What I’ve been reading this week, 20 September 2019

The melting Alps, camping with children as an act of hope, a counterargument to #dontgeotag, and making the move to lightweight hiking.

Environment

To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution – ‘We should reject the assumption that our built environment must become one big computer. We should erect barriers against the spread of “smartness” into all of the spaces of our lives.’ (I’ll have more to say about this excellent piece on my tech criticism blog, The Entanglement.)

Special report: How climate change is melting France’s largest glacier – I last visited the Mer de Glace in 2008. I’m shocked by the level of retreat since, and it’s only going to get worse.

Camping with children is a refreshing act of hope in a changing climate – ‘Taking our son camping has become my stubborn way of hanging onto hope that a beautiful future is still possible. So we went to the woods.’

Long-distance hiking and the outdoors

Social media isn’t ruining our national and provincial parks – it’s making the great outdoors more accessible – a counterargument to the #dontgeotag movement.

Making the move to lightweight hiking – Sally Phillips writes about how she shed pack weight for the TGO Challenge, and came to enjoy the experience all the more.

First selection of pictures from my Colorado Rockies walk – Chris Townsend has returned from a long walk in Colorado with some excellent photography. If he’s anything like me, it’ll take a few weeks to process and sift through them all!

Swimming through the twilight – Julie Coldwell describes the magic of swimming at dusk.

Meet Ordesa Valley, Europe’s less crowded answer to Yosemite – ‘While some may take any comparison to Yosemite as bordering on sacrilegious, I don’t make the analogy lightly. Few places in the world sing to the soul as much as these two mountain valleys.’

A short escape to Ecuador to climb some of its more obscure peaks – Mark Horrell is heading back to Ecuador.

The Revive campaign comes to Inverness – John Burns introduces Revive, a campaign for the reform of Scotland’s grouse moors.

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