Americans do not have the legal right to roam in their own country, as do the British, Norwegians, Swedes, and many other Europeans. What’s up with that, anyway? A must-read primer on access is the book This Land Is Our Land by Ken Ilgunas, who makes the argument that the U.S. wouldn’t be so divided if we could just relax our attitudes toward property a little.

Author Marty Smith lives near the headwaters of the Colorado River. It’s okay to be a little jealous. martinjsmith.com, @martinsmithedit

Photographer David Slater’s life was turned upside down by the controversy over his images of the Celebes crested macaques. Wikimedia refuses to remove his photos, and after fighting PETA in court he doesn’t have the money to take on the internet giant, too. To get his side of the affair, plus what he’s doing to help the monkeys of Sulawesi, visit djsphotography.co.uk.

The field of legal rights for nature is evolving rapidly. The Rights of Nature: A Legal Revolution That Could Save the World, a book by David Boyd, will give you a solid understanding of the philosophical and practical issues surrounding it. For up to date progress, find your way to the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (therightsofnature.org) and the Nonhuman Rights Project (nonhumanrights.org).

Whatever you do, don’t go online and track down a video of “SpongeBob SquarePants” singing the “Campfire Song Song.” Just don’t. Unless, of course, you want it stuck in your head for months, which has been our plight during the entire production of this issue.

Contributing editor Craig Childs wrote about the New Jersey Pine Barrens in AJ10. houseofrain.com, @journalizard

Chris Burkard is a senior contributing photographer to Adventure Journal. chrisburkard.com, @chrisburkard

Forest Woodward is also a senior contributing photographer to Adventure Journal. forestwoodward.com, @forestwoodward

Paul Guschlbauer’s flight south went mostly smoothly. On the ground, not always. “Usually we rent the cheapest cars—this time, trying to be super safe [in the Atacama Desert], we actually took an expensive 4×4,” he wrote. “At one in the morning, we had to get picked up by the police because the car broke down at 5200m! Everyone had altitude sickness…The mechanic also could not start the car again, so we guess it is still up there.” The blog of his trip will have you Googling “how do I get my pilot’s license?” fly-overland.com, paulguschlbauer.at, @paulguschlbauer

There were long gaps during the production of this issue where we couldn’t reach writer and photographer Christophe Noel. He recently launched Clean Drink Adventures to bring potable water to rural Nepalese—23 million people there don’t have access to safe drinking water—and for five weeks was delivering water himself via motorcycle. cleandrinkingadventures.org, christophenoel.net, @christophe_l_noel

For an ongoing program, the Texas stilt-house cabin project is remarkably difficult to access. There’s little documentation online, and repeated calls to the General Land Office, which runs the program, were not returned. If you want to know more, try emailing cabins@glo.texas.gov. If you want to see more stilt houses, however, that’s easy as falling off a dock. Writer Michael Medrano and photog Tim Romano created a fat, beautiful coffee table book that we think should smell of brine and fried shrimp but sadly doesn’t—it’s from this book that our story is excerpted. For wistful Gulf Coast scents, use your imagination. stilthouses.com, timromano.com, @timromanophoto

Jeff Moag is a regular contributor to Adventure Journal. The former editor of Canoe & Kayak, he most recently wrote about the last unclimbed 8,000-meter peak, K2, in AJ11. @jeffmoag

Tessa Hulls is a multidisciplinary artist who has so many diverse projects it makes our head spin, including creating a nonfiction graphic novel about her grandmother and an exhibition exploring her Chinese ancestry at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz, California. tessahulls.com, @tessahulls

In hiking circles, Kolby Kirk is a legend. You can see why, first by watching his video, “Condor’s PCT Adventure in 3 Minutes,” at our online resources page, and then by going to thehikeguy.com, @thehikeguy

It’s a disgrace that nearly 10 million acres of land belonging to all Americans are off limits because of private owners blocking access. Congress’s permanent funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund will help with land acquisition, but that’s only the beginning. Check in with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (trcp.org) and the Center for Western Priorities (westernpriorities.org) to learn how to take action.

This is environmental journalist Gloria Dickie’s first piece for AJ. gloriadickie.com, @gloriadickie

Author David Stevenson is an alpinist, ski mountaineer, and the director of the Creative Writing and Literary Arts program at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. ddstevenson.blogspot.com

Artist Tom Baumgartner lives in the heart of the Sonoran Desert in Tucson, Arizona. patternology.com

The Nevada Museum of Art’s Anne Brigman retrospective ended in January 2019, but a sumptuous 400-page book on her life is available from Rizzoli, and her photographs are in the permanent collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian.

The couple that you know as Fresh Off the Grid and we know as Our Favorite Chefs are back on the road. Megan McDuffie and Michael van Vliet were posted up in Bend, Oregon, for a while—you know, like, indoors—but have returned to vanlife. freshoffthegrid.com, @freshoffthegrid

Surfing in Cuba still faces great difficulty, but because of the challenges those who pursue the sport are among the most passionate in the world. To follow their story, check out Havana Libre, currently in post-production, at makewild.co/cuba. There you can also pick up a copy of The Cuba Unknown, Makewild’s 180-page photo and guide book on the island surf scene, including some of the photos featured in this issue.