Cover photo courtesy of Shallan Knowles
Most days when I wake up, I spend a few quiet minutes with my coffee gazing out on our cramped urban backyard. Out of habit, I scan the small patch of grass our dog and her archnemeses, our resident pack of taunting squirrels, seem hell-bent on destroying. My eyes drift to the garden and flower beds and along the bright, tropical scene painted on the concrete wall that holds back our neighbor’s ancient arborvitaes. Lastly, I inspect the sagging, faded back fence boards still draped with last summer’s hops, the flimsy border between this serene scene and the often sketchy alley on the other side.
This morning ritual is all auto-pilot, a subconscious searching for change. Maybe the squirrels have gone on a hole-excavating rampage, or the frost that glazed the rose bushes the morning before now glistens with dew. What is different that requires attention? Is the fence closer to collapse, giving the neighborhood’s roaming pit bulls and alley wanderers access to our cultivated space? Change, whether it’s just outside my door or elsewhere in life, is sometimes imperceptible and slow in the moment, but always inevitable and largely out of our control.
Like our favorite places throughout the Inland Northwest as winter transitions to spring—including my own backyard, where young flower shoots now grow where snow piles lay just weeks before—a lot has shifted for Shallan and me as publishers since last year’s first spring flowers bloomed. We started another business, and we continued to invest time and resources into Out There’s digital presence and our Great Outdoors Expo event. Together, over time, every new thing and every little change slowly beget the realization that all good things come with a catch: more time at computers cranking out work meant less time outside doing the things that inspired us down this path in the first place.
This magazine you’re holding in your hands has gone through a lot of changes in the last 20 years. For the first half of its life, it was known as “Out There Monthly” because a new issue came out, as the name implied, every month. Over the years, we shifted the publishing schedule to adapt to the times, the pandemic, and our changing lives. In the midst of an ultra-workathon in recent months, views of our backyard were often my most intimate connection with the outdoors on a given week, and that’s something that needs to change.
This issue is another benchmark in the evolution of Out There: it is the first iteration of the magazine as a seasonal, quarterly print publication. We are excited to condense the creative efforts of all who make each issue possible into four larger magazines, with each one themed to the season. Outdoor adventure here in the Inland NW is defined by the seasons, and shifting Out There to a seasonal print schedule is also a better fit with that reality. The bonus for us, we hope, will mean less time processing pixels and pounding keyboards and more time out there in the sun and snow.
Enjoy this three-month Spring Issue of Out There, our largest spring issue ever. We’ve included plenty of spring skiing events at our local resorts for those still making the most out of every snowflake, a collection of spring travel and hiking adventures around the region, and pretty much everything in-between that makes our outdoor-adventuring hearts beat this time of year, from snowshoeing to conservation efforts to biking everywhere we can.
As we move forward as a quarterly print publication, we also hope you’ll engage with Out There in other ways. Sign up for our weekly emails full of trip ideas and event reminders at Outthereoutdoors.com/adventure-email and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Blue Sky, and other platforms. And if you love this free magazine, support the amazing advertisers that have made it possible for the last two decades. Finally, consider signing up as an Out There Member on our website as a way to support the magazine and score some pretty sweet deals from our advertisers. You’ll get an invite to our annual fall party too. Spring is in the air, and whatever adventures you head out on, take a copy of Out There with you to share the love of the outdoors with someone new.
—Derrick Knowles, Editor
