Outside magazine turns 30. So does Dave Philipps!

Is there a connection? Probably only in the fact that I was lucky enough to have people from the generation interested enough in the outdoors to spawn a magazine like Outside also spawn a love of wide-open spaces in me. The magazine and I are both products of the "On the Loose" cadre of dirt bag Baby Boomers.

Outside, surprisingly, started as a free insert in Rolling Stone. Like Rolling Stone, and almost all things counter-culture Baby Boom, Out Side has become less raw and more commercial, to the point where it almost seems like it's meant to be picked up in dentist's offices by people who like to read about the outdoors, more than people who are in the outdoors. And who couldn't be annoyed by the formulaic headlines borrowed from Cosmo? ("37 Dream Jobs ," "20 Dream Towns," "48 Trips of a Lifetime," "50 Ways to Change Your Life.")


No word on whether Dave Philipps has traded the budding "On the Loose" style of 10 years ago for an increasingly Bourgeois life-style, but he does tent to slip phrases like "137 ways to wash a chiweenie" and "14 Ways to Skip Work to Mountain Bike" into conversation.

So, anyway, yes, I'm turning 30. I started with the Gazette when I was 26. I was hoping to have finished all 53 fourteeners (no Culebra Peak) by this milestone, but I still have three to go. Things got hectic.

Also turning 30 this year: Burton Snowboards, Bode Miller and Bruce Chatwin's classic travelogue, "In Patagonia."