Merrell Barefoot Trail Glove

Until this summer I had been wearing my Vibram Five Fingers on approaches and slab descents. But they are not durable (one of the seams failed less than 6 months after buying them), they don't have enough pinky room for me, and I'm always worried about the possibility of breaking a toe. So I picked up a pair of Merrell Barefoot Trail Glove shoes (they're a men's model, but they fit me better than the women's) to replace them. These are now my all time favorite shoes of any kind and I'm finding myself wearing them not only in the outdoors (backpacking, hiking, sailing), as I'd planned, but around town and on trips, and also cycling. Highly, highly recommended!

"Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout" by Philip Connors

I randomly came upon a review of this book (on Salon, maybe?) and bought it because the reviewer compared the author to Ed Abbey, whom I love. Indeed, the book did not disappoint, and I would highly recommend it to Abbey fans, National Forest fans and those interested in wilderness policy. The author waxes lyrical a bit more than Abbey, but doesn't go overboard, and the book is not so much gripping as engrossing -- it creates its atmosphere nicely and if that's what you're looking for at the moment, you'll go back to it.

I started reading this a week after the Needles Lookout burned to the ground, which, in turn was a week after we visited it, though I had bought the book much earlier.