John Muir Trail: Here We Go…

Our bags are packed.  We’re ready to go.  I’ve dreamed of hiking a long trail with my kids for years, and now we’re actually doing it!

Thursday morning we’ll wake up in Yosemite Valley, eat as much hot breakfast as we can stuff in our bodies, and then lug our heavy packs to the Happy Isles Trailhead.  From there, it’s one foot in front of the other for 30 days, passing through some of the most spectacular wilderness in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

I think the kids are ready.  They’re excited… and nervous, which is what you’d expect.  I’m excited and nervous too.  I’m sure there will be days when it feels like a struggle for them, but we plan to take our time and keep it fun.  The boys have their own cameras and journals.  They’ve got ropes and a step-by-step knot guide.  They’ve got a star chart, a great field guide for identifying critters, little knives for whittling… and, of course, they’ve got a great big, beautiful world to explore.

Please send us good vibes!  When we return, I will share a series of posts containing pictures and journal entries from our trip.  Check back for that in September.

To read more about what we’re doing and why check out this past post.

To learn more about the John Muir Trail check out this link.

Jason Kapchinske is the author of Coyote Summer.

John Muir Trail: Food

Today, I mailed our food resupply packages for our upcoming John Muir Trail hike.  We’ll be picking them up in a few weeks at the Tuolumne Meadows post office and Muir Trail Ranch.  We’re planning to be on the trail 30 days, so it’s a lot of food:

• 58 packages of freeze-dried dinner meals
• 189 packets of instant oatmeal
• 8 packages of freeze-dried egg scramble meals
• Several large sacks of nuts and trail mix
• 116 snack bars
• Enough buffalo, turkey and beef jerky to make leather pants for the family
• Enough dried mangoes and apricots to make matching shirts
• Chia seeds (I’ve never had these before, but I fell for the packaging which informed me that these seeds turned the ancient Mesoamericans into superheroes)
• Coconut flakes
• Multivitamins
• Candies (to bribe the kids up high mountain passes)
• Instant coffee (to get my sweet little wife out of her sleeping bag in the morning)
• 62 packets of hot chocolate
• 15 Chocolate bars
• I'm probably forgetting a few things, but that covers most of it... I couldn't find any freeze-dried wine.

To find out more about our trip and why we’re doing it, check out this previous blog entry.

To learn more about the John Muir Trail, check out this website.

J.S. Kapchinske is the author of Coyote Summer.

The Wisdom of One Place

Photo: child in water © Ashley Turner

This is a good article by Fred First from the Children and Nature Network.

"My brief return to the biology classroom in 2005 after a 17-year absence brought a shocking revelation: the outdoors was an alien and unknown place to my students.

Out of 120 on field trips near campus along Virginia’s New River that semester, only one student could call one of some 50 observed living things by name: poison ivy. Everything else—birds and bushes, wildflowers and vines, insects and fungi—were anonymous strangers. 

That revelation disturbed me. What would become of this place if future generations were so out of touch with the natural world?"  -  Read the full article by Fred First here.

Is a Nature Deficit Depressing Kids?

Courtesy of Primal Docs

“As a primary care doc, I find this idea of a nature deficit disorder fascinating because I believe we can’t be healthy in a completely artificial environment, Yet decade after decade, we continue to celebrate the fabrication of an increasingly unnatural world…”  

Read the full post by Cate Shanahan, MD here.

The Silent Solo Sit

I really like Riley Hopeman's idea of the silent solo sit.  Quiet moments outside were so important for me as a kid, helping to ground me in the places that I lived, giving me a deep sense of connection.  They made my life more peaceful and meaningful.  Even today, those brief, long-ago moments help me hold onto a childlike optimism that I cherish.

"The silent solo sit is an activity I always incorporate into a teaching week. It provides each individual with the opportunity to connect with the natural world on their own..."
Read Riley Hopeman's full article here.

Midweek Meditation

Photo courtesy Algalita Marine Research Institute

“Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.” 
— Aldo Leopold 

How Nature Resets Our Minds and Bodies

The Atlantic – March 29, 2013
By Adam Alter

Paoli, Pennsylvania, is a small town with a local suburban hospital. Patients at Paoli Memorial recover in a row of rooms facing a small courtyard. In the early 1980s, a researcher visited the hospital and gathered information about patients who had undergone gallbladder surgery between 1972 and 1981. Gallbladder surgery is routine and generally uncomplicated, but most patients in the 1970s recovered for a week or two before they returned home. Some took longer to recover than others, and the researcher wondered whether subtle differences between the hospital rooms might explain this discrepancy. Some of the rooms on one side of the hospital faced onto a brick wall, whereas others slightly farther down the corridor faced onto a small stand of deciduous trees. Apart from their differing views, the rooms were identical...  Read the full article here.