Hello and Welcome!

Welcome to Maine Outdoor Living.  I'm excited to share my passion for the outdoors with you, and in the coming weeks and months, I hope you find a few things worth trying yourself, wherever you live.  I plan to write articles on hiking, boating, camping and fishing in the Maine Coast and Maine Mountains, of course, but I do expect to talk about some of my favorite tips, tricks, and gear that you can use anywhere.  I also expect to write many articles about two of my biggest outdoor passions that apply anywhere:  outdoor cooking, especially with dutch ovens, and Boy Scouting, a program in which I spent 9 years as a youth, reaching the rank of Eagle Scout.  I have now spent more than 7 years as an adult scouting volunteer and have a file cabinet full of successful past projects and outings that I'm anxious to share.

I considered taking a more narrow approach to this blog and publishing just about cooking, for instance.  The more I thought about it, though, the more I felt that a more generalist outdoor blog would be better.  For one thing, it's important that I have something to share regularly year round.  Putting together photos for a dutch oven blog in a Maine January could be a bit difficult, given our high winds and cold temps.  I'll have a greater volume of content to share covering a broader range of material.  I also figured it would make for more interesting reading to have a different outdoor related topic each week.  Lastly, it'll be more "Maine" to have articles that reflect the seasonality of out state.  There is something great to do outdoors in Maine every month of the year, and I'd like this blog to reflect that.

By the way, one thing you won't find articles on here is hunting, because I've never taken up the sport.   Like most Mainers, I view controlled hunting as a positive thing, helping to maintain healthy wildlife populations.  I've just never taken an interest in participating.  I do love fishing, though, so you'll see a few posts on that.

So that's my brief introduction to Maine Outdoor Living.  Please check back frequently, and try one or two of these things yourself.  Share your comments, success stories and feedback.  Most of all, get outdoors!