Category: Whatnot (Page 2 of 12)

Odds and Ends

An 80-year-old woman, 1,000 kilometres, 7 weeks, a trusty steed, and her faithful dog

2021-09-12 / Downshift

For the 40th time, Jane Dotchin has set out on a seven-week pilgrimage along rural byways from her home in Hexham, England to Inverness, Scotland.

How many 80-year-olds do you know who travel 1,000km overland each year? Age is just a number for Jane Dotchin from Hexham, England, who has done such a trek annually since 1972. This year, her 13-year-old pack pony, her disabled Jack Russell terrier, and a few personal items were all she needed for the trip.

Dotchin puts on her eyepatch and an orange safety vest, packs her kit and Jack Russell terrier Dinky onto her horse, and sends it. From her home in Northumberland, near the Scottish border, she’ll ride all the way north to Inverness. It’s a tradition that started decades ago for Dotchin, with a deferred animal care request and an inkling of freedom.

Is now the right time to ban campfires?

2021-08-17 / Downshift

Source » Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff, High Country News »

Published 5 years ago, on July 13, 2016

In 1972, Grand Canyon National Park outlawed campfires in the backcountry. Backpackers like me considered this an outrage. After all, the only people who carried those fancy little stoves back then were people incapable of building a fire. I bring this up because we are living through another explosive fire season in the West.

Of course, popular campsites back then looked a lot like parking lots. No downed wood, no dead (or live) grasses, no bushes, no bark on the trees as far up as you could reach. When a dozen people a night are building campfires, anything burnable vanishes pretty quickly.

Note: Fires denude the camping area.

I had a stove. I remember setting up my tiny SVEA, putting the pot on to boil, and turning to organize my sleeping place, because when cooking on a wood fire, it takes forever for the pot to boil.

But my pot boileth over, more quickly than I expected.

Note: Stoves are more efficient than wood fires.

A fire is convivial, although I usually don’t sit next to it: I spend a lot of time skulking around to avoid smoke. Said smoke also fills the whole camping area. I can see and smell a campfire from a mile away.

Note: Fires stink.

Together – Marko Roth’s travel story from Patagonia

2018-03-11 / Downshift

Marko Roth presents Together, a short travel film about his 1,200-mile journey through Patagonia.

The world’s longest glass-bottomed bridge just opened on China’s Tianmen mountain

2018-03-09 / Downshift

More photos at the BBC.

New forensic analysis indicates bones found on a remote island in the South Pacific were likely those of legendary adventurer Amelia Earhart

2018-03-07 / Downshift

Science Daily:

Richard Jantz, professor emeritus of anthropology and director emeritus of UT’s Forensic Anthropology Center, re-examined seven bone measurements conducted in 1940 by physician D. W. Hoodless. Hoodless had concluded that the bones belonged to a man.

Jantz, using several modern quantitative techniques — including Fordisc, a computer program for estimating sex, ancestry, and stature from skeletal measurements — found that Hoodless had incorrectly determined the sex of the remains. The program, co-created by Jantz, is used by nearly every board-certified forensic anthropologist in the US and around the world.

The data revealed that the bones have more similarity to Earhart than to 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample.

The new study is published in the journal Forensic Anthropology.

Source: University of Tennessee at Knoxville

Outdoor recreation has larger economic impact than mining or agriculture

2018-03-07 / Downshift

Get your selfie stick out.

Kamila Kudelska, Wyoming Public Media:

The new study by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that outdoor recreation accounted for two percent of the entire U.S. economy in 2016.

And

Tara Highfill, a research economist at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, said two percent is actually very significant in the overall economy.

“That may sound small, but it’s actually quite large when you look at other industries,” she said. “For example, outdoor recreation is larger than the entire mining industry in the U.S. It’s larger than the entire agriculture industry in the U.S.”

Highfill said the most surprising finding is the size of the outdoor recreation economy and the speed at which it is growing. In 2016, the outdoor recreation economy grew 3.8 percent, compared to a growth of 2.8 percent in the overall economy. A final report will be released in September.

Study: Outdoor Recreation Satellite Account: Prototype Statistics for 2012-2016

More:
Outdoors Economy Is Bigger Than Oil – GearJunkie
Outdoor recreation was 2 percent of GDP in 2016 – TheHill

Laos is remaking itself as an adventure center, and it’s serving them well

2018-03-07 / Downshift

John Henderson, Los Angeles Times:

In 1990, about 14,400 people visited landlocked Laos. By 2015, that number had swollen to 4.7 million. A country the World Bank ranked among the 10 poorest in the world in 1991 is now at 118.

I spent three weeks in February 2017 traversing the country, trekking along the northern border with China and kayaking along the Mekong River on the southern tip near Cambodia.

I started in the middle of the country, going north, then heading south, which seems not to make sense on its face but was faster than traveling north to south or the other way around.

Category: Whatnot (Page 2 of 12)

An 80-year-old woman, 1,000 kilometres, 7 weeks, a trusty steed, and her faithful dog

Is now the right time to ban campfires?

Together – Marko Roth’s travel story from Patagonia

The world’s longest glass-bottomed bridge just opened on China’s Tianmen mountain

New forensic analysis indicates bones found on a remote island in the South Pacific were likely those of legendary adventurer Amelia Earhart

Outdoor recreation has larger economic impact than mining or agriculture

Laos is remaking itself as an adventure center, and it’s serving them well

Bonjour. Hello. Hej. Olá. Hola. Привіт. مرحبا

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