Stay 731: Simplicity

When I tell people that my family moved from Seattle—and that we didn’t move to Jackson because of family or a job—I often get the response, “Why would you move here?” Really it all started with woods. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, about his own time living in the woods, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

To Preserve & Promote Beauty

When I first moved to Jackson, my only regret in my college choice was (what seemed to me) the lack of natural beauty in the university’s town. As a Middle Tennessee native and an East Tennessee enthusiast, I grew up enthralled by the beauty of Tennessee’s landscape: the rolling hills, slow-moving rivers, and Blue Ridge Mountains in the east. Hence, my relocation to West Tennessee was, quite literally, flattening.

Concrete Ain't Cuttin' It

The pine trees towered over us, swaying precariously in the winds high above, but down on the pine needle-laden ground my boys and I hardly felt the gusts. Besides, we were hard at work and couldn’t be bothered with the weather. We had gathered pieces of mostly rotting wood with plans to erect a grand establishment: a place that would say, “We were here, and we did something great.”

Meadows Adventure Scouts: Fall Camping Guide

Fall is finally in full swing, and if you're anything like me, you know that there are few things better than fall camping season. There's just something about the cozy campfires and the chilly mornings that makes being outdoors in the fall so much more invigorating than any other season. And if you live in Jackson, you're fortunate to be surrounded by tons of nearby state parks and recreation areas that make getting out in nature a breeze.