By Laura Read San Francisco Chronicle Magazine It’s a school with no computers, no televisions, no cell phones, no light switches, no amenities. If you want food or water, you’re pretty much on your own. The classroom is the great outdoors – and the course is survival. In today’s tough economic times, when people are [...]

By Laura Read MIT’s Technology Review Magazine In the bare-bones warehouse space of CrossFit West Santa Cruz, rock and rap music thrums over the clamor of some very fit people lifting big weights. Cliff Hodges, the 30-year-old MIT grad who co-owns the new gym, starts his day here around 8 a.m. But a few hours [...]

The day after Thanksgiving, I hiked near Carson Pass alongside a young woman soon to graduate from Stanford with a degree in English and creative writing. We were hiking at around 7,500 feet elevation through old snow on a treeless ridge when a blizzard crept in. Through the freezing wind the senior described her difficulties [...]

….Even before the menus were handed out, you could see what sort of a place this was. Order the pork and it might resemble a rough-hewn raft, stranded by tides on a narrow beach of polenta. Fish might come with shredded turnips or a pabulum of coddled fruit. The younger an ingredient, the more highly [...]

“…a huge amount of writing takes place in your subconscious mind. It is being formed by your inner thoughts before you become aware of it. … Your subconscious mind is toying with it and it will come to you – like a forgotten name or the clue to a crossword puzzle – when you cease [...]

Last year I volunteered for the first time to campaign in a presidential election. My assignment for the Obama team was in Carson City, Nevada, forty miles from my home in northern California. Was I nervous? Very. Any disturbed occupant might wing open a door and argue me and my canvassing partner speechless. Lucky for [...]

By Laura Read In a cleft of the Northern Sierra, straddling two rivers that once lured gold miners, Downieville, California is enjoying a 21st-century treasure boom in the form of extreme sports. Cashing in is easy. Rent a mountain bike for the epic “Downieville Downhill,” a 4,080-foot descent through gullies and meadows. Paddle Class III, [...]

From Thomas Swick’s book of essays, A Way to See the World In his wonderful opening biographical essay, Swick expresses the yearning he felt during a post-college stint at a language school in Provence: “There was something about the landscape, too, so lauded by others, that depressed me. The earth was harsh and dry and [...]

By Laura Read It took Bay Area writer Jennifer Woodlief more than two years to reconstruct one of the Sierra Nevada’s worst tragedies, the 1982 avalanche at Alpine Meadows ski resort. In interviews reviving memories that most people would rather forget, Woodlief uncovered fine details about how the mountains of Bear Creek Canyon, 5 miles [...]

By Laura Read Three decades ago, Tahoe Nordic Center founder Skip Reedy hatched an idea: host a point-to-point ski race 30 kilometers (18 miles) along an old ski route between Tahoe City and Truckee. Skiers would love it, he thought: after enjoying a seven-mile uphill to the 7,770-foot Starratt Pass, they’d swoop downhill through a [...]