Exploration and Recreation Stories Archive

Science and Nature

That Time We Reared Spider Babies, and Other Memorable Stories of 2025

by Kate Golden December 17, 2025December 18, 2025

Stories that delighted us, enraged us, got us outside, got us thinking.

Wildlife Watching

Why Is That Woodpecker White?

by Eric Schroeder December 4, 2025December 9, 2025

For years, the author has gathered photographs of local leucistic birds: white (or whitish) woodpeckers, hummingbirds, sparrows, turkeys, bald eagles, and more.

Parks

New California Law Aims to Encourage Private Campgrounds

by Jesse Greenspan October 30, 2025November 23, 2025

The camping shortage is brutal, and the latest federal lands chaos doesn’t help. Streamlined permitting could help more Californians go camping—and rural landowners to care for their properties.

Fall Issue 2025

In These Gardens, New Home Lands Grow

by Jillian Magtoto September 24, 2025

On the blended ecologies that first-generation immigrants tend.

A cartoon of a coastal ecologist in a wetland, noting wildlife as she goes.

Urban Nature

Job: Coastal Lookout

by Sonya Bennett-Brandt August 21, 2025August 21, 2025

Between ambitions and amphibians, an ecologist mediates.

A photograph of Crissy Field with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background

Summer Issue 2025

Take These Trails to Circle the Bay, On Foot or Afloat

by Tamara Sherman, Brittany Shoot and Guananí Gómez-Van Cortright June 17, 2025September 24, 2025

The San Francisco Bay is the sloshing heart of the Bay Area, and we are lucky to have two terrestrial trails to circumambulate it, and dozens of nonmotorized boat launches to paddle its blue-green waters.