by Natalie Ogbourne | May 14, 2020 | Navigating Tough Terrain
Leaving the comforting bustle of the crowd, I stepped off the boardwalk onto the geyserite-strewn path. This was my first solo hike. I was leaving from the Old Faithful area, where I lived and worked, to make a six-mile round trip journey to a backcountry waterfall....
by Natalie Ogbourne | Jan 31, 2020 | Navigating Tough Terrain
We set off, my family and I, into the high desert. Unfamiliar territory, it was marked by slot canyons and stark terrain. We were mountain hikers, more accustomed to treading over soft, tree-lined paths than through stony expanses. Trailhead signs warned that heat...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Sep 16, 2019 | Navigating Tough Terrain
The first trail—as in, an unpeopled, into the wilderness, marked-by-blazes-instead-of-a-worn-path trail—I remember taking was to the petrified forest in Yellowstone. I was fourteen, with my family, on our second visit to the park, and we’d finally stopped believing...
![Sparkling in an Unfamiliar Life]()
by Natalie Ogbourne | Sep 2, 2017 | Navigating Tough Terrain
My great-grandma was a woman of summer. She kept a garden. She grew the flowers and vegetables that graced her table. She picked the berries that topped our ice cream. Once in a while I helped her in the garden or the berry patch and it always shocked me when she...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Feb 19, 2017 | Navigating Tough Terrain
J and I took our first trip to Yellowstone together twenty-two springs ago. As we zipped down the interstate ahead of schedule in the middle of the afternoon, I realized we could make it to the park that night. We could cancel our along-the-way reservation, drive to...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Sep 1, 2015 | Pondering Life Outside
Summer’s green is wearing thin. Before long, it will give way to the colors of autumn. Some years, summer’s heat and its green march across the lawn arrive with a suddenness that suggests we’ve gone straight from winter to summer with no stop for spring. This...