Tough Break
November 6, 2008
By Lucas Will
I ruined 2 digital cameras this past summer. Granted, they weren’t the industries leading models, but they were still nice, functional cameras worth a few pennies. Worse yet, one of them wasn’t mine.
During a two-week trip paddling the wilderness lakes and rivers of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Northern Minnesota, my camera went down. In my defense, I knowingly did nothing wrong.
At some point, the dry box that I kept it in obtained some moisture, either from dew or possibly a splash of water. Not realizing this I continued to store the camera in the box, sealing it tight when not in use. One morning as I went to snap a frame of my crusty eyed brother emerging from our tent, its functioning went awry.
My First Ghost Town Trip, Part II: Cortez, Nevada
July 14, 2008
By Clint Thomsen
Click Here For Part I To This Ongoing Series
CORTEZ? I didn’t remember seeing a Cortez on Chris Case’s map, but our collective euphoria spiked again and we were off. The mining woman’s instructions led us up a winding canyon past a modern-ish mining operation. We stopped on a sandy knoll and got out of the Jeep to do what men do after they’ve just downed a twelve-pack of Dr. Pepper. That’s when we noticed remains of foundations in the distance and old wood strewn on the ground.
That’s also when we noticed the flames under the Jeep.
We frantically tossed handfuls of sand until we extinguished the fire. Turns out the Jeep’s undercarriage had collected some brush during earlier bushwhacking. Unfortunately, the Jeep also leaked oil. Oil plus brush plus engine heat makes for a scary situation, and we were happy once the flames were doused. We were even happier when the Jeep still worked.
Hiking With Olivia: Trail Entertainment
July 14, 2008
By Olivia Reese
Hiking is about the scenery, the physical exertion, accomplishing goals and of course, the food. But playing games and singing songs while wandering through mountain meadows and shaded forest paths keeps our brains fresh and makes us laugh. Check out some of my favorites:
20 Questions
20 Questions is an old standby capable of entertaining for hours. It is simple and one of my favorites. I spent a weekend last month hiking the Great Sequoia National Forest and it took 3 hours of intense questioning to determine what my friend Victoria was thinking about…it was a mailbox. We played the game again hiking in Tahoe. It took us 2 hours to figure out “keyboard”.
The rules:
One person thinks of an object. Everyone else asks yes or no questions about the object, attempting to determine what it is. Some helpful questions: “Can you buy it at Walmart?”, “Is it made of plastic?”, “Would it cost more than $50?”, “Do you own one?”.
Climate, Trees, and People In The Peruvian Amazon: Toward a Sustained Rainforest Movement
June 19, 2008
By Nick Engelfried
While many adults in the US are still in a state of denial over global warming, young schoolchildren in villages deep in the Peruvian Amazon are learning about the effects climate destabilization is likely to have on their way of life.
That’s just one thing I learned during a recent three-week trip to the Loreto region (northeast corner) of Peru, with a Peace and Conflict Studies class from Pacific University in Oregon.
My First Ghost Town Trip, Part I: The Search For Gold Acres
June 18, 2008
By Clint Thomsen
MY PASSION FOR GHOST TOWNS was sparked in my college American History class. My professor, a quirky 1970’s holdover that had a knack for storytelling, told the class about a ghost town he’d found somewhere in the Nevada desert. Ghost towns are the stuff of legends and my mind filled with images of dusty roads and saloon doors creaking in the wind. I stayed after class that day and asked him to tell me more.
Later, Tyler, John, and I sat around Professor Case’s kitchen table as he unfolded an old map of Nevada. He made some recommendations and we ultimately decided to make the mining town of Gold Acres our initiation into ghost-towning. Armed with wide-eyed excitement and a topo map (these were the pre-Google Earth and GPS days), we hopped in Tyler’s Jeep and drove into the sunset.
