Rain Days Are Usually the Good Ones
For years I let a rain icon on a screen cancel my week. Then I got caught out in a steady soaker and had one of the best walks of that spring. Rain is not the problem. Cold, wind, and lightning are the problems.
Wade Holloway
Where The Money Actually Goes In A Kit Bag
A snapped pack buckle at a stile made me audit three years of buying. What turned out to be worth paying more for, where I honestly cannot tell the difference, and the purchases I regret most.
Walking Through a Field of Cattle Without Making It a Story
I misread a group of young bullocks one May evening and ended up backing toward a hedge with my heart going. Here is what I have learned since about reading a herd, choosing a line, and the one thing I got badly wrong about dogs and cows.
Walking Alone Versus Walking With Someone
I go out on my own most weeks and with a friend maybe twice a month. The two are not versions of the same activity, and I got into trouble the year I tried to treat them as interchangeable.
The Hour That Changes a Walk
I walked the same three mile loop at six in the morning and at four in the afternoon for most of a summer. It was not the same walk. Here is what the hour actually changes, and what it does not.
The Waterproof Trousers I Was Too Proud To Wear
I carried over trousers for a year without using them, mostly out of vanity, and got cold for it. What finally changed my mind, the three features that made them wearable, and what they are still genuinely bad at.
Five Kinds of Mud on a Farm Road
Mud is not one thing. Some of it walks fine and some of it will take a boot off your foot and keep it. After a lot of ruined afternoons I can name five kinds by sight, and I test for the rest with a stick.
What Mud Season Taught Me About Timing
A March walk that ended with me carrying about four pounds of clay on each boot, and what I worked out afterwards about drying time, where water leaves a field, and why walking the grass edge is not always the polite thing to do.
The People You Meet on a Farm Lane
A quad bike idling in the gateway, a question about a missing ewe, and twenty seconds of conversation. Notes on the farmers, dog walkers, riders and workers you actually run into on a country lane, and how to not be the annoying one.
What Waterproof Actually Means Once You Are Standing In It
Three winters of wet feet taught me that a waterproof boot is a claim about the boot, not about your leg. Where water really gets in, why old boots fail at the crease, and the drying mistake that killed a good pair.