With the first Barbour Beacon fall collection just hitting stores, Japanese designer Tokihito Yoshida rolls on with another fantastically designed collection of outerwear from the venerable English brand. The new offerings compliment the main Barbour line perfectly, but the Beacon coats are just unique enough to be really desirable without taking anything away from the core collection. That is the tough part of collaborating with such a well known and revered brand like Barbour, making the collaboration product unique but not too too crazy. Mr. Yoshida walks that line wonderfully and every piece of both the AW09 and SS10 Beacon lines are worthy of my closet. I’ll be bold and say that this is the best designer-brand collaboration going right now — well played by all involved. Wondering what you should be wearing next spring? See below.

Wax Bicycle Jacket | $749

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Northern Minnesota’s Bemidji Woolen Mills is one of America’s last functioning woolen mills. There used to be hundreds of mills like Bemidji, Pendelton and Woolrich scattered throughout the U.S., but these days companies making fabric of any sort in this country are few and far between. The town of Bemidji — who claims the title of “first city on the Mississippi River” — seems like it is the perfect place to wear BWM’s seriously classic woodsman gear. Good to see a company like Bemidji Woolen Mills still doing its thing, making nice looking and rugged clothing all in the United States.

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Anyone that follows along with my (mostly) nonsensical twitter updates knows that I was lucky enough to head up the Taconic State Parkway to the Orvis Sandanona shooting grounds this past weekend to shoot some clays and learn how to fly fish. The day was hosted by the good folks at Barbour and couldn’t have been more fun. You can read all about it over at Men.Style.com. While you are there, check out their great hunting gear story.

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Riding on the back of a four-wheeler feeling like I am going to battle.

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The Trad in his infinite knowledge of interesting things points us to one of the most entertaining reads the Sunday Book Review has ever offered up. The gem of an essay is on Minnesota native and epic hook and bullet purveyor George Herter. The titles of Herter’s books alone make me love the guy. The archive includes: “How to Get Out of the Rat Race and Live on $10 a Month,” the popular “Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices” and my personal favorite “How to Live With a Bitch.”

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An ACL reader named Joakim Simonsson wrote me a while back and included in the email a few shots of his beautiful log cabin. My interest piqued, I wrote back asking to see if he could send more. It turns out the photos came from his 1940s cabin located about five hours northwest of Stockholm, or as he put it “just where the woodlands turn into the mountains.” I’d describe it as heaven on earth. Eventually, Mr. Simonsson put all of the photos together and started a blog — appropriately called Log Cabineer — to share his picturesque adventures. Check out some of the photos below and visit Log Cabineer for more.

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