Most people I know haven't left the city in six months. I know because I was one of them.
I work in an office. I coach youth baseball three nights a week. My son plays high school ball, which means half my weekends belong to a dugout somewhere. Time isn't something I have extra of right now — and for a long time, I used that as a reason to stay put.
But here's what I figured out: I wasn't too busy for the outdoors. I was too busy looking for the wrong version of it. I kept waiting for the two-week trip, the fully planned expedition, the perfect window that never opened.
So I made a rule instead.
The 3-Hour Rule: any place we explore, any adventure we take, any meal we cook over a fire — it has to be reachable on a single tank of gas. One tank gets you roughly 400 miles. That's about 200 miles from your front door, which happens to be about a 3-hour drive. Not a flight. Not a week off work. Just a full tank and a Friday afternoon.
Turns out there's a lot of wild inside that circle.
Pedernales Falls State Park
Within three hours of Austin you've got the limestone canyons of Pedernales Falls State Park, the cold clear water of the Guadalupe, the granite dome of Enchanted Rock rising out of the Hill Country like it has something to prove. You've got river camps and deer leases and backroads that don't quite show up on Google Street View. You've got enough to keep you busy for years without repeating yourself.
You don't need more time. You need a different rule.
That's what This Wild City is — a guide to everything wild within a tank of gas. Every week: one place, one meal, one reason to get outside. The adventure was always this close. We just needed a reason to go.