The Editors’ Choices: Featured Selections from Our Backlist
Way back in 1999 — before Facebook, broadband, and the ascendency of “Lord Google” — Farwell Forrest and I began writing In the Same Boat, a weekly column for what was then the fresh new canoeing and kayaking website Paddling.net. Our column was published every Tuesday for the better part of two decades, and while our articles covered a broad range of topics, the unifying theme was always the many joys (and occasional travails) of messing about in small, no‑octane boats. But nothing lasts forever, and we wrote our last column for Paddling.net on August 29, 2017. That wasn’t the end of In the Same Boat, however: On the following Saturday we happily shifted our mooring to our independent website, Back in the Same Boat. Our old columns traveled with us, and we continued to publish new articles every Tuesday, with occasional pieces on other days of the week.
That was then. This is now. After completing the laborious task of reformatting and uploading nearly 1,000 previously published columns and writing new ones every week for a year, we wrote our last new article on 31 October 2018. After a grace period, we also pulled most of our backlist off Back in the Same Boat. It was not an easy decision, and to learn why we took this drastic action, read “Upping Anchor: We Cast Off — Again.”
Well, our faithful readers were disappointed, and we’ve had a stream of requests to make many of our articles available again. So that’s what you’ll find here, links to what we consider to be some of our most important articles. The “Table of Contents” below will give you a jump to each subject collection. Over the coming months, when taking a break from a couple ambitious other projects, we may add more or switch out different articles for those listed here, so stop back from time to time.
Thanks for stopping by. Tamia Nelson
- Health, Well-Being, and Safety
- Ethics, Environment, and Philosophy
- Nelson’s Column
- Farwell’s Rules
- “Tin Tanks,” or, the Case for Aluminum Canoes
- Getting Away
- In the Company of Trees
- Voices of the Wild
- Girl Talk
- What Am I to Wear?
- The Happy Camper
- It’s Alimentary
- Contemporary Reports and Journals
- Dispatches From Our Readers
- SAfety First: Nurturing the Habit of Awareness by Tamia Nelson, 10 March 2015
- How to Not Die of Hypothermia by Tamia Nelson, 3 November 2017
- A Paddlers’ Code of Conduct: Everybody Pitches In, and Nobody Gets Left Behind, by Tamia Nelson, 8 December 2017
- The Other Ten Essentials: Five Things You Can’t Buy, From Curiosity to Confidence, by Farwell Forrest, 14 November 2017
- The Other Ten Essentials: Five More Things You Can’t Buy, From Patience to Joy, by Farwell Forrest, 17 November 2017
- Burning Issues: When to Say NO to a Campfire—and Why, by Tamia Nelson, 8 October 2002
- Monofilament, Deadly Deceiver, by Tamia Nelson, 27 March 2007
- Talking Trash, by Tamia Nelson, 22 May 2012
- The Man Who Wasn’t There… Keeping Wild Things Wild is Up to Us, by Tamia Nelson, 1 June 2015
- Bark-Eater: Eulogy for an Old-Timer, by Tamia Nelson, 17 April 2001
- Headwaters: The Maternal Line, by Tamia Nelson, 25 December 2012
- The Man Who Wasn’t There… Keeping Wild Things Wild is Up to Us, by Tamia Nelson, 1 June 2015
- Fixing Images on the Emulsion of Memory: Keeping a Journal by Tamia Nelson, 16 May 2018
- Learning to See: Happy Are the Painters, by Tamia Nelson, 23 March2018
- In the Same Boat: Getting Acquainted, by Farwell Forrest, 1 March 1999
- Kicking the Bucket List: A Declaration of Independence, by Farwell Forrest, 26 January 2018
- Kicking the Bucket List: In Defense of Serendipity, by Farwell Forrest, 2 February 2018
- Devices and Desires: Have I Got a Tweet for You!, by Farwell Forrest, 9 February 2018
- Self-Reliance Revisited: Why Does the Slave Embrace His Chains?, by Farwell Forrest, 16 February 2018
- Batteries Not Included: The Virtues of Simplicity, by Farwell Forrest, 23 February 2018
- Devices and Desires Redux: The Facebook Follies by Tamia Nelson, 21 March 2018
- In the Midst of Death… The Lively World of Dead Trees, by Tamia Nelson, 26 June 2007
- In the Midst of Death… What Good is a Dead Tree?, by Tamia Nelson, 10 October 2017
- Boyz in the Woods: Coyote Tells It Like It Is, by Tamia Nelson, 5 January 2018
- The Tin Tank in the 21st Century: Requiem or Renaissance for This Workhorse of the Rivers?, by Tamia Nelson, 28 April 2015
- Tanks for the Memories! Readers Sound Off About Aluminum Canoes, by Tamia Nelson, 23 June 2015
- The Art of the Miniature Adventure: Life in the Slow Lane, by Farwell Forrest, 22 May 2018
- The Art of the Miniature Adventure: On (and Off) the Water, by Farwell Forrest, 25 May 2018
- Girl Talk: Going It Alone by Tamia Nelson, 2 August 2011
- The Lady’s Not for Turning: The Story of Mina Hubbard, by Tamia Nelson, 12 November 2002
- Headwaters: The Maternal Line, by Tamia Nelson, 25 December 2012
- What Price Safety? Are Drysuits Worth the Cost? by Tamia Nelson, 7 April 2015
- Frogman or Amphibian? The Choice is Yours by Tamia Nelson, 14 April 2015
- Fighting the Cold War: Readers Wade In by Tamia Nelson, 7 April 2015
- Smoothing It: Secrets of a Happy Camper by Tamia Nelson, 10 August 2004
- Keeping Your Food to Yourself in the Backcountry Where the Wild Things Are by Tamia Nelson, 6 June 2015
- Keeping Your Food to Yourself in the Backcountry Where the Wild Things Are by Tamia Nelson, 6 June 2015
- Java Jive: The Ch’i of Coffee by Tamia Nelson, 19 July 2005
- Voyages of Discovery: A Missouri River Odyssey, by Tyler Higgins, 13 March 2018
- A Few Words From the Texas Hills, by Tamia Nelson and Farwell Forrest, 31 May 2005
- Tanks for the Memories! Readers Sound Off About Aluminum Canoes, by Tamia Nelson, 23 June 2015
- Fighting the Cold War: Readers Wade In by Tamia Nelson, 7 April 2015
