Dick Gase lives a good life. He’s hiked 4,947 miles of beautiful terrain and plans 3,100 miles more to reach the Triple Crown of Long Distance Hiking. Bejeweled with lessons learned and stories to tell, Dick has taken the high roads of the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail. In April 2010, he’ll hike the CONTINENTAL DIVIDE TRAIL (CDT).

Trekking (in spirit) with Dick, will be Ironwood Tree Experience (ITE), a project of The Center for Children and Nature at Prescott College. A nonprofit project, ITE connects youth with community through experiences in nature and instills lessons of youth wellness, character development, community action, and sustainability practices.

Dick aspires to hike 3,100 miles and raise funds for ITE youth scholarships.
You can follow along! Contribute to Dick’s ITE Hike-a-thon:

• Pledge an amount per mile hiked
• Pledge a flat challenge rate

Contribute at www.ironwoodtreeexperience.org or mail check (payable to Prescott College) to Prescott College Tucson Center at 2233 E. Speedway, Tucson, AZ 85719, or call Suzanne at (520) 319-9868.
Prescott College is a nonprofit 501 (c)3. Proceeds fund ITE youth scholarships and are tax deductible.
Visit www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?trailname=10192 to follow Dick’s adventure.

• date of departure: 4/27/2010
• trail: Continental Divide Trail
• distance in miles: 3100
• months on the trail: 5
• route: Mexico border near Columbus, NM to Canadian border in Glacier National Park

ITE Eco-skills program. Check out which EcoSkills are great for you. Click HERE

The State of America’s National Parks: Listen to Nation Public Radio’s recent segment on the Diane Rehm Show regarding children in nature and the history of the creation of the National Park System and the National Wildlife Refuge.

Guest host, Susan Page, speaks with historian, Douglas Brinkley, and Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, about President Theodore Roosevelt’s vision for preserving America’s wilderness and the future of our national parks and monuments.

Guests

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, former Democratic U.S. Senator from Colorado.

Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine.

Click Here for Windows Media format

Click Here for RealPlayer Audio

Louv’s latest book bears the self-explanatory title Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. After tens of thousands of years of children playing and working primarily outdoors, the last few generations have seen such interaction with nature vanish almost entirely. The implications — for children’s physical and mental health, and for the future of environmentalism — are immense, Louv argues.

But he stresses that there is hope — indeed, that response to the book has him more hopeful than he was when he began writing it. After all, in a world of intractable problems and social malaise, his encouragement to parents is simple and easily achieved: Take your kids outside. (Read part two of this interview in Gristmill By David Roberts www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/03/03/louv/)

Michael Pollan has built a reputation as a sleuthing agro-journalist. In his latest book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he brings his investigative skills to bear on four meals. One is the typical American overprocessed fare; one is composed of what Pollan calls “industrial organic” — organic food grown on huge mega-farms alongside standard crops; one comes from a small organic farm that refuses to sell outside its neighboring community; and one is hunted and gathered entirely by Pollan himself. (His account of tracking and shooting a wild boar is bizarrely gripping.) Read the interview by David Roberts at www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/31/roberts/