Soft Paths

Drawing on the principles of the Leave No Trace program, the expertise of the National Outdoor Leadership School, and the substantial body of research into wilderness use, this book has long been the definitive guide to low-impact outdoor activity. This new edition covers every aspect of the outdoor experience, demonstrating the frequently simple, often unexpected measures that we can take to keep the wilderness pristine. This edition also provides new information on conservation law and the public's use of wild lands, ensuring that readers can minimise impact without sacrificing their enjoyment of the outdoors.

• Leave No Trace, minimum impact skills and ethics • New research and field experience prescribe better minimum-impact techniques for wilderness use • Expanded information on camping practices • How far you should camp from water, where to pitch your tent, how to build a fire or if you should build one in the first place • Respecting and caring for wildlands, doing your part to protect our limited resources and future recreation opportunities • Trampling, litter, waste disposal, fire use, wildlife health, and protecting cultural resources

How to enjoy the wilderness without harming it.

From soft politics, soft power and soft spaces to fluid territories, software and soft programming, Bracket 2 unpacks the use and role of responsive, indeterminate, flexible, and immaterial systems in design. In an era of declared crises--economic, ecological and climatic, among others--the notion of soft systems has gained increasing traction as a counterpoint to permanent, static and hard systems. Acknowledging fluid and indeterminate situations with complex feedback loops that allow for reaction and adaption, the possibility of soft systems has reentered the domain of design. The examples displayed in "Bracket goes soft" are offered as nothing more than a short catalog of soft systems--some explicitly architectural, others geological, others entirely metaphorical. In all cases, these examples explore how the notion of going soft can be iterated across professions, disciplines, and fields of research. The book is divided into the themes "sensing/feedback"; "interfacing/ enveloping"; "subverting/hijacking"; "formatting/ distributing"; "contingency/ resilience"; "diffusing/generating". Bracket is a book series structured around an open call that highlights emerging critical issues at the juncture of architecture, environment, and digital culture. The editorial board and jury for Bracket 2 includes Benjamin Bratton, Julia Czerniak, Jeffrey Inaba, Geoff Manaugh, Philippe Rahm, Charles Renfro, as well as co-editors Neeraj Bhatia and Lola Sheppard. Bracket is a collaboration between InfraNet Lab and Archinect.

In this meditation, respected Ugandan academic Dani Wadada Nabudere traces the roots of the global economic crisis and warns of the threat that the decline of Western nations poses to the African continent—the final frontier for those in search of new lands and resources to exploit. As a deterrent to what he sees as the encroachment of super-profiteers looking to Africa for the land to increase their profits in industrial agriculture, Nabudere advocates for what he terms “community sites of knowledge,” that is, the use of indigenous tools and knowledge to revitalize the lives of Africa’s people. The book puts forth the belief that any dependence on imported knowledge and material instruments will only lead to the entrenchment of colonial stereotypes, and that indigenous knowledge is imbued with the roots of “complex ecosystems” that require the inputs of a diversity of expertise and experiences and that are capable of producing the knowledge necessary for the residents of the African continent to reclaim the future.

This book focuses on the issues and trends in outdoor, 'nature-based' recreation, leisure and tourism and explores the implications for public policy, planning, management and marketing. It is intended as supplementary reading for advanced students and is a useful reference tool.

Contributors include Cheryl Strayed, Carrot Quinn, Barney "Scout" Mann, Aspen Matis, Nicholas Kristof, Heather Anderson, Will "Akuna" Robinson, and many more Shares new stories over the last decade to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the original PCT Readers Sidebars address some of the issues affecting the PCT today Includes a map of the PCT to follow along with the stories What’s it like to be a trail angel and can romance truly blossom from first meeting to marriage on the Pacific Crest Trail? How do trail names get bestowed and what does it mean when you find yourself roaring back at a mountain lion? How have climate change, technology, and the sheer number of hikers affected life on the PCT? Find the answers to all these questions, and so many more, in the diverse writings gathered in Crossing Paths, an anthology of stories and poems written by PCT hikers. Reflecting the contributors’ rich and varied individual experiences, this collection includes both ordinary and extraordinary experiences, from dodging lightning strikes on an exposed ridge south of Sonora Pass or surviving early fall snowstorms in the Cascades, to deeply personal walks-as-therapy following military service or cancer treatment. The selection represents geographic, gender, ethnic, and age diversity, and strives to reflect the totality and depth of life on the trail.