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tailorvizsla · 4 years ago

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You didn't think I wouldn't ask for some Boba Fett though now did you? (Of course not, he is the new shiny for me iuwhei) ✨ HC Of my Choice... What about having your first kiss with Boba and he doesn't #know it is your first one till part-way through or after? Am I projecting? Yes, yes I am.

Title: HC – Boba Fett and First Kiss Pairing: Gender neutral Reader x Boba Fett Word Count: ~1700 Rating: PG-13 Warnings: Boba Fett is a grumpy bastard, but you hold your own against him. Boba also gets injured, but there aren’t any graphic descriptions of the injuries. Author’s Notes: Okay, my Angle, I’ve been thinking about this one for as long as it’s been sitting in my inbox. I’m not familiar with Boba Fett’s character, so I wanted to make sure this was good for you. So, without further ado, here we go with the Big Green Grumpy Jerk who has somehow inexplicably charmed his way into my heart with a few gruff comments.

Tagging @princessbatears because chaos? :>

📚 My Master List 📚

Boba Fett isn’t a man of many words. It’s not that he’s shy or anything – he just doesn’t like talking to people beyond what is necessary. He has worked alone his entire life, so the sound of others’ voices just sort of grates on him. He especially does not like being crowded by people.

So, one day, while doing his thing, he ends up injured. It’s not even due to combat. His jetpack just…sputters out. His beskar’gam turns what should have been a fatal fall into a very painful one. He knows he has broken a lot of bones, but Boba refuses to die like this. He crawls his way back to his bike, calls for medical aid, and prays to the Maker that someone in town will come help him.

You are the only person who does come to help him. Most other people are too afraid of the Imperial remnants to work with a Mandalorian. Others are too afraid of Mandalorians to work with a Mandalorian. You? You are not afraid of much. He is not sure if you are brave or stupid. After splinting the worst of the damage, you get him onto the bike and get him back into town. It is at this point that Boba finds himself leaning toward thinking you are stupidly caring and trusting.

You inject him with bacta – the good kind that makes him giggly, sleepy, and numb – and get to work. When he wakes up, he’s wrapped in an annoying number of casts and splints, but at least he’s still alive. However, you then give him the bad news: the fall has damaged many of the delicate nerves in his back. If he fails to undergo physical therapy, there is a real chance he may never walk again. He’s no medical expert, but when he looks at the scans you took, he knows you aren’t lying.

So, Boba resigns himself to having to deal with you on a regular basis. The first physical therapy exercises are simple, yet they exhaust him to the point where he just passes out. As the days go by, he starts putting up the walls to keep you out. (Spoiler alert: you manage to find your way through the cracks in the wall, annoying him with barely any effort on your behalf.)

Now, under ideal circumstances, this shitshow would end with Boba Fett getting back on his feet, paying you handsomely for the amount of time you have spent getting him put together, and going back to bounty hunting, never to think of you again. But of course, the universe throws an even bigger wrench into his carefully thought-out plans. Someone finds out that you’re taking care of him and a whole bunch of angry townspeople converge on your little clinic. He grabs you and the two of you run. The last thing you see is your clinic going up in flames. (Boba can’t believe the shortsightedness of these people – they’ve driven off their only competent medical professional. What are they going to do next? Kill their only competent mechanic? Di’kute, every last one of them.)

And so, the two of you go off on a merry adventure, annoying the absolute shit out of each other on a regular basis. Boba especially is concerned at how easily you have managed to find every single weak point in his defenses – physical, mental, and emotional. You are a fair shot with your blaster, so when he got fresh with you that one time, telling you that your ass looked downright edible in the trousers you had borrowed from him, you drew your blaster and fired a shot off at his feet. He laughed so hard his bucket nearly fell off. (You are not sure if you are disturbed that he finds being shot at amusing. He does scold you a bit, but you do notice that he does not talk about your ass anymore.)

With your knife? You’re lethal, and he learns that the hard way when he fails to announce his presence behind you. One moment Boba is reaching to touch your shoulder and the next moment, he’s got your elbow in his face and your penknife embedded in his flak vest. Fortunately, the blade’s too short to cause serious damage, but he does not let you forget that you kriffing stabbed him when he was only trying to ask you what you wanted for dinner.

Even though Boba would rather cover himself in tiingilar sauce and crawl back into the sarlacc pit headfirst than ever admit it, the two of you make a damn good team. He goes off to hunt bounties, you stay in town to provide your medical services for a fair fee. Sometimes, when your services are not needed, you’ll hang back at the ship and do some basic accounting to keep him within his budget.

Boba grumbles when you ask to accompany him on a hunt, but he figures you really do need to learn how to defend yourself if anything should happen to him. When the two of you were surrounded by goons, you naturally fell into place behind him, your back to his, covering his shebs while he provides the heavy firepower. When the numbers are thinned to something more manageable, he sets you loose on them, letting you practice your knife skills. And by the Maker, he is impressed with how much you have improved since the last time you stabbed him.

Between hunts, you get his shebs back into fighting shape. Hell, he thinks he’s even better than he was before. The exercises you insist on forcing on him have made him more flexible than he was before, and his bones no longer creak first thing in the morning. One particularly hot, muggy day, you try to make him drink that vile green vegetable concoction you call a smoothie. Smooth his shebs, there are chunks in that liquefied animal feed. Sometimes he wonders if you’re trying to kill him on purpose.

(You don’t know this, but Boba has already arranged for everything in his possession, ships and banking accounts included, to be transferred to you in the event of his death. Hell, he has even started negotiating with a friendly Tribe to make sure you have a home to go to and your pick of their warriors for marriage, should you be interested. Boba justifies it this way: the last time his jetpack mutinied, he ended up several hundred thousand credits in debt to you by his estimation. By ensuring you have a safe place to go, and a family ready to welcome you, he can offset the immeasurable debt he owes you. It hurts to think of this, but Boba genuinely cannot bear the thought of you being alone in this cruel galaxy, the same way he had been when he was a child. So, if he ever does piss you off to the point where you off him in his sleep, you’ll be fine.)

You keep pushing and pushing, insisting that he needs B-vitamins or some other bantha-shit he’s sure you’ve made up for the sole purpose of annoying him. When you start going on about macronutrients and essential vitamins, Boba loses it. He tosses his cutlery down and goes stomping off toward the cockpit. You follow him, blathering on and on about the last blood panel you had pulled – HDLs, LDLs, and a whole slew of acronyms later, he loses it. Rather than snap at you, he shuts you up the only way his poor sleep-deprived brain can come up with.

Boba pushes you up against the wall, gently to avoid hurting you. You don’t seem at all phased. In fact, you start waving the paper at him as you try to draw his attention to his sodium levels. Boba leans in and presses his lips to yours. You finally stop talking, your entire body going stiff in response. He takes a moment to nibble along your lower lip before parting your lips with his, tongue probing a bit deeper in, and you still aren’t responding. Boba draws back and stares down at you. You’re wide-eyed and clearly in shock.

He leans in again. This time you respond clumsily, your hands clutching at that stupid piece of paper. He gently wrestles it out of your grasp and crumples it up. Then he tosses it over his shoulder, not caring where it lands. He cups the back of your head and deepens the kiss. Still, you’re not responding the way he wants, so he draws back.

“What, never been kissed before?” he asks.

Before he can say anything else, he realizes that that was your first kiss. While Boba has never wanted to be anyone’s First Anything, he realizes that he wants to make an exception for you. There’s no one in this entire galaxy who can annoy the shit out of him in one breath and then worry about his health in the next. You are his little baar’ur. After you have wormed your way under his plating and so selfishly made yourself a fixture in his life without his permission? Oh, no, no, you are not going anywhere.

He cuts off your stammering with another kiss. He takes this one slow, moving your hands to where he wants you to touch him – one at his nape, the other at the small of his back, right over that spot that makes his knees weak.

This time, you respond. Slowly, hesitantly, but as you grow more confident, your hands begin to stray. You worm your fingers up the back of his shirt and dig your nails into the sensitive skin there, making him gasp in pleasure. Then you dig your fingers into his long hair and tug lightly, earning a low growl from him. You freeze and stare up at him with wide eyes until he leans back in.

Fortunately, your big smart science brain learns his likes and dislikes very quickly. When he finally pulls away, he finds that he really likes what he sees – your shirt’s rumpled, your hair is sticking up, and your lips are red and swollen from his kisses. Then and there, he makes a vow to make sure you always look like a mess.

(Spoiler alert: quite a few more of your firsts happen right here in the cockpit.)

#star wars #boba fett #boba fett x reader #boba fett x gender neutral reader #boba fett x you #first kisses #implications about first times #asks #my angle is so good to me #i love this grumpy green butthole already

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galra-druid · 6 years ago

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Mobile Master Post

Here’s all the general info you’ll need for this blog in a post for easy reading on mobile, a mirror of my information page save for the FAQ, Tags, and Connections sections.

Rules & Guidelines

General Rules

This is a side blog. All follows/likes/asks will come from Ash-mun. I prefer to have all of my RP blogs on one blog separate from my main account for organization purposes.

The usual: Read rules, avoid godmoding and metagaming. We're human, mistakes happen and things are forgotten but please do keep these things in mind and keep reading!

Respect the line between IC and OOC. If you can't understand that the actions and thoughts of a muse are separate from the reality of who the mun is or what they believe? Please don't interact with me.

This blog is semi-selective. That means I'm selective with who I follow, but welcome all in my ask box unless otherwise tagged on a post. I am open to giving anyone a chance to RP. I'll give you a heads up if I don't think we'll mesh.

OC, Multi-ship, Multi-fandom friendly. I'm here for the interaction and seeing what sort of stories our muses can create.

I do not ERP. I am 300% okay with discussing sexual headcanons, having my muse engage in sexual situations behind the scenes, writing sexual drabbles, or such but I will not smut with other RPers.

Mun and muse are over 21+ I'm okay with interacting with muns who are under 18, but I refuse to do anything bordering on the sexual with an underage mun/muse.

No formatting required for me, as long as I can read it? We're good.

I'm up for any sort of RP length, but I'm prone to lengthier posts as a whole. No, you don't need to match my posts. I'm here for quality, not quantity.

If it's been over a week and you haven't seen a response to a thread? Please remind me of it! I try to keep track of all my threads, but sometimes things get lost in the shuffle.

I am not a meme source. Please don't use me as a source of RP memes, it's a pet peeve of mine.

Tag request: NSFW Please tag your NSFW posts as simply NSFW. I often browse in public and Tumblr's default tag system is how I block this content.

I unfollow for the following reasons, if you're curious as to why it might happen: Untagged smut, not trimming threads, untagged OOC spam, blogs who give no indication of wanting to actively engage, using me only as a source of RP memes (This'll most likely get a soft block).

I'm not on here every day and reply in batches. I'm prone to do most of my writing in chunks when work is calmer, thus I queue my responses so the dash isn't spammed.I have a job that drains my energy, so more often than not when I'm home? I'm zoning out with games/tv/art over writing anything. I have to reiterate that work is mentally draining along with all my fun chronic issues, so there will be chunks of time where I simply can't muster the energy for writing. If you're looking for someone lurking here constantly with rapid fire responses? It isn't me.

Non-RP related but, if you promote transphobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, or anything harmful that falls under general discrimination laws? Fuck off. Problematic characters and baddies are fine and dandy as long as you're not celebrating any of the above through your character.

VLD Specific Rules

No shipping with underage muses, I'm not comfortable shipping a legal adult with a child.

Please tag your ships. There are some VLD ships I'm not into, and I suspect the same is true of others. Tag those ships with the universal ship tags and I'll do likewise!

Yes, non-RP blogs can follow.

Yes, my headcanons and artwork can be reblogged.

I'm not interested in fandom drama. I don't care about the shipping feuds, petty RP squabbles or any such thing. I'm here to write, thank you.

Voltron: Legendary Defenders Season 6 spoilers will be on this blog. I'm slow to watch new episodes when they drop, so no one following the series will be spoiled but- If you haven't watched anything yet? This blog will spoil content!

Biography

General Stats

Alias: Osera

Birth Name: Unknown

Race: Altean/Galra

Age: 18

Height/Weight: 5"8'/140 lbs

Build: Pear shaped

Hair Color: Yellow-white

Eye Color: Yellow glow

Skin Tone: Lavender

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Pansexual

Homeworld: Unknown

Relatives: Unknown

Occupation: Druid

Weapons: Dagger

Strength: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

Agility: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Intelligence: ★★★★★★★★☆

Magic Abilities:

Quintessence Absorption/Transfer

Phase Shifting

Chameleon Shifting

Energy Lightning

Telekenisis

Overview

An assumed orphan raised within the Galra Empire as one of Haggar's Druids, Osera has lived a life in obscurity behind a mask and robes knowing nothing about her true parentage and past and nothing beyond glory for the Galra Empire.

Personality

Positives/Virtues/Skills: Loyal, soft spoken, hard to anger, driven to serve the Empire, solitary and finds no issue with isolation, studious,inquisitive

Flaws/Weaknesses: Black and white morality, neuroticism and easily overwhelmed by outside stimuli, indecisive without an authority figure

Likes: Quiet spaces, cavernous ships and settlements, secret Space Mall visits, exotic and/or spicy foods

Dislikes: Overtly loud places due to her sensitive ears, unease in natural places due to a lack of time in them, the bland food she gets on ship

Dreams/Ambitions: Furthering her training to the point of mastering her Druid powers, discovering the identity of her parents.

Fears: The current state of the Galra Empire and what is to become of it. Osera doesn't know who to trust or what faction to turn to as being a Druid puts her in the cross-hairs of many. A general unease in the wilderness as Osera has next to no survival skills planet side as she’s never needed them. Osera has never been in a body of water larger than a tub, thus even the concept of an ocean scares her. She doesn’t exactly know how to.

History

Childhood/Family Life: Osera has only memories of foster parents within the Galra Empire, raising her for a brief time before she was transferred off for training as a Druid due to her magic potential.

Education: Osera has been training under the Galra Empire as a Druid to serve under Zarcon for almost as long as she can remember along with typical education for a Galran youth. Life to Osera has been a constant drive for self improvement to serve the Galra Empire better. Being a reserved child that carried over to her teenage years, Osera has kept her head down with little to speak of as far as incidents of note go. Her late teen years saw a ramping up in more combat oriented training typical for Galra soldiers, but it was a place Osera faltered as she leans heavily on her Druid abilities. Still, such training did eventually gain her a promotion from a stint on a Space Hub converting quintessence to one serving on Lord Zarkon’s ship itself.

Combat Prowess

Weapon of Choice: Osera has some training with a simple dagger, but nothing to really speak of as it seems to be more a ceremonial accessory as oppose to a true weapon.

Physical/Magical Strengths: Her true strength is with her Druid abilities with not much to speak of with general hand to hand combat beyond that of an average person.

Physical/Magical Weaknesses: Osera isn't exactly the physically strongest creature about, nor is she well versed in true physical combat. Constant use of her magic abilities drains Osera unless she has a quintessence source at hand.

Verses & AUs

Season Specific Verses: These tags are specific for plots either happening during the actions of that particular season or right after with the intent of staying in line with canon. For the majority of the seasons, Osera is living on Lord Zarkon's flag ship in service to Haggar. She keeps up with Druidic studies along with interrogating prisoners and aiding in quintessence conversion. Once Zarkon passes, Osera follows tradition and serves under the one who won the Kral-Zera. Once Lotor goes missing, her fate is up in the air at the start of S7.

No Sanctuary - Fugitive Verse: At the death of Lord Zarkon by his own son, the Galra Empire is in upheval with a Kral Zera on the horizon to determine the new leader of the Galra. During this time, Haggar's Druids are left to their own devices but since the collective was never truly a part of the Empire and all are considered the Witches' minions? They are slaughtered wholesale as creatures never to be trusted.Osera manages to escape during this chaos and finds herself adrift in a galaxy she knows little about. She's left any Druid guise far behind and seeks to blend in as nothing of interest to anyone, hoping to avoid the Galra's faction scuffle.

His Faithful Follower - Lotor’s Empire Verse : Once Price Lotor wins the Kral-Zera and cements his claim as the rightful ruler of the Galra Empire. A new era begins where Lotor wishes to usher in peace for the entire universe with the help of Voltron and its Paladins. Sendak may be trying to sow mutiny and win Galra to his side, but with Lotor Osera has found a safe haven as a half-breed. She is uncertain of what the future will bring, but believes in Lotor's plan to unite the universe.

A Sharpened Blade - Blade of Marmora Verse : Lord Zarkon's death at the hands of his own son was enough to shake Osera out of her complacent life as a Druid. She no longer can blindly follow orders at the bidding of Haggar and finds no welcoming place within the evolving Empire for a Druid such as herself. The unrest that followed Lord Zarkon's death revealed the true state of the universe and Osera can no longer sit idly by while everything breaks apart. She first ventured out on her own before gaining a lead to the Blades of Marmora and after proving herself, she's taking up training as one.

A Softer Purple - No War AU : The tragedy of Honerva's poisoning and resulting death never comes to pass. The brilliant Altean alchemist harnesses and contains the ever growing space rift on the Galra's home planet, along with taming quintessence. Voltron continues to be a force for good within the universe, spreading the Altean message of good faith far and wide as various species venture further in space.The Garrison is now a place where students from many planets of origin study and brush up on space travel. Osera is a student enlisted there, having grown up on Earth all her life with her parents.

Courtly Vices - Royalty AU : Set in a fantasy realm, the Galra Empire, Druid Collective, and Voltron Paladins are their own respective factions trying to mediate peace. Formerly, the Druid Collective was a close ally with the Galra Empire but the antics of Prince Lotor has brought unrest between the factions. To obtain a better foothold and stabilize their power, the Druid Collective has bartered one of their own Druids off as a bride to the Yellow Paladin. Osera finds herself wed to a stranger and none too happy about it.

#mobile post #mobile #Shut Up Ash ♦ OOC #all that's left to do is plug in pictures into my info page #swap the colors #and slap down a new theme #:D :D :D :D #oh #and a new promo #ksjsadj

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j0sgomez-blog · 6 years ago

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By Michael Lanza

A glacial wind pours through a snowy pass in the remote mountains of Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park. Virtually devoid of vegetation, the terrain offers no refuge from the relentless current of frigid air. Some of the troops are hungry, a little tired, and grumpy; mutiny doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility, so I don’t want to add “cold” to their growing list of grievances. I coax everyone to push on just a little farther, down out of the wind to a sun-splashed, snow-free area of dirt and rocks for lunch.

But I don’t like the looks of the steep slope we have to descend. Blanketed in snow made firm by freezing overnight temperatures, and littered with protruding boulders, it runs hundreds of feet down to a lake choked with icebergs—in mid-July. A trench stomped into the snow by other trekkers diagonals down to our lunch spot. It’s well traveled, but someone slipping in that track could rocket downhill at the speed of a car on a highway. I turn to our little party—which ranges in age from my nine-year-old daughter to my 75-year-old mother—and emphasize that we have to proceed extremely carefully.

We inch our way across a span of snow broader than a football field is long. Within twenty feet of the safety of the dirt where we intend to stop, I hear my wife behind me shriek, “Nate!” And I spin around to see my 11-year-old son sliding downhill, accelerating rapidly.

By sheer luck—or perhaps just because he weighs so little—he stops abruptly about 30 feet below us, caught on the lip of a moat that has melted out on the uphill side of a boulder. (With a little more speed, he might have slammed into that boulder, miles from the nearest road and many hours from the nearest emergency room.) I tell him to remain still, then usher everyone to the lunch spot and kick steps into the hard snow down to Nate to lead him to safe ground.

My kids trekking up the Langvatnet valley, Jotunheimen National Park, Norway.

I hesitate to share that story because some people will read it and judge me a bad parent who willingly places his children in harm’s way. Some parents may see it as validation for their fear of taking kids out into nature. I’m a father (and not mentally unbalanced, honestly); I understand that protective instinct. I’ve also seen how quickly everything can go wrong in the backcountry—a few times, in fact, which is a few too many. But seeing danger suddenly grab one of my kids and hurl him down a mountainside felt like simultaneous blows to my head and heart. For the rest of that trip, and occasionally since, those three seconds of horror have replayed in my mind, and I’ve chastised myself for not simply guiding my kids and my mom one at a time across that slope (as I did when we continued that descent—uneventfully—after lunch).

Now, several years after that beautiful, weeklong, hut-to-hut trek in Jotunheimen, my family and the friends who joined us look back on it fondly. In spite of that haunting memory of Nate’s slide and a deep understanding of the inherent risks, I continue to take my kids backpacking into wilderness, rock and mountain climbing, whitewater kayaking and rafting, and backcountry skiing. The reasons for that derive from societal forces as much as personal values, and are as complicated and vexing as parenting itself.

But I’m still not sure what terrifies me more: knowing how close we came to tragedy, or my enduring belief that exposing my kids to this kind of danger is somehow good for them.

Like this story? You may also like my “10 Tips For Getting Your Teenager Outdoors With You” and “My Top 10 Family Outdoor Adventures.”

Raising Wild Kids

I became a father at age 39, on the brink of middle age, and began playing parent by ear with only a vague sense of the melody (which inevitably means hitting a lot of bad notes before finding the right ones). I’d had a good life through my thirties, working as an outdoor writer, spending more days outside every year than many avid backpackers, climbers, skiers, and paddlers spend in 10 years. In some ways, I think it may have been harder to surrender that freedom at that age than it might have been 10 years earlier. Suddenly, the cold reality of fatherhood had taken away my ability to head out anytime the desire hit me.

I saw only one conceivable strategy for preserving my charmed lifestyle—and my sanity: I had to raise my children to love the outdoors as much as I do.

Shortly after my son and daughter came along in the early 2000s, author Richard Louv coined the term Nature-Deficit Disorder in his bestseller Last Child in the Woods, revealing just how little time children in many Western nations spend outdoors. As my kids reached school age, I began to realize how many parents believed—based on overwrought news reports that painted a picture very different from the statistical reality—that child abductors lurked everywhere, making the streets and playgrounds unsafe for children to wander around unsupervised (as if they were, you know, children). Instead, parents actively managed their children’s time through organized sports and music lessons and “play dates” with other kids—which I believe helps foster the impression in kids’ minds that “playing” involves one friend, maybe two or three, not the larger gatherings required for activities like pickup sports games.

It slowly dawned on me how radically the topography of childhood had shifted in the decades since I’d traveled over it.

Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside, which has made several top outdoors blog lists. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Subscribe now to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Please follow my adventures on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube.

Then my children reached a transitional age from elementary school to junior high, and they and their peers seemed to phase out almost all outdoor activity. They still played soccer, but only in organized leagues; I rarely see any kids in our residential neighborhood engaged in the pickup ball games that dominated my time at that age. For many of this generation, the games that kept my peers and me outside and physically active are replaced by electronic entertainment that keeps them inside and inactive.

My son and daughter, now 17 and almost 15, move comfortably between two strikingly disparate worlds. One is the world they love to visit: nature. They have explored many wild places that I didn’t even know the names of as a boy: Sequoia (lead photo at top of story), Zion, Olympic, Glacier Bay, Capitol Reef, Everglades, and in the state of their birth, the Sawtooth and White Cloud Mountains and Middle Fork of the Salmon River, among other public lands. They were skilled and experienced wilderness travelers before they became teenagers.

At the same time, when we’re home, my teenagers live in the walled-in, plugged-in, touchscreen, modern world. They communicate or play electronically with friends who are in their own homes more often than in person. If I tell my kids to go outside, they look at me as if I’ve suggested that they go live in a hollowed-out log and subsist on grubs; they tell me that none of their friends are outside or see any reason for going out. From their perspective, formed by comparing themselves with the kids they know, this is perfectly normal.

That bothers me—particularly the normalization of living almost entirely indoors. But what bothers me even more is adult society’s complicity in the growing home confinement of its children.

Like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain, I’ve spent nearly two decades raising wild kids from the most wired generation in history.

Planning your next big adventure? See “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips” and “The 20 Best National Park Dayhikes.”

Young Backcountry Skiers

Snowflakes float silently out of a gray ceiling and fingers of fog probe the mountainsides within view as five of us slowly ski uphill on Pilot Peak in southern Idaho’s Boise Mountains. Our group includes my friends and regular backcountry-skiing partners Paul Forester and Gary Davis; Gary’s 15-year-old daughter, Mae, out on her first-ever day of carving wild snow; and my son, Nate. Mae and Nate grew up as neighbors and have become close friends in high school.

After climbing steadily uphill for more than an hour, we reach the top of an open meadow that slopes downhill for several hundred vertical feet from where we stand. Pine forest flanks the sprawling meadow on all sides, many of the trees scorched, blackened husks since a major wildfire last summer—the kind of blaze that has become larger and more common throughout the West as the climate warms. I wonder what that portends for the future of skiing for these teenagers—although that may someday seem trivial in light of the larger climate-related problems facing their world. (Read about the impacts of climate change in my book Before They’re Gone—A Family’s Year-Long Quest to Explore America’s Most Endangered National Parks.)

But today, in a winter of one snowstorm after another, white fluff covers the ground deeply here, at over 7,000 feet. We dig a pit nearly two meters deep to evaluate the likelihood of an avalanche occurring where we want to ski. We’ve deliberately picked a run we know doesn’t get steep enough to make an avalanche likely. Still, risk is like pine sap on clothing—no matter what you do, you can never eliminate it completely, anywhere. The three adults here feel the enormity of responsibility we bear to keep these two young people safe.

After judging the avalanche risk low enough to ski here, we head downhill one at a time. Nate and Mae both face-plant in the powder and come up laughing. After a couple of laps up and down, Mae feels a sports injury acting up, and Paul’s having a binding issue; they and Gary decide to ski down to the car, and offer to wait there while Nate and I ski another lap. So we take them up on it.

As we make the last uphill climb, Nate confesses: “The first few times we went backcountry skiing, I was just trusting you when you said it would get more fun, because it wasn’t a lot of fun those first times.” I nod; skiing up a mountain is hard work. “But now I get it. This is great,” he says, gesturing at the heavily falling snow and deeply quiet ponderosa pine forest around us, “and every time we go, I like it better.”

I can help you plan the best backpacking, hiking, or family adventure of your life. Find out more here.

Nate backpacking in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains.

A Generation Indoors

Few of Nate’s and Mae’s peers experience anything even remotely resembling our day on Pilot Peak.

Then-National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis told National Geographic magazine in 2016, “Young people are more separated from the natural world than perhaps any generation before them.” While national parks saw record numbers of visitors three years in a row—with 325 million in 2016—those people are mostly Baby Boomers (and predominantly white, another concern of National Park Service managers). The average age of visitors to Yellowstone is 54, while the number of people under age 15 going to national parks has fallen by half in recent years.

Any parent can tell you where those kids are. Children age eight to 18 spend more than seven hours a day on electronic screens, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study. (The New York Times news story about the study carried the headline: “If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online.”) But that figure under-represents the reality: They multi-task on multiple devices and actually cram nearly 11 hours of media consumption into those seven-and-a-half hours.

At a wedding not long ago, I had the weirdly jolting experience of watching virtually everyone college age and under dancing with their phones in their hands—recording a video, taking a photo, or constantly ready to do either. They didn’t want to separate from their technology even for the length of a pop song. My kids have spent days at a time in the wilderness; they’re used to being offline for long periods. But for many of their generation, being disconnected poses a significant psychological obstacle to getting out in nature.

Anyone with an Internet connection can read reams of material demonstrating why too much screen time is unhealthy for kids. Some data also suggests that certain uses of devices aren’t bad for kids. But I worry more about what they’re missing by staying online indoors.

Responsibility for the future of our national parks, the air we breathe and water we drink, even our planet’s livability in this era of rapidly accelerating climate change, will fall soon upon the shoulders of these teenagers and children. We may discover what happens when we raise a generation of children as if they were indoor cats.

A growing body of research demonstrates what many of us know intuitively: that being in nature makes us physically and emotionally healthier.

University of Utah cognitive psychologist David Strayer found that a group of Outward Bound participants performed 50 percent better on creative problem-solving tasks after three days of wilderness backpacking. His explanation: immersion in nature somehow gives the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s overtaxed command center, a much-needed break. Researchers at the University of Exeter found that increasing green space near people’s homes made them measurably happier. Other studies have shown that people with a window view of greenery perform better in school and at work and recover faster in hospitals. Whatever physiological indicators are measured—stress hormones, brain waves, heart rate, or protein markers—the evidence is clear: Our bodies prefer being in nature.

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But I think the ongoing conversation about how little time kids spend outdoors misses one critical point.

Adults tend to discuss the issue as if it’s a problem created by kids. Mine were born in the 21st century. They and their peers did not invent the Internet, online games, or electronic devices. They also did not create an urban and suburban environment where, compared to my boyhood, far more private and public property is fenced off or otherwise off-limits to playing, biking, sledding [insert childhood play activity of choice here] out of concern about “safety” (i.e., lawsuits). Today’s kids did not decide against walking to school; parents have created this generation of children who get driven to school.

Viewing this issue on a larger canvas, we should all worry about who will take on tomorrow’s conservation battles. Activism doesn’t arise from nothing—it is a fire stoked by experiences. Environmentalism’s greatest champions began as young people passionate about wilderness and nature. Responsibility for the future of our national parks, the air we breathe and water we drink, even our planet’s livability in this era of rapidly accelerating climate change, will fall soon upon the shoulders of these teenagers and children.

We may be in danger of discovering what happens when we raise a generation of children as if they were indoor cats.

Family Adventures

A couple of years ago, when I asked my then-13-year-old daughter, Alex, what she’d like to do for our annual “girl trip,” she contemplated it only briefly, then said, “Let’s go rock climbing.” We had a wonderful time on the granite cliffs of Idaho’s Castle Rocks State Park, where she reached the top of some of the hardest routes she’s ever climbed.

My son, Nate has developed twin passions for climbing and whitewater kayaking, and grown quite competent at both. As we paddled the class III whitewater of Idaho’s Payette River, a short drive from our home, on a summer day not long ago, I asked his advice on the correct line through an approaching rapid. Nate smiled at me and said, “Don’t worry, Dad. I wouldn’t just let you do it on your own.”

Both of my kids were crushed to learn we couldn’t take our annual ski trip to a backcountry yurt last winter, because a major wildfire the previous summer had damaged much of the yurt and trail system in the Boise National Forest. It would have been our tenth straight year, going back to when Alex was four. (We have plans to renew that tradition this winter.)

Moments like these reinforce my gut feeling that my wife and I have done something right by taking them camping and climbing, backpacking and skiing since they were babies.

When my little world briefly turns to poo-poo, I know the cure—the instant injection of happiness delivered by going backpacking for several days, or spending a day skiing, climbing, or hiking, or taking an hour-long trail run. I see that same reaction in my kids and their friends who join us outside—an instant shot of joy. Children who grow up without that experience may never teach it to their own kids. For nearly all of the history of homo sapiens, we have been creatures of nature. Only in the past few generations have more and more people become distanced from it, fomenting a misguided notion of the natural world as alien to us.

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I don’t delude myself about the risks of my kids climbing, whitewater kayaking, backcountry skiing, or even just backpacking; I’ve seen the worst that can happen out there. I also understand how activities with a relatively low level of risk can be a sort of gateway drug to riskier pursuits; and how young people, especially, are sometimes drawn to danger like a moth to the flame. Still, risk is something we can estimate and make decisions to minimize; one obviously doesn’t have to climb cliffs or paddle whitewater. A simple walk in nature probably involves much less risk than we accept without thought when we get in our cars every day.

I’ve also seen how my kids draw real life lessons from what we do outdoors. We all learn to manage risk through experience; and outside, risk is so visual and visceral that those lessons get fast-tracked. On a cliff or in a whitewater rapid, danger is in your face. It provides an effective metaphor, when the time is right, for talking about the sort of hazards young people too often view blithely, like alcohol, drugs, sex, and cars.

Plus, there’s simply no analog in civilization for the time my family spends together in the backcountry, when we’re all disconnected from our electronics. We talk to each other. We tell stories. We laugh. In other words, we resort to the basic form of human communication that is the cornerstone of human civilization: verbal. Probably like most families, mine almost never spends hours a day talking and sharing time together in the “real world.”

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To a new parent asking my advice, I’d suggest establishing strict limits on screen time for young children (and impose the rule on yourself at home, because if kids are good at anything, it’s imitating their parents). I would postpone getting a kid her first cell phone for as long as possible—it’s electronic methamphetamine, and most kids (and adults) get addicted immediately.

But we’re never turning back the clock of childhood to a time before smartphones, tablets, laptops, social media, texting, and Youtube. That genie escaped the bottle years ago. Short of whisking your family off to live in the remote Arctic, insulating your child from the influences of society is as realistic as expecting him to never disagree with you. Their friends have phones and computers. They’ll reach an age where they routinely use a computer or other device for schoolwork. (Then try monitoring screen time.) As with most adults, the lives of children grow increasingly interwoven with technology.

Negative reinforcement—restricting a child’s access to anything—only goes so far. At some point, you have to grant your kid the freedom and responsibility to make decisions, which they will do with or without their parents’ endorsement, anyway. That’s called growing up.

To get my kids off screens, I have to offer them something better. And to find that something, we go outside.

Better Than Screens

The mountain goat seemed to appear out of thin air as we neared Gunsight Pass in Glacier National Park. Nate, then nine, and Alex, seven, froze in their tracks and stared at it—not in fear so much as wonder. It was their first mountain goat. We exchanged stares for several minutes, until the goat yielded the trail by plunging down the mountainside below us, which was basically a cliff. Alex peered down from the spot where the goat had stepped off the trail and said, “I can’t believe it went down there.”

Moments later, we encountered an older couple hiking in the opposite direction, who sized up our kids and gushed, “We’re impressed! We never had any luck trying to get our kids to backpack.” After they had passed, Alex turned to me and pointedly said: “You didn’t get us to do this. We wanted to do it.”

Six years after that hike in Glacier, Nate, then 15, and I laid in our 0-degree sleeping bags on an April evening, in a tent pitched on snow at 12,000 feet below the soaring cliffs and spires of the East Face of California’s Mount Whitney. Hours after reaching the 14,505-foot summit of the highest peak in the contiguous United States via a mountaineering route, we were tired and proud as we recalled details of the day.

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Nate and our team on the Mountaineers Route, Mount Whitney.

Then Nate threw an arm around my shoulders and spoke words that he’d said before and I’ll never get tired of hearing: “I love it when we do these things together.”

Am I endangering my kids by taking them on these outdoor adventures? I understand the honest answer to that question too well to deny it. But the anxious moments have been relatively few.

More significant are the positive impacts the outdoors has on my children. It’s making them better people—better able to manage the challenges and stresses they will encounter in “normal” life; better citizens for helping to address the myriad difficult choices the future holds for society; and well-rounded, mature individuals better able to follow a path that leads to happiness.

That last item is what matters most to me.

So I view that question through the wide-angle lens that reveals the whole picture of what it’s like to be a young person today. And from that perspective, I’m convinced that, rather than endangering them, the outdoors is saving their lives.

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Tell me what you think.

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Why I Endanger My Kids in the Wilderness (Even Though It Scares the Sh!t Out of Me) | The Big Outside

Why I Endanger My Kids in the Wilderness (Even Though It Scares the Sh!t Out of Me)

By Michael Lanza

My kids trekking up the Langvatnet valley, Jotunheimen National Park, Norway.

But I’m still not sure what terrifies me more: knowing how close we came to tragedy, or my enduring belief that exposing my kids to this kind of danger is somehow good for them.

Like this story? You may also like my “10 Tips For Getting Your Teenager Outdoors With You” and “My Top 10 Family Outdoor Adventures.”

Alex, 6, at Idaho’s City of Rocks National Reserve.

Alex, 13, at Idaho’s Castle Rocks State Park.

Nate canyoneering in Capitol Reef National Park.

Alex trekking in Jotunheimen National Park.

My kids trekking up the Langvatnet valley, Jotunheimen National Park, Norway.

An early family backpacking trip.

Raising Wild Kids

I saw only one conceivable strategy for preserving my charmed lifestyle—and my sanity: I had to raise my children to love the outdoors as much as I do.

It slowly dawned on me how radically the topography of childhood had shifted in the decades since I’d traveled over it.

That bothers me—particularly the normalization of living almost entirely indoors. But what bothers me even more is adult society’s complicity in the growing home confinement of its children.

Like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain, I’ve spent nearly two decades raising wild kids from the most wired generation in history.

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Backcountry skiing, Boise Mountains, Idaho.

Nate backcountry skiing near Galena Summit, Idaho.

Nate backcountry skiing, Boise Mountains, Idaho.

Reid Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park.

Skiing to a backcountry yurt.

Young Backcountry Skiers

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Nate backpacking in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains.

A Generation Indoors

Few of Nate’s and Mae’s peers experience anything even remotely resembling our day on Pilot Peak.

Any parent can tell you where those kids are. Children age eight to 18 spend more than seven hours a day on electronic screens, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study. (The news story about the study carried the headline: “If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online.”) But that figure under-represents the reality: They multi-task on multiple devices and actually cram nearly 11 hours of media consumption into those seven-and-a-half hours.

A growing body of research demonstrates what many of us know intuitively: that being in nature makes us physically and emotionally healthier.

Find your next adventure in your Inbox. Sign up for my FREE email newsletter now.

But I think the ongoing conversation about how little time kids spend outdoors misses one critical point.

We may be in danger of discovering what happens when we raise a generation of children as if they were indoor cats.

Backpacking to Spider Gap, Glacier Peak Wilderness.

Alex backpacking the High Sierra Trail in Sequoia National Park.

Alex trekking the Alta Via 2 in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains.

Alex hiking Angels Landing, Zion National Park.

Nate kayaking Idaho’s Payette River.

Family Adventures

Moments like these reinforce my gut feeling that my wife and I have done something right by taking them camping and climbing, backpacking and skiing since they were babies.

Get the right gear for your adventures. See my picks for “The 10 Best Backpacking Packs” and “The 5 Best Backpacking Tents.”

Let The Big Outside help your family get outdoors more. Get full access to ALL stories. Subscribe now!

To get my kids off screens, I have to offer them something better. And to find that something, we go outside.

Alex and mountain goat, Gunsight Pass Trail, Glacier National Park.

Nate and Alex on Mount St. Helens.

Alex (2nd from right) on Idaho’s Middle Fork Salmon River.

Better Than Screens

Click here now to get my e-guides to the best beginner-friendly backpacking trips in Yosemite and Grand Teton National Parks.

Nate and our team on the Mountaineers Route, Mount Whitney.

Then Nate threw an arm around my shoulders and spoke words that he’d said before and I’ll never get tired of hearing: “I love it when we do these things together.”

Am I endangering my kids by taking them on these outdoor adventures? I understand the honest answer to that question too well to deny it. But the anxious moments have been relatively few.

That last item is what matters most to me.

See all of my stories about family adventures at The Big Outside.

Tell me what you think.

The Big Outside helps you find the best adventures. Subscribe now to read ALL stories and get a free e-guide!