The Tidal Wave Mixtape

If y'all aren't daily readers of Aquarium Drunkard, then that means you probably missed the Mondo Boys' Tidal Wave Mixtape last summer. We listened to the mix while driving to the AT two weekends ago (hugging tree part of hike pictured above), and despite the awful (awesome) sound system of my 1999 Subaru, the tunes were just about perfect. Download it here. Comes with the S.E. Rogie jam below.MP3: - S.E. Rogie - Please Go Easy With Me

Back to the Wild

Outside Online ran a short article last week prefacing a book of Christopher McCandless' previously unseen (publicly) photos, postcards, letters and journal entries titled Back to the Wild. The book, slated to be released in July, will also be released as a DVD with scans of photos found exposed with McCandless in the bus and interviews with those he met along the way. Say what you will about McCandless and his mystique, but these photos are amazing and haunting.Keep an eye out on Amazon and the Back to the Wild site for release and availability.Check out a trailer for the DVD after the jump!

George Sheehan

The late George Sheehan (November 5, 1918 - November 1, 1993) was a runner, doctor and author of many books, most notably one of my new favorites, Running and Being: The Total Experience, which was published in 1978. (You can buy it here on Amazon, or, if you're like me and obsessed with the local Salvation Army, find it at the neighborhood thrift store with a far better cover.) The guy is a philosopher, not a trainer, overusing quotes from people like Thoreau and Nietzsche and relating it to the power you feel after spending a Sunday afternoon running in circles. Sounds cheesy, sure, but it's more meditation than motivation. If you've read and enjoyed Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, then you'll love Running and Being. Sheehan was the oldest of 14 children, and while he was a track star at Manhattan College, he didn't renew his interest in running until age 45 while living in New Jersey. He began running in his back yard (26 loops to a mile) and five years later, he ran a 4:47 mile, which was the world's first sub-five-minute time by a 50-year-old.Read the book if you haven't already, and make sure you watch this video, THOUGHTS ON THE RUN, about Sheehan and running the Boston Marathon. It's a wonderful Youtube gem.

Southbounders

I spent a little time on the Appalachian Trail this last weekend, hiking a section around Dutchess County, NY. At one of the shelters was a Southbounder (a thru-hiker going from Katahdin to Springer instead of the more popular route, Springer to Katahdin) who, quite literally, didn't stop talking from the second I arrived until the second he left the following morning at 9 am. And dude was up at 5 am, shouting to his trail buddies about the point system at REI that allowed him to get all of his awesome equipment. It was painful. But that is neither here nor there..Cracker Jack, the chatter box's trail name, reminded me Southbounders, a 2005 film about Olivia, a gal wandering down the 2,000+ miles of the AT, finding herself along the way. It's, well, not the greatest form of entertainment you'll ever come across (see the trailer after the jump) but it's streaming on Netflix and you don't exactly see a fictionalized version of something like this everyday. Do whatever you'd like with this information, but if you're at home and need a little motivation to get outdoors this summer, attempt to watch it. Although I'm not sure what's harder, hiking the entire length of the trail or watching Olivia romantically explain her self-given trail name for the first time, Next Step, right before she kisses Rollin, her love interest that she's fallen in love with after reading his journal entries at each lean-to.Rough.

The Ranger, the Cook and a Hole in the Sky

Surfing the "westerns" section on Netflix yesterday, I stumbled across the 1995 film The Ranger, the Cook & a Hole in the Sky. Starring Sam Elliot and a young Jerry O'Connell as cocky, over-confident Forest Service Ranger in 1919 in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in Idaho, this film is pretty corny and screams made-for-tv (even though it wasn't). But watch it anyways. In researching the film a little more, I saw that the film was adapted from a semi-autobiographical collection of stories by Norman Maclean titled A River Runs Through It. From what I hear, the book is leagues better, as is often the case, telling the tale of Maclean's own stint as a seventeen-year-old Forest Service Ranger in Idaho. Aside from "The Ranger, the Cook & a Hole in the Sky", the book includes two other stories, "Logging and Pimping and Your Old Pal Jim" and the title story "A River Runs Through It". A River Runs Through It was, as I'm sure most of you know, also made into a film in 1992 (by Robert Redford), starring a young Brad Pitt. Who's seen these films? And more importantly, read this book? Just grabbed the book on ebay this morning.Watch the trailer for A River Runs Through It here.

FIRE SEASON

Fire Season: Field Notes From A Wilderness Lookout has been out for a few months now, but I haven't had a chance to dive in quite yet. Free books on stoops (see below) are cutting in line.After a career at the Wall Street Journal, Philip Connors quit, moved to New Mexico and started watching for fires over the beautiful Gila National Forest. That was in 2002 and he's done that job for the National Forest Service every summer since. Fire Season recounts his stay in 2009, from April to August, with one chapter devoted to each month.A little bit more to the story, of course, so read the NYT review here, watch a video preview of the book here, and read an excerpt of the book here.  90% of lookout towers in the United States have been decommissioned and only few hundred remain.MP3: Bruce Springsteen - Fire (GO!)

In the Shadow Of A Rainbow

I don't know too much about art, but I recognize a Peter Parnall when I see it. Spotted this cover on a lonely stoop this morning while riding past on my bicycle. Haven't read this one yet, but so far, so good. And it was free, of course. Anyone out there finished it?In The Shadow Of A Rainbow:

First published in 1974, this classic tale of friendship, courage, and the wild has captured hearts of all ages. In 1970, a young Indian who introduced himself as Gregory Tah-Kloma beached his canoe near the author's Babine Lake campsite in the backwoods of British Columbia. Night after night by the campfire, the young Indian told the remarkable story of his devotion to a pack of timber wolves and their legendary female leader: Náhani, "the one who shines." This extraordinary tale has touched many readers over the years with its moving portrayal of the friendship between Greg and Náhani. Certain names and locations have been altered, but the facts of Gregory Tah-Kloma's adventures with Náhani are as he told them to Robert Leslie.

More Parnall here.

Breathe Owl Breathe

You should all listen to Breathe Owl Breathe, a Michigan three-piece making music in a handbuilt cabin in the upper reaches of the lower peninsula. On the small Portland, Oregon based label Hometapes, B.O.B. makes amazing dreamy, woodsy, honest folk music. Micah, Andréa, and Trevor are currently on tour and you should make a point to see them if they're somewhere close. Literally one of the best live shows I've ever seen. Listen/watch after the jump!

On The Edge

On The Edge, 1985:

Aging distance runner Wes Holman (Bruce Dern) can no longer participate in American events thanks to a violation of his amateur status 20 years earlier. Convinced he's still fit enough capture the honor he lost years ago, Holman heads to his childhood home in Northern California to train for the run of his life: the brutal Cielo Sea Race, which has crushed competitors decades younger than him. John Marley and Pam Grier costar in this potent film.

According to RunningMovies.com (YES) the Cielo Sea Race is based on the actual race called The Dipsea Race and the aerial footage in the film was taken from an actual race.Watch the trailer after the jump and then watch the movie in full over at Netflix. It's well worth your time, I promise.

Never Cry Wolf

Never Cry Wolf (1983) was one of Disney's first takes at a grittier, more mature venture, and they knocked it out of the park on the first swing. Never Cry Wolf is an adaptation of Farley Mowat's influential book by the same title, written in 1963. You can find this film at most any library, ours has three copies.From wikipedia...

In Northern Canada, a young government biologist named Tyler (Charles Martin Smith) is assigned to travel to the isolated Arctic wilderness to study the area's savage population of wolves. His orders are to gather proof of the wolves' ongoing destruction of caribou herds.Contact with his quarry comes quickly, as he discovers not a den of marauding killers, but a courageous family of skillful providers and devoted protectors of their young. Tyler is befriended by two Inuit who tell him their own stories about the wolves. As Tyler learns more and more about the wolf world he comes to fear, along with them, the onslaught of hunters (Brian Dennehy) out to kill the wolves for their pelts and exploit the wilderness.

Watch the trailer and some clips here. Or watch the whole shebang (for now) in pieces here.

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Filmmaker Werner Herzog was interviewed yesterday on NPR's Fresh Air about his 2010 film, "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams", just before it's US release at the end of April. This film, shot in 3D (I know, I know) contains footage of some of the oldest cave paintings on the planet. The Chauvet Cave in Southern France is closed to the public, due to it's immense sensitivity and presence of harmful levels of radon and carbon dioxide. Herzog, creator of many films, including Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World, is known for going to unprecedented lengths and some of the most inhospitable places for footage. I don't know about the whole 3D thing (Herzog speaks to this skepticism which he initially shared) but this looks amazing.Check out the trailer here.

Lesser

From Lesserfilm.com..."In 1981, Rob Lesser led a team of kayakers with primitive equipment down the then unknown Grand Canyon Of The Stikine, a remote, impossibly violent Class 5+ section of river in a deep black gorge that today remains the global test-piece for the world's best.For the next 20 years, fewer than 30 people repeated his feat. In between other first descents on rivers around the world, Rob returned to the Stikine 5 times, most recently at age 53, joining a team half his age. In the last 30 years, 300 people climbed K2, perhaps the hardest climb in the world. As of 2006, less than 100 had run the Stikine.Now, in 2011, at age 65, Rob is returning with his heirs to the river that shaped so much of his life. This is a story about a quiet hero, in a deafening place of almost incomprehensible power. It is an exploration of essential human questions about purpose, perspective, will and mortality against the backdrop of one of the most powerful, yet little known, places in the world."Watch both of the trailers after the jump. Man alive.Thanks to Wildwood for the heads up.

LESSER - A LIFE LESS ORDINARY PRE-TEASER from Anson Fogel on Vimeo.

LESSER - A LIFE LESS ORDINARY - THE BUS from Anson Fogel on Vimeo.

23 Feet

From 23feet.org ..."23 Feet is film about a community of people who make the conscious choice to live simply to do what they love in the great outdoors. Three women set out across the west in their 23 foot, 1970 Airstream to search for the stories of people who have turned their backs on the creature comforts of society to live in school buses, vans, and other small spaces. From an inspiring campfire chat with legendary Yosemite climber Ron Kauk, to hearing the powerful story of a woman who changed her whole life for surfing, 23 Feet gives an intimate look at the ups and downs of dedicating your life to your outdoor passion."Help these gals out and shoot 'em some funds over at their Kickstarter page, and watch the trailer a few times. Excited for this.

Nanook

Nanook of the North :

Nanook of the North (also known as Nanook of the North: A Story Of Life and Love In the Actual Arctic) is a 1922 silent documentary film by Robert J. Flaherty. In the tradition of what would later be called salvage ethnography, Flaherty captured the struggles of the Inuk Nanook and his family in the Canadian arctic. The film is considered the first feature-length documentary, though Flaherty has been criticized for staging several sequences and thereby distorting the reality of his subjects' lives.

In 1989, this film was one of the first 25 films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Watch: Nanook Of The North

CAMPING AND CAMP CRAFTS

Yesterday I traded somebody an old drawing that I had lying in my studio for this book, The Golden Book of Camping and Camp Crafts (1959). I saw a couple images from this book on Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves and have been scouring used book stores ever since to no avail. The illustrations in this book are unbelievable. Also in the series are The Golden Book of Indian Crafts and Lore and The Golden Book of Nature Crafts. Keep an eye out if you please. More photos after the jump.