🎈🎂🎉Happy Birthday to Go Outside

Celebrating a 365-day-old pandemic project, and a note about our future

A year ago, after a strange spring and summer of social distancing, masking and only seeing friends, family and co-workers via a computer screen, we decided to start this Substack newsletter.

The great outdoors is one of the few things that provided us solace during the pandemic, and we noticed nature was doing the same for people around us from all walks of life.

Some, like us, had been going outside for decades. Others were new to the mountains but eager to learn. We wanted to help more people Go Outside, and so, we launched Go Outside as a simple little pandemic project.

That’s us, a year ago, at Larch Valley.

Admittedly, we didn’t have lofty goals. We hadn’t been seeing much of each other (due to pandemic restrictions) and thought working on a project together would be fun. We’re both trained as writers and we figured we’d put our nature writing out there and see if people wanted to read it.

It turns out they did! Today, we’ve built a community of nearly 2,000 subscribers and we’ve so enjoyed coming to your inbox (nearly) every week over the last year, with advice, stories, trip reports, photos, and general outdoorsy goodness.

We’ve taken you on adventures within Calgary and across Alberta and we’ve loved the e-mails, texts, tweets, comments, conversations and feedback about our work. During what has been a strange and sad COVID-filled year, it’s brought us joy to know we’ve inspired some of you to embrace winter, to go for a bike ride, to explore our amazing backyard, to find peace and a mental health break in nature, and to just generally love the outdoors as much as we do.

With all that being said, our lives have changed a lot (A LOT!) since we launched this project a year ago. Cailynn is now the mom of a nearly six-month-old. Annalise has a baby on the way in November! 🎉

Annalise, hiking for two.

With Cailynn starting to transition back to her day job as a freelance journalist, and Annalise juggling a challenging pregnancy, her job as principal of a growing small business, and volunteer commitments, we just don’t have the same time to write Go Outside that we did a year ago.

So, as we celebrate Go Outside’s first birthday, we’ve also made the decision to take a step back from this fun little project of ours.

Cailynn with her wee hiker.

We’ll be taking a few months off from our once-a-week Go Outside publishing schedule. We’re thinking of it as a rest, between seasons. We sincerely hope to be back in a more regular way later in the new year. So stay subscribed! (Plus, we may still pop into your inboxes occasionally in the coming months, to rave about how miso soup and layering will keep you warm in the winter, or to tell you about the ski trails and winter activities we’re introducing our babies to.)

Until then, thank you so much for reading Go Outside over the last year, and happy trails!

Annalise & Cailynn