Contemplative Hiking

Your Inner Wild from Margaret Emerson on Vimeo.

I published my book, Contemplative Hiking Along the Colorado Front Range in 2010, and did the actual hikes described in the book from October, 2009 until August, 2010. Just two short years later, I’ve already noticed changes in the environment as a result of climate change in the foothills and mountains of Colorado. The benefit [...]

When I started first grade, I didn’t speak English. My parents and I had just emigrated from Poland, and within a couple of weeks of arriving in Detroit, Michigan, my mother enrolled me in the local public grade school. I don’t remember much from that time, but what I do remember is sitting in class [...]

Our way of life is changing the planet. It’s changing the climate, it’s stressing animal habits, it’s creating the next big global extinction event, and it’s melting the ice caps at a rate unprecedented to modern civilization.  We are squandering fossil fuels that took millions of years to form on industry that’s meant to make [...]

I spent a week in Glacier National Park, Montana with my family, almost completely unplugged. We didn’t have cell phone service where we were lodging, there was no wireless, and the only time we could check messages or receive calls or texts was when we drove into Columbia Falls or West Glacier to get groceries. [...]

Here’s a transcript of an interview I did for Bodhi Nest, a company founded by Anna Brouhard, a colleague in ecopsychology. The Bodhi Nest focuses on the intrinsic connection between mind, body, spirit, and earth. The Bodhi Nest seeks to guide individuals, families, and communities towards a holistic approach to reconnecting our lives and our [...]

Last week I received an e-mail from the Continental Divide Trail Alliance, the nonprofit formed in 1995 to construct the Continental Divide trail, with the sad announcement that they are ceasing operations. Their Board of Directors had to make this difficult decision due to “increasing pressures from development in the West, rising land costs, and [...]

By Carolyn Baker, PhD. Original article can be found on Carolyn Baker’s website at CarolynBaker.net. NOTE TO READER: Carolyn and I will be co-facilitating two workshops in Denver, CO on the 3 Keys to Resilience in Uncertain Times. If you’d like to meet others and discuss your thoughts and anxieties about what’s happening with the [...]

There are times when all of us, at some point, experience a mild bout of “the blues.” Either it’s circumstantial —there is something worrisome going on in our life— or it’s just the normal ebb and flow of mood. If you’re a woman, it can be hormonal or it can be the result of poor [...]

The cover story in the December, 2011 issue of Outside Magazine is about marine biologist’s Wallace J. Nichols “touchy-feely” theory that if we could “understand what really happens to us in the presence of the ocean—which brain processes underlie our emotional reactions—it could bring about a radical shift in conservation efforts.” Nichols has been observing [...]