Riverside Hooligans was born some years ago out of a discussion with a friend serving in the Army in Iraq. Over the years, it was a hodge-podge of random ramblings.

In 2012, Riverside Hooligans was reorganized to be an outdoor sports and adventure blog focusing on travel, including backpacking, kayaking, camping, fishing, rock climbing, nature, wildlife, survival skills and gear repairs and modification.

Hooligans, while primarily a journal of Jim T. Ryan’s adventures with friends and family, was also an advocacy for Americans returning to their roots as frontiersmen and adventurers. In that respect, we believe America’s immense wild spaces are precious not only for their aesthetic beauty and diversity of wildlife, but also as important portals into our history as a people.

These environments — including the mountains, forests, waters, air, prairies, farmlands, deserts and towns that dot them, are worth protecting as homage to those who came before us, as the ecosystems and local economies that will sustain our life and soul today, and for generations to come.

The former Hooligans, and now AOJ, are also a call to conservation.

We are not against the use of nature for recreational or economic reasons. But we abhor the abuse, misuse and unsustainable pillaging of the public trust to feed the coin pockets of the few today at the expense of ours, our families’, our communities’ and our nation’s future.

To protect your family, your community and your nation by protecting the natural world that sustains their life is a great patriotic act. We love this country, including its environment, not excluding it.

Joy in nature is to commune with God and Mother Earth in their cathedral. The natural world is a holy gift and that’s worth preserving for the health of humankind’s soul.

That being said, we welcome all to join us on our journeys up cliffs, through forests, down rivers and into the next adventure.