Resources

Much of the epic journey in this story took place in the boreal forest covering northern Canada and much of Alaska—the world’s largest intact forest ecosystem. It stretches over 1.2 billion acres, from the Pacific to Atlantic coasts. It’s a great place for a paddle as it contains more than 200 million acres of surface freshwater, the greatest such concentration on earth. More at natural-resources.canada.ca

David Jackson is a photographer and writer based on the Ontario side of Lake Superior. He’s covered remote Indigenous villages in the far north, Team Canada in the Olympics, and a bunch of topics in between. davidjacksonphoto.com, @davidjackson_

We can’t promise all their photos will be evocative of summer, but if you’d like to see more from the photographers featured in this collection…

Chris Burkard, chrisburkard.com, @chrisburkard

Mak Crist, makaylacrist.com, @makcrist

Mattias Fredriksson, mattiasfredriksson.com, @mattiasfredriksson

Tara Kerzhner, tarakerzhner.com, @tarakerzhner

Joe Klementovich, klementovichphoto.com, @klementovich

Morgan Maassen, morganmaassen.com, @morganmaassen

Nina Riggio, nina-riggio.com, @ninareeg

John Watson, theradavist.com, @johnprolly

Each year, about 38 million sockeye salmon return to the watersheds feeding Bristol Bay to spawn. That’s enough sockeye that if you stretched them nose to tail, the line of salmon would reach from Alaska to Australia and back. But recent years have seen even bigger numbers. 2023 was a record year with 79 million sockeye estimated to have entered Bristol Bay.

Carrot Quinn is a backpacking guide and writer living in Alaska, though that hardly covers it. She’s a long-distance hiker, a former freight train hopper, occasional salmon counter, and a general badass. She’s the author of The Sunset Route: Freight Trains, Forgiveness, and Freedom on the Rails in the American West, The Dial Press, 2021. carrotquinn.com, @carrotquinn

Refreshingly, or frustratingly, depending on your analog communications tolerance, reservations for Hermit Island Campground can be made only by snail mail or over the phone. The camp store sells groceries, beer, and wine, and is well-stocked with beach toys. hermitisland.com

Krista Langlois recently left freelance writing to take a job as a senior editor with Hakai magazine. She lives in Southwest Colorado, nearly as far from the ocean as you can get, and while the 300 days of sunshine a year have grown on her, she hasn’t let go of her childhood dream of living on a craggy, foggy coast that looks a whole lot like Hermit Island. kristaleelanglois.com

You don’t have to bomb down a mountain road at 50 miles per hour protected by a thin layer of spandex and a plastic helmet to experience a flow state. Yoga, composing music, cooking, running, and swimming can induce flow. If you’re lost in what you’re doing, the self-conscious part of your brain in snooze mode, you’re there. For more, check out Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Harper, 1991.

Writer Patrick Brady mostly rides on dirt now because he “can find flow at lower speeds with lower consequences.” He runs one of our favorite bike websites, The Cycling Independent, where he goes by the name Padraig. He lives in Sonoma County, California, and according to Brady, “Lance Armstrong is still pissed at me,” though we aren’t sure why. cyclingindependent.com, @redkiteprayer

What makes a surf shack a surf shack? You know it when you see it. There’s an outdoor living element to it. Coziness is important. A curated beachy vibe. A surf après situation. Kick off your shoes, have something to drink, unwind, just be. As you can see from these pages, it can be big or small. Heck, it could be a boat. Just leave the sand at the door, please.

Surf Shacks was adapted from Surf Shacks, Volumes 1-2, Gestalten 2017, 2020. Matt Titone is a graphic designer and the founder of Indoek, a surf culture brand, and a design studio called ITAL/C. He’s based in Southern California. indoek.com, @mtitone

In case you’re wondering, and we know you are, the first documented person to hike the length of the Grand Canyon was river guide Kenton Grua in 1977. It took him exactly five weeks, and Grua figured he hiked over six hundred miles because of the serpentine shape of the canyon floor. The hike received little attention or publicity but remains one of the most badass journeys in Grand Canyon history. We recommend floating it. Check out oars.com

A Good Bad Idea was excerpted and adapted from A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon, Simon & Schuster, 2024. Author Kevin Fedarko is a celebrated writer and adventurer based in Flagstaff, Arizona. His work has appeared in Time, the New York Times, and many other outlets. He’s the author of The Emerald Mile, the bestselling story of a dory’s legendary speed run through the Grand Canyon. @kevinfedarkoauthor

Pete McBride is a Colorado-based photographer and writer and frequent contributor to Adventure Journal. He seems to be in the Grand Canyon more often than not. McBride won a National Book Award for his 2021 book Grand Canyon: Between River and Rim. His newest book is The Colorado River: Chasing Water, Rizzoli, 2024. petemcbride.com, @pedromcbride

The recipes in this issue are excerpted and adapted from Dirty Gourmet: Plant Power, Mountaineers, 2023. Why a book on vegan camp cooking? First, perishability is less of a concern for plant-based foods. And if you’re writing a cookbook for all diets, “It’s much easier to start with a vegan recipe as a base, then add or substitute animal products if you’d like, rather than start with animal-based recipes, then try to make them vegan,” says Mai-Yan Kwan, Dirty Gourmet crew member whom we profile in this section.

Dirty Gourmet’s first cookbook, Dirty Gourmet, was published by Mountaineers in 2018. dirtygourmet.com, @dirtygourmet