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I usually don’t love gift “guides.” Retailers sell placements to brands as a form of marketing revenue. Most influencers use monetized links. Brands push items based on sales plans, profit margins, and available inventory. It’s not about helping you find a thoughtful gift. It’s about capturing your sale when you’re burnt out on shopping, at … Continue reading Gift Guide 2025 – Gift Ideas for Outdoorsy Folks

Writing holiday gift guides doesn’t always come easily. The browsing starts early, well before most folks are in the holiday spirit. The planning tends to overlap with election season, layoff season (October), and the last price hikes before brands lock-in for the holidays. But 2025 feels especially hard. Anticorporate sentiment is at an all-time high, … Continue reading Thriftmas Gift Guide 2025

Is it green or greenwashing? This series looks at the sustainability practices of reader-nominated brands. For more details on the project and a bit about my background, the project page is here. This piece focuses on Finisterre. Here’s how they stack up against my 5 main tenets of sustainability: They use more sustainable fiber types: recycled … Continue reading Finisterre: Green or Greenwashing

Last year, I finally attended a Rippin Chix Resort Ski Camp. I spent 5 seasons thinking about their clinics before pulling the trigger, and I know a handful of women curiously interested, so I decided to write a review. And while my ski reviews tend to run for thousands of words about the perfect skier for a given setup, I can be a lot more concise when it comes to this clinic: do it.  … Continue reading Rippin Chix Steeps Camp Review

This summer, I traded a lot of trail time for garden work. It’s been a wild season. I lost my dog in June, my partner got a firefighter job 24 days later, and we’re both splitting time close to his academy that’s over 2 hours away. Buying 32 new plants was a nice hit of … Continue reading Garden Review 2025

We said goodbye to our little girl, Kona, on June 2nd. She was diagnosed with two aggressive cancers last November, and despite both tumors responding well to treatment and a great prognosis at her last infusion, she had complications and declined in the days that followed. We let her go in our backyard in the … Continue reading Kona’s Memorial