People are getting outdoors in droves, all in flight — at least mentally — from the pandemic. Under stay-at-home orders, they're also bringing the outdoors to the indoors, finding comfort and knowledge in books, movies, podcasts and more. Here are how some of Outdoors Weekend's contributing writers are getting their nature fix:
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I've been riding a bicycle 14,000 miles from Oregon to Patagonia with Jedidiah Jenkins, whose memoir "To Shake the Sleeping Self" chronicles his 2013 adventure — and enlightenment. It's been quite a roll so far, and not so much about the cycling itself. Jenkins writes with candor, humor and humility about the spirit quest and surprises that come from "exceeded expectations, lazy biases and half-thought thoughts." No flats with this book. – Bob Timmons, Outdoors Weekend editor
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I have rediscovered a CD of the original score of the University of Minnesota/TPR-produced series, "Minnesota: A History of the Land." Written and performed by Minneapolis resident Peter Ostroushko, the documentary recounts the story of all the people and the landscapes of this place we call Minnesota. The music is by turns sweeping, sad, merry and lastly, at peace. When I listen to this music, I can take a broad view, I feel my place in the great scheme of things. – Sue Leaf
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I've gone down plenty of rabbit holes over the years chasing stories about famous explorers — Ernest Shackleton, Edmund Hillary, Lewis and Clark, Roald Amundsen. Anyone who has accomplished great feats, especially if in great peril.
Not much left to explore these days, but there are great feats. My latest obsession is Alex Honnold, the first rock climber to free solo (without ropes) El Capitan, the 3,000-foot wall at Yosemite — an achievement beyond compare.
I've been watching and (and re-watching) the masterful documentary about the climb, "Free Solo." There are books on the subject but nothing comes close to the movie. Watching it, you have no choice but to view the climb as something truly unbelievable. – Jeff Moravec
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As a way to celebrate the spring bird migration, I'm rereading "The Snow Geese" by William Fiennes, a British author. I spent an enjoyable spring afternoon driving the countryside with Fiennes in the late 1990s when I was working for a daily newspaper in Aberdeen, S.D. As part of his book research, Fiennes was following the birds' arduous 3,000-mile-plus journey from their wintering grounds in the southern United States to their breeding grounds in the Canadian Arctic. Fiennes had read a column I wrote on the snow goose migration and stopped in the newsroom for a chat. His beautifully written book is part memoir, part natural history, part travel writing. Above all, the book is about the human longing of going home — just like the biological drive of snow geese to push north to their breeding grounds near Churchill on the shores of Canada's Hudson Bay. – Tori J. McCormick
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I'm enjoying "Second Nature" by Michael Pollan. I was inspired to download the audiobook after spending an afternoon planting starter seeds for our vegetable garden with my 3-year-old daughter. It was at that same young age, as Pollan writes, that he planted a watermelon seed in the ground behind a hedge in the backyard of his family home in Long Island. The following summer he triumphantly discovered a watermelon growing on the vine, an experience which laid the groundwork for his later career as a journalist and author. A collection of essays, the book is a meditation on our relationship with nature. In it he describes the trials and tribulations of the life of a gardener, as well as framing the act of gardening as a form of self-expression. Our garden as an outdoor space feels especially sacred this spring as we stay closer to home, looking for unique ways to maintain peace, normalcy, and connection. – Mackenzie Havey
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This year, the Zumbro Curse struck again. For the second year in a row (third for 17-milers runners), the trail race in southeast Minnesota was canceled. I was signed up for the Zumbro 50-mile before the world fell apart. Fortunately, around that time I also got a DVD in the mail called "Unbreakable: The Western States 100." It's the story of the 2010 edition 100-mile race, following four undefeated contenders: Anton Krupicka, Geoff Roes, Hal Koerner, and a 22-year-old, two-time UTMB winner named Kilian Jornet. The film tells an epic, immersive story as the runners move back and forth in place. It also captures a moment when the sport was still smaller, but when the caliber of competition was rising like a rocket. It was a lovely escape into the virus-free past, and a good reminder that next year we'll be back at Zumbro. – Frank Bures
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Certain land is important to me, particularly our land in central Minnesota and the fields I pheasant hunt in South Dakota. I've found myself reflecting on the idea as I've stayed indoors with my family. Those lands have taken on new shades of meaning as I've read "Lakota America: A New History of indigenous Power" by Pekka Hämäläinen. This magisterial history traces the Lakota people from the middle of the 17th century, when Mde Wakan (Lake Mille Lacs) was their spiritual home, through their ascent as an imperial power west of the Missouri River, to their ultimate subjugation by the dawn of the 20th century. Reading the book has forced me to reconsider the land under my feet. – Tony Jones
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Last weekend my wife and I escaped to the wilds of the Alaskan Riviera with our 29th annual Northern Exposure party. We continuously watched episodes from the 1990s television series for two-plus days and interspersed walks along a nearby nature trail. Though the series is on DVD, we watched it on VHS. During its heyday, we taped every episode, which includes the original music and soundtracks. Our party meals were from the "Northern Exposure" cookbook that features foods and snacks mentioned in the series. During the show's prime, our party was also an extended-family gathering that required dressing up as the characters. "Northern Exposure's" nature settings were virtual transport into the great outdoors. – Scott Stowell
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I talk often with my students at St. Thomas about using their undergraduate days to start building a personal library and, in particular, including books that can be called comfort reading — those works to turn to for relief in times of stress, anxiety or unease. For many of today's students, it's a Harry Potter novel.
For me, it's a little book about life and fishing called "The Compleat Angler" by the English author Izaak Walton. I've written about Walton a bit, and I've visited his fishing cottage in the Peak District, hiked his favorite streams, and read his text along the way.
I once wrote, "it is a story of nostalgia, of slow-moving English streams and countryside cottages; rolling landscapes and lightly populated, friendly villages; handmade fishing gear, firm handshakes and grandfatherly advice."
Pages are falling out of one of my copies; they are from the chapter on carp. "… if you fish for carp, you must put on a large measure of patience … ." Good advice in any time of stress. – Mark Neuzil
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I have been reconnecting with old friends during this time of sheltering. Most evenings, right before lights out, I check in with Retch Sweeney, Rancid Crabtree and others who populate the books of outdoors humorist Patrick F. McManus. I find a laugh or two a healthy tonic in trying times. Stories titled "They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?" "The Fine Art of Delay" and "Skunk Dog" were never destined to win the Nobel Prize in literature yet they are golden. Just what the doctor ordered. – C.B. Bylander
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One could do worse, these days, than to have a Rand McNally Road Atlas splayed open in front of a desktop logged into Google Maps Street View, with a Travel Math mileage calculator app fired up on an adjacent phone, exploring for summer bike touring routes. What's the best road — with some kind of shoulder and no kind of rumble strips — from Mora to Minneapolis? Or Taos to Telluride? Let's figure it out. And dare to imagine how the ride might be. – Tony Brown, former "Bike Guy" columnist
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Every spring, I reread "Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place" (Pantheon Books, 1991), by Terry Tempest Williams. In this now-classic memoir, Williams relates two simultaneous events that transformed her personal landscape: a record-breaking rise of Utah's Great Salt Lake, flooding migratory bird habitat she had explored since childhood, and the deaths of her mother and grandmother from cancer. This year, more than ever, Refuge reminds me to look outdoors — to the warming soil, budding trees, and returning birds — for the courage I will need to endure uncertainty and change. -- Christine Petersen
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No doubt a backlash to stay-at-home, I'm ranging to the ends of the earth with Martha Gellhorn's "Travels With Myself And Another." There are myriad ways to enjoy, and be appalled by, this collection. As a delightful travelogue of "horror journeys;" a pitch-perfect black comedy; a survey of midcentury zeitgeist; gonzo journalism without having to endure Hunter S. Thompson; an eye-watering catalog of bigotry; a manifesto of white privilege with a side of unquestioned patriarchy; and famous person sightings sprinkled throughout. All of that goes down easy, even the disturbing parts, thanks to Gellhorn's whip-smart writing.
Occurring between 1941 and the early 1970s, "Travels" was published in 1978. It describes trips taken steerage-class through pro-communist China; island hopping across the Caribbean with a foray into jungly Suriname during World War II; across Africa west to east; a week (though it seems longer) in 1972 Moscow; and hanging with hippies on an Israeli kibbutz. -- Sarah Barker
