My story on eco lodges is up at ForbesTraveler.com (MSNBC.com and the Today Show’s website
also picked up the story). This article focuses on high-end resorts
with an eco angle, from environmental conservation to light-on-the-land
building techniques to the embracing of local culture.



Going green is not a new concept in the world of travel. For decades,
resorts like Maho Bay in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Turtle Island in
Fiji have demonstrated that eco-awareness and sustainability can
coexist with tourism. But in the past five years, the “eco” buzz has
been amplified within the travel industry—and throughout popular
culture as well.

If you’re going to spend the cash for a lux getaway, you might as
well do it with some conscious. This Top 10 list includes resorts with
thatch-roofed huts on a beach to cabins afloat on raft foundations in
fjords. Their structures are influenced by sources as diverse as
Robinson Caruso and Renzo Piano.

Go here for the full story: ForbesTraveler.com

Jason Magness is a “legend in the small underground of adventure sports.” At least that’s according to the Wall Street Journal,
which this weekend profiled Magness, a climber/adventure
racer/yogi/slack-liner buddy of mine from North Dakota famous for—among
a few things—snowkiting across North Dakota two months ago in the name
of renewable wind power energy (see my story on the trip here: http://thegearjunkie.com/sailing-across-the-prairie)

But a “legend”? Well, I’ll have to get his opinion on that. The Wall Street Journal story (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120735228186491329.html?mod=hpp_us_leisure) is called “Into the Wild With Yoga,”
and reporter Alexandra Alter focuses on Magness’ pursuit of yoga on a
slackline (“yogaslacking”) as well as his free-spirited “itinerant
adventure addict” lifestyle.

As Zen vagabond types go, Magness
is the real deal. He lives out of a van and sleeps on couches around
the country, traveling to race, climb and teach yoga and slacking. He
is 32 years old and has a background in physics, once working as a
rocket-systems engineer for Raytheon in Tucson.

I met Magness at Primal Quest Utah, a 10-day adventure race we both
did (on separate teams) in 2006. We shared a crazy moment in the middle
of the night, lost in the desert, on about the fourth day of the event,
both sleep deprived and delirious.

In the WSJ story, Alter
cites Magness as the personification of “the latest generation of
American drifters who live to scale cliffs, ski or surf” and earn
“four-figure annual incomes.” To provide some context, the writer
quotes Chuck “Chongo” Tucker, a 56-year-old climber who’s lived summers
outdoors for nearly four decades in Yosemite Valley. “People dream of
doing what we’re doing,” Chongo says.

Magness gets quoted
saying things like “Exploring that edge of human potential is really
fascinating to me.” But the funny thing is, from Magness, this sentence
I believe does not contain a drop of B.S.: He pushes life and the
current moment to its max, whether that’s in the Virabhadrasana pose
while balanced on webbing or six days deep into a race, head swimming,
blisters bleeding on his heels.

Alter captures some of that in the story, readable in full here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120735228186491329.html?mod=hpp_us_leisure