Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Hiking

August Field Notes

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August must have been the shortest month in history. At least, that’s how it felt for us as we swirled through a whirlwind of conferences, parties, birthdays, and projects. Fortunately, we also took some time out for a much-needed relaxing family camping trip just a few feet from the Pacific Ocean and a lovely hike in one of our favorite spots. I managed to capture some photographic evidence from those adventures, which I’ll share below.

What happened to the big website revamp, you may be wondering. Well, change is coming! But, for a myriad of reasons, I’m postponing it until after I launch my dad’s anthology in November. Stay tuned….

For now, I’m excited to be back to regular posting. I missed you all!

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Did you have any August adventures? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

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Finding Adventure

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My family has been living car-free since last August. If I were to write a survival guide about our year, I’d include all the practical tips on commuting, safety, weather, etc. … and I’d dedicate an entire chapter to adventure. For me, the real challenge to thriving sans automobile is finding ways to get out of the day-to-day and away from our neighborhood. It’s finding adventure.

When my husband talked about getting rid of our car, I didn’t worry about getting to the store, library, or doctors’ offices. I knew we’d figure all that out. But I had serious reservations about not being able to drive to the forest, mountains, and ocean. I know I’m not alone. I interviewed a car-free family with four kids for an article last year. They’re bicycle advocates and they thought about living car-free for a long time, but they held onto their Toyota Previa minivan for years. Why? They wanted to go canoeing. They wanted to visit the coast and big city. They wanted to go on adventures.

Well, fortunately, adventures are more accessible than you might think. Our city bus system drops off near one hiking trail that’s sixty miles from town. Local hiking groups routinely carpool to trail heads. In the winter, buses take adventure-seekers to two different ski resorts on weekend days, where you can also cross-country ski or snowshoe. You can often join in on friends’ hikes, excursions, or camping trips. And, of course, you can rent a car for a weekend.

When I’m feeling weary of the same old walks in the same old neighborhoods, I try to think like a tourist. I’ve traveled in the United States and Canada and in several foreign countries, and I rarely rented cars at my destinations. I never let that stop me from finding adventures. I took buses, subways, trains, and shuttles. I explored on foot. I rented a bike.

Bicycle day trips are a nearly perfect form of adventure. They’re not hard to plan, young kids can easily participate, it’s fun to seek out a scenic route, and the journey is inevitably part of the adventure.

On Memorial Day Weekend, I took two bicycle day trips. Both reminded me of how important it is for me to get away from the city and into nature even though both destinations were technically inside the city. One day I took a 14-mile bike ride in the wetlands. It’s an easy ride from my house, and it’s home to 200 kinds of birds and 350 plant species. I’ve seen blue herons, beavers, and a bald eagle there, and I’ve listened to the melody of Pacific Tree Frogs and birdsong. This time of year, the grasslands are speckled with native purple camas lilies.

The next day, my husband, son, and I rode to a beautiful forested city park that we don’t visit often. It’s on the other side of town, but only a four mile ride from our house. This time of year, it’s blooming with thousands of rhododendrons. We hiked around, smelled flowers, ate a picnic, and then stopped for ice cream on the way home.

Both were easy day trips and required little in the way of planning or packing. And both left me feeling restored … and made me hungry for longer bike trips. Next I’m hoping to ride to an arboretum and hiking spot about ten miles from our house. And I have big plans for a bike camping trip and a longer bicycle tour in the future (although both of those will wait until after our new family member arrives later this summer).

Taking a car-free adventure can seem daunting, but like any adventure, the hardest part is committing yourself to it. Once you’re on the journey, you’ll almost certainly be glad you went.

Looking for inspiration? Check out these resources:

Do you go on car-free adventures? I’d love to hear about it.

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6 Ways to Nurture Your Family’s Connection with Nature

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Most of the new parents I know are anything but negligent. They take their toddlers to storytime and enroll them in swim courses, dance classes, and music lessons. They serve fresh vegetables, read picture books, learn baby signs, and take workshops in infant massage and child development. A storytime leader at my local library jokingly refers to my generation of moms and dads as “PhD parents.”

But with all the scheduling, classes, and shuttling around, we may be in danger of neglecting something that’s actually more crucial to our children’s health and development than workshops and classes – unstructured playtime in nature. Numerous scholars and environmental psychologists are sounding an alarm, arguing that kids today are at risk for developing what Richard Louv, author of the 2005 bestseller Last Child in the Woods and Chairman of Children and Nature Network, calls “Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

Humans need to experience nature.

Both adults and children have an innate affinity for the natural world and an urge to connect with other forms of life which Harvard researcher Edward O. Wilson coined “biophilia”. Unconvinced? Consider the following findings:

  • Workers who could view a nature setting from work were more satisfied, felt better challenged by their jobs, and reported better health than co-workers who couldn’t view nature. (Kaplan, R. & Kaplan, S. (1989). The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)
  • Surgical patients randomly assigned to a room with a view of trees required less pain medicine, healed faster, and were discharged sooner than those with no window or a view of a brick wall. (Ulrich, R. (1984). View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery. Science, 224, 420-421)
  • A view of green plants and vistas helped highly-stressed rural children relieve anxiety. The more plants, green views, and access to natural play areas the kids had, the less stressed they were. (“Nearby Nature: A Buffer of Life Stress Among Rural Children.” Environment and Behavior. Vol. 35:3, 311-330.)
  • Girls living in inner-city Chicago Public Housing with views of greenery had more self-discipline, increased concentration, and reduced impulsive behavior than girls the same age living in identical housing in more barren areas. (Journal of Environmental Psychology, 22, 49-63.)

Unstructured play, especially outdoors, benefits kids.

We don’t just need a view of nature either. We need to get out in it. Research, like studies conducted by doctors Hillary L. Burdette and Robert C. Whitaker, has shown that playing outdoors alone or with friends, siblings, or parents not only helps kids stay fit, it helps them :

  • pay attention
  • solve problems
  • sleep better
  • interact with others
  • avoid depression, anxiety, and aggression.

Kids are communing less with nature.

The research may be in, but those long summers many of us remember from childhood, where we roamed the neighborhood, collected bugs, made mud pies, and headed out for  week-long family camping trips seem to be going extinct. Children’s playtime fell 25% between 1981 and 1997, and that trend has undoubtedly continued in the last decade.  Moreover, by 1990, the radius kids were allowed to roam shrunk to 1/9 of what it was in 1970.

Why?

  • We’re busy. Americans work about five weeks more per year than we did in 1970. And the bad economy is making people even more hesitant to take time off. When workers are able to take a few days off, many feel they should stay connected to work via cell phones, laptops, and blackberries.
  • TVs, computers, video games, and hand-held electronic devices compete for our attention. The average person watches more than four hours of TV a day.
  • We’ve become scared of nature. The widespread fear of sun exposure in the last few decades (possibly resulting in an epidemic of Vitamin D deficiency) exemplifies how anxious many of us have become about the Great Outdoors.

6 Ways to Nurture Your Family's Connection with Nature #parenting #nature

Six easy ways to re-connect with nature

1. Institute a family green hour.

If you’re a scheduler, pencil a “green hour” into each day. At that time, let your kids enjoy unstructured playtime in the backyard, a garden, a neighborhood park, or another safe and accessible green space.

Remember, connecting with nature is necessary for adults too. During your family’s green hour, get outside, work in the garden, draw or write in a nature journal, or just relax and observe your surroundings. You can connect with other families who schedule a daily green hour here.

2. Take a nature walk.

Pack a lunch and head to the forest or the city park. Nature walking is not the  time for feeling the burn. Set a slow pace and observe birds, plants, tracks, insects, scat, rocks, and the sky. Bring along binoculars, a magnifying glass, field guides, or just your curiosity.

3. Feed the birds.

Install a bird feeder outside one of your windows, and observe the birds that come and go. Feeders don’t have to be expensive. Kids can even make their own. Read up on what kinds of birds live in your neighborhood. Different birds like different kinds of feeders. Don’t stress if you don’t see any action right away. It takes awhile for birds to find a new feeder. Attract even more birds to your yard by designing a bird-friendly landscape.

4. Watch the sky.

If you can see the stars from your backyard or patio, make a weekly stargazing date with your family. Find tips for what to look for each week here. You can also track the moon’s cycle here.

If you can’t see the stars from your abode, check out your local astronomy club. They often host free dark sky meet ups, where you can look through telescopes and learn about the constellations from dedicated stargazers.

5. Stare at the Clouds.

Connecting with nature doesn’t have to be hard work. Stretch out on the grass and gaze up. If you like what you see, check out the Cloud Appreciation Society’s website, or get your hands on a copy of one of their books: The Cloudspotter’s Guide and The Cloud Collector’s Handbook.

6. Take a Camping Trip.

If you’re trying to save cash on your summer vacation this year, camping is the way to go. You’ll need some basic gear – a tent, sleeping bags, a flashlight, water, a first aid kit, and plenty of food and water. You’ll probably also want a lantern, camp stove, and a good book.

You don’t have to go far from home, but the more off the beaten path, the better. Resist the impulse to over plan. Enjoy waking with the sun, spending long days wandering and relaxing, and talking and singing around the campfire at night. (Tip: leave the cell phone in the car.)

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How does your family connect with nature? I’d love to hear your ideas.

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Adventures on Foot

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Appalachian Trail. Credit: Jasen Miller

I’m reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, a hilarious account of his adventures on the Appalachian Trail (AT). Of his first day on the trail, Bryson writes:

It was hell. First days on hiking trips always are. I was hopelessly out of shape — hopelessly. The pack weighed way to much. Way too much. I had never encountered anything so hard, for which I was so ill prepared. Every step was a struggle. The hardest part was coming to terms with the constant dispiriting discovery that there is always more hill.

The AT is 2,160 miles. It runs from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia, traversing 14 states. According to Bryson, 1500 people set out to complete it each year, but only 300 people make it to the end.

Despite Bryson’s eloquent descriptions of the miseries of trudging day after day through endless forests weighed down by a gigantic backpack, I’ve always dreamed of taking an adventure on foot when my son’s older. I love to walk, and I hope I’ll get the opportunity to tackle at least some portion of one of these trails someday.

The CT stretches almost 500 miles, from Denver to Durango, traveling through six wilderness areas and eight mountain ranges and rising to 13,334 feet. I’ve done day hikes on many portions of the Colorado Trail, and every part I’ve visited is beautiful. (The below picture is actually from a stretch of the 401 Trail near Crested Butte, Colorado, but it gives you an idea of what makes hiking in Colorado worthwhile.)

Colorado Scenery. Credit: trailsource.com

The PCT zigzags 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada through California, Oregon, and Washington. It passes through six of the seven ecozones in North America, including deserts, mountains, and old growth forest. Three hundred hikers attempt the entire trail each year, walking through the Mojave Desert, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Yosemite, Crater Lake, and the Columbia River Gorge.

Pacific Crest Trail. Credit: nordique

The longest hiking trail in the U.S., the NCT stretches 4,200 miles from New York to North Dakota. It spans mountains, forests, and prairies and skirts Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.

North Country Trail. Credit: Daniel Morrison

We have no shortage of long hiking trails in the United States. The National Trails System totals 60,000 miles in all 50 states. It’s longer than the Interstate Highway System. If you’re looking for a place to hike, or just want to dream of your own adventure on foot, you can find lots of information about America’s hiking trails at americantrails.org.

I’d also like to take a hut trip someday. On these adventures, you spend the day walking in the woods. Then instead of sleeping on the ground or on a platform in the outdoors, you sleep on a bed in an inn. Huts range from rustic cabins to grand lodges. Europe abounds with hut hiking adventures. The accommodations in the Alps are supposedly quite luxurious; think: “arugula salad, beef consommé, entrecôte steak, and fine cheeses”. But you can also take hut trips in Colorado, New Hampshire, Georgia, Glacier National Park, Yosemite, and other locations around the U.S. You can learn more about hut hiking here.

Have you ever taken an adventure on foot? Would you like to? I’d love to hear about it.

Out of the Wild

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Colorado Central Magazine recently published my humorous essay “Out of the Wild.”

Out of the Wild

by Abby Quillen

I grew up in Central Colorado, and most weekends my family piled into a canary-yellow 1975 Chevy pickup and pitched down rutted-out, rock-strewn roads to hike, explore, or cross-country ski at places with names like Mosquito Pass, Missouri Gulch, and Cochetopa Creek.

By the time my sister and I were 18, we’d both sucked in the thin air on top of a 14,000 foot mountain, run across high-mountain meadows, visited too many ghost towns to list, waded barefoot in ice-cold streams, and spent countless nights sleeping with only a tent and a sleeping bag between our bodies and the hard, cold ground.

Like any wilderness adventures, our outings weren’t always predictable or safe. My dad delighted in driving down twisting and switch-backed mountain roads, often with precipitous drop offs on one side. My mom spent most of our rides clutching the truck’s dashboard, taking in sharp intakes of air through her teeth. “Slow down, Ed,” she’d hiss. “Watch the road.”

Despite my mom’s careful backseat driving, my dad managed to get our truck stuck in some precarious places, notably on a ledge on Mount Princeton and another time in the mud up the North Fork.

Both my sister and I have scars to remember our excursions. When Columbine was nine, she talked my dad into letting her skip school and accompany him and a friend on a cross-country ski trip over Old Monarch Pass. They ended up stranded for several hours after nightfall, and my sister got frostbite on one of her feet.

A few years later, when I was eight, I raced my cousins down a steep section of the Colorado Trail during a family camping trip. I tripped and gashed my upper lip, scraped my chin, and more permanently, chipped my front tooth.

Today my own son is almost two, so I reflect on my childhood quite a bit. When my husband and I aren’t changing diapers or trying to serve a balanced diet to someone who spurns vegetables, we converse about how we might not ruin the little fellow.

We live in Eugene, Oregon, and there’s plenty of wilderness to explore around here. But we mostly amble down sidewalks, explore city parks, and bike down paved paths.

While I delighted in marmot and pica sightings as a kid, my son is more familiar with city creatures – the gray squirrels who run along our fence and taunt our cats, the ducks and nutrias who swim around the litter in the canal by our house, and the seagulls who dive for trash in the grocery store parking lot.

My husband and I want to get out in the wilderness more. But we tend to gravitate toward activities that fit into our son’s nap schedule and where there’s no danger he’ll toddle off a cliff face.

I don’t think we’re alone. In the 30 years between my second birthday and my son’s, everyone’s gotten more concerned about safety. We’re supposed to strap my son into a car seat until he’s seven. And according to Oregon law, he should wear a helmet when he’s riding his Strider bike, which doesn’t even have pedals.

Lately some folks are decrying the increased restrictions on children. Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, warns against something called nature deficit disorder. And movements with names like Free-Range Parenting are cropping up.

Of course I don’t want my son to be deficient in anything, especially something as integral to my childhood as being outdoors. So last weekend my husband and I decided it was time to introduce my son to the wilderness. We were heading across the Cascades to visit my sister in Bend, and nothing says nature like crisp, high-desert air, windswept expanses and snow-capped mountains.

But on our first day in Bend, after my son took his nap and we were all ready for an afternoon hike, the sky turned black and rain started pelting from the sky. We decided to head to a pub for an early dinner instead.

The next day we’d planned a visit to the High Desert Museum, but afterward, we stopped for a hike at the nearby Newberry Volcano. It was a scenic jaunt to the caldera, and my son managed the two miles mostly by himself. But the trail was paved, so it didn’t exactly feel like a wilderness excursion.

No problem, my husband and I thought. We’d just stop for a hike on our way back to Eugene the next day. The drive is beautiful, with dense Douglas fir forests and breathtaking views of Mount Jefferson and Three Fingered Jack. There would be numerous places to stop for a hike.

When we saw the sign for the Headwaters of the Metolius, I told my husband, “This is it. I’ve heard it’s beautiful.” So we followed the signs, parked, and started walking … on an asphalt path. It’s well worth the short walk to see the wide, sparkling Metolius River bubble out of an underground spring. But a hike it is not.

“We’ll just stop somewhere else,” my husband assured me as we got back in the car. But my son had other ideas. By the time we turned back onto Highway 126 he was fast asleep.

We’ll have to save my son’s introduction to the wilderness for another day. I’m hoping maybe my parents will be up for a hike when we visit Colorado this summer. Will it really hurt anything if my son wears a helmet on the outing?

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Slow Summer Living

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Summer is meant to for slowness. Savor it and get outside. #summer #powerslow

Remember those long summers from childhood? My family spent lots of weekends camping each summer – going on hikes, reading paperbacks in the shade, wading in streams, taking afternoon naps, and telling stories around the campfire. Back at home, my sister and I rode our bikes all over town, walked to the swimming pool most afternoons, made mud pies, captured bugs in jars, read dozens of books, and just played.

Recently I stumbled upon journalist Kelly Wilkinson’s blog Make Grow Gather. She’s on a mission to relive one of those slow, lazy summers from childhood.

This summer, I am attempting an experiment. An experiment to take back summer. Like when I was a kid and thought everyday could be warm and empty and mine.

She made a summer to-do list. Here are a few of my favorite things on it:

Walk barefoot • Take a nap outside • Make suntea • Pick berries • Spend time in hammock • Go on picnic • Make herb water • Hang birdfeeder • Grow vegetables • Go to a farmer’s market • Read the Sunday papers outside • Learn a summer constellation • Go camping •  Read a summer book • Pick wildflowers • Blow a dandelion • Watch fireflies • Make lemonade • Watch a meteor shower • Eat a watermelon • Take a walk on a dirt road

In our house, summer is an opportunity for me to work and write a little bit more, since my husband is home more to watch our son. And that works out great, because after so many months of tearful morning goodbyes and refrains of “Dada gonna be home soon?”, they’re both pretty excited to spend more one-on-one time together. But Wilkinson’s inspired me also to make old-fashioned summer laziness a priority in the next two months.

So I’m planning to spend lots of time here…

and here…

and in our other favorite escapes, and to just really enjoy these long days with my family. So I’ll probably be posting a little bit less during the next two months. But hopefully you’ll be too busy catching fireflies, picking berries, blowing dandelions, and gazing at stars to notice.