Hiking Hobbies
It's hard for me to just hike out into the woods without an agenda. Don't get me wrong I love hiking and I love the woods, but I crave that adventure of looking for something hard to find. My wife and I decided we'd buy some handbooks on trees, fish, mushrooms and even the different types of clouds. (I love clouds) Now, depending on where we decide to hike, we pack one or more of these guides and try to find and identify something we've never seen before.
There are so many different subjects for studying while hiking here in the Carolinas. You may be interested in the stars, birds, rocks and minerals, sea shells; whatever it is pick up a field guide and get started next time you lace up those boots.
How deep you delve into your new hobby is all up to you of course. Most of the time I just prefer to find something unique, then identify it in a guide. My wife, however, goes all out on the trees. When she finds a new leaf, she presses it ( flattening it between the pages of a heavy book) and displays it in a photo album labled with info from her guide. Her tree album and field guide cost just over 20 dollars, so it is not an expensive hobby.
The National Adubon Society Field Guides are a good place to start. They have a huge index of pictures and info on your subject and where it is located. The only problem I find with the Adubon guides is that the pictures and information are in seperate sections of the book.
That led me to pick up Simon & Shuster's Guide to Mushrooms. I like the way the way this guide has the photos and info blocks right beside one another for quick reference. Mushrooms are tricky enough without having to flip back and forth to identify them. Simon and Schuster's guides are a bit less expensive also.
enature.com is a nice site to jumpstart your hobby if you are having trouble deciding which subject to choose. They offer field guides to just about everything and you can put in your zip code to find out what to look for in your location. I prefer to have a guide on hand while I'm hiking, that's part of the fun; but Enature.com is a wonderful reference tool to add into the mix.
If you have trouble finding a guide try Amazon, you should be able to pick up a used copy easily.
There are so many different subjects for studying while hiking here in the Carolinas. You may be interested in the stars, birds, rocks and minerals, sea shells; whatever it is pick up a field guide and get started next time you lace up those boots.
How deep you delve into your new hobby is all up to you of course. Most of the time I just prefer to find something unique, then identify it in a guide. My wife, however, goes all out on the trees. When she finds a new leaf, she presses it ( flattening it between the pages of a heavy book) and displays it in a photo album labled with info from her guide. Her tree album and field guide cost just over 20 dollars, so it is not an expensive hobby.
The National Adubon Society Field Guides are a good place to start. They have a huge index of pictures and info on your subject and where it is located. The only problem I find with the Adubon guides is that the pictures and information are in seperate sections of the book.
That led me to pick up Simon & Shuster's Guide to Mushrooms. I like the way the way this guide has the photos and info blocks right beside one another for quick reference. Mushrooms are tricky enough without having to flip back and forth to identify them. Simon and Schuster's guides are a bit less expensive also.
enature.com is a nice site to jumpstart your hobby if you are having trouble deciding which subject to choose. They offer field guides to just about everything and you can put in your zip code to find out what to look for in your location. I prefer to have a guide on hand while I'm hiking, that's part of the fun; but Enature.com is a wonderful reference tool to add into the mix.
If you have trouble finding a guide try Amazon, you should be able to pick up a used copy easily.
posted by Phillip at 2:30 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home