Author Archives:

Winning the Cold War: How to Not Die of Hypothermia

Winning the Cold War

How to Not Die of Hypothermia

With the New Model Climate turning autumn into spring, it’s easy to forget how quickly the weather can turn. But don’t be fooled. An ancient killer still lurks in the hills and waters of Canoe Country. The name of this baleful beast? In an article that originally appeared in 2005, Tamia reveals the chilling answer.
_____________________________________

by Tamia Nelson | November 3, 2017
Originally published in different form on January 11, 2005

It attacks the unwitting, the unwary, and the unprepared. It stalks its prey in all seasons of the year. It can strike during a summer picnic on Golden Pond, in the middle of a rough open-water crossing in November, or while traversing the Grand Portage in a swirling spring drizzle. And it waits patiently in any water cool enough not to feel comfortably warm. Many of its victims never see home again.

What is this stealthy killer’s name? Hypothermia, that’s what, and it’s every bit as deadly as drowning. Know your enemy. That’s always good advice. So let’s take a closer look at …

The Big Chill

The human body isn’t a heat engine in the strictest sense, but it

… Read more »

In the Midst of Death… What Good is a Dead Tree?

In the Midst of Death…

What Good is a Dead Tree?

The Others have an answer to the question in the title. But is anyone listening? Tamia is.
______________________________

by Tamia Nelson | October 10, 2017

A Tamia Nelson Article on Backinthesameboat.com

The Expert looked at his watch, and gave his companion a thumbs-up. The job wouldn’t take long. A flight of finches exploding into the air. Neither man noticed. The Expert eyeballed the old pine. He didn’t see the red squirrel clinging to the trunk. He saw only the brown needles and the bare limbs.

“What good is a dead tree?” the Expert asked, not expecting an answer. His companion knew the question was purely rhetorical. And he marked the pine for removal.

The two men thought they were alone. But they were wrong. And the Others who were present did their best to answer the Expert’s question. He wasn’t listening, though. Perhaps he never had. In any case, his companion was anxious to get going. Time is money, after all, and the Expert had more trees to condemn.

Yet the dissenting voices of the Others continued to make their case, long after the Expert had gone. It’s too bad that the expert and his companion … Read more »

Tanks for the Memories: Readers Sound Off About Aluminum Canoes

Tanks for the Memories

Readers Sound Off About Aluminum Canoes

If form indeed follows function, then there’s beauty in some of the industrial age’s most improbable offspring. Like the Grumman aluminum canoe and all the other “tin tanks” that followed in its wake, for instance. Tamia wrote about these venerable (and venerated) craft earlier in the year, and the mail she got around the column was so interesting she figured the tin tank deserved a curtain call.
______________________________

by Tamia Nelson | June 23, 2015

A Tamia Nelson Article on Backinthesameboat.com

Plastic is forever, at least when measured against the scale of human life. Scraps of lawn chairs, shreds of shopping bags, and fragments of soft drink bottles will be circulating around the world’s seas — and poisoning marine life — long after our cities go the way of the fabled Ozymandias’ “sneer of cold command.” But while plastic itself is almost eternal, the things that we make from it — including lawn chairs, shopping bags, and soft drink bottles — have a much shorter life expectancy. They are, in fact, almost ephemeral. This is true of plastic canoes, as well. Farwell’s and my veteran Old Town Tripper is a case in point. It grew progressively more brittle as the decades passed, succumbing at last to the combined … Read more »

Keeping Your Food to Yourself in the Backcountry Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are

Keeping Your Food to Yourself in the Backcountry

It’s summertime, and the wilderness is calling. Soon campsites in popular parks will be filled to overflowing, as paddlers and hikers make themselves at home where the wild things are. And with the crowds comes conflict. We want to keep our food to ourselves. But our involuntary hosts have other ideas, and the resulting differences of opinion can get messy. Is there an alternative? There is.
______________________________

by Tamia Nelson | June 6, 2015

Backcountry wanderers and campers walk a thin line in our dealings with the furred and feathered natives on whose doorsteps we camp. We want to be accepted by them, but we also want them to know their place and keep their distance. This is pretty presumptuous of us, really. Since when do house guests get to lay down rules for their hosts? Be that as it may, however, it’s much harder to strike the right balance than it used to be. Truly wild things treat infrequent blow-ins with appropriate caution and circumspection. But tens of millions of us now invade the natives’ wilderness homes, and such familiarity inevitably breeds contempt. The natives have learned … Read more »