With a background in journalism, Chase Banger decided to flex his creative muscles and create a beautiful 128 page coffee table ready magazine called Long Days. Many hours were spent fussing over the paper thickness, deciding which pages should be matte vs. glossy, choosing photos to help flesh out the stories within, and endlessly playing with page layout (with a lot of it being learnt as he went). The journey was also a cathartic project for him to write stories about his love for backcountry camping while also curating tales from fellow campers into something that he hopes others will love reading.
While Chase’s screen time has inadvertently increased as of late (a byproduct of writing the majority of the articles, designing the entire layout and spreading the good word about the magazine on social media) the core message that the magazine exudes is to encourage people to spend more time in the backcountry (a line on the footer of the website reads… “This is a magazine for people who wish there was no offseason”). Perhaps the current schedule of publishing two issues a year will afford him time to find a natural balance (all while still managing a full time job) but thankfully the end result after months of hard work is that issue #1 of Long Days has finally been printed and is being mailed to eager readers.
Traversing: What was the spark for you to create Long Days?
Chase Banger: My wife has been subscribing to a lifestyle magazine based in Australia since high school. When I met her, I hadn’t been exposed to print much but then I fell in love with the medium. I love that it is both a slice of time and a collection of people’s stories. It was then that I knew I wanted to create a magazine and I tossed around doing an outdoors magazine but couldn’t figure out how to tie together all of the ideas. The biggest passion of my life is backcountry camping, so considering time is finite and I work full time, this has to be something I really enjoy. So focusing on backcountry camping has been really rewarding.
Traversing: Even though “print is dead”, there is something remarkable about long form journalism. What do you hope to share with Long Days?
Chase Banger: I’m hesitant to say it’s not for beginners, because I want to be inclusive. I think if it’s done well, everyone will find something that speaks to them, there’s a universality to, you know, being away from people and camping, even if you’ve only done frontcountry or you only have watched Naked and Afraid or whatever, right? It’s not an extreme sports magazine, but there is still space to feature a crazy arctic trip. I’ve had my definition of “backcountry” when I went into it, but then the other day someone reached out to me and asked “What about horseback?”. That’s really interesting and opens up a whole new piece. There’s so much universality of squatting and making dinner… and it takes like 5 times as long and it tastes 5 times as good because you had to work so hard for it.
Traversing: Where did the name “Long Days” come from?
Chase Banger: I think of it as twofold.
The symbolic answer is when you picture a camping trip, most people think of a long summer day and so it was a kind of nod to that.
But it’s not just the season, getting there is hard and you have long days when you’re trying to get somewhere cool. It’s the payoff of that long day.
Traversing: When tripping, any favourite destinations?
Chase Banger: I started backcountry camping in the Kawartha Highlands, which will always have a soft spot in my heart. I’ve done a lot of tripping in Algonquin of course which is probably not surprising. Recently over the past few years I started doing some whitewater tripping which is such a cool new unlock. The most recent one I enjoyed is probably the Coulonge River in Quebec (one of three rivers that feed the Ottawa River) and it was a lot of fun.
Chase has been blown away by the enthusiasm for the first issue and feels that Long Days will be shaped by the readership and their contributions. Issues come out in June and December and hopefully if there is continued interest in the magazine, one day Chase would like to work up to four issues a year. There is a maximum of six ads per issue of Long Days and 100% of the ad money goes towards contributors. If you would like to write for Long Days, be sure to drop Chase a note.
