Summer 2019 Outlook & Update
Given the nearly year and a half hiatus from writing, I was sure that the vision of this blog had played itself out. Instead, changing circumstances has renewed my vigor to write. A brief update - my wife and I couldn’t resist the urge any longer so we packed up our lives in Minnesota and moved ourselves out to Boise, Idaho. This move was predicated on the desire to be closer to public land and mountainous regions of this country. With a move to Idaho, there are literally millions of acres of public land available for recreational use essentially outside our doorstep.
The vision and mission of this blog will remain the same - to encourage and teach individuals who don’t frequent or have abundant opportunity at accessing public land how to best utilize the land that they own when they do have the desire. Whether it’s done via a weekend backpack trip, a once-a-year big game hunt, or any other type of trek into the wide open wilderness, it is the goal of these writings to equip the low frequency public land user with all the knowledge required to fully enjoy their time on the land that they own as an American citizen.
Throughout this coming summer (2019), I am going to aim at doing extensive gear reviews and start building up a principled approach for approaching public land recreation activities from 4x4 adventures to that big game backcountry hunt.
The approach to planning will be a chance for me to think out loud and refine these principles to hopefully make the teaching of public land recreation more approachable. I want to be careful about distinguishing between making the applicability of public lands easier versus making the recreating easy. I don’t think there is, nor should there be, a hack or easing up on the level of difficulty of recreational activities out in the wilderness. I believe that it is the difficulties of these situations and activities that give the land and the activities the greatest value, both to the individual and society.
For the gear reviews, I hope to give the public land novice an overview of all the essential gear that is commonly used regardless of the elected recreational activity. My thought is that these reviews will start out at a high overview level and then dive deep into the nuances and common failure modes of that gear, so that anyone can be properly equipped to recreate confidently and safely on public land. I also plan on covering more recreational opportunities through the lens of the population that does not have public land right outside their front door - a life situation that I found myself in for nearly three decades and so I know well.
As always, I will write these musings from a beginners mindset, often starting with a question or position that some may be too embarrassed ask. This site remains committed to remembering that everyone starts with no knowledge and I hope that the information can teach readers and give them the confidence to go out and find adventure on public land to continue their learning journey. There is nothing quite like the experience of finding yourself removed from the daily bustle of life and to hear the rushing of a stream, the scream of raptor circling overhead or just the silence of being far enough away from civilization to allow you to reconnect and be humbled by the wilderness that surrounds you.
Kyle Zibrowski
