Last July, renowned feminist author Erica Jong penned a New York Times op-ed titled “Is Sex Passé?” Sex sells, but the essay was less an exploration of sex than of attitudes about gender equality and feminisim.

 “How far will we go in destroying women’s equality before a new generation of feminists wakes up?” Jong wrote. “This time we hope those feminists will be of both genders and that men will understand how much equality benefits them.”

The backlash was heated and immediate.

 “Am I bringing a pair of sledgehammers for you tonight?” That’s not the email you expect to get when making plans for a hike. But when I opened my inbox a few weeks ago, that’s exactly what I saw—a note from 42-year-old yoga teacher Josh Schrei (pronounced Shry) asking if I’d be partaking in his oddball workout up 8,577-foot Picacho Peak.

Fast-forward to later that evening. It’s sunny—the first day in weeks without rain—with billowy clouds and a flamingo hue hovering over the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Schrei, a muscular 5’8” guy with Sanskrit phrases tattooed on his arms, a honey-colored tan and clear greenish-blue eyes, is standing next to his shiny blue Subaru Forester holding out a pair of four-pound sledgehammers for me.

Cannupahanska’s story is the story of his people. They are the same.

Born Cannupa Hanska Luger in Fort Yates, N. Dak., on the Standing Rock Reservation - home to the Hunkpapa Lakota - his first name was broken up to fit the birth certificate, and he inherited the last name Luger. He is an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, located on the upper Missouri River, and his family owns land and participates in the community in an area known as Lucky Mound. His lineage is Norwegian, German, Lakota, MHA Nation, possibly even French and Italian on his father’s side, and he has lived in Phoenix; Olympia, Wash.; Seattle and Santa Fe.

He has been a slam poet, an MC and a street artist. Among other young and innovative Native artists in Santa Fe, the 33-year-old is one of the more outspoken about the limitations of what Southwestern Association for Indian Arts’ outgoing executive director Bruce Bernstein refers to as the “Native box,” or the tendency to group all Native artists together under a set of formal and cultural obligations­—from the materials and methods used to make art to the corresponding themes and narratives.

At the New Mexico State Fair, just a few hundred feet west of the Downs at Albuquerque racetrack and casino, sits a row of crumbling stables. On a June afternoon, the walkways are littered with dead pigeons—casualties of BB guns wielded by the horses’ caretakers’ young children, many of whom live onsite. In the bathrooms the caretakers share, layers upon layers of mildew rot the walls of the shower stalls to a color resembling human excrement.

Flies buzzed around the heads of attendees seated on the patio of Socorro’s Capitol Bar, a brick saloon near the town’s plaza where, at the turn of the 20th century, the bar’s one-time owner, Justice of the Peace Amos Green, held court and jailed the guilty. More than 100 years later, US Senate candidate Martin Heinrich was on trial by a Democratic base at a quick meet-and-greet in a county where more than 75 percent of voters pulled the lever for Democratic US Sen. Jeff Bingaman in 2006. It was a fundraiser attended by a few dozen of the Democratic faithful. Suggested donation: $25.

This past winter, a homeless woman named Martha and her friend Mary, a caregiver at The Life Link—a nonprofit program that provides various types of assistance for homeless and low-income Santa Feans—came to SFR with a story. Martha had met Mary at The Life Link; each wanted to recount the story of Martha’s struggle to surmount homelessness. Now, eight months later, Martha plays an instrumental role in running Santa Fe Need and Deed, a program designed to match local homeless people with Santa Feans who want to help them. “It has been an enormous transition from self-pity and anger to discovery about my own inner workings,” Martha wrote me recently. “There is indeed a richness in poverty that most people are unaware of, and even those who are in poverty cannot embrace.” Although Martha is still “technically homeless”—she’s currently living in a small studio without indoor plumbing—she’s dedicated to helping others like her. “If I can’t use my time on the streets to help and to make a difference, I will not feel good about myself,” she writes. “I have learned empathy, the hard way.” —Alexa Schirtzinger

Ever since I watched Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights as an awkward 15-year-old, I’ve wanted to move like Romola Garai. Of course, I was still growing into my body and could barely run down the basketball court without tripping over myself. I tried ballet when I was seven, but couldn’t deal with the fact that my younger sister was The Nutcracker’s Clara while I was cast as a mouse. The first time I danced with a boy in middle school, I put my hands around his waist. High school mixers and college dances were a blur of alcohol-feigned confidence—the result of which was a torn MCL—and that pretty much sums up my attempts at coordinated movement. It was then, as I sulked in the corner of a bar with ice on my knee, that I decided it was time to learn how to actually dance.

“We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor…the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thundercloud and the rain…some life pasturing freely where we never wander.” –Henry David Thoreau I’ve lived in Santa Fe off and on for the last two years, and in that time I’ve participated in nearly every outdoor pursuit available to a human bound by finances and gravity. Few places on earth offer such a varied palette of adventure, situated as Santa Fe is at the intersection of alpine and high desert biomes. With that adventure occasionally comes danger, but the rewards, for me, have always outweighed the moderate risks. Yet those who thrive on challenges tend to escalate them. Here you’ll find stories of some of my favorite nearby adventures, in order of escalating toughness, with maybe a flyspeck of danger. (We’ve also ranked them on a 1-5 scale for difficulty, danger and fun—1 being the least and 5 being the most.) Nothing crazy here. Just some fun moments in places worth wandering.

Wearing an oversized green wool toque, his Blackberry wedged between his ear and shoulder, Tyler Gage watches the factory staff load 9,000 empty glass bottles onto a cool, steel conveyor belt in a New Jersey bottling plant. His puffy eyes hide behind designer glasses, and his shoulders slump with every yawn. The last two weeks have been hectic: innumerable phone calls with potential suppliers, too many missed deliveries and countless meetings with his financial advisers. The schedule is to be expected given the task at hand: Gage has two weeks to launch a brand-new energy drink with his three-year-old tea company, Runa. Standing, feet tapping, eyes scanning, frequently checking his phone for updates, Gage watches the pressurized air push the 3,000-gallon mixture—water, liquid flavor, citric acid and Runa’s special ingredient, a rare Ecuadorean leaf called guayusa—out of the mixing vat, through the connecting tubes and into the revolving pneumatic udder.

David Barsamian, the founder of Boulder, Colo.-based Alternative Radio and a prolific author, speaker and journalist, comes to Santa Fe this week to discuss “US-Israel War on Iran.” SFR sat down with Barsamian to talk about new developments in US-Iran relations; Syria and the legacy of the Arab Spring; and the failure of capitalism as described in his new book with Richard Wolff, Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity.