Led by a unique team of experienced world-class outdoor adventurers, guides, instructors, and experienced meditators, this weekend will provide room for exploring the layers of self-knowledge possible through adventuring in our natural environment. During the weekend, lovers of nature and those interested in hiking, rock climbing and kayaking will come together to adventure without and within.
To get an idea what see the interview of Lama Willa Miller by R. Richards below:
Read more on the program at our MSI and Wonderwell’s Webpages, and stay tuned for more details posted on this blog.
“The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
I started Mountain Spirit Institute in 1998 when we led our first trip to Peru, with the basic mission “to facilitate a deeper connection to the natural environment, each other and ourselves.” Since then it has become ever more apparent how we need “nature time” more than ever. It’s good to see people out on the trail, and in kayaks these days, but National Park use is down in the U.S, and technology competes for the breath of fresh air. We just offered a presentation last night in a small town in New Hampshire called “Get Outside While You Still Can.” The piece below echoes a lot of what we covered in our presentation, and why we started MSI.
• Get Out into nature that is
• How do you view nature?
• Find it hard to get nature time?
• Technology Got ya?
How do you spend your time?……
Doing This?
Or Doing This?
Come and explore, with Mountain Spirit board members
Bob Stremba and Randy Richards, Nature Deficit Disorder
&
Why we need to get outside while we still can!
GETTING OUTSIDE!
WEDNESDAY, JULY 25th , 7:00PM
Cost: Free
Lake Sunapee Bank Community Room
116 Newport Road
New London, NH, USA
For more information call 603-763-2668 or http://www.mtnspirit.org
Wildlife Bridge Overpass – Giving animals a leg up on the auto traffic
Where’s the merge lane and who has right of way when the only traffic are animals such as tigers, wallabies, possums or kangaroos? I suppose whoever is highest on the food chain gets to go first across these overpasses with no roads, and only trees and grasses.
Someone posted the aerial image at right this evening. At first glance it looked like the same bridge under which I passed two years ago on the east coast highway heading north from Sydney, Australia. I dug in my files, and found the snapshot of the bridge and include it here.
I was so taken aback by the site of the strange overpass, which looked like a neglected highway department lapse in maintenance, that I stopped the car and took a picture. At the time, I didn’t know what it was, and after some discussion with my wife, decided it must a wildlife corridor.
Wildlife Overpass – East Coast Australia
It’s good to see there are others. The Facebook image didn’t have a caption indicating where it was, but looks like it could be another location in Australia. Anyway, “Good on ya” for building this you Aussies! Anybody got an idea how many of these wildlife overpasses there are, and who’s the traffic cop?
While putting in at the Connecticut River the other day in Lyme, NH, I met Daniel Embree, owner of Bunker Hill Boatworks in North Pomfret Vermont. Dan was jut pulling up to the landing in a beautiful double ended rowboat, the likes I’d never seen. Then again, I don’t get to the Adirondacks that much anymore. He explained his boat was an Adirondack Guideboat, which is quite common in “the ‘Dacks”. Having started to understand the healing power and love of working on boats, (mind you, I only do minor repairs) I immediately noticed, as anyone would, the beauty of the workmanship of Dan’s craft, which is also…his craft. Dan built the boat.
Dan has been making boats since 1990, and has decided to build on and improve his traditional design based on 19th century patterns by D. Grant, and is considered by many the fastest fixed-seat rowing craft. The history of the guideboat is one of backwater travel for sightseeing and sport which was easy to row and portage, (unlike my beautiful but heavy Mansfield canoe which I just portaged to Morgan Pond the other day. My neck still hurts).
Dan uses a traditional wooden design with a the use of fiberglass. Each boat is first ribbed and planked and then coated with a fiberglass/epoxy resin. This increases strength and preserves the wooden look, and makes the boat easier to maintain. The Adirondack Guideboat is 16ft in length and weighs in at 75lbs. So make your portages short. The boats are made of cherry, birds eye maple, and white pine woods.
Nice Work Dan! A great boat.
I was taken by the product I thought I’d include it in our blog and let you know about a nice guy doing good work. Dan seemed to have an aversion to websites, so you’d have to reach him by phone or email at 802-295-3552. He does have an email, but he might tie me up to the stern of his Guideboat and drag me down the Connecticut if I give it out..no just kidding – I’ll post it here later, if he’s interested in letting it out. For now…
Dan Embree – Box 331, North Pomfret VT 05053
THE SAILING STONES, also referred to as sliding rocks or moving rocks, are a geological puzzling phenomenon found in California, Death Valley. These rocks, some as heavy as 300 Kilograms, are mysteriously transported across a virtually flat desert plain without human or animal intervention, leaving erratic trails in the hard mud behind them, some hundreds of yards long. They move by some mysterious force, and in the nine decades since we have known about them, no-one has ever seen them in motion.. until recently..
Mystery or Mother Nature?
Deep in the heart of the California desert lies one of the natural world’s most puzzling mysteries: the moving rocks of Death Valley. These are not ordinary moving rocks that tumble down mountainsides in avalanches, are carried along riverbeds by flowing water, or are tossed aside by animals.
These rocks, some as heavy as 700 pounds, are inexplicably transported across a virtually flat desert plain, leaving erratic trails in the hard mud behind them, some hundreds of yards long.
They move by some mysterious force, and in the nine decades since we have known about them, no one has ever seen them move.
Until now. Racetrack Playa is the seasonally dry lake (a playa) located in the northern part of the Panamint Mountains in Death Valley National Park, California, U.S.A. that is famous for ‘sailing stones‘. One cold winter morning, when the snowmelt covered the playa, the solution to the puzzle was finally caught on film.
Interesting comments and opinions, both pro and con here..
Editor’s Note: We include this post simply because it’s certainly a natural curiosity of mother nature. Let’s learn more about the planet on which we live.
The United States government on Thursday returned to Peru 14 pre-Columbian and colonial art pieces that had been stolen or looted, according to Radio Programas. “These pieces of art that have been recovered are part of our cultural legacy as a nation but, of course, they belong to all of humanity,” said Harold Forsyth, Peru’s ambassador to Washington D.C.
The objects include nine Cusco-school religious paintings, from the 17th and 18th centuries, that came from Peru’s southern Cusco region, a whistling pot from the, Read the rest of this story…
An Outward Bound base of operations in Washington State will be reopened according to the Northwest Outward Bound School Board of Directors. I’m glad to hear this good news, as I spent many a day there when working for OB, and like many instructors, still consider it my other home. This just in..
“On Monday, several members of the Washington Advisory Council (Steve Smith, Josh Cole, Dave Betts, Wyatt Southworth-Thomas, Julie Weis) drove to Portland to present a few options for the potential reopening of the Mazama basecamp. The following has been released from the board of directors of the Northwest Outward Bound School:
“The Northwest Outward Bound School Board of Directors has enthusiastically committed to reopening the Washington Program and the Mazama Basecamp for the 2013 season. How robust this programming will be has not yet been determined, but
OB student rappels in the North Cascade Wilderness
Northwest Outward Bound School Board, staff, and volunteers look forward to offering powerful programs in a spectacular setting. Reviving the program has taken the effort, commitment, and dedication of dozens of people on the Washington Advisory Council and the Friends of Mazama group, and moving from this decision to program implementation will take the support of many more people. For this to come to fruition, we need to raise a significant amount of funding, and we accept gifts through our website (www.nwobs.org) or at 31520 E. Woodard Street, Troutdale, OR, 97060. Your contribution toward this effort will make it a reality. We wish to thank all of those who have given time, energy, and funds to get us to this place and to all of those who will offer support in the coming months.”
Mountain Spirit Institute Offers Upcoming Programs and Special Events
Mountain Spirit Institute of the Dartmouth Lake Sunapee Region and Queenstown New Zealand area, is offering programs this summer and fall in New Hampshire, based on its mission to “help people reconnect with the environment, each other and a deeper connection to one’s self”.
The first program, on July 22nd , is an Adventure Educator’s Sharing Symposium open to teachers, students and outdoor educators who would like to share, learn and apply best practices of group processing and facilitation, especially with a holistic approach. There is no charge, as MSI is offering this as a public service.
Mountain Spirit will also be offering a Reconnection with Nature Hike on July 24th where there will be hiking to a local mountaintop, and participants will have a chance to relax with a short meditation and powerful nature reading. Again, there is no charge, as MSI is offering this as a public service.
On July 28th there will be a one-day Solo retreat starting at eight in the morning with a basic orientation and safety talk. Participants will then be shown their own “solo spot” where they will spend the day with minimal gear and distractions. There is a nominal program fee for this event. There will also be an Overnight Solo on August 24th and 25th where participants spend the night under a tarp in a beautiful local setting. The goal for Solo’s are to reconnect, unplug, contemplate and be present in nature with few distractions with the safety net of experienced facilitators and guides. Solos will also be offered as an on-demand basis.
Lama Miller
Mountain Spirit Institute is collaborating with Lama Willa Miller of the Wonderwell Refuge, in Springfield NH on an outdoor adventure program called Mindfulness in the Mountains. The Natural Dharma Fellowship has a retreat center, where the program will be based for the weekend of Oct 12-14th.
MSI will offer again its MSI Film Series, one of which will be Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. This remarkable film follows two men, one an Australian and other an American truck driver, on their amazing path to recovering their health through juicing and healthy lifestyle choices . There will be some testimonials and discussion after the film. They do what their website calls a “reboot of your body”.
Rock Climbing will be offered to parent/children pairs, as well as families up to four, on the local crags in the region by appointment.
Mountain Spirit Institute is an insured non-profit educational organization started in 1998. Their first program was a cultural immersion trip to Peru. All of the summer and fall programs will be facilitated and managed by internationally recognized guides and facilitators. For more information on any of these programs or on Mountain Spirit Institute, visit their website at www.mtnspirit.org or call 603-763-2668
Edward Abbey: Action outdoorsman and author of Desert Solitaire, *The Monkey Wrench Gang and 17 other popular novels and essay collections, was one of America’s most powerful and relentless spokesmen for the environment and certainly its most uninhibited. Here, at Abbey’s curmudgeonly bat, is his introduction to The Backcountry Handbook, of which I thought I’d post the first half. I doubt many fans of Edward Abbey would find this little gem, buried in an outdoor handbook.
There’s one thing that gripes me in my lurching about in America’s blessed but overcrowded backcountry, it’s those androids from the moronic inferno of contemporary techno culture who apparently
Learned outdoors etiquette from The Boy Scout Handbook of I928.I mean the cretins who build their campfires with green logs laboriously chewed from living trees with dull hatchets. And then erect a corral of rocks to enclose a fire about l0 times bigger than even a White Man needs. And then,
upon departure from the scene of their felonies, pile all their garbage upon the smoldering remains-including such non-combustibles as tinfoil and wet tin cans, wet condoms and Pampers-let it smoke and black- en and stink for while and conclude the infamy by heaping this mess with a pile of mud and stones. Everywhere we go in what’s left of natural America, we find these miniature trash dumps. The intention, no doubt, was to prevent forest fires, as Smokey the Bore has been instructing us for 50 years. But fires are natural, inevitable and good for the forest; Any Native American can tell you that, if you can find one. (The true terror of the modern forest is not the wildfire but the logger with his chain saw, the road builder with his bulldozer, the cowboy with his cow. These types wreak far more destruction upon our forests than any wildfire ever did or could. And wreak it at our expense, financed by our tax dollars.) Why do these Ralph Lauren he-man Campfire Girls build giant fire rings filled with half-baked rubbish? I don’t know. No one knows. They are the product not of thought but of ritual, spastic reflex, ancient ideologies conceived in sin and whelped by bureaucrats. One discovers such mementos even in the sand and rock of the desert, where the nearest tree may be a scrubby juniper four feet tall, l0 feet away. Mysteries of the Wild. But irksome. There are many things that irk, actually, not only me but you, but this is not the place for a complete listing.
Editor’s Note: Did you know that The Monkey Wrench Gang was blacklisted from the east coast booksellers during its first printing? Maybe the east coast establishment didn’t want to disturb the goings-on, as this book surely tends to do. I have a well-read family member, that has an incredible breadth of education and reading behind him. What’s more he was a hut ranger in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He had never heard of Edward Abbey. I’m not sure if he’s read him yet. I’ll have to loan him my tattered copy of The Gang.
Mountain Spirit's Blog 
Death Valley’s “Sailing” Stones
17/07/2012Sailing Stones
THE SAILING STONES, also referred to as sliding rocks or moving rocks, are a geological puzzling phenomenon found in California, Death Valley. These rocks, some as heavy as 300 Kilograms, are mysteriously transported across a virtually flat desert plain without human or animal intervention, leaving erratic trails in the hard mud behind them, some hundreds of yards long. They move by some mysterious force, and in the nine decades since we have known about them, no-one has ever seen them in motion.. until recently..
Mystery or Mother Nature?
Deep in the heart of the California desert lies one of the natural world’s most puzzling mysteries: the moving rocks of Death Valley. These are not ordinary moving rocks that tumble down mountainsides in avalanches, are carried along riverbeds by flowing water, or are tossed aside by animals.
These rocks, some as heavy as 700 pounds, are inexplicably transported across a virtually flat desert plain, leaving erratic trails in the hard mud behind them, some hundreds of yards long.
They move by some mysterious force, and in the nine decades since we have known about them, no one has ever seen them move.
Until now. Racetrack Playa is the seasonally dry lake (a playa) located in the northern part of the Panamint Mountains in Death Valley National Park, California, U.S.A. that is famous for ‘sailing stones‘. One cold winter morning, when the snowmelt covered the playa, the solution to the puzzle was finally caught on film.
Interesting comments and opinions, both pro and con here..
Editor’s Note: We include this post simply because it’s certainly a natural curiosity of mother nature. Let’s learn more about the planet on which we live.
Tags:comments, Death Valley, Mystery Solved, Sailing Stones
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