Volunteer Vacations for Hikers

by Erik Olsen on


It’s summer and you’re trying to come up with something cool to do for a week or perhaps a
long weekend. You love to be in the mountains, you love to hike, but you also want to give something back, contribute a
little bit to the places you enjoy.

The American Hiking Society

offers opportunities for you to volunteer and help build and improve trails, clear brush, build trail bridges,
and do all sorts of maintenance to make hiking opportunities better for everybody. The opportunities range widely, but
nearly every state has something.

New Yorkers might check out Camp Deer Run’s offerings,

while in Idaho, they need some help in the Sawtooth Wilderness. With so many great resources available in this
country to get out and experience nature, it is sometimes a good idea to give a little back, since many of these places
are made great by volunteers.

Andrew Skurka: The Big Walk

by Erik Olsen on

When Andrew Skurka reaches Cape Alava, Washington in August, he will have completed an impressive journey. He will
become the first person to walk the 7,700-mile transcontinental
Sea-to-Sea Route (C2C), a major achievement.

He’s been averaging about 36 miles per day, since he started on August 6, 2004 at Cape Gaspe, Quebec. He has since
traversed a network of hard-core long-distance trails that almost continuously span the continent between the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans. The only breaks are a 700-mile gap in North Dakota and Montana along the Missouri River and a
30-mile gap in Vermont.

Totally cool.

Madagascar’s Charms

by Erik Olsen on

Consider the lemur. A cute furry creature with Marty Feldman eyes and a friendly disposition. They are relatives of ours, you know. Crawl back along the knotted, twisted branch of human ancestry and make your way down towards the trunk and there they are, all bug eyed and unevolved. Now consider seeing them in the wild. Hanging to with Lemurs, as it were, as if having a beer with an old friend you haven’t seen in 25 million years. That would be cool, right?

Well the only place you can do this, that is the only place these cute semi-primates live is the island of Madagascar off Africa. And that is where the author of this article went on vacation. Trekking around Andasibe-Mantadia National Park, one of the island’s few remaining primary forests, she encounters “luminous birds and fluorescent frogs”, exploding blossoms. The piece has its activist side, but it’s pretty good. Good enough, anyway, to make me consider Madagascgar as a potential destination.

Guns, Germs and Steel

by Erik Olsen on

Pretty cool. Worldhum picks up on the
fact that National Geographic is running a series based
on the Pulitzer-winning book by Jared Diamond Guns, Germs and Steel. You knew this was coming. GG&S was one of the
few science books of the last few years that people actually have read. I enjoyed it immensely, although there were
times when I thought the author was trying to be too nice. Perhaps a bit politically-correct. But it is a fine
read.  The book attempts to explain why certain societies have been “successful” while other have not. 
Presumably the series will do the same. I’ll watch.

Kayak for a Cause

by Erik Olsen on

Here’s your chance to do two great things: go kayaking, and help
raise mooney for several important charities. It’s called
Kayak for a Cause and it happens July
23rd.  This is the fifth one of these things, and they expect over 200 paddlers this year. It’s a cool event. They
paddle from Norwalk, CT to Long Island. Quite a haul. The event was started by Scott Carlin and Miles Spencer who did
the paddle way back when and now run the organization and raise the cash for charities like the
Make-A-Wish Foundation.