All Stories

Shadowy figure in the sky
Field Notes

3 Spooky Legends of the American West

In the Santa Lucia mountains of California, there have been sightings of a mysterious figure in the late afternoon sun. The figure appears suddenly as a tall, dark shape against the sky, arms spread apart, with a halo or corona of sunlight radiating from behind. Various sightings have also described a person wearing a dark billowing cloak or large hat. Once spotted, they usually disappear quickly, or sometimes turning to “follow” the viewer.

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2 Min
Ice hockey puck on frozen lake
Field Notes

Unofficial Rules of Pond Hockey

The heart and soul of hockey lives out on the ice at lakes and ponds across North America—these local proving grounds are where legends are made and communities built. For many, it’s a rite of passage. Culture. A place to gather to shake off the deep freeze. Though these tend to be unstructured matches, a few “unwritten rules” still exist. Don’t be a hoser—save your fights for the bar. Everyone’s welcome, no matter age, gender, or skill level. These are just a few from an unofficial list.

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2 Min
Timber framer Peter Henrikson
Profiles

Peter Henrikson: Soul of Traditional Craftsmanship

Whether it is in a timber-framed home, or a backcountry stream bridge, or a 16th-century boatshed built on the shores of a Norwegian lake, it is the invisible that makes the visible hold together. Stout timbers connect one to the other, each log hand-selected, each joint hand-fitted, each nexus of beam and truss and tie and rafter its own unique, articulated piece of hand-wrought woodworking. For many, timber framing is, in its essence, an expression of honesty.

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Man holding 3 legged folding stool
How-To's

DIY 3 Legged Camp Stool

One of the best items to have on any outdoor excursion is a good seat. A seat can help keep you dry in wet weather, provide a spot to rest your legs for a bit, help keep you warm if it’s cold out, and, let’s be honest, it’s just more comfortable than sitting on hard rocks or snow. One of the simplest forms of a seat is a folding tripod. These are small because they fold when not in use, so they don’t take up much room in your pack or truck. It’s a great option for lunch breaks on the river during a day of fly fishing, a solid place to sit while glassing up wild game, or just a spot to take a load off around the campfire.

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3 Min
Wide angle shot of building interior with lots of chainsaws and logging materials.
Profiles

New York’s Largest Chainsaw Collection: Hud-son Chainsaw Museum

An early morning fog rolls through the town of Barneveld just outside the Adirondacks in New York as a worker flips on the showroom lights at Hud-Son Forest Equipment. As sales start amidst the smell of gasoline and chainsaws rev to life as employees set to work on customer repairs, the history of the tools of the forestry trade hangs in the front window. These tools, some over 90 years old, represent central New York’s Chainsaw Museum, a testament to passion and a long family history in forestry that runs in Dan Hudon Jr.’s family.

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3 Min
A wooden halibut hook, hand-crafted by Tlingit Master carver Jon Rowan of Klawock, Alaska.
Field Notes

Halibut Hooks of the Northwest Coast

Traditionally, a náxw, or “halibut hook” in the Lingít language, was carved out of two pieces of wood attached with cordage (natural fiber) to form a V-shaped hook. A piece of bone (later metal) would also be wrapped to the bottom piece of wood and angled towards the inside to create the barb. The upper piece of wood might be plain or carved, with a fishing line attached. The line would run to the surface, where it would be affixed to a wooden float or inflated buoy made of seal stomach, while the fishhook could be weighted at the bottom with a simple stone sinker. The finished assembly was designed to keep the hook near the ocean bottom, where large halibut feed.

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5 Min
a middle aged bearded white man wearing a yellow flannel shirt, dark jeans and a green hat holding a block of wood and a chainsaw looking up at a tree to assess it
Profiles

Zach LaPerrière: The Sage

Living in a small cabin immersed in the virgin old-growth with his family for the last twenty-five years, LaPerrière is a part of the wilderness. There is no television or road into it. Visitors park off the nearby road and walk in. As a result, they spend as much time outdoors as indoors. He spends long hours in his woodshop under the cabin, and he will spend months working on the creations that come from a single tree, turning it on his lathe, peeling back layers, and discovering the story in the wood.

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4 Min
view from the deck of a working sailboat that has gear and a motorcycle strapped to the deck while a woman looks out to the snowy mountains
Field Notes

Sailing The Inside Passage on The Raven

We ran into Naomi Spar on the piers of Sitka, AK, while they were driving their adventure touring bike over the dock onto the worn deck of their sailboat, a Sloop named “the Raven”. The scene was so unique that we had to ask them their story and how they came to be cruising the coast of Alaska with a motorbike strapped to their foredeck. They gave us a tale of navigating the Inside Passage, a lawless mystery ridden trial ground that so many prospectors had concurred before them.

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2 Min
Salmon and venison cooking on an open flame.
Food & Recipes

Filson Food: Surf & Turf Alaskan Style

Anchored to Alaska’s rainforest-shrouded coastline, Barnacle Foods shares the flavors, sights, and stories of the uncommon delicacies from the surrounding region. Founded in 2016, Barnacle Foods makes pantry goods from Alaskan kelp (yes, seaweed!) sourced through sustainable wild harvest and regenerative rope-grown sea farms. The flavor-boosting kelp is the first ingredient, adding richness and depth to mouthwatering hot sauces, seasonings, salsas, BBQ sauces, and more. At Barnacle, they’re on a mission to share foods that do good for the ocean and coasts, the local communities, and the future. It doesn’t get more Alaskan than this.

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3 Min
Aerial image of a mid-size boat in the middle of a dark green ocean surrounded by bull kelp.
Profiles

Bringing the Ocean’s Bounty to Market in Southeast Alaska

Barnacle, by producing food products that require large amounts of kelp, and purchasing that kelp from the communities who are farming it, is helping to build not only a business, but an eco-friendly, sustainable, and renewable industry and future for Alaskans. “The march that we would like to lead with Barnacle is to do as much good as we can for our oceans and our communities,” says Heifetz, “and to keep the value from our edible resources here in Alaska with the people who have the skills and knowledge to best steward the coastline, and have been doing so for millennia.”

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3 Min
Donna Kalil standing on top of her SUV's hunting platform.
Profiles

Python Bounty Hunter: Donna Kalil

The snakes that she’s hunting are the result of a good idea gone wrong. In the 1970s, the first Burmese pythons were imported from overseas as pets. They were a hit, and their numbers grew due to breeding programs and increased imports (importation has been banned since 2012). Released into the wild by their owners, they discovered an Eden in the Florida Everglades region, a place filled with food where they thrived. An apex predator, their only competition is large American crocodiles, alligators, and Florida panthers, and even those creatures can succumb to the pythons; nothing seems to stop them. The only other thing that can kill them in the wild is an extended hard freeze, which rarely happens this far south. They quickly took to the waterways and started to feed, and feed, and feed.

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5 Min