Outdoor Nation

GET INSIDE THE OUTSIDERS – JOIN THE MOVEMENT

Adventure Treks has partnered with The Outdoor Foundation and leading private, public and non-profit organizations to build a youth led movement to revolutionize the
outdoors for youth.

Outdoor Nation is a next-gen movement to champion the outdoors. Youth and young adults are joining together to bring it outside –
building an Outdoor Nation that combines youth power, political action, and outdoor play.  

By becoming an Outsider you’ll:

• Win free stuff from brand name companies like The North Face just for providing feedback and sharing your opinions

• Connect with other Outsiders across the country who share your passion

• Advise and work with the top outdoor companies in the world

• Influence federal and state public policies and programs

• Have the chance to earn exclusive internships with cool outdoor organizations

• Have the chance to travel to NYC and attend Outdoor Nation in Central Park

Be one of the first 500 members between the ages of 13-30 and win a FREE Outdoor Nation T-shirt!

To join Outdoor Nation and become an Outsider,
simply visit www.OutdoorNation.org.  During registration, mention you were referred by Adventure Treks.

Take care and GET OUTSIDE!

SHS Boys Start Club to Promote Love of Outdoors

Published in the Scarsdale Inquirer
By SARAH KOCH

Inspired by Adventure Treks, an outdoor summer backpacking program,
two seniors at Scarsdale High School have found a way to spread their knowledge
and enthusiasm of the outdoors to younger kids. Last year, Branden Wachtel and David Hyman founded the Outdoors Club, a free after-school club for elementary school children in Scarsdale to learn about the outdoors and explore their love for nature. Wachtel and Hyman are co-presidents of the club and have offered four programs so far - two at Fox Meadow and two at Greenacres.

"We both grew up in Scarsdale," said Hyman in a recent interview, "so when
we were in elementary school we weren't really exposed to the same kind of experiences that we are trying to give to elementary students now. We were more
exposed to wilderness and nature by the Adventure Treks program. We just try to
hit them early and get that motivation."

"The whole goal of the program is to bring the concept of going outside to the
kids; not just to play soccer or to go on a jungle gym," Wachtel said, "but to appreciate it and learn more about it."

Weekly meetings begin with one of many active games, such as base tag, a blindfolded obstacle course led by a partner, or a scavenger hunt. "The group building activities are really useful in the wilderness," said Hyman, because these skills are important when you're backpacking with a group of people. I think the games really helped the kids work together." The leaders have also taught map orientation and how to use a compass, as well as other skills that are helpful in the woods.

Each of the four programs has been different. "We try to make them new and exciting each time because we're trying to give the kids the broadest overlook," Wachtel said. "We didn't really follow a schedule."

Hyman and Wachtel initially had trouble finding other high school students
who wanted to participate in the club. "We tried to go to friends and people
who shared our interest in the outdoors. We found five great people and it's been
a lot of fun," said Wachtel. "We've tried to give everyone an opportunity to lead
the program." Other members of the SHS Outdoors Club are seniors Jonah Garry,
Michael Perry and Charlie Schwartz.

"All of us are very interested in climbing and hiking and working with younger
kids," added Hyman. "It's been a lot of fun to work with them." Typically, five of the club members lead programs for the elementary school children, but in total there are about 15 or 20 high school students involved in the Outdoors Club. Not only do they lead the programs for younger students, but they also volunteer with manual labor at the Weinberg Nature Center, cleaning up parking lots and spreading woodchips on trails~ The members of the club who cannot lead the after-school programs due to extracurricular conflicts like to help at the nature center. Within the next week, the club members plan to clear more trails at Weinberg.

The leaders have been working closely with science teacher Jennifer Wagner, the group's club adviser, who has been of great help to the club. "She helps us a
lot with the planning of the program during the week," Wachtel said. "She has
helped with the administrative side, setting up the program with the schools for
us." Both Wachtel and Hyman feel very lucky to have had such a supportive, enthusiastic teacher by their side.

"Leading the programs has been really fun," Hyman said. "It's been challenging
at times because Scarsdale doesn't really have the reputation of being outdoors
all the time. It's been hard to find a group of kids to continue going on trips
and working with the kids and cleaning up parks. I think the kids really enjoy it
at the schools, though," which is why several of the kids have returned for a
second program, after enjoying it the first time around.

The co-presidents hope that their efforts will encourage the kids to continue pursuing a love for nature. "One of the primary objectives is just to get people
outside," said Wachtel. "The students learn all of these new games we hope
that they will use with their friends along the line and broaden their appreciation of nature."

Wachtel said the Outdoors Club adviser is looking for SHS students to take
over next year after the current seniors graduate. Any student interested should
contact Wagner or write .to shsoutdoorsclub@gmail.com. The club is also doing volunteer work at the Weinberg Nature Center this Saturday, Dec. 12 and Wachtel said anyone who would like to help can just show up that day between noon and 4p.m.

Try Going Outside And Doing Something Without TV...

The Geminid meteor shower is named Geminids due to a trail of meteors traced back to the constellation Gemini. The Geminids meteor shower is considered by many to be the best meteor shower of the year. It produces the brigghtest meteors of any shower and can be observed on December 13th and 14th. Along with producing some of the brighterst meteors of any shower, the Geminids produce a large number of multicolored meteors every hour once it reaches its peak.
Click here for more information.

Outside University: The Top 40

TOP 40 COLLEGE TOWNS OUTSIDE U.
Outside Magazine 2003
Tuition prices and programs may have changed since original publication.

Today's topic: We rank the Top 40 schools where you can hit the books AND the backcountry. Your assignment: Rappel off that ivory tower and take our cram course on America's most adrenaline-friendly colleges. You'll come for your B.A. (Bachelor of Adventure) and want to stay for life.

What did we do all summer? We searched the country for the coolest college towns, places where the outdoors and intellectual esprit mingle blissfully. Whether you're seeking a great university experience or just a stimulating place to call home, our guide will get you there. PLUS: study-abroad programs in Spain, Japan, Botswana, and more; military schools at which to earn your outdoor stripes (on belay, sir!); and colleges where extreme fun trumps academics.

Click here for the Top 40 Best Outdoor Colleges For Recreation.

Nicholas Kristof: Let’s Get Kids Awed by Nature

How to Lick a Slug

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: August 1, 2009

MOUNT HOOD, Ore.

While backpacking here with my 11-year-old daughter, I kept thinking of something tragic: so few kids these days know what happens when you lick a big yellow banana slug.

My daughter and I were recuperating in a (banana slug-infested) wilderness from a surfeit of civilization. On our second day on the Pacific Crest Trail, we were exhausted after nearly 20 miles of hiking, our feet ached, and ravenous mosquitoes were persecuting us. Dusk was falling, but no formal campsite was within miles.

So we set out a groundsheet and our sleeping bags on the soft grass of a ridge, so that the winds would blow the mosquitoes away. Our dog looked aghast (“Ugh, where’s my bed?!”), but sulkily curled up beside us. As far as we could tell, there was no other hiker within a half-day’s journey in any direction.

We debated whether to put up our light tarp to protect us from rain. “No need,” I advised my daughter patronizingly. “There’s zero chance it’ll rain. And it’ll be more fun to be able to look up at shooting stars.”

It was, until we awoke at 4 a.m. to a freezing drizzle.

The rain not only punctured the doctrine of Paternal Infallibility but also offered one of nature’s dazzlingly important lessons in perspective, reminding us that we’re just tenants — and ones without much sway.

Such time in the wilderness is part of our family’s summer ritual, a time to hit the “reset” switch and escape deadlines and BlackBerrys. We spend the time fretting instead about blisters, river crossings and rain, and the experiences offer us lessons on inner peace and life’s meaning — cheap and effective therapy, without the couch.

All this comes to mind because for most of us in the industrialized world, nature is a rarer and rarer part of our lives. Children for 1,000 generations grew up exploring fields, itching with poison oak and discovering the hard way what a wasp nest looks like. That’s no longer true.

Paul, a fourth grader in San Diego, put it this way: “I like to play indoors better, ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” Paul was quoted in a thoughtful book by Richard Louv, “Last Child in the Woods,” that argued that baby boomers “may constitute the last generation of Americans to share an intimate, familial attachment to the land and water.”

Only 2 percent of American households now live on farms, compared with 40 percent in 1900. Suburban childhood that once meant catching snakes in fields now means sanitized video play dates scheduled a week in advance. One study of three generations of 9-year-olds found that by 1990 the radius from the house in which they were allowed to roam freely was only one-ninth as great as it had been in 1970.

A British study found that children could more easily identify Japanese cartoon characters like Pikachu, Metapod and Wigglytuff than they could native animals and plants, like otter, oak and beetle.

Mr. Louv calls this “nature deficit disorder,” and he links it to increases in depression, obesity and attention deficit disorder. I don’t know about all that, although his book does cite a study indicating that watching fish lowers blood pressure significantly. (That’s how to cut health costs: hand out goldfish instead of heart medicine!)

One problem may be that the American environmental movement has focused so much on preserving nature that it has neglected to do enough to preserve a constituency for nature. It’s important not only to save forests, but also to promote camping, hiking, bouldering and white-water rafting so that people care about saving those forests.

One sign of trouble: the number of visits to America’s national parks has been slipping for more than a decade. Likewise, Europe and Canada have both done an excellent job of building networks of long-distance hiking trails, while the U.S. has trouble maintaining the trails it has.

One of our family’s annual backpacks is the 40-mile Timberline Trail circuit around Mount Hood, crossing snowfields and dazzling alpine fields of flowers. In years when we’re particularly addled, we hike it as many as three times. But a washout almost three years ago left part of this gorgeous trail — completed in the 1930s — officially closed, and unofficially rather difficult to get by. Here’s a spectacular trail that was built in the last depression, and we can’t even sustain it.

So let’s protect nature, yes, but let’s also maintain trails, restore the Forest Service and support programs that get young people rained on in the woods. Let’s acknowledge that getting kids awed by nature is as important as getting them reading.

Oh, and the slug? Time was, most kids knew that if you licked the underside of a banana slug, your tongue went numb. Better that than have them numb their senses staying cooped up inside.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

Sign in to Recommend More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on August 2, 2009, on page WK10 of the New York edition.

The Case Against Overparenting

The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
Time Magazine, Nancy Gibbs- November 20, 2010

The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old's "pencil-holding deficiency," hooked up broadband connections in the treehouse but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. We hovered over every school, playground and practice field — "helicopter parents," teachers christened us, a phenomenon that spread to parents of all ages, races and regions. Stores began marketing stove-knob covers and "Kinderkords" (also known as leashes; they allow "three full feet of freedom for both you and your child") and Baby Kneepads (as if babies don't come prepadded). The mayor of a Connecticut town agreed to chop down three hickory trees on one block after a woman worried that a stray nut might drop into her new swimming pool, where her nut-allergic grandson occasionally swam. A Texas school required parents wanting to help with the second-grade holiday party to have a background check first. Schools auctioned off the right to cut the carpool line and drop a child directly in front of the building — a spot that in other settings is known as handicapped parking.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1940395,00.html#ixzz0XhuOCXT4

We were so obsessed with our kids' success that parenting turned into a form of product development. Parents demanded that nursery schools offer Mandarin, since it's never too soon to prepare for the competition of a global economy. High school teachers received irate text messages from parents protesting an exam grade before class was even over; college deans described freshmen as "crispies," who arrived at college already burned out, and "teacups," who seemed ready to break at the tiniest stress. (See pictures of the college dorm's evolution.)

This is what parenting had come to look like at the dawn of the 21st century — just one more extravagance, the Bubble Wrap waiting to burst.

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together. And so there is now a new revolution under way, one aimed at rolling back the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads. The insurgency goes by many names — slow parenting, simplicity parenting, free-range parenting — but the message is the same: Less is more; hovering is dangerous; failure is fruitful. You really want your children to succeed? Learn when to leave them alone. When you lighten up, they'll fly higher. We're often the ones who hold them down.

A backlash against overparenting had been building for years, but now it reflects a new reality. Since the onset of the Great Recession, according to a CBS News poll, a third of parents have cut their kids' extracurricular activities. They downsized, downshifted and simplified because they had to — and often found, much to their surprise, that they liked it. When a TIME poll last spring asked how the recession had affected people's relationships with their kids, nearly four times as many people said relationships had gotten better as said they'd gotten worse. "This is one of those moments when everything is on the table, up for grabs," says Carl Honoré, whose book Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting is a gospel of the slow-parenting movement. He likens the sudden awareness to the feeling you get when you wake up after a long night carousing, the lights go on, and you realize you're a mess. "That horrible moment of self-recognition is where we are culturally. I wanted parents to realize they are not alone in thinking this is insanity, and show there's another way." (See the 25 best back-to-school gadgets.)

How We Got Here
Overparenting had been around long before Douglas MacArthur's mom Pinky moved with him to West Point in 1899 and took an apartment near the campus, supposedly so she could watch him with a telescope to be sure he was studying. But in the 1990s something dramatic happened, and the needle went way past the red line. From peace and prosperity, there arose fear and anxiety; crime went down, yet parents stopped letting kids out of their sight; the percentage of kids walking or biking to school dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2001. Death by injury has dropped more than 50% since 1980, yet parents lobbied to take the jungle gyms out of playgrounds, and strollers suddenly needed the warning label "Remove Child Before Folding." Among 6-to-8-year-olds, free playtime dropped 25% from 1981 to '97, and homework more than doubled. Bookstores offered Brain Foods for Kids: Over 100 Recipes to Boost Your Child's Intelligence. The state of Georgia sent every newborn home with the CD Build Your Baby's Brain Through the Power of Music, after researchers claimed to have discovered that listening to Mozart could temporarily help raise IQ scores by as many as 9 points. By the time the frenzy had reached its peak, colleges were installing "Hi, Mom!" webcams in common areas, and employers like Ernst & Young were creating "parent packs" for recruits to give Mom and Dad, since they were involved in negotiating salary and benefits.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1940395,00.html#ixzz0XhuIpiUt

Surprise "Dock " Turns 50

SURPRISE! Adventure Treks Founder, John "Dock" Dockendorf turns 50 December 4, 2009. On November 14th a host of Adventure Treks staff, friends and family joined together at the Adventure Treks Barn in North Carolina to surprise Dock and wish him a happy 5oth birthday.

In addition to local Adventure Treks Alumni, A.T. legends came from across the country to tell stories and reminisce with old friends: Rob and Connor Clemens- Colorado, Ramin Nowroozi- Pennsylvania, and Adrian Bardon- North Carolina.

Kyndra Luce compiled a touching journal filled with treasured memories shared by past instructors, students, and friends. Dock was surprised as well as honored to hear the fond memories expressed by party guests.

Thanks to all who helped make this a special day!