My love for spending time in the outdoors is only matched by my love for all things coffee related. I don’t remember when this began, my mom is a tea drinker and what my dad considers coffee is more akin to coffee bean flavoured water. It may have been when I was in high school - all of the cool girls worked at Starbucks and I was determined to do the same. And so I did, I spent year slinging over sweetened coffee drinks to teenagers who could likely not afford them. As time went on the balance of sugar to coffee in my drinks flip flopped and I became a snob of all things coffee related. And so, when I ventured into the outdoors I needed options that were better than the instant that my mother would add into chocolate cakes and lighter than lugging a parceling carafe thousands of meters up the side of a mountain. I have three tried and true ways to help you find a good cup of coffee no matter where you are.

I have never been a big reader… I will be the first to admit that. But give me a good documentary, an audio book or an online class and my attention can not be waived and as we spend more time at home I have (with a lot of your help) compiled an extensive list of books, movies, documentaries, short films, TV shows, podcasts and miscellaneous online resources to help us all feel a little but more inspired and prepared to get outside.

As with everything I am not an expert - but over the years this is something I google almost every morning before I go for a run. The more comfortable you feel the more likely you are to stick with this! A few notes: I am Canadian through and through and do not do well in hot temperatures so I will stop running outdoors when the temperature is above 20°c/68°f - I will either run in the early morning before the sun (with a headlamp or very well lit, safe route that I know well) or (and I hate this) hop on a treadmill if I am in training. Or I will swap my cardio and cycle or swim or jump rope or do a workout class. I also have run at temperatures below -20°c/-4°f and I would not say it is particularly enjoyable but with the right layers it is, to me, better than running on a treadmill indoors.

My mother is a many-times Boston Marathon runner, her sister a world champion IronMan competitor and as for me… I like to put heavy things on my back and walk uphill. Moving fast has never come naturally to me. But about a decade ago, to distance myself from my “freshman 15” I decided that I, like my mother, would be a runner. She is three inches taller than me, her hips line up with my armpits and our running technique would be akin to watching a race between a gazelle and a pug (I am not the gazelle in this comparison in case that was not clear). I remember the day I decided to start running. It is 2.5 miles from my parents’ house to the highway (they live on a farm, in the country, on the top of a hill) and I ambitiously (read: naïvely) thought that 5 miles would be a good starting distance. I made it down the driveway, too

Popcorn, coffee and cheese. That would be my list of non-negotiable foods in life (peanut butter coming in a close fourth). I think the inclusion of popcorn in this top three stems from a Sunday night tradition in my childhood home - fighting with my brothers over who got to climb up on the counter top and microwave the butter as my dad popped popcorn for our weekly standing movie date. The seven of us, a silver bowl of almost comical volume filled to the brim with salty, buttery goodness and a movie that more often than not would be shut off before it finished due to a few sets of extremely heavy eyelids. Being far away from home I have found myself drawn to the familiar including, of course, a bowl of popcorn popped on the stovetop before bed.

There is a day, every spring, when I lay out all of my backpacking gear for the year, pack in into my bag more meticulously than I ever will in real-life conditions and toss it on my back - just to see what it feels like. A metric ton of bricks - THAT is what my backpack feels like just before the ground melts and I spend as many days as humanly possible sleeping in a tent atop a mountain. I have to admit that the past few years I have had the opportunity to travel during the winter months, with a few December and March days closer to (or south of) the equator making that spring backpacking curve slightly less steep.

Getting into the outdoors can be intimidating for any number of reasons (will I be eaten by a bear? how do you poop in the desert? is my biodegradable soap actually okay to use?) not the least of which is the hefty financial investment. After an almost decade of hiking, backpacking and general spending time in the outdoors I put together a little list of things that I have had with me since the beginning, that I wish I purchased earlier in this journey and that I don’t know how I lived without. Plus a few tips on how you can keep a little money in your pocket while you’re at it!

Packing for international travel is never easy but packing for hiking, backpacking, free diving and having the ability to capture it all complicates things even more. On my recent two week trip to French Polynesia being streamline in my packing was essential and having a lightweight, compact camera was at the centre of this. I packed my Fujifilm X-T30 and four lenses (plus an extender) that allowed me to both have a. reach from 16-196mm (equivalent to 24-294mm on a full frame camera) all of which fit into a small camera cube for lightweight compact travel.

I didn’t grow up with a camera glued to my hand and some innate need to understand the mechanics of every electronic that crossed my field of vision - often I wish I did. I first picked up a camera in high school, I took photos with my friends doing silly things on an old point and shoot that sat in automatic mode until the day that it found its final resting place in a box in my parents’ basement. When I started to hike and travel I relied on the help from friends and my trusty cellphone to capture photos. I eventually purchased my first “big girl” camera in early 2017