Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2025 i Explore Magazine

"What qualifies as a hike?” You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve been asked this—usually by outdoorsy newbies sheepishly wondering if what they did last weekend met some preconceived “adventure standard.” “If you call it a hike, it’s a hike,” I say. Sometimes I nudge them in the direction of walking upon natural surfaces, but heck, I’m not judge and jury of the outdoors. You said you hiked—you hiked. I’ve been guilty of it too—proclaiming I took my five-year-olds for a “hike,” then later downgrading the activity to “forest walk.” Why though? It was a hike to them! Same goes for camping. Despite my family having owned an RV park for some 75 years, until about five years ago I didn’t have much personal experience actually using an RV. (You…

It’s a wonder I don’t walk headlong into a spruce. My eyes are always cast down, scanning for the next wild bloom. I have my not-so-fashionable 1980s shoulder bag ready to go, packed with a DSLR camera, a water bottle, a heavy-backed book in case I want to press a few blooms. It’s time to find some flowers in Manitoba. MAY–JUNE NARCISSE WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT AREA Late snow doesn’t stop the prairie crocus from pushing up through the gravely soil to catch the first warm rays of the season. Those pale blue petals certainly make it look like a member of the crocus genus, but this local favourite more closely resembles a buttercup, botanically speaking. The Anemone patens grows from seed and not a bulb as a true crocus does. Those…

Frank Anthony Wolf has tasted Beluga whale in the Canadian Arctic with the Inuvialuit. “It tastes like buttery ham, the muktuk, if you eat it raw,” says Wolf from his home in North Vancouver, British Columbia, a pitstop between his winter gig as a polar bear guide in Churchill, Manitoba and a month-long, 900-kilometre spring kayak trip from Prince Rupert, BC, to Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. “Everyone is wired differently. Some people have said to me, ‘It’s very privileged what you’re doing.’ Well, I don’t make any money off of it and you’ll see how privileged you feel when you’re dragging upstream in a cloud of black flies for two weeks,” he joked. “It’s not a vacation. It’s work, and it’s almost like a martial art or art in…

Tucked in the stillness of the forest near Sunderland, Ontario, this cozy A-frame cabin was the perfect escape to celebrate my birthday with my husband. This morning, I woke up early and took a moment for myself, something I don’t often get to do as a mom to young kids. Wrapped in a blanket, I slipped into the hammock with a book, surrounded by the hush of the forest. The cabin stood like a postcard; the perfect background to my first morning of another lap around the sun. This moment, simple as it was, became one of my favourites from the trip. It reminded me that joy can hide in stillness, silence and in nature. Sometimes moments like this stay with you, not because they were grand, but because they…

High in the Rockies near Banff, above a perfectly calm alpine lake still crusted with a thin layer of ice at the edges, Tim Patterson bends over the water before we set off on the snow-covered trail. He prays in his native tongue, an Interior Salish I do not understand. But I do understand the feeling and power it represents as he asks for blessing and protection for our journey and honours the might that the water, rock and snow around us possess. As he speaks, I, too, feel powerful, capable of accomplishing great things, of going far and testing limits, though our small group will conquer no summits today; that is a settler mindset. Today, after arriving via helicopter to this hidden basin, we will be present, see and…

Despite making a living as a writer (which includes making things up sometimes), I’d be hard pressed to imagine some of the absurdities emerging from the New America under the Trump Administration 2.0. Consider recent comments from Lee Zeldin, Trump’s pick for administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In an interview with Fox Business Network about the slashing of pollution-control and climate change mitigating regulations, here’s what he had to say: “It means that it’s going to be easier to purchase a car. It’s going to be easier to heat your home. Operating a small business is going to be easier. People who are looking for employment are going to have more opportunities.” I Googled the EPA. The organization’s stated mission is “to protect human health and the…

We’re heading north, and I’m the sweeper. I wait for the other 20 cyclists to secure paniers and wheel away before mounting my e-bike. I’m secretly delighted to bring up the rear of our group, forced to go slower than my bike’s turbo setting of 25 kilometres per hour. I feel the sun and breeze on my face, smell the earthy brackish wetlands and admire fields of red poppies, their crèpe-like petals waving as we pass. I’ve enjoyed e-biking trips on three continents, and the chance to clock some kilometres during a leisurely week of cycling and sightseeing in the scenic south of France was too good to pass up. I’ve signed on with the Italian leisure company, Girolibero, for a one-week bike and barge journey that begins on the…

If it wasn’t for Greg Hill’s insatiable thirst for adventure, he could have made a great accountant. Whether it was tree planting, ski touring or driving an electric car to his next adventure, Hill’s mind was doing math. “I’m always running the numbers in my head,” he says. In his autobiography, I Could Die At Any Moment, he recounts some of these calculations. How many more trees did he have to plant to afford a winter of skiing? Was he still on pace to hit two million vertical feet of ski touring? Will he have enough charge to reach the next trailhead? Importantly, it wasn’t just in his head. He meticulously recorded and published the stats and accomplishments because he knew people weren’t going to just take his word for…

When I was in my teens, my family took a trip to the West Coast and I saw real waves for the first time. I was already a solid swimmer and strong kayaker, so I immediately saw the potential for bodysurfing despite never having been in the ocean before. I still vividly remember the fatigue in my arms as I finally crawled back up out of the water’s roar, choking salt water and thinking, “Damn, I’m a kayaker, good swimmer and I almost died?” My experience was not unique: In his excellent book Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, Laurence Gonzales writes about the tourists who arrive in Hawaii, see the sparking blue water, and jump in. Just as I did. An unfortunately large number die despite, like…

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