Nudists and campfires

Nudists and campfires

What do these two things have in common?

This year is a wonderful blank sheet. Who knows where any of us will be in a year, a month, even a week from now? Life continues to surprise, delight and occasionally exhaust me, and I am excited to be dreaming up a whole new year of things to do and posts to write. The majority will be on great ideas for things to do in the great outdoors, places and people who inspire me and stories from my travels as a journalist and lover of the outdoors. There will no doubt be more walks, canyons, rock climbs, campsites and mountain bike tracks to describe. Occasionally I'll write about something else that tickles my goat, but I hope always you'll find them enjoyable, accurate, well-researched and worth spending five minutes reading. Look out for a new category that I might call "Thecology", blending ecological understanding with the idea of a Creator figure.
Last year, in terms of readership, two of my posts stood out way above every other. One in particular has so far received three times more page views than any other post. And that, no surprise, was on Sydney's nudist colony. Yes, people, put the word nude, nudist or any hint of people seeing some flashed flesh, and you'll increase your hit ratio. It's a shame, but that's reality.
The next most popular post was on where can you have a campfire near Sydney. I'm glad that there are still enough people out there who want to camp and have a campfire to find this interesting, and I'll continue to search out good places (for myself as much as for you, dear reader!)
My part-time job as associate editor of RM Williams OUTBACK will no doubt take me to some pretty interesting places this year, and my own business as a freelance journalist and editor (yes, I am available for hire people) will hopefully get me into some other trouble around the country. I look forward to sharing insights, practical information, interviews and occasionally strong opinion about this wonderful, mixed up, exciting world we live in.
See you on the track.
www.kensbigbackyard.com.au

PS. Despite the Christmas rush, there's still plenty of copies of Top walks in NSW around, so grab one and plan to knock off a few walks in 2014.