OUTDOOR SUPER-SITE. TRAILS.COM also thinks it’s “your best resource for hiking, mountain biking, skiing, hot springs, climbing and more!” This excellent source of outdoor information is not free - in fact, it's $49.95 per year - and Internet cruisers have gotten used to free things. For people who do a lot outdoors, the TRAILS.COM maps and wide-ranging information may make it well worth the price. Check it out here:

http://www.trails.com/

BACKCOUNTRY SKIING

     LOU DAWSON’S backcountry skiing weblog, with much gear information, plus photos and what he calls “enviro rants.”

http://www.wildsnow.com/

SKI BUM POET

     What a combination! This Wasatch Mountain “ski bum poet” now has a beautiful baby girl and a plan to relocate to the Finger Lakes section of New York State, where the growing season is longer. Keep up with the family by clicking below:

http://www.skibumpoet.com/

KOTY BEAR’S BLOG

     KOTY BEAR is a blogging Montana ranch dog who goes to some great wild places with his mom. And his mom takes some stunning photos of those wild places.

http://kotybear.blogspot.com/

BUILD A TREEHOUSE

     These people are serious and they’re thorough. They will even tell you how to put a fireplace in your treehouse, first explaining how to mix concrete, while, on the other hand, telling you not to damage the tree. I notice that, for people not quite up to the fireplace level, they have good instructions for building a simple platform in a tree.

http://www.thetreehouseguide.com/building.htm

FOREST PEACE AND TRANQUILITY

     Sometime when you’re in a mood for something slow and dreamy – perhaps when you’re near your bedtime – explore this beautiful site. Click on pictures, select different dream forests. The creator is Japanese and has the Japanese appreciation of tranquil beauty.

http://www.forests-forever.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi

SECRET WORLDS

     You start in a galaxy somewhere in the Milky Way, swoop closer and closer to earth, until you “reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, you go tinier and tinier, moving from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.”

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/