Hi Trev, hope you don't mind a bit of constructive criticism.
I've been looking at some of your links on the food thread and whilst some of them are really interesting, others are less so, to me anyway. I'm imagining we're going to get more links on this thread, some will be worth me following up and others not.
Just had a quick look at the one above and don't know where to start really.
What is it on that site that you think is most useful for folks here to look at?
I just haven't got the time to check them all out but it's frustrating knowing there might be things I'll miss. A little bit more information with the link would be most helpful.
Can I ask - if you have time - could you add just a a brief idea of what's on offer in each link. That way if I've only got time to look at a couple, I can choose the two that sound most useful. Otherwise I just have to chose one or two at random and skim them hoping to find something relevant.
no disrespect Trev, but if you have a few sentences describing exactly what it is you are passing on in info terms and the relevent page(s) that would be super!
You are churning out loads and loads of interesting links but without descriptions some are useful to some people and some are not
however as MoS says you are doing a grand job and i have had fun looking at some of the link research you have been doing
If you all scroll down the page there to the actual heading of 'Backcountry links' (the clue should have been evident in the use of the word 'backcountry' there above at direct link button) then that is where the gems are to be found. The rest of the page is just many a link to travel info for the American Backcountry, which is in itself handy enough for anyone thinking of travelling out there. Elementary, as Sherlock Holmes would no doubt have said.You just look and pick and choose exactly what you like, as with any other menu anywhere else really. In no ways do I suggest everything will be of interest to anyone and everyone though, you are right. It is all very muchdown to individual taste, passion and circumstance, indeed. The word 'backcountry' is usually referring to outdoors America and Canada used in this context though, practically universally on the internet. So that should already have indicated to you the region of the world I was meaning. Lots of USA folks use this site, so I occasionally put on links and things just for them here too, as I love wilderness America and Canada especially and intend to get out there a lot more one fine day, if I can.
As the great Chris Townsend wrote, 'However, to my mind the best backpacking is to be found in the land where it began, North America. In both the USA and Canada there are vast areas of spectacular and pristine wilderness that are only accessible to the backpacker. Here lie the really long routes, the 2000 mile Appalachian Trail, the 2600 mile Pacific Crest Trail and the 3000 mile Continental Divide Trail. There are many shorter ones too, of which the most famous is the John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada in California. For the keen backpacker a visit to North America must be the ultimate aim.'From a very old nineteen nineties TGO article of his on the essential facts of backpacking.
Which is why the man is one of my biggest outdoors/wilderness survival studies heroes of all time, and for me he is right up there with the greats like Ray Mears and Tom Brown Jnr.
As for the food thread on the recipes front, it is again some just really general links to outdoors cooking tips and some to lists f specific recipe locations; for the real foodies to scour through for gems. But some is very specific like the 'Hard Tack biscuit' one, as individual food tastes are very personal indeed, and most folks already now what things they either do or don't like to eat now, don't they!
Also I don't put in stuff necessarily for all you folks to immediately search completely through right here and now. I give a good choices list to try to cater for most subjects people might want to search into a little bit further. Just look at a little bit here and there where you have the time, you won't miss anything you were not meant to find in the end really! Just bookmark the thread to come back to at a later time to check it out maybe further, if that time there is nowt else to do upon a rainy windswept dark night in! You will never wade through all I have for you right-off anyways most likely, and the such thought was not my intention anyway either. Little by little, bit by bit is the way to go with such things, most definitely.It is better, more educational and more enjoyable to just come back time and again to dip in as your fancy takes you moreover, you will likely see. They do say that 'a little of what you fancy does you good!' You know!
Think of these links threads as 'resources' educational threads to bookmark for later repeat viewing, rather than the normal more usual fare of the straight standard OM Forum threads for immediate discussion in the 'now' moment, as it were. There are plenty of threads like that already on here, so I just wanted to try to offer something slightly different to complement the others is all.You can always return at your leisure at later time to supp again from the fountain of outdoors facts at these resources at the links, whenever you want to via the site personal bookmarks function button.
Unfortunately I don't always have time to come back to threads and look at them in more detail but I'm sure some do. They'll be the folk who follow up every link, I can't and was just asking for a bit more detail rather than just a link.
I agree that when I do see something that really interests me, I can bookmark it for future reference.
"Just look at a little bit here and there where you have the time, you won't miss anything you were not meant to find in the end really!"
Trouble is, I feel I don't have time to look at all of it to start with, whether now or later, a little bit here and there, whatever, there are only so many hours in the day. What I was asking for was a bit more direction to help me decide whether I bother looking at a link at all.
For instance, taking your advice with your link at the top of the page.
I did scroll down to the section titled 'Backcountry links' and went immediately to the ones that don't specify a North American place name on the basis that they will probably contain information specific to that country. That's my way of filtering out some of it, I don't have time to look at it all.
So the first page I clicked on Anyplace Wild - said, page cannot be found.
So I suppose that proves your point that you never know what little gems you might find when looking at your links, Trev.
But I still say, I'd like a bit more information about what a link might contain at the outset.
I'm not asking you to stop doing what you're doing - I like it and I'm sure others do too, just requesting additional information so I can be selective and choose which links to follow up
No, MoS, the whole set of stuff there under the title 'backcountry basics' is USA specific you see. That is the where and the why of the term universally on the internet, as I did already state.
REI links sadly seem to change all the time it appears. All their stuff can be very easily accessed through the REI main website anyway though. The stuff there is very good, but is largely aimed at the very beginners basics rather than being more specifically detailed.
The trouble is with lots of links that they will work say in Explorer but not in Firefox browsers use, or the other way around, and similar with other different search engines. Plus some web links are up and running one day then taken down the very next, or moved elsewhere, as the internet is basically a man made living breathing ever changing interconnected thing. It is often hard to keep up with it, and if I had a buck for every working link I had, and went back later on to find it broke, then I would be a very rich man!
REI links sadly seem to change all the time it appears. All their stuff can be very easily accessed through the REI main website anyway though. The stuff there is very good, but is largely aimed at the very beginners basics rather than being more specifically detailed.
Anyplace wild.Now, this was a time specific link for when that tv show done by Backpacker magazine in the States was being shown on tv there. It was a good while ago now, so the link is taken down; and like other web pages out there the pages themselves are not then replaced, but just live on full of the many thousands of useless links that are out there still to this day. It cannot be helped, and is just the way things are. 'That's life' as the old saying goes! It was a survival in the American backcountry type tv show, but didn't have the popularity of Born Survivor; achieving but a minority special interest audience of backpackers, wilderness and survival skills fans, in the US and Canada. It did though influence tv here, which was how we ended up, apparently, with stuff like the old 'Bare Necessities' survival team game show on our tv screens here!
Outside Online is a big website for a US outdoors magazine.Here.
It is one that I occasionally put links in to on this forum. You might well recognise the big yellow page top border if you go there. I recently linked there about the original article from that magazine, that went onto become the bestselling book and now award winning popular cinema film 'Into the Wild'.About the chap who set off into the North Woods backcountry looking for adventure and excitement, only to be so sadly killed by a lack of backcountry skills knowledge in the end. A sad lesson for us all there, I do firmly believe.
So as I say, in conclusion I don't put a links page up just to point you to one or two specifics there, but to invite you instead to explore further as time allows yourself into a specific subject designated area. In this case 'backcountry' studies, ie that means American wilderness firstly primarily, then too Canadian. Both REI and the Outside online I have linked to a good few times before too, so felt they really essentially needed little more explanation as to the site content, as such. All was here really already classified for you under a title heading as 'Backcounty Basics' , 'Backcountry Outdoors', or American backcounry basics, which all just mean by popular definition the same thing entirely on the internet.
By far the vast majority of links there work I have found. The rest is a little bit out of my control really. When kind folks out there have taken the time and trouble of hard work and passion to put together a links list of useful sites, then I will try to present it too as they do originally in its entirity. I think that is only right of me, really.It would then, in that case be often practically impossible to include notation to every link say on a big links list, and that explanatory notation should indeed not really be necessary; if it is first off all under one specific header 'subject title' anyway. We shall have to agree to differ on those points I think. I have a lot of time on my hands being out of work here, but not 'that' much time!
thats much better Trev. an intro and a link into what you have found - Wrote ID.
You don't seem to just simply realise here that it is the useful whole 'links list' that I have found, fellas. It is not a list I put together myself, but is some other kind souls hard graft of dilligent work, that contains some really useful stuff! Maybe you should aim your critic at that gentleman instead perhaps. He alone has the power to alter and change his page of online USA backpacking links.All I can do is stay true to his kind original ideals here, in reproducing it as he meant it to be seen, in its undoctored raw whole.
All I can do is stay true to his kind original ideals here, in reproducing it as he meant it to be seen, in its undoctored raw whole.
