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Wild Beauty

A foggy Appalachian Trail at Newfound Gap in Great Smokey Mountains National Park. (William Silver/Shutterstock)

A few weeks ago, after years of searching, my husband and I bought our dream property: an old but beautiful farmette in Pennsylvania. We both grew up in rural settings, but we have lived in cities or neighborhoods our whole married lives, so to find a place together and build the life we’ve imagined for so long has been an exciting adventure.

One of our favorite aspects about our new home is that it borders the Appalachian Trail, the longest hiking-only footpath in the world, stretching 2,193.1 miles from Maine to Georgia. I remember feeling amazed that I would be able to hike parts of the trail, and meet travelers from all over the country, once we moved to Pennsylvania. Now that we’re going to be living so close to this American treasure, I decided to do a little bit more research into the trail’s history.

The Trail’s Beginnings

Exactly 100 years ago, the idea of the Appalachian Trail was born when regional planner Benton MacKaye put out a proposal for the trail with an article, “Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning,” for the October 1921 edition of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects.

In it, he writes something that rings perhaps even more true today than it did in 1921: “We civilized ones also, whether urban or rural, are potentially helpless as canaries in a cage. The ability to cope with nature directly—unshielded by the weakening wall of civilization—is one of the admitted needs of modern times.”

Appalachian Trail wooden sign. (Prosiaczeq/Shutterstock)

By 1937, the footpath connecting Maine to Georgia was complete. Three years after the Second World War ended in 1945, recovering veteran Earl V. Shaffer became the first person to hike the trail in one consecutive journey. His motive for hiking was to “walk the Army out of my system.” He hiked the trail three times, completing his third trip at the age of 79.

By 1968, the National Trails System Act became law, putting the Appalachian Trail under federal protection. Today, the trail draws over 3 million visitors every year. Many serve as volunteers to maintain the trail’s beauty and cleanliness.

The Trail by State

The trail crosses through 14 states, from the rocky wilderness of northern Georgia, to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, to the headquarters of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy in West Virginia, to the trail’s most challenging sections in Maine. To hike the trail is to see the country in its wild beauty and diversity.

Each decade, the number of “2,000 milers,” the name given to hikers who hike the trail in its entirety, grows dramatically. In the 1930s, only 5 people completed the hike from start to finish; in the 2010s, 9,946 hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, according to statistics compiled by the Conservancy.

The Draw to Hike

The first person I met who hiked the trail from start to finish was Emily. She was the sister of a college friend, and we met up with her years ago in Pennsylvania as she was passing through on her way to Maine. As we ate dinner together at my in-laws’ farm, Emily told us story after story about sleeping under the stars, foot injuries, and meeting others along the trail. While we lounged in the candlelight, drinking coffee after a delicious dinner, she talked about listening to audio books; what it was like to have only your thoughts for company day after day; how fulfilling it was to live so close to nature.

This was long before I had ever hiked portions of the trail myself, before I had seen hay bales glowing in the golden hour before sunset on a Pennsylvania farm, before I had picnicked with my daughters by the trail’s streams, before I had ever imagined that we would one day be able to hike the stretch behind our own home after dinner. I was already drawn to it then, when I heard Emily’s stories.

I don’t know if I will ever hike the trail from start to finish like Emily did. With small children in tow, it feels like a distant dream. But I love to get out and hike the trail around me whenever I can, meeting people from across the country when I do. In a polarizing, tense time for our country, I love the reminder that the states of Maine and Georgia are connected by a footpath; that on a ground level, none of us are really all that different. Now, I only have to venture into my backyard to be reminded of this truth.

On the trail, whether for hours or months, we become what MacKaye hinted at: freshly uncaged canaries, learning how to be free.

Categories
Features The Great Outdoors

The Last Frontiersman

roland welker
Roland Welker in Alaska. (Courtesy of Roland Welker)

Roland Welker is as tough as they come. He’s a bushman, fur trapper, big game guide, logger, and survivalist who spends months at a time alone, deep in the wilderness of the western Bush region of Alaska. His tough exterior is evidenced in the dirt embedded deep in his fingertips, his raspy yet animated voice, and his calm and unflappable demeanor as he chops wood, butchers a fresh kill, or builds a shelter. He’s tough, yes, but he’s also incredibly reflective about the outdoors, and his call to live like the “old-timers” in the wild.

He calls his lifestyle “getting woodsy” and says it’s a mentality—like a game of chess—where you have to think about every move you make. You have to be able to look around you and utilize what’s at hand. It means living like an old-timer, dependent on skills, physical fitness, and the land.

A Lifetime of Experience

Welker’s passion for the outdoors was ignited during his childhood growing up in the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania. Wanting to immerse himself even more into the wilderness, during his 20s, Welker set his sights on Alaska. Now 49, his outdoor experiences for the past 28 years have led him to become an expert at wilderness survival. In fall 2019, he participated in filming for Season 7 of the History Channel’s survivor show, ALONE, and won.

For the first time in the series, rather than determining the winner by which contestant lasted the longest before “tapping out,” Season 7 offered the largest prize yet: $1 million to any contestant who could last 100 days in the wilderness of the Canadian Arctic.

Welker was a natural, and his calm determination alongside a lifetime of survival experience led him to win the prize. He achieved a lot of “firsts” for the show, including killing an 800-pound musk ox with one arrow and a belt knife, building a shelter he termed “Rock House,” and building a meat cache that rivaled any contestant’s shelter—assuring that his meat would be safe from predators. His mindset had as much to do with his success as his survival skills; Welker said he went in prepared to stay the whole winter—well over the required 100 days—which led him to chop wood for hours each day and allowed him to amass enough wood to get through the negative 30 to 40-degree temperatures.

The Trek to Alaska

Raised in Shiloh, Penn., by the age of 8, Welker was setting traps that he would check by flashlight before going to school. He was camping solo by age 11 and had a backpack ready by the door so he could head out each weekend. Sometimes it was with family or friends, but if no one was available, he was just as happy to go alone.

“I grew up there in the 70s,” Welker said. “It was still kind of a really neat backwater place in the 70s—a lot of farms still going, the dairy industry was still there. There’s always been logging and still is to this day; coal businesses were booming in the 70s before it went extinct. It was just a really neat time to be a boy in central Pennsylvania—Shiloh, in particular.”

(Courtesy of Roland Welker)

A voracious reader, Welker said his father taught him a love of reading by introducing him to American novelist Louis L’Amour and Western books. “I remember him buying ‘The Big Sky,’ a 1947 Western novel by A. B. Guthrie Jr.” The book paints a portrait of life for mountain men between 1830 to 1843. Welker said he has read the book 30 or 40 times. “It’s my favorite. People say I kind of became a character from that book. It’s almost scary.”

At 24, Welker struck out for Alaska, eventually making his way to Red Devil by accident. Red Devil, Alaska, had a population of 23 as of the 2010 national census. Welker fished and hunted along the Kuskokwim River.

“This is mountain country. It was winter and ice was running when I arrived, and this was my first Alaska winter. I was getting into the thick quick,” he said. Welker soon realized that “this is the place I had been looking for forever. It was still frontier-y and wild west, so to speak.”

Welker says he was a bit of a reckless teenager, and credits the wilderness for taming what he calls “shift energy”—that young aggressiveness of his teen years.

“I found this place [Red Devil], and I took a lot of that energy and absorbed it into major expeditions that I would fund myself. I’d pick a piece of country and start calling in supplies so I could trap all winter.”

Welker said his lifestyle was affected by the nation’s founding fathers and historical figures he learned about through reading.

“I absorbed myself in every book on history that I could lay my hands on starting in the sixth grade,” he said. He particularly enjoyed the works of Allan W. Eckert, a 20th-century author who wrote historical novels about Native American tribes.

Welker wanted to be like the novel protagonists. “Somewhat unknowingly, I started forming myself under the likeliness of the frontiersman in the mountain at a very young age. I am not just a hunter, I’m a sportsman. I’m absorbed in the old traditions of frontiersmen, and that’s what carried me through ALONE,” he said.

Jill Dutton is a travel writer who seeks out locally celebrated foods, outdoor activities, and liquor trends. She’s passionate about telling the stories of those she meets on her travels, offering a glimpse at the culture of place. Follow Jill’s travels at www.USAbyRail.blog.

Categories
Camping National Parks The Great Outdoors

Tips for Camping at or Near National Parks

(Courtesy of Mark Koep)

When Mark Koep first started camping with his family 12 years ago, one of his fears was being attacked by a bear. “We’ve seen black bears invading trash cans, but that’s about it,” Koep said in an interview. “There’s not a lot of danger when you’re out camping, especially when there’s a lot of people in the campground, just because animals shy away from that.”

Although bears are rare, Koep said he has seen other wildlife emerge from the surrounding forest at campsites. “We have seen moose, mountain lions, and wolves in and around campgrounds, but never in a threatening way,” he said. “There was always a sense of awe and amazement to see them.”

Koep and his family are among the 10.1 million households who camped in 2020, according to a Kampgrounds of America study. “We already had growth in camping, but then COVID just accelerated it,” Koep said in an interview. “With the loss of other types of travel, camping became a fallback, plus it has the benefits of you’re relatively isolated, so you’re able to stay distant from people, and you’re able to go out into remote areas.”

Koep, who founded resource site Campground Views based on his camping experience, expects campsites to be packed this year now that COVID-19 restrictions are being lifted state by state and vaccinations are on the rise nationwide. “A lot of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands where you can camp for free by just parking off the side of a road are going to see record numbers of people,” he said. For newcomers to the campsite scene, Koep offers the following tips.

When campgrounds tell you they’re booked 2 to 6 months out, call back.

“They may have just had a few cancellations for the weekend,” Koep said. “Generally, people are booking up campgrounds, but then the trend we’re seeing is cancellations at the last second. There are about a billion campsites nationwide, and there’s never going to be a million people camping. So there’s always availability.”

(Courtesy of Mark Koep)

Broaden your search for campsites outside of major national parks such as Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Teton.

“There’s a handful of campgrounds inside Yellowstone National Park and other national parks, but if you do a 50-mile radius search around Yellowstone, there’s literally hundreds of campgrounds,” he said. “It may require a bit more research, but you can always find a campsite in the surrounding area.”

Bring a propane stove when camping in a tent.

“If you’re in an RV, you’ll have a stove or microwave in the RV and maybe even a power-appropriate barbecue. And in a tent, generally, you’ll have a Coleman camping stove that’s propane powered,” Koep said. “Sometimes you can cook on a fire at a campsite, but there’s usually a lot of fire restrictions in the summertime, especially out west.”

(Courtesy of Mark Koep)

Ask before transporting firewood across state lines.

“Some states don’t allow it,” he said. “Research and understand the rules of where you’re going before you get there so that you don’t inadvertently do something that causes damage to the area.”

Juliette Fairley is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Born in Chateauroux, France, and raised outside of Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, Juliette is a well-adjusted military brat who now lives in Manhattan. She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TheStreet, Time magazine, the Chicago City Wire, the Austin-American Statesman, and many other publications across the country.

(Courtesy of Mark Koep)
Categories
A Love of Learning The Great Outdoors

Outside Changes Everything

(Ben White/Unslpash)

My friend Ann, a veteran mother of four, has one piece of parenting advice she passes out consistently to frazzled new parents, particularly if they happen to have a fussy baby: “Get out of the house. Put that baby in a stroller and get outside. Outside changes everything.” She’s right.

Outside really does change everything, especially in today’s world when, by some calculations, up to 90 percent of our lives now happen inside. And each year we spend more than 1,000 hours in front of a screen. It’s an insidious change from the way people traditionally lived their lives, and it’s not for the better. Happily, some folks are beginning to notice.

In his 2005 international bestseller “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder,” Richard Louv discusses the importance of being outside and interacting with our natural world. “Now more than ever, we need nature as a balancing agent,” he says. Turns out the benefits are myriad, but here’s my top five.

Improve Mental Health

With so much anger, anxiety, and stress happening indoors, simply stepping outside can be an easy antidote. While it isn’t guaranteed to cure all your problems, breathing fresh air and observing nature has definite mental health benefits.

Follow the science: Sunshine is a natural mood-lifter because it boosts the body’s serotonin levels. Serotonin helps stabilize moods and keeps people calm and focused. Outdoor time also decreases hyperactivity in children. As Louv said, “The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.”

Follow the logic: Outdoors, children can run and yell, jump and climb; it’s an easy, healthy, all-natural way to burn off excess energy, so much so that children diagnosed with ADHD who spend more time outdoors tend to have milder symptoms.

(Annie Spratt/Unsplash)

Improve Physical Health

It’s important to prioritize the time we spend outdoors. “Time in nature is not leisure time; it’s an essential investment in our children’s health (and also, by the way, in our own)” Louv says. Perhaps that’s because there’s just something about being outside that naturally encourages people to be active.

My plan to relax on the front porch turned into an evening weeding the flower bed—working up a sweat and pulling a sizeable pile of weeds. Turns out being physically tired helped me fall asleep more quickly and sleep better throughout the night.

But the health benefits of being outside don’t stop there.

Sunshine (again!) helps rev up the vitamin D levels, which are critical for a healthy functioning immune system. Plus, those same vitamin D levels also build strong bones and muscles. Outdoor exercise—particularly weight-bearing exercise such as biking, walking, hiking, or climbing—increases strength and endurance even more. Dealing with the changing terrain of the natural landscape improves balance.

There are other, more unexpected health benefits of being outdoors. Optometrists know our eyes aren’t made for screens, and excess time staring at tablets, phones, and computers leads to dry eye and eye strain. Nature provides ample opportunities to exercise our farsighted muscles and build depth perception as we look at things 20 feet or 200 feet or even 2,000 feet away.

Build Confidence

Beyond the mental and physical benefit of being outside, a life spent with nature changes us in many positive ways, perhaps because the things we accomplish outdoors are real—not virtual—and so are the rewards.

Encountering a bear or a mountain lion on the trail and living to tell the tale is about as real and confidence-building as it gets. As Louv says, “The pleasure of being alive is brought into sharper focus when you need to pay attention to stay alive.”

(Will Stewart/Unsplash)

But wild adventures don’t have to be life and death to be meaningful. Walking the length of a log without falling off is its own triumph. Put that log 2, 3, or 5 feet off the ground and bump up the thrill of achievement. Try jumping across a narrow spot on a stream. Fail and you walk home with squishy wet socks and pruny toes; succeed and you walk home with dry feet and a smile on your face.

Hunting and fishing or gathering nuts, berries, or mushrooms in the woods bring their own brand of confidence. Want to grow your confidence? Grow a garden. Invest yourself in a very real way in keeping yourself (and your family) alive by planting, tending, and then gathering up your own food.

Make Social Connections

It’s not immediately obvious, but being outdoors offers social connections. Opportunities to work together on an outdoor project cultivate a spirit of cooperation. Fallen logs are too heavy to be moved on their own. One person catches the fish while another builds the fire to cook over, but both jobs are necessary.

Visit a farmer’s market and you’ll soon strike up conversations with vendors. Do this for several weeks in a row and soon you have new friends you’ll look forward to seeing … and it’s all brought to you by the great outdoors.

Promote Learning

Take it from a veteran homeschool mom—being outdoors is the ultimate educational experience. In fact, many of our best learning moments took place outside. A life outdoors promotes curiosity and the learning of new words and concepts. Being outside nurtures creativity and imagination; it encourages risk-taking and independence.

Why is the sky blue? Why are rainbow colors always lined up the same way? Why don’t earthworms have eyes? Why do hummingbirds hum? What does pileated mean? Why is the sand at the bottom of the sandbox cooler than the sand at the top? Why do flowers smell different? With so many curious, interesting things around them, kids learn without even being aware they’re learning.

(Leo Rivas/Unsplash)

Creativity and imagination take flight as leaves become boats carrying cargoes of dandelion flowers. Trees become houses with leafy roofs. A fallen log becomes a mighty train headed down the rails to adventure. Outdoors, people learn about the interconnectedness of the natural world and its inherent complexities. Fisherfolk protect the rivers, lakes, and streams that serve as homes for trout, bass, crappie, and catfish. Hunters conserve the homes where the deer, elk, bison, and antelope roam.

Working to achieve that indoors-outdoors balance, Ginny Yurich, founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and her family decided to make a conscious effort to spend more time outdoors … like 1,000 hours each year. Yurich ended up starting a movement (www.1000HoursOutside.com), promoting the benefits of spending large quantities of time outdoors. Whether you’re a city dweller or country through and through, whether you spend 1,000 hours outdoors or something less, time spent outdoors is good for the soul. Because being outside really does change everything.

Gina Prosch is a writer, home educator, life coach, and parent located in mid-Missouri. She is the author of “This Day’s Joy” and “Finding This Day’s Joy,” both of which are available at Amazon. Find her online at GinaProsch.com or TheHomeschoolWay.com. She also co-hosts The OnlySchoolers Podcast (OnlySchoolers.com).