Articles

It's all about the strop

Don't forget this important last step when sharpening a knife

by Cosmo Genova - Thursday, Feb 1st, 2018

Photo: Cosmo Genova

As the saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. While its safe to assume that the old adage should be interpreted more figuratively than literally, you won’t be skinning anything unless your blade is sharp enough for the task. Most of us get by with blades that are just sharp enough to get the job done, and inevitably, we find ourselves woefully unprepared for a task that requires some precision.

How federal agencies go from respected to reviled

Politics and public lands

by Chris Hunt - Wednesday, Jan 31st, 2018

U.S. Forest Service employees in the Cairbou-Targhee National Forest take fire behavior observations from the safety of a meadow on the West side of the Continental Divide (photo: USFS).

In the early 2000s, as a fly fisher who would rather wander off the beaten path in search of wild, backcountry trout than stand in the bow of a drift boat in hopes of hooking into a big-river behemoth, I wasn’t a big fan of Jim Caswell.

Cutthroats and magpies

A childhood on water

by Myers Reece - Tuesday, Jan 30th, 2018

Photo: D. Beck

I grew up outside of Livingston, Montana, three miles up a curvy dirt road. A small creek, teeming with native Yellowstone cutthroats and flanked by bushy willows, paralleled the road, and I started fishing there as a preschooler with my father, planting the seeds of a lifetime obsession. By the time I was 5, I would venture to the stream alone with a rod and jar full of grasshoppers freshly procured from our front yard. On my way out the door, I would tell my parents, “I’m going to get lunch.”

Patagonia and others protest Trump's attacks on public lands with massive countdown clock

America's heritage will be open to mining and drilling in ...

by Chad Shmukler - Thursday, Jan 25th, 2018

Photo: Sorane Yamahira / Bellvisuals.com

Last night at the opening of the 2018 Outdoor Retailer Show in Denver, Colorado, Patagonia was joined by The Wilderness Society, The Center for American Progress and The Conservation Lands Foundation in protest of Donald Trump's massive rollback of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.

The fish in the sea

A catch is always in some sense an ending, but a loss can mark the beginning of something

by Tom Davis - Tuesday, Jan 23rd, 2018

Photo: Martin Christensson

She didn’t break my heart. She may have blindsided me a little, but it’s not as if she took my legs out and left me writhing in agony. We didn’t have enough history for that; there had been nothing promised. She simply vanished from my life—a life in which her appearance was at best a memorable cameo.

Not that I was blessed with the kind of telescopic perspective that enabled me to see that at the age of 17, when every word, glance, and gesture from a girl you’re interested in is freighted with earth-shattering significance.