Cover photo courtesy of Lisa Laughlin
Stories connect us. That’s nothing new. But I’ve been thinking about the way stories connect us to place, specifically outdoor places, and the use of telling stories that are anchored in the natural world.
When I’m outside, it usually starts with movement. Stories unravel as I walk with a friend on the trail, muscles at work. But stories also come to me at times of sitting: particularly around a fire (the oldest of storytelling places), or under a pine tree covered with snow, breaking for cold sandwiches after snowmobiling in the backcountry, feeling alive and alert just for existing in that remote, snow-bright place.
Perhaps we’re at our most story-ready when we’re outside because we’re away from television and traffic, already looking to connect with something transcendent. Maybe we crave stories when we’re outside because the world feels bigger there, where the snow-muffled silence is both beautiful and hard to sit with, where we feel small on the face of a mountain. Maybe we go to these places to find stories, to sharpen the ones we know or are still discovering. To go into the wilds and come back with fresh-foraged tales.
I have certain places that are story-anchored: an alpine lake and set of trails in the Cascades always bring up stories of past backpacking trips. If you’ve connected deeply enough with a place, I’ll bet you’ve cached the threadworks of stories there, too. I believe places can hold stories in a near-physical way, like how a familiar creek crossing or a wave of fireweed in bloom might trigger your story recall with their place-based cues. We could call these “story cairns.” Why follow them?
The stories of the outdoors that we tell are bigger-than-us stories. They’re of-the-earth and environment stories. They’re stories that show we’re paying attention. And those stories are worth megaphoning these days. Grounding those tales on a set of skis, sleds or snowshoes makes them ring specific to our outdoors community.
Each time we put together this magazine, we’re rounding up those stories that feel megaphone-worthy. Stories of celebration, mishaps and near-misses—all the things that amaze and surprise us when we go out into this complicated world.
In this issue of Out There, we look back at the making of “Ski Flakes,” the regional ski videos that started at Schweitzer in the ‘90s, to consider how storytelling can both shape and preserve a culture. We share the adventure of an 89-year-old who bagged the last trail on his 100-hikes list, a story of perseverance. And, for the first time, we’ve included a handful of poems, a storytelling form that might be considered a journey in its reading.
In each of them? A celebration of the ways you can get out there this winter in pursuit of the connections that make us human.
- Lisa Laughlin, managing editor
