Archive for the ‘Mountain People’ Category
02/08/2009
By R. Richards
In the next few weeks I’ll be journaling the Peru 2009 Cultural Immersion program which lasted 14 days. I won’t chronicle every day but the most important highlights of our experience.
We had 7 participants: Sally R. and her husband Scott S., Gail and Hal B. of Sunapee NH, newlyweds Tim Y. and Amy G. and Betsy S. of Grantham NH. Most were teachers which made for good dynamics. On our first day in Cusco, we hiked up to Sacsayhuaman ruins. After walking the great walls, we had a little meeting as the sun set, setting the tone for open communication and willing to stretch outside of one’s comfort zone. The group all agreed they’d give it their best shot. That night we had dinner at the Retama where Guillermo is the music director of his band Chimu’s/Chimu Inka and plays there almost nightly.
Guillermo plays "Quena" flute at Moray
After a night in Tika Wasi in Cusco, we headed for the Chinchero and the fascinating agricultural terraces of Moray. Here, Guillermo took out his flute and played, setting a surreal tone in the ruins. You could hear the music echo through the terraces below. Then there was a hair-raising ride (not so much much for me, I’m used to the heights) to the Inka salt pans just before the sun set, then off to Anna’s pension. Many thanks goes to Julio of Personal Travel Service for setting up our ride with Ernesto and the Mercedes bus plus all tickets and other logistics in the Sacred Valley.
Anna's Family, Guillermo & Ernesto
It had been a few years since I’d seen Anna when I stayed at her pension for night. It was good to see Anna again, her daughter Katey and her other daughter who had been in Italy for four years, who I’d not yet met. Anyway, we all settled in nicely, the participants heading off to stay in nearby homes, down the street. We’d all met up for dinner at Anna’s though. Although it was a bit of a switch from the four star Hotel Antigua in Lima, everyone adjusted well to Anna’s where we’d be basing ourselves over the next few days. Below is a short clip as we arrived at Anna’s. Ernesto our knowledgeable driver, Anna, her godchild, daughter, and Guillermo are featured.
Tags:1- Video Posts, Anna Sequeros, cultural immersion, Dexter Randall Richards, ecospiritual psychology, espiritiential education, Experiential Education, Guillermo Seminario, Holistic Living, Julio Aquila, Mountain Spirit, mtnspirit.org, Ollantaytambo, Personal Travel Service, Peru, Spiritual, Sunapee, Sustainability
Posted in 1- Video Posts, Experiential Education, Mountain People, Peru, South America, Spiritual, Sustainable Living/Communities, Traveling | Leave a Comment »
20/06/2009
One Boy’s Passion for Wilderness Survival Skills
Marco & Jelena Wells
One never knows when an inspirational person will cross one’s path. Today, for me, it came in the form of Marco Wells, all of 12 years, who visited us in Piha, with his sister Jelena, mother and father Tina and Steve and grandmother Helen from the former republic of Yugoslavia, (who recently attended our wedding a few weeks ago.) From the start, it’s a bit hard to determine who’s the biggest inspiration in this family, whether it’s Helen for starting her journey to New Zealand from eastern Europe years ago, or Marco’s dad who fosters his son’s love of the outdoors and wilderness survival. Then there’s his mother, who gets just as excited as her son, when we got the compass out and starting shooting bearings off the nearby peaks. It could also be his wonderful sister who’s eyes lit up during our day hike, when she looked over the edge of the windy cliff, which dropped a few hundred metres down to the Tasman sea. But this story leads me back to Marco.
A few weeks ago at our wedding, “Grandmother Helen” (we’ve also adopted her as our own), told us about her grandson who “is interested in the out-of-doors”. Well, when I started talking to Marco today at our home, “interested” was an understatement. Marco is passionate about wilderness skills, wild edibles, feeling the wind, and even a bit of climbing and just being out there. He’s got it in his blood.
Today's Hiking Buddies
My wife and I later wondered aloud, after they had left back for the Auckland area, what makes one boy passionate about the outdoors and the next, not. I was that boy which started with my romping and winter camping trips around the John F Gile Memorial Forest and Morgan Pond in New Hamsphire. Marco, his dad and I talked about “nature deficit disorder” and, stating the obvious, I mentioned the threat of video games, technology and kid’s lack of nature time.
(Image: L-R:Randy & Amanda Richards, Grandmother Helen, Marco, Yelena, Tina and Steven Wells)
Kare Kare Beach from our Hike Today
Not Marco! He’s out back building different types of fires, constructing snares and assembling survival kits in a can. OK, I’m sure he puts his own time on the computer too, but he sure knows quite a few native plants and is working on lots of survival skills. On our walk today he was naming a number of plants and their their uses. He taught me a number of things today, but one stuck in my mind. When collecting and using silver ferns for a emergency shelter, be sure to turn the ferns belly up, otherwise, the tiny seeds, adhered to the bottom sides of the fern, will drop off on you during the night causing irritation and itching. He showed me the tiny seeds. Marco, just so you know, I’ll not forget that. (more…)
Tags:Desert Solitare, Edward Abby, Edward Whymper, John F Gile Memorial Forest, Journal of A Trapper, Kare Kare, Kurt Hahn, Last Child in the Woods, Marco Wells, Morgan Pond, My side of the mountain, Nature Deficit disorder, NH, Osborne Russell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Randy and Amanda Richards, Richard Louve, Scrambles Amongst the Alps, Sir Edmund Hillary, Tasman Sea, The wilderness world of John Muir, Utah
Posted in Books, Climb/Ski/Mntneering, Experiential Education, Inspirational People, Mountain People, New Zealand, Power of Place | Leave a Comment »
16/06/2009
Bob Stremba
M.S.I. VP/Board member and fellow spirit adventurer Bob Stremba, EdD, is heading for Oregon and Washington State tomorrow to take a bit of time off between semesters running the Adventure Education Department at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. He’s also headed north to climb on Mt. Hood’s southern route again. He’ll be climbing the route with fellow board members of the Association of Experiential Education. Over the years, Bob has also summited Mt. Rainer twice, as well as Mt. Baker and Mt. Adams.
After his trip to the Northwest, Bob will be flying to Russia where he’ll be going into classrooms, facilitating group team building initiatives for Russian students. When I asked how his conversational Russian was coming along, he said he’ll have a translator. However he is working on the written language a bit, I assume so he can write a bit on blackboards and flip-charts. Stremba applied for, and was selected to be the lead (and solo) facilitator for this program. At program’s end, Bob will finish in western Russian – which is only a two hour train ride to Finland, so he figured he might as well leave Russia from the western border. If we’re lucky, we’ll get some updates on this blog during his travels. We wish him the best on his program and further travels to Finland after program’s end.
Tags:Association of Experiiential Education, Bob Stremba, Dexter Randall Richards, ecospiritual psychology, Experiential Education, Finland, Holistic Living, Mountain Spirit, Mountaineering, Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier, mtnspirit.org, New Hampshire, New Zealand, Peru, Russia, Spiritual, Sunapee, Sustainability, Utah
Posted in Experiential Education, Focus on MSI People, Leadership, Mountain People, MSI News, Traveling | Leave a Comment »
12/06/2009
Indigenous Rights in Amazon
Peru is witnessing violent clashes between indigenous groups trying to protect the Amazon. The government has pushed through legislation allowing intensive mining, logging and large scale farming in the rainforest.
If government and extractive industries proceed, the Peruvian rainforest and its people will suffer unfortunate consequences for the global climate, indigenous cultures, local and global environment.
Interested readers of this blog can sign a petition addressed to the President of Peru, to support the struggle of the indigenous peoples to protect the Amazon. A well respected Latin American politician has plans to deliver the petition to President Alan Garcia on the signer’s behalf.
Petition to the President of Peru, Alan Garcia:
We urge you to immediately cease the forceful suppression of indigenous protests, to suspend laws that open up the Amazon to extractive industries, and to engage in a genuine dialogue with indigenous groups to end the conflict and address their legitimate demands and rights.
UPDATE: To date 112,881 people have shown their support to the indigenous struggle by signing the petition in response to the people’s voicing there opposition to this plan. Peru’s legislature has just temporarily suspended two of the controversial decrees because of this pressure.
Mountain Spirit Institute, as an organization, doesn’t advocate on political behalf’s but believes by disseminating information, readers of this blog, and participants of our programs may make informed choices. For information on MSI’s core values, which include learning from indigenous peoples click here.
Tags:Amazon, Climate Change, indigenous rights, logging, mining in South America, Peruvian government, President Alan Garcia, rainforest protection
Posted in Climate Change, Conservation, Environment, Leadership, Mountain People, Sustainable Living/Communities | Leave a Comment »
15/05/2009
R. Richards and A. Hamilton at Mt. Cook, NZ Ceremony set for 30th May near Auckland
Executive Director Randall Richards is getting married to Amanda Hamilton. Randy 51, is a native of Sunapee New Hampshire, USA, and Amanda, 40, born in South Africa, who has been living in New Zealand for a number of years, are planning a simple ceremony at the end of the month. Neither have been married before, nor have any children.
It took their mutual friend Lizbeth Asserhoj from Denmark, living in Copenhagen, to put them together. Richards knew Asserhoj from travels in Peru, and Hamilton first met her in Australia, and later traveled with her in India. Lizbeth thought the two would get along, and went so far as to invite Richards on the India trip in hopes the two would cross paths and hit it off.
What started with some emails and Skype video calls, soon developed into a trip to New Hampshire, USA for Amanda, and month later, a trip for Randy to NZ. The two will be having the ceremony on the 3oth of May at Piha Beach near Auckland, New Zealand, Amanda’s twin sister, mother and friends will be present. The two will also plan celebratory gatherings in the U.S. when they eventually return.
Ceremony on N. end of Piha Beach, NZ
Both are lovers of the mountains. Hamilton has been a ranger for the Aspiring National Park for the last few seasons on New Zealand’s South Island, and has enjoyed trekking in Nepal, the Alps and other areas. Richards has been climbing, skiing and mountain guiding most of his life.
Tags:adventure travel, Amanda Hamilton, Dexter R. Richards, ecospiritual psychology, Experiential Education, Holistic Living, Hut Ranger, Mountain Spirit, Mountaineering, Mt. Aspiring National Park, mtnspirit.org, New Hampshire, New Zealand, Peru, Piha Beach, Randy Richards, Spiritual, Sunapee, Sustainability
Posted in Holistic Living, Mountain People, New Zealand, Spiritual | 1 Comment »
15/05/2009
MSI and Family Cari
A Son Helps Build a Family Lodge on a Remote Island
There are times in my life when I’ve returned to a wonderful place in the world that I’m still getting to know, and by chance, I’ve end up camping in the same field or returning to the same hostel. Only when I walked into the place, do I remember having stayed there before.
Richard Cari with a Kantuta, National Flower of Peru
Richard Cari’s home and the Kantuta Lodge is one of those places. Since I’m on the subject of “chance travel”, the reader might be interested my entry on a similar instance where I was hitch hiking across France and ended up sleeping in the same field I had slept in 15 years prior. But for now, more on Amantani Island on Lake Titicaca.
I’d come to Amantani Island a few times during my travels in Peru. The place and people drew me in. No cars, electricity only a few hours a day, not even cats or dogs, which made the place seem peaceful. There is hardship on Amantani. The small population living on the 3 mile by 1.5 mile island on Lake Titicaca live at 13000 feet in stunning but somewhat harsh environment. There sustainable crops of Quinoa, potatoes and herbs are rain dependent. There is no irrigation of the crops. People do go hungry, despite the tourism dollars that trickle in from visitors taking boats from the nearby (4 hours!) harbor or Puno, Peru. Most visitors stay at family homes on the island’s west side, who have formed a cooperative rotating schedule that spreads the wealth and visitor’s dollars so no one family is reaping the homestays.
At Outward Bound we learned as instructors the metaphors of community, and here on Amantani, the population, because of its environment is a clear example of community. The island people work together with the resources they have to create the best possible outcome for all.
Segundino & Marcelina Cari of Amantani Island
Segundino, the island’s vice-Shaman, if you will, and his wife Marcelina have what was once a small home like the other villagers near the boat docks. But their son Richard went to University in Puno and majored in Tourism. He has come back with a plethora of “tools” and ideas he learned at school, that have transformed their home into the Kantuta Lodge, complete a separate building dining room, with longer beds for Gringos and Gringas and the only hot shower on the island.
Amantani Island, Lake Titicaca
Richard has done a spectacular job with his new skills making a better life for his family. He is creating a market. I told him I would submit the family lodge Lonely Planet, and even though I’ve not followed through I suspect the word has already gotten out about his good work.
The last time I visited Family Cari, I enjoyed the stay thoroughly. I got to help Richard’s sister Wilma do some cooking and plant potatoes by digging trenches in the garden below the house. I didn’t do very well by the way. Wilma, showing me the digging technique with a short handled hoe, giggled as I’d dig for a few feet before feeling breathless from the altitude. Her mother and father looked on from the house with a wry smile. (more…)
Tags:adventure travel, Amantani Island, David Mamani, Dexter R. Richards, ecospiritual psychology, Experiential Education, Holistic Living, Kantuta Lodge, Mountain Spirit, Mountaineering, mtnspirit.org, New Hampshire, Peru, Randy Richards, Richard Cari, Segundino Cari, Service, Spiritual, Sunapee, Sustainability, Tourism, weaving, Wilma Cari
Posted in Environment, Experiential Education, Focus on MSI People, Holistic Living, Leadership, Mountain People, MSI News, Peru, South America, Sustainable Living/Communities, Traveling | 4 Comments »
27/04/2009
Bob Boyce, Scot Bergeron: Matterhorn's Summit Image: R Richards
Three local guys from Sunapee, New Hampshire, USA summited the Matterhorn via the Hornli Ridge. Although it’s been a few years since the team summitted, a story that happened on the ascent bears worth mentioning here. It’s about boundaries, keeping your cool, and international relations.
Scot Bergeron, Bob Boyce, and I decided to do the standard route from the Hornli Ridge Hut. Scot and I were playing music just over the hill in Saas Fee for the summer and took a few days off. I’d done the Haute Route once with a group of Austrian young guns from Strolz Ski Boots in Lech, and another time with a couple of clients, but hadn’t done any climbs in the area, and thought the Matterhorn would be a good place to start.
We were the first out of the hut in the early darkness. We soon found ourselves overtaken by few of the local guides and their clients, not because of our slowness in climbing but the rather slow going in keeping on route which none of us had climbed before. We’d see headlamps off to our south and figured they were a bit more on route than us, so we’d veer in their direction. As the sun was coming up we came to a roped section just below the Solvay Hut at 4000 m. I was belaying Scot, who was just about half-way up the pitch, when a Swiss mountain guide came up to our belay (more…)
Tags:Alps, Austria, Climbing, Edward Whymper, Haute Route, Hornli Hutt, Hornli Ridge, Lech, Matterhorn, Mountain Spirit, Randy Richards, Sass Fee, Scrambles Amongst the Alps, Solvay Hut, Strolz, Summitting, Switzerland, Zermatt
Posted in Alps, Books, Climb/Ski/Mntneering, Mountain People | 1 Comment »
08/04/2009
Guillermo Seminario
We have one or two more spots for our July 12th trip to Peru.
MSI starting running programs to Peru in 1998 and R. Richards had been high altitude guiding for some years prior to that on Aconcogua and Huascaran and Ecuador’s volcanoes for Alpine Ascents International. Although there are some mountaineering and glacier experience programs on the books, (keep an eye out for New Zealand and Peru), this trip will be a cultural exploration and connection with the local people and areas of Cusco, Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca and Nazca.
Family Cari - Amantani
We will be staying with Richard Cari and his folks on the Island of Amantani at the Kantuta Lodge. Guillermo Seminario will be our host for most of the trip. This will be our tenth year in Peru, and are grateful of all the wonderful friends and family we now have in this soulful country. Says R. Richards, “I’m also looking forward to getting back to Huaraz to visit with my godchild and his family at Restaurant Salud Y Vida.
Tags:Aconcagua, adventure travel, Alpine Ascents International, Amantani, Dexter R. Richards, ecospiritual psychology, Ecuador, Experiential Education, Guillermo Seminario, Holistic Living, Huascaran, Mountain Spirit, Mountaineering, mtnspirit.org, Peru, Richard Cari, Spiritual, Sunapee, Sustainability
Posted in Experiential Education, Mountain People, Peru, Spiritual, Traveling | 1 Comment »
07/03/2009
Three cups of Tea
A Mountain Spirit Board member, plus a few others, have been telling me I need to read “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. It’s a great story about persevering a dream of building a school for the children of Korphe, Pakistan. One passage, quoted below, reminds me of how gravitating back to sustainable cultures can make our lives saner. If you’ve not read Three Cups of Tea, I suggest you pick up a copy.
An excerpt from the book that caught my eye:
“A book he’d read , Ancient Futures, by Helena Norberg-Hodge, was much on Mortenson’s mind. Norberg-Hodge has spend seventeen years living just south of these mountains in Ladakh, a region much like Baltistan, but cut off from Pakistan by the arbitrary borders colonial powers drew across the Himalaya. After almost two decades studying Ladakhi culture, Norberg Hodge has come to believe that preserving a traditional way of life in Ladakh-extended families living in harmony with the land- would bring about more happiness than “improving” Ladakhis’ standard of living with unchecked development.
Ancient Futures
“I used to assume that the direction of ‘progress was somehow inevitable, not to be questioned,” she writes. “I passively accepted a new road through the middle of the park, a steel-and-glass bank where a 200-year-old church had stood…and the fact that life seemed to get harder and faster with each day. I do not anymore. In Ladakh I have learned that there is more than one path into the future and I have had the privilege to witness another, saner, way of life- a pattern of existence based on the co-evolution between human beings and the earth.”
Norberg-Hodge continues to argue not only that Western development workers should not blindly impose modern “improvements” on ancient cultures, but that industrialized countries had lessons to learn from people like Ladakhis about building sustainable societies. “I have seen,” she writes, “that community and close relationship with the land can enrich human life beyond all comparison with material wealth or technological sophistication. I have learned that another way is possible.”
Norberg-Hodge admiringly quotes the king of another Himalayan country, Bhutan, who say the true measure of a nations success is not gross national product, but ‘gross national happiness.”
Tags:adventure travel, Ancient Futures, Bob Stremba, Brenda Dowst, Cindy Heath, Craig Cimmons, Dexter R. Richards, ecospiritual psychology, Experiential Education, Greg Mortenson, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Holistic Living, Ladakh, Mountain Spirit, Mountaineering, mtnspirit.org, New Hampshire, Peru, Randy Richards, Spiritual, Sunapee, Sustainability, Three Cups of Tea
Posted in Books, Mountain People, Sustainable Living/Communities, Traveling | 2 Comments »
07/03/2009
Woman's Hking Club, NZ
These ladies were seen at Aspiring Hut the other day. They walked in for the day. They hail from Timaru, New Zealand in the central part of the South Island. Some members of this group have been hiking together for over twenty years. Some of them were carrying beautiful walking sticks made by a local craftsman in Timaru. Some of these inspirational woman also had their sticks for the same amount of time. The average age of the group was 73 (which was later confirmed by a comment on this blog)!
Inspirational Group? Yep!
One of ladies had been at the Aspiring Backcountry Hut fifty years ago on her honeymoon. That’s the one in the back of the line with the red shirt and blue hat. The group had lunch, relaxed and started heading back down the trail, not without giving us a wave.
The next time I’m complaining about my joints or back, I’ll remember my encounter – running into this wonderful and inspirational group of mountain women.
Posted in Health, Holistic Living, Inspirational People, Mountain People, New Zealand | 4 Comments »
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