Outdoor Diary: And Just Like That, We’ve Arrived Here

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Listen in as Amy recaps the first season of Humans Outside and gives you the lowdown on how you can keep up with us even during our summer podcast break!

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Some of the good stuff:

[:30] A break
[:45] Our pre-corona beginnings
[1:25] Getting outside in a pandemic
[1:48] The many seasons of Alaska
[2:45] Some of our favorite episodes
[3:19] An Alaska summer
[4:12] Outdoor Hero
[4:57] How to keep up with Humans Outside

Connect with this episode:

Listen, it’s not you — it’s me. We’re going to need some time apart.

Actually, it’s no one. It’s just time for the Humans Outside podcast to take a break for the summer. Our first season has officially come to a close, and it’s been an incredible ride.

We started this season in early February, before any of us knew what the COVID-19 virus is – yeah ok we’re naming it now – and that the world was going to change so dramatically in so little time. One of our first episodes recounted our late January cruise to somewhere warm. When I turned off my phone for that trip I had never once before heard the words “coronavirus.” When I turned it back on five days later, the news was filled with word of a new disease popping up overseas. Bad stuff happens when I go on vacation, my coworkers will testify to that, but not once did I ever expect this.

Many of you have struggled to find places to go outside devoid of others who may unintentionally spread the virus. We’ve grappled with learning how to tackle the world safely while still being kind to both others and ourselves.

But through it all the outdoors has at least been its consistent, steady, never-changing self– murder hornets notwithstanding.

This season of the Humans Outside podcast has also spanned the seasons in Alaska — winter, long and dark, was still with me when we started and in a blink melted into our brief spring and then, BAM, summer. We had my first race did not finish, or DNF, my first glacier run, my first Black Lives Matter protest, my first 80-mile week, my first time on a whole host of local trails, that time I accidentally lost all of my water in an epic gear fail, and the most exciting purchase in a long time — my hot tub.

There was the time I thought I lost my kid to a bear or a creepy dude, our celebration of Summer Solstice, my first and second times in a public use cabin in Alaska, my 1000th day in a row of 20 consecutive minutes outside and me challenging all of my habits and preconceptions.

Our full episodes were also packed with information, insights, and challenges that still have me thinking about the possibilities of the world. Adrianne Haslet’s, Lisa Hallett’s, Kikkan Randall’s, and Craig Vaream’s inspiring stories, Michelle Abbey and Corie Weather’s advice, Peter Scott, Mike Erwin’s and Nailah Blade Wylie’s insight and Kate Arnold’s courage all keep me going, just to name a few. If you haven’t heard these episodes, go back and listen to them — these folks are incredible.

Meanwhile, Alaska summer marches on and we are enjoying every single second of it. This past week I was dealing with an abductor muscle strain – that muscle between your legs that I often call my “squatter.” So I literally did nothing except rest and sit in my hot tub for five days and it was so, so great. I love running and moving, but man it’s nice to rest. And then, when things were feeling better, my friend Rachel and I hit the Lost Lake trail, home to a very popular trail race that has been canceled for this year, for a fantastic 15 miles sunshine run up through magical fairy forests, alpine meadows of wildflowers, past the gorgeous Lost Lake and then back down. It was just so drop-dead gorgeous. And as we did this, my boys were out on a halibut charter working to stock my freezer with over 40 lbs of fresh fish.

You know I’ve talked about our huge tent, the Kingdom 8, which I call “The Taj,” where we sleep on camping cots because why the heck not? It was our outdoor hero just a few weeks ago. But for the last several trips we’ve opted to bring our smaller one- and two-man tents where we sleep on the ground like normal camping people. And that’s why I’m newly very grateful for our Thermarest mats. I still brought my pillow at home because I’m no fool, and I have to tell you — I slept like a dream this weekend, despite being on the ground. We’re going to go ahead and give two points to that Thermarest, and call it our Outdoor Hero for the week. I think I slept better with that on the ground than I have in my own bed recently and I am not kidding. It sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s not.

So what do I have planned for the next six weeks? Well, we’ll be working hard on season 2, getting ready to give you an incredible parade of new episodes full of tips, tricks, and insight on getting outdoors and creating an outdoor centric life. We’ll have a ton of great new blog posts based off our previous episodes. We’re going to have some new videos up on our YouTube channel. And of course we’ll also be having plenty of outdoor summer adventures. I have two full weeks of vacation slated in there with running and mountains galore.

And so while over this break you won’t hear from us through any new episodes, but you better believe we’ll be getting outside daily and posting all of it to Instagram. Of course, I want to see all of your adventures, too, so I expect you to tag your photos with #humansoutside365 and follow us on Instagram @humansoutside.

Until next time, we’ll see you out there.

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