Back when I was just out of college and working for the Arizona Game and Fish Department as a field tech, my outdoor pursuits all had a real, tangible purpose. Every day in the field came with a set of objectives, and a lot of planning and care went into each one.
I’d start by figuring out which data needed collecting. Sometimes it meant rating miles of cattle fenceline across chaparral and desert grasslands; other times it meant measuring ground-flora species and height at a string of randomly generated GPS waypoints. Most days required long drives into remote corners of the state and miles of cross-country hiking and bushwhacking. The lead-up to each outing was its own ritual—studying maps and ArcGIS layers, plotting routes, and guessing at the terrain ahead.
It wasn’t until SOTA that I regained that sense of purpose for heading into the unknown. Not every outdoor pursuit of mine involves radio, but many do—and this site has become a running journal of those trips.