Community Stories
Life on the deck of Hokule’a, the double-hulled canoe that sails around the world using only ancient wayfinding techniques.
The first-place essay from a youth writing competition we hosted with the nonprofit Write the World.
In northern Chile, a desert is being scourged by the textile industry. But a resilient community is transforming a reality of waste into opportunity.
Simplicity, style and lessons in bike jazz on Eastern Washington’s Beacon Hill.
Louisiana community organizer Roishetta Ozane on her fight to stop the biggest fossil fuel expansion on earth and how mutual aid can play a part.
Our next fight against Big Oil is for basic human rights.
A conversation with Vincent Stanley, Patagonia’s director of philosophy and co-author of The Future of the Responsible Company: What We’ve Learned from Patagonia’s First 50 Years.
Climate and sustainability journalist Yessenia Funes writes to her future child—the one she hopes to have and has been afraid of bringing into our world.
In a small British Columbia mountain town, one woman is using trails to help heal wounds and bridge two communities.
Inside Yakutat Surf Club’s budding stoke scene in Southeast Alaska.
The remarkable relationship between Hidetoshi Matsubara and his birds of prey.
When your goal is to raise children in wild places, it helps if you’re flexible.
When they urged climbers to stop using their best-selling product in 1972, Tom Frost and Yvon Chouinard laid the foundation for Patagonia’s work today.
Teresa Baker, Pattie Gonia, José González and Gabaccia Moreno bring a new initiative to the outdoor community.
Out of necessity, Jacqueline Sangueza loved fishing nets before she loved the ocean.
First-generation Vietnamese American Mai Nguyen follows in the footsteps of their agrarian ancestors with a farm that grows numerous types of grains with a no-till, anti-fertilizer regenerative approach.
The story of Naelyn Pike, a 21-year-old Chiricahua Apache, and her fight to keep sacred Apache land from becoming a copper mine.
Cydney Knapp and her husband, Bartek, knew they wanted to raise their kids to love the outdoors, so they learned how to navigate change and embraced the chaos.
How a mother’s own childhood experience on the Appalachian Trail shaped the way she teaches her four children to find nature in the heart of New York City.
Why a logging protest has become Canada’s largest act of civil disobedience.
Rolling Stone called him “the real Indiana Jones.” His new memoir reveals why our friend Rick has always been a great deal more.
What’s the secret to a really good pair of jeans? Comics journalist Sarah Mirk tells us what to look for and how to keep them in play longer.
When it comes to making more responsible jeans, our work is never done. And, of course, we leave the really dirty work to you.
The father and son team behind Life Do Grow farm has focused their life’s work on building a sense of community and well-being in an area that has been plagued by poverty, violence and neglect for decades.
Ashe and Christin Brown are parents to their 3-year-old daughter, Quest, whom they want to raise with an appreciation for the diversity of the natural world.
Caroline Gleich grapples with the fears that come with an aging parent and the pressure she feels to have a child before her dad is gone.
Nearly every Wednesday, Courtney Reynolds can be found elbow-deep in a bin of someone else’s castoffs, searching for scraps of fabric and colorful quilts to deconstruct and sew into original clothing items for her three preschool-age kids, or to sell in her online shop, Napkin Apocalypse.
We’re entering Earth’s sixth mass extinction, but clues about this climate crisis could be right under our feet.
A book excerpt about how the microbes within us and the genes we share with other wild creatures are key dimensions of being human.
One young couple’s unexpected career path of farming sea vegetables drew them back to their roots and brought a promising climate-change solution to their coastal hometown.
As the proprietor of Cold Antler Farm, a 6.5-acre span of land in Washington County, New York, Jenna Woginrich spends her days with red-tailed hawks.
Sheep (and their poop) could help California’s climate-driven wildfires. One couple is ushering in this idea with a small flock and some supportive fire departments.
Coauthor Kim McCoy recounts discovering the mystery of what lies beneath the waves, where ocean and land meet and compete.
Two women, Black and Indigenous, reflect on the myth of the American West after horse-packing through the Sierra.
A wildlife ecologist reflects on the public lands that are his escape hatch and life’s work.
One woman’s decades-long fight for clean air and environmental justice.
Melinda Daniels is huddled under the shelter of her purple tent waiting for the rain to start, which only seems odd when you consider the context: she’s in the middle of a farm on a blindingly sunny day.
Returning endangered species to the wetlands of Argentina is good for humans, too.
Making face masks in the time of COVID-19: when “breathable face fabric” takes on a whole new meaning.
Young farmers learn what it means to do essential work during a global crisis.
Three moms share the details.
Jasmin Caton worried having twins might slow down her life in the mountains. Then she remembered what her parents did with her.
Welcoming back the “welcoming noise” near the Arctic Circle.
As seen in the November 2019 Journal. For the recipe behind Carston’s Spicy Magic Sauce, scroll to the end of the story. Although my tongue felt as if it might melt, Carston Oliver assured me I was not, in fact, going to die. “That’s just the capsaicin,” he told me, as he calmly ordered some…
It’s fascinating to hear Zaria Forman talk about ice, especially the way that it sounds. She describes the way it rumbles and thunders and cracks, even when you can’t see anything. It crackles and pops like breakfast cereal on high volume. “Ice crispies,” she calls it. “It’s a really beautiful sound.” Polar ice is possibly…
“We biked through wind, rain, and snow. If lightning struck, we kept going. We only stopped if it got too close. We outran tornadoes in Oklahoma. We waited out a storm in an old horse barn in Montana, huddled like penguins, our bikes cast carelessly aside in the mud,” writes John Flynn. After John lost…
Editor’s note: This post discusses anxiety and suicide. In a humble workshop in Washougal, Washington, a blind craftsman holds a locally harvested log that he has made into a blank with his miter saw. He turns it in his hands to feel its shape and weight. He measures and marks, measures and marks. A flick…
In a fossil-rich corner of western Colorado, set against lush agricultural fields, the big-box stores of Grand Junction and the sandstone formations of the Colorado National Monument, you’ll find Fruita. These days, the town is an international mountain-biking destination known for its ribbony, high-desert trails, technical routes overlooking the Colorado River and funky downtown where…
How the child in an old road trip photo from the Patagonia catalog is helping humanity understand Mars.
Dave Murray lives in a wooded mountain valley in western Montana with his wife, Connie; a labradoodle rightly named Loki, after the Norse god of mischief; and a bunch of mules. I live 140 miles north near Glacier National Park. He and I met on a float trip down a wild river in northern British…
