the sustainable play reader

The Adventure Gap and Narratives of Inclusion

The reality is that if you have a constituency of voters who have no direct relationship with the natural world, why would they ever vote, allocate federal tax dollars to support it in perpetuity to the future the way it is now?

The Alchemist

Brad Rassler 24 min read

IT HAPPENED ON A CRISP SAN FRANCISCO EVENING. February of 1968 at the Carousel Ballroom. Jerry Garcia and the Dead were...

Climbing to Freedom

Dick Dorworth 14 min read

Then she recounted a story that put climbing into a stark, perhaps primordial perspective, one that I’d never entertained or needed to entertain.

On the Sustainability of Summits

Brad Rassler 7 min read

IF YOU’RE you’re one of the 1,200 climbers attempting Denali’s popular West Buttress route next year, the nearly two metric...

Art of the Wild: Gessner, Stegner, and Abbey

Brad Rassler 29 min read

WRITER, PROFESSOR, AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROVOCATEUR, David Gessner, is lounging in his writing shack out back of his North Carolina house, a...

A Mighty River of Jackalopiana

Michael P. Branch 9 min read

Sarah nods. “Free ice water. Hand-painted road signs. Free coffee and doughnuts for vets. And jackalopes. That’s what we’re about."

Burning Mental Impressions

Dennis Eagan 7 min read

Then something remarkable happened: once I began to move, my mind shifted from melancholia to wonder.

Riding into the Heart of Patagonia

Nancy Pfeiffer 31 min read

A calafate seed was growing inside me. The idea was simple: Return to Coyhaique, buy a horse, and head south.

Searching for Jensen

Brad Rassler 22 min read

YES, I KNEW SOMETHING of the great mountaineer Don Jensen; after all, I bore witness to his Sierran legacy with every ramble...

The Ascent of the Riffelberg

Mark Twain 21 min read

OUR GUIDES, HIRED ON THE GEMMI, were already at Zermatt when we reached there. So there was nothing to interfere...

Hells Canyon Revival

CMarie Fuhrman 21 min read

And always, in this search, a person might find that she is already there, at the center of the world....

The Lost Coast

Dennis Eagan 8 min read

THE CALL OF THE SEA is hard to resist. I became intrigued with the Aleut trade route in 1988, while reading...

Pretzel to E4

Chip Brown 7 min read

The match moved toward the endgame. He had no real chance of winning but stubbornly fought on.

Running Talus

Brad Rassler 14 min read

Unabashed, they climbed, skied, drank, smoked, danced, dropped, screwed, and designed gear, and schemed how to avoid the war in Asia.

Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System

Donella Meadows 42 min read

Back from the sublime to the ridiculous, from enlightenment to caveats.

Time Alone (Chosen or Not) Can Be a Chance to Hit the Reset Button

Thuy-vy Nguyen 6 min read

Time when we are unexpectedly alone can be difficult but, at least for some of us, it can also be a blessing in disguise.

Conservation Gone Wild

Robert Lugg 5 min read

The epithet “basic” was all over Facebook news feeds and the blogosphere in 2014, and not only because Taylor Swift...

Inside Rock

Michael P. Cohen 11 min read

When I see these stoned counters in other people’s houses, they seem, in their shape and their function, like places of business or places of death.

That House of Happiness

Euell Gibbons: No Grape-Nut He

Inside Bohemian Grove

Pretzel to E4

Why I Don’t Trophy Hunt

Inside Bohemian Grove

The King of the Golden River

The Dead Citron

The Wind in the Willows

Three Poems by E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake)

The Ravine (ЯР)

Five Poems by Li Bai 李白

The Greening of Alex Honnold

The Adventure Gap and Narratives of Inclusion

Art of the Wild: Gessner, Stegner, and Abbey

Why I Don’t Trophy Hunt

A Mighty River of Jackalopiana

The Two Burials of Jonathan Wright

Three Poems by E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake)

The Wind in the Willows

Song of the Open Road

Nonfiction

The Adventure Gap and Narratives of Inclusion

The Alchemist

Climbing to Freedom

On the Sustainability of Summits

Art of the Wild: Gessner, Stegner, and Abbey

A Mighty River of Jackalopiana

Burning Mental Impressions

Riding into the Heart of Patagonia

Searching for Jensen

The Ascent of the Riffelberg

Hells Canyon Revival

The Lost Coast

Pretzel to E4

Running Talus

Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System

Time Alone (Chosen or Not) Can Be a Chance to Hit the Reset Button

Conservation Gone Wild

Inside Rock