Ken Campbell, Author at The Last Wilderness

Nostalgia

Posted by Ken Campbell April 10, 2011 0 Comment 1074 views

Sometimes when I’m making dinner, I’ll look for old songs on YouTube. It’s good to hear the old ones, the one-hit wonders especially. Good to remember the way things used to be. There are paddling spots that bring out a similar sense of sweet nostalgia. The Nisqually Delta, where Jon the all-pro whitewater kayaker flipped […]

Cold

Posted by Ken Campbell April 8, 2011 0 Comment 1136 views

It’s supposed to get up to 58 degrees today. That will seem tropical compared to the way it’s been so far this spring. I suppose I should be grateful. All right. I’ll be grateful.

Doing the maps

Posted by Ken Campbell April 7, 2011 2 Comments 1172 views

I’ve been trip planning. A little San Juan stuff, Deception Pass and Marrowstone Island, plus other places closer to home, like the Tacoma Narrows. I have six multi-day courses on tap for this spring and summer and it’s that time when I have to sit down with the charts and the current information and plan […]

Gunfire and mysteries

Posted by Ken Campbell April 5, 2011 0 Comment 1045 views

The prairie is a natural interpretation of an egg crate. Little mounds four, five, eight feet high, make up the surface of the inter-forest grassland, like a living mogul course. No one knows how they were formed: Prairie dogs? Seismic activity? Native earth sculpting? Glaciers? Mima Mounds is an anomaly. The fact that we still […]

Jobs, money and kayaks

Posted by Ken Campbell April 3, 2011 0 Comment 1092 views

When I first started kayaking, almost all the boats were made in the US or Canada. There were a few British boats on the scene as well, made in Great Britain, and a few others from Mexico, but the lion’s share of the manufacturing took place in North America. Now, of course, things have changed […]

Military spending

Posted by Ken Campbell April 1, 2011 0 Comment 1078 views

The Spruce Railroad Trail, just west of Port Angeles, is a four-mile section that connects the North Shore and the Lyre River trailheads and runs along the scenic shores of Lake Crescent. It’s not backcountry. But it is beautiful. The original right-of-way was constructed during World War I by the Spruce Production Division of the […]

Cartography

Posted by Ken Campbell March 31, 2011 0 Comment 1202 views

Do you ever look at maps? I don’t mean do you consult a map from time to time to figure out where you’re going, I mean do you ever just unfold a map onto the table and look at it? A map of a place you’ve never been and may or may not ever visit? […]

Of watches and warnings

Posted by Ken Campbell March 30, 2011 0 Comment 1130 views

It’s flooding season again here in western Washington. Of course, we’re talking about a season with notoriously elastic boundaries, some years beginning in January and ending in December. That said, spring is often a time of high water around these parts, when sandbags and insurance coverage are often pressed into duty. At some point, within […]

A Counting game

Posted by Ken Campbell March 29, 2011 0 Comment 1129 views

I’ve been doing some research, been grazing in the fields of the internet, as it were, trying to settle on a pollution sampling method that will mesh with the parameters of this summer’s trip. There’s a method used by the Pangaea Exploration that seems pretty straightforward, but it doesn’t address the micro-plastic problem that is […]

Gray morning paddle

Posted by Ken Campbell March 27, 2011 0 Comment 1204 views

On some weekend in March, near the end of the month, some random foggy morning. There is a light rain falling, off and on, nothing that we don’t take for granted around these parts. Wispy clouds, falling tendrils of mist, undulating through the sky between me and the Gig Harbor entrance. To my right is […]