 The Lost Art of Driving with the Windows Down
I’ve got an empty stomach, but a full heart. Driving where the sky meets the road. No more good-byes, a life of hellos. One hand on the steering wheel and the other out the window, this is my self-portrait.
Slightly harvested wheat fields yawn out beyond the horizon. I’m yearning to reach the place where the transforming aspen leaves blink in patches on either side of me like the last embers of a dwindling fire.
 The Lost Art of Stayin' Alive
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ …” It’s lookin’ pretty grim in here. I’m watching a cold storm roll down the valley, from an improvised metal shelter that kept me dry through the biggest winter hereabouts in recent memory. The firewood stack is high and dry, there are plenty of provisions stored in nooks and crannies, but I feel like I need a drink.
 The Lost Art of Hitchhiking with Skis
Look friendly. Smile at every car, even if they speed by without pause. Hold your skis next to you like they are your passport. Be courteous to drivers, giving them room to slow down before the turn off. Channel Sissy Hankshaw — believe your thumbs are enormous. Stash your mittens so your intention is clear. Remember that it’s first come, first serve. If there is someone else waiting for a ride, ask if there is room for two.
 The Lost Art of Campfire Bullshitting
Not long ago, this trail buddy of mine loads his rooftop gear box full of wood and hauls it to a mountain range deep in Mexico, so we can drink beer by a campfire smack dab in the middle of what everybody has warned us is a raging drug war. Not much happened, except one morning we made coffee under the watchful gaze of a spooked-looking local kid hiding behind a tree a stone’s throw from camp.
 The Lost Art of Sleeping on the Ground
Edward Abbey once asked the question, “Why sleep on the ground if you don’t have to?” In true Abbey style, he bluntly answered his own query: “Only an idiot sleeps on the ground from choice. Little bugs crawl in your ears.” On a recent trip to the sporting goods store, I realized that manufacturers couldn’t agree more with Mr. Abbey.
 Lost Art: "Wilderness Areas' for Wilderness" Sake
When the light is right, if I
crane my neck a certain way and
peer through my window, the
edge of wilderness is almost visible;
but it’s been dark for hours and my
main light is a computer screen as I scroll
through testimony for and against the latest
attempt, “To designate certain National
Forest System lands and public lands under
the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior
in the States of Idaho, Montana, Oregon,
Washington, and Wyoming as wilderness,
wild and scenic rivers, wildland recovery areas,
and biological connecting corridors, and
for other purposes.” [“Northern Rockies
Ecosystem Preservation Act” (2009)].
 The Lost Art of Talking Yourself Out of a Ticket
I saw the cop right when he saw me, which meant I
was already screwed. He was parked perpendicular to the
interstate behind a concrete barrier, radar gun locked on
my bumper as I careened around a corner. Despite smashing
the brake pedal, it took me three seconds to get under the
60-mph speed limit.
 The Lost Art of Scrambling for Supper
It might've been the summer they found Elvis on the bathroom floor, but I'd abandoned rock 'n' roll with the British invasion and one more dead, fat star made little impression at the time. What I do know is that the big fires two years before had killed most of the trees in this valley, the windfalls were enough to keep most fishermen away from some of the best trout water I'd ever seen and the biggest lunkers were in a place we called The Box ...
 The Lost Art of Whacking Beers
A good many years ago, a buddy of mine who makes his living chasing forest fires started casually referring to one of our favorite pastimes, overindulging on various economical varieties of canned beverages, as “whacking beers.” He had just returned from a particularly slow wildfire season and was laid-off for yet another long, dark winter.
 The Lost Art of Dry Stacking
There are dozens of books and scores
of articles on how to stack up stone. They
all describe the same, butt-simple process
outlined below, which I learned while apprenticing
with Byron Curfman, a true dry stack master
who lives in his mostly stone mini-estate on Hastings
Mesa. We joyously made two-truck runs into the vast
San Juans, and although I’m still an apprentice, it was
from Byron that I learned you can make Wild West stone
do precise, intricate, functional and interesting things.
It was from Byron that I caught Stone Fever.
 The Lost Art Of Working In The Rain
Sprinkles. Showers. Squalls. Liquid
sunshine. Swimming your way through the
wet and wild terrain of the North Cascades
on a Backcountry trail crew is an epic unrelenting
struggle against mildew, misery and mud. The trails might be steep and the forests might be
deep but, ultimately, it's the sheer oceanic quantity of
maritime precipitation that rules and ruins us all.
 The Lost art of Getting By
My friend Bobby calls it “the economic fringe,” that place where people exist who don’t aspire to more than what the rest of the world deems the minimum. No single demographic of human beings dwells on the economic fringe. For instance, I grew up on an island in the West Indies, and down there the economic fringe was where crackheads lived. But now I lay head to pillow at 9,640 feet. Here the economic fringe is where the highly ambitious live. It is just a different kind of ambition.
 The Lost Art of Ski Waxing
As much as I love the piney scent of the great mountain outdoors, there’s another smell associated with skiing I like even more: The aroma of molten paraffin, mingling with molybdenum and fluorocarbon fumes.
 The Lost Art of Knots
Marlinspikes, sheepshanks, catspaws, butterflies, Turks Heads. I can’t tie any of those knots; don’t even know what they look like. Nor can I tie a one-handed bowline (French, Spanish, Portuguese or otherwise), even though I took sailing lessons as a kid, worked on a cod boat for a few months in my 20s and did a fair bit of ski mountaineering in my 30s.
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