by Tamara Jacobi, Eco-Adventurer
I look up at the towering papaya trees surrounding our dipping pool. Newly planted last year, these trees had peered up at me timidly, searching for guidance. I breathe in deeply, inhaling the scent of their flowers, as though to draw inspiration as I return to commence another year of running my family’s eco-lodge on the pacific coastline…

by Shannon Mullen, Journalist & Outdoor Girl
In climbing, you learn mostly through failure,” my instructor said with a grin, “but success is that much sweeter.” I’d just fallen off the rock wall for the fifth time at an indoor climbing gym in Lander, Wyoming. The small ranching town in the Rocky Mountains is famous in this sport for its proximity to breathtaking, steep-walled canyons, towering boulders left by the glaciers that carved them, and the scores of talented athletes who come in droves to scale both…

by Shannon Mullen, Journalist & Outdoor Girl
In a few days I’m leaving almost everything I know to head west in search of new challenges, with only a sketch of a plan and the freedom to ditch it entirely. I’ve always thought that I’m the type of person who needs a big catalyst to make a decision like this, some life-altering event. Instead all it took was admitting to myself that I’ve stopped learning where I am, mostly because I can’t see past my limits…

by Margaret Burns Vap, Big Sky Yoga Retreats
Hiking is a great reminder to have fun when you exercise. We do it not just for the health benefits, but also for enjoyment. Health-wise, it’s great to get outside and into nature, and there’s the body and mind benefits of the long, low-intensity cardio workout from a good solid hike. So what else do you need to add to this almost-perfect mix? Yoga, of course.

By Sarahlee Lawrence, River Rafting Guide

I can’t smell anything. I can’t even smell myself. No wood smoke burns my nose. Most days, the sour smell of the cardboard plant freezes in the ice crystals inside my nose. But today I smell nothing…