There is no substitute for time spent outdoors-even if it's a simple walk in the woods. For many years Niels S. Nokkentved has written about natural resources and environmental issues as a reporter, columnist and author in the Pacific Northwest. His writing took him deep into the deserts and mountains. He paddled lakes and rivers and camped and hiked in Washington's Cascade Mountains and Olympic Peninsula and in central Idaho's Sawtooth and the Boulder-White Cloud mountains. Nokkentved's writing about the Northwest shows a deep reverence for nature and a keen sense of place. His intention in assembling this book is to entice people to get outdoors by sharing his own adventures and the adventures of others he has met along the way. He shows readers that outdoor adventures don't require special equipment-other than good rain gear perhaps-or extensive expeditions to exotic places. While those sorts of thing definitely qualify, satisfying and worthwhile adventures can be had right outside the back door. Most of his adventures began within a half-hour of his home. Some others took a little longer. But the most important thing he learned was to just get outside-a simple walk along a stream or a farmer's field. He learned that if he had his eyes and ears open, adventure was sure to find him. And adventure is always its own reward, for as the late Justice William O. Douglas said, "the richness of life is found in adventure."