Five stay warm tips

Car rides with the windows down Tall, ice-filled drinks Swims with your horse The pleasures of summer seem far, far away. At my place, pasture walks are slow, laborious efforts of postholing, walking in snow that goes to my thighs and fills my boots. I’d […]

Warming Tips for the Outdoors Inclined

Tempest Williams stirs it up

The Outdoor Retailer is all about the selly-selly-sell. Thousands of outdoor gear exhibitors tout their latest socks, stoves, skis, shoes, snowshoes, and shovels in the effort to wow thousands of buyers (or not). Increasingly, however, it’s also about organizing and affirming the outdoor industry’s growing […]

Tempest Williams wows OR crowd

Welcome UtahOutsider Readers!

For those of you wondering what will happen to UtahOutsider now that I’ve high-tailed it to Colorado: fear not. UtahOutsider lives on! The site will remain live and active. The new ColoradoOutsider debuts today! Suffice to say, I reserve the prerogative to maintain my outsider […]

Species Parade, Week Nine

Moving 300 miles southeast and up 1,600 feet in elevation from my previous stomping grounds means a whole new environment and a whole new parade of species to celebrate. There are still juncos and deer. In town, there are still mostly white folks. But things […]

A Day in the New Life

Wallace Stegner famously said: the West faces you like a dare… I think a lot of Easterners feel that to live out this way is to go after that dare, to live adventurously, to embrace and appreciate the wilderness expanse as well as their adopted […]

Bits of Winter Wonder

Winter has come and I’m determined not to bring bad juju (ie, snarkiness) to the season. As in: “Brrr, I don’t want to do _______ (fill in outdoor activity) because it’s too dang cold.” or “I’m just going to sit around the space […]

The Shine of Newness Officially Off

The glisten and novelty of living in this new place is officially off and over. I no longer skate above the surface of a beautiful, iced-over pond. I’m swimming in it. (And, yes, I’m cold. With dastardly electric heat, I’m heating the house as conservatively […]

Progress in fits and starts

I’ve now put about 30 hours of trail work into the Lollipop Loop. That’s what I’m calling the trail that goes from our back pasture, down a southeast draw, up along a modest cliff face, then back along a northeast draw. It’s been a helluva […]