"Where's your boyfriend?" a man asked me on the summit of Slide Mountain, the highest peak in the Catskills. It'd been a bad week, so I'd left work early that Friday and escaped to the mountains, my go-to move when the world's feeling extra heavy. This was my third summit of the day, and I …
In Their Own Words
"One of the things I think that Rochester is lacking tremendously is a connection to the multitude of green spaces and natural gems in the bioregion that we have here. We have over twenty public parks that are all within fifteen, twenty minutes driving distance; we have the Adirondack Park, which is a state park …
EarthWorks Institute
The quintessential American childhood is built upon exploration. We see it time and again in children’s literary classics, such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Bridge to Terebithia, and the Little House on the Prairie series. More often than not, the freedom of exploration is linked with the outdoors. Even when the kids are housebound, they …
In Their Own Words
"I am an old woman now. The buffalo and black tail deer are gone, and our Indian ways are almost gone. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I ever lived them. We no longer live in an earth lodge or teepee, but in a house with chimneys; and my son's wife cooks by …
Medicine Wheel, Wyoming
You may have heard the word "yoga" before. "Meditation," too. Maybe "chakra" even, if you've participated in any of the two aforementioned words. In the past ten years or so, Westerners have become enthralled with connecting more intimately with their bodies and the world around them. They do this by tapping into Eastern practices, which …
In Their Own Words
"We’ve been opposed to the PennEast Pipeline that’s bringing natural gas through here, but the problem is it’s almost impossible to fight. It’s an interstate pipeline and interstate pipelines are approved by a federal agency called the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It was set up in 2005 by a bunch of secret meetings that Dick …
Sierra Club, Lehigh Valley Group
If you're involved in the outdoors in any capacity, you've heard of the Sierra Club before. Headquartered in Oakland, California, and founded in 1892 by environmentalist and outdoorsman John Muir, the organization boasts three million supporters, making them the undisputed king of grassroots environmentalism. I met with Executive Committee member of the Pennsylvania Chapter Don …
People in Parks 