Talking Story Archives - Page 4 of 114

The Nook Backcountry Tent by MSR

Posted by Ken Campbell January 3, 2014 0 Comment 4029 views

I am always looking for a new tent. I had one that I really liked but it’s been in need of some repair for a while now and I’ve been using others that I had out in storage, remembering the specific reasons that I no longer favor them. None of them are terrible, exactly; it’s […]

New Year’s Day, 2014

Posted by Ken Campbell January 1, 2014 0 Comment 1471 views

I don’t know what happened to the past 12 months… it hardly seems possible that they would be already gone. But here we are again, ready to do it all over one more time. One more turn of the calendar, one more trip around the sun. Exactly the same, yet completely different. It’s been almost […]

Secrets of Augustine

Posted by Ken Campbell December 29, 2013 0 Comment 6181 views

Last year’s Roadless Coast expedition took the Ikkatsu Project team along Washington’s Olympic coastline where we surveyed remote beaches for marine debris. We had barely finished that trip when we decided to do another, this time to south-central Alaska, to see what might have washed up on some of the least-visited and wildest shorelines in Cook Inlet.

Roll On, Columbia

Posted by Ken Campbell December 29, 2013 0 Comment 6096 views

It is doubtful that when Woody Guthrie wrote his quintessential salute to moving water, he had any idea of the effect that the years would have on his beloved Columbia river. Rapids have been submerged, huge hydroelectric dams have formed lakes in the desert, and the legendary salmon runs of yesteryear seem more myth than fact.

A Winter Tale

Posted by Ken Campbell December 27, 2013 0 Comment 6461 views

“It is easy to make plans in this world; even a cat can do it; and when one is out in those remote oceans it is noticeable that a cat’s plans and a man’s are worth about the same.” Mark Twain As I lay in my sleeping bag somewhere on the shores of Johnstone Strait, […]

Breathing space

Posted by Ken Campbell March 26, 2013 1 Comment 1870 views

It’s the spring of the year here in western Washington. I doesn’t seem like that long ago that it was snowing on the passes and raining bullets here along the shores of the Salish Sea… I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of the foul weather yet, but the future is looking a bit more […]

What odds?

Posted by Ken Campbell March 10, 2013 6 Comments 2053 views

Tomorrow will be the 2nd anniversary of the tsunami that devastated northern Japan. Two years gone since then… it hardly seems possible. A couple weeks ago, this blog had its five-year anniversary. What started out as a writer’s exercise book turned into a full-blown daily newsletter, about a variety of items related to nature and […]

Other pursuits

Posted by Ken Campbell February 27, 2013 0 Comment 1386 views

I have been pretty one-dimensional lately… the Ikkatsu Project has dominated most of my efforts and I haven’t been quite the outdoor renaissance man that I would normally expect myself to be. That’s just the way it is, I suppose. The work I’m doing with marine debris is important to me (and just downright important), […]

The ways of change

Posted by Ken Campbell February 25, 2013 1 Comment 1709 views

I’m not sure I’m a kayaker any more. I don’t know when it happened, but I can’t help but think that something has changed. Don’t get me wrong… I still paddle. I still take my boat out into the spray and I still love the feel of a hurricane headwind or a quiet, backwater morning. […]

Catching up

Posted by Ken Campbell February 22, 2013 0 Comment 1434 views

The Tacoma showing of The Roadless Coast went off well the other night at the Grand Cinema… sold out to the doors with a lot of very cool people. With that showing done and the next one still over a week away, I’ve got a little time to decompress and get some other things done. […]