nature

Smartphones are making the wilderness easier to access, but no longer a place to escape and unplug.

The hype may feel new, but Californians have been excited about wildflowers for a long time.

Right now, there are backpackers crossing into Canada after five months of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. They're called thru-hikers, and they started the trail in Mexico and will traverse 2,650 miles. Now, the lazy among us might have just read "Wild," Cheryl Strayed's memoir about the Pacific Crest Trail. The even lazier among us may be waiting for the movie to come out in December. The hikers who actually make this trek see toenails fall off and their feet can swell whole shoe sizes. They say the only thing they talk about more than their feet is food.

This story originally aired in 2014.

One of the Bay Area’s main attractions is its proximity to nature. Only 45 minutes separate Bay Area residents from arriving at the ocean, the mountains, or a hiking trail. But not everybody experiences the Bay Area’s natural beauty.

Sandip struggles with a “getting back to nature” trip.

  We'll have a conversation with environment journalist Florence Williams about her new book The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative. 

On the August 18th edition of Your Call, we’ll have a conversation about free and low cost local events, museums, nature walks and concerts.

Mountain yellow-legged frogs used to be bountiful, hopping out from under hikers feet anywhere there was water. Now they’re critically endangered by both non-native predators and a deadly fungal disease that's killed over a third of the world’s amphibian species.

Antarctica is officially the coldest, windiest, and driest continent on Earth. At almost one and a half times the size of the United States, 98% of it is covered with thick sheets of ice. 

In Oakland, just past Jack London Square, there’s a zone along the water that’s a little wild. It’s past the new condos and great restaurants, past the wholesale produce warehouses that open for business before dawn, and down the channel from Lake Merritt’s newly landscaped park. It’s an in-between space. But change is coming from both sides.

While San Francisco can’t compete with places like Yosemite for wildness, you’ll find the city is teeming with nature if you just take a moment to see. From slugs to oaks to falcons, we share our sidewalks with a variety of life. 

On the March 8th edition of Your Call, we’ll revisit our conversation about the benefits of nature on our mental health.

On the February 22nd edition of Your Call, we want to know about your favorite Bay Area hikes. 

On the January 11th edition of Your Call, we’ll have a conversation about the benefits of nature on our mental health.

KALW’s Julie Caine sat down with Amber Hasselbring to talk about nature corridors.

Over 830,000 people live in San Francisco and that number is growing. Yet beneath the dense urban atmosphere is a hidden world that goes about its own business and even has its very own roads. Well, you might call them roads, they're actually nature corridors that connect one habitat to another.

This week on KALW's showcase for the best stories from public radio podcasts and independent radio producers...

Nowadays we think of wilderness as a fully natural environment that contrasts sharply with the designed and constructed environments in which we normally move. But does that vision of wilderness really exist anymore? What is natural and what is artificial about wilderness? Should humans be understood as a part of nature or distinct from it? And how should we approach conservation efforts so that we balance the needs of a growing world population with the need to preserve some aspect of the wild in our lives?

On the next Your Call, we’ll speak with Jon Young, author of What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World.  Understanding bird language, says Young, leads us toward a deeper connection to animals…and to ourselves. What can we learn from paying closer attention to what other species are up to?  Join us at 10am PST or post a comment here.  How does bird-watching connect us to our surroundings?  And why does it matter?  It’s Your Call with Rose Aguilar, and you.

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