A couple of new recently released books might make good reading for that outdoor enthusiast on your Christmas list; young or old. Both are currently available in local book stores: "An Uncrowded Place" by Bob Butz and "Adventures with Jonny: Ice Fishing," a children's book by Michael DiLorenzo.

My first ski run of the new season is in a bi-ski, complete with outriggers strapped to my arms. It's the kind of bi-ski you see adaptive skiers occasionally using on area slopes, and I'm taking a run as a participant in a Northern Michigan Adaptive Skiing Program training session for instructors and volunteer helpers that was being held at Schuss Mountain.

I'm pretty sure it was Thoreau who once said, "The mere existence of wilderness refreshes us." Take a trip to Black Mountain Forest Recreation Area 0, located southeast of Cheboygan, and you will instantly understand what he meant.

The Great Lakes snowsports season is off to one of its earliest starts ever. Ski areas opened in both Minnesota and Wisconsin the last of October, and Ski Brule -- located along the Wisconsin border near the Upper Peninsula's Iron River -- opened for the season on Nov. 11. It was the first area to open in Michigan.

As bleak as northeastern Arizona is, except for its canyons, the central portion of the state, around Sedona, is called Red Rock Country, and it's beautiful. Surrounded by red-rock monoliths that can be seen from anywhere in the community, this area has long been rated as one of the country's most beautiful locations.

It's my first trip to Arizona, and, beyond the Painted Desert, much of the northeast corner of the state is pretty barren and not overly scenic. Wide empty valleys are interspersed with rocky scrub-covered mesas. Like the ancient Anasazi that inhabited this land over a millennium ago, you have to look in the canyons. One of those canyons is Canyon de Chelly (pronounced "shay"), an 83,000-acre National Monument, which is located in the northeast corner of the Grand Canyon State; a state full of canyons.

Former U.S. Ski Team member and Olympian Cary Adgate, a Boyne Falls native who grew up making his first ski turns on nearby Boyne Mountain, will be inducted into the U.S. National Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame next April. The class of 2008 was just announced.

It's been four years in the works, but the proposed Antrim County Glacial Hills Natural Area is set to become a reality. It brings together a couple of public land parcels tied together with the acquisition of an old family farm to create a contiguous 763-acre parcel that will be called Glacial Hills Natural Area.

What a great fall weekend. That run of warm, sunny weather Friday through Sunday was one of the nicest fall weekends I can recall in recent years. I hope you didn't miss getting outside to enjoy it. If you did, well, we'll probably see temperatures like that again sometime next April. I spent the three days wandering around the hill and dale country of Antrim County.

Fall is definitely in the air. The chilly mornings and cool days are a constant reminder, but I think the one thing I notice most is the shorter days. All of a sudden you can't ride or hike much beyond 7 p.m., and even that time is starting to shrink. That's about the time I like starting a ride, a hike or paddle during summer's longer days.

You could call him Pathfinder, and like the legendary figure of colonial times he spends much of his time on the trail. Arlen Matson, local retired grade school teacher, has been involved in much -- if not all -- of the labor building 90 miles of the North Country Trail that bisects the Grand Traverse region.

About this time each year I get an itch to get up to Pigeon River Country State Forest and see the beginning of the fall color season. And, if I'm lucky, spot some elk in the process. Making the annual pilgrimage last week I did see some fall color, but no elk, just evidence they had been there.

It's been a while -- 20 years -- since competitive cycling last graced the streets of Traverse City, but that's about to change when the inaugural Cherry Roubaix Bike Race takes to city streets Saturday.

October has long been known for the beautiful fall colors it brings to the Grand Traverse region, but for the last decade it's also become known as the month when you can "Fish with the Pros." The attraction for a small number of eager bass fishermen has been the chance to spend a weekend throwing lines with some of the nation's top professional bassmasters.

The new 10-mile mountain bike loop at Arcadia Dunes is both a challenging and scenic ride. The trail loops over Day Hill offering scenic views of orchards and valleys and farm land along the top of the hill. It also offers lots of uphill with some good sustained climbs. Called Day Hill Trail, it's much more challenging than the VASA Single Track.

Having visited the area along the Lake Michigan side of the Elberta Dunes a few times I often wondered what the view would look like from the top of those towering dunes. You get a peak of the view from the viewing area set aside along the bluff that you drive over to reach the public beach. It's a nice view, but you can see the dunes go much higher as they stretch south as far as the eye can see.

Houdek Dunes Natural Area, one of the Leelanau Conservancy's largest preserves, is a microcosm of nearby Sleeping Bear Dunes and its dune environment. But what's really striking as you hike through the 330-acre tract are the large trees scattered along the hiking trails and throughout the preserve.

Whitewater parks, areas set aside on a river and set up for whitewater action with kayaks and canoes, have become popular in recent years. In the Great Lakes area, Wausau, Wis., and South Bend, Ind., have set them up on rivers flowing through their cities, and Rockford, Ill., is looking at the feasibility of setting up one. They are quite popular out west and in particular in Colorado.

No matter how you spell it -- Petobego, Ptobago or Tobeco -- this state game area offers a nice hike to a beautiful, secluded beach along East Bay. On a regional map of the Grand Traverse area that I possess, I found all three spellings. It was called Petobego State Game Area, Ptobago Pond and the creek that flows under U.S. 31 into the pond was Tobeco Creek.

While it will never be mistaken for San Juan, Capistrano, Richard Zenner of Kingsley looks forward each spring to the return of his swallows and will miss them -- as he does every year -- when they depart in a few weeks for their annual winter migration south. Zenner loves to watch and listen to the purple martins, largest of the swallow breed, each summer as they come to nest and raise their young in his three martin houses that he has tended for close to 30 years.

Ghost towns, old homesteads, abandoned fields and orchards, and, of course, lots of scenic views are just some of the things you will see on two new guided mountain bike tours offered at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore this summer. While I wouldn't call either of the rides a walk in the park, they are very doable for just about all mountain bikers.

Michigan's Upper Peninsula has long been touted as a backpacking paradise with its long trails and rocky shoreline, but the Lower Peninsula has often been largely overlooked by backpackers except for a couple of trails. That may change with the introduction of outdoor writer Jim DuFresne's new book "Backpacking in Michigan."

A group of 23 paddlers was organized by John Heiam and Lois Goldstein to perform a cleanup -- one of two they do annually -- on the Platte. It is one of several area rivers that they organize cleanups for during the summer and fall.

This past week I visited both Boyne Mountain and Highlands checking out the mountain bike park at the Highlands and all the cross-country biking trails at both resorts along with some other new outdoor activities they now offer. I first saw the mountain bike park a couple of years ago when they were first starting it up and thought it was incredible. Now it's even bigger with a lot more stunts, jumps and rails.

I became interested in ancient rock writing when I visited the area around Moab, Utah, a little over a year ago and was fascinated by the petroglyphs -- carved into rock -- and pictographs -- painted onto rock -- that exist at a number of sites around the area. This ancient form of prehistoric Native American communication has a mystical quality.

The Emerald Isle was calling me this past week. It had been 13 years since I last set foot on Beaver Island, but with the Michigan Outdoor Writers hosting their annual summer meeting on the island, it was a good reason to return.

Looking for a great spot for a quiet evening paddle where you are almost assured of seeing a variety of wildlife? Then take a paddle on Brown Bridge Pond. I guarantee that spending an hour or two paddling around this beautiful, backwater pond will renew your spirit and soul.

We've all heard that old adage, "If you don't like our northern Michigan weather, just stick around an hour. It will change." Well, guess what? There's a lot of truth to that old adage.

Slowly we inched along the edge of the pond, which lies along the east side of Four Mile Road just south of Potter Road. Bob Carstens held his hand up in the fading light signaling that we stop and listen. It was after 10 p.m., and the night was filled with an incredible amphibian chorus.

One thing I've quickly learned this spring is to take the warm days as we get them because they've been in short supply since about the third week of April. It wouldn't surprise me if May on average doesn't end up cooler than April. Unfortunately, I think the morel season went south with the weather.

Morels are up and appear to be more plentiful than in the past couple of years, which one Mesick resident described as "miserable pickings last season." Mushroom Cap Motel clerk Mary Howell says one of her guests "came back with over 100 morels."

The 98,000-acre Pigeon River Country State Forest -- the largest uninterrupted block of contiguous state forest land in the Lower Peninsula -- has had a kind of love-hate relationship with mankind over the last century or so.

I love a spring like this, when it warms quickly after winter. The choice of outdoor activities is great during this transition period, and the weather has been magnificent. This past week I've gone hiking, mountain biking, done float trips on area rivers and closed down the last of winter's lingering downhill ski runs at Boyne Mountain this past Sunday.

What a difference a year makes. In the 29 years I've lived in northern Michigan I've seen one of the worst and one of the best winters in the last couple of years. This past winter was without a doubt one of the best, if not the best.

What do the states of Michigan and Maine have in common? They have pine trees in common. Maine's state nickname is the Pine Tree State, which is in honor of the state's many white pine trees -- a well known species in our state as well. They also have Boyne USA in common.

It had been 40 years ago (1968) that I last skied in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. When the North American Snowsports Journalist Association (NASJA) scheduled its annual conference at Bretton Woods in the Granite State, I decided to attend.

When is a cave not really a cave, and, more importantly, if you're a bat do you really care? The answer to this two-folded question is when it's a dam spillway, and, no, bats aren't particular. If you are a bat the dark, cavernous insides of the Tippy Dam spillway can serve just fine as a "hibernacula."

While most 16-year-olds are still trying to decide what to do with their life after graduation, local teenager Haley Kanaskie has known since she was about eight years old. The Traverse City West sophomore has her sights set on making the 2010 Olympics as a freestyle skier.

Riding up the front-face main lift at Nubs Nob on Monday, I was amazed at the amount of snow that covered the slopes. I've been skiing at Nub's for nearly 30 years, and I can't recall ever seeing as much snow covering the slopes and trails.

Over the years I've visited caves throughout the Midwest in Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, South Dakota and Tennessee, but never the granddaddy of all caves, Mammoth Cave, which I just visited on my way home from Florida.

Although they sit only a few miles apart, and one lift ticket is all you need to ski or snowboard at both Boyne Mountain and Highlands, they really are as different as night and day. The Mountain, often referred to as a "skier's mountain," has the reputation for being a little tougher skiing with more advanced runs, but that's somewhat of a misnomer.

There will be plenty of activity on the VASA Pathway this week and weekend with the big race going on and all the side races and family activities scheduled. If you want to get away from the maddening crowds try some snowshoeing on the VASA Single Track Trail.

Old Indian Trail, located on the southern end of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, is kind of an anomaly among the many scenic trails that abound throughout the National Park.

Lou Awody, long time northern Michigan Nordic guru, has opened a new cross-country touring center just south of East Jordan off M-66.

After much chatting, laughter and lots of awed exclamations at the start of our trip down the Jordan River via a raft, our group became quiet and quickly understood the beauty of a winter float trip.

There's nothing like a downpour complete with thunder and lightning to put a damper -- no pun intended -- on winter. It's like we are starting all over with winter; well, not quite, but it sure ruined the mood.