Free Republic

EC just returned from an adventure in the wild with Pack 21, an overnight adventure that left EC grimy, exhausted, and with a better understanding of WHY our fight to keep America free, and to preserve our liberties is so important. Will our generation be the first in American history to leave a world of LESS opportunity for our children?

CHEYENNE -- Federal officials began arriving in Riverton on Monday to prepare for the Rainbow Family gathering, which is expected to be held on U.S. Forest Service land in the Big Sandy area near Pinedale. A national incident management team made up of about 40 Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management personnel was setting up shop to deal with the potentially thousands of people who could turn out for the event in early July. "The Rainbow Gathering of Living Light" is a weeklong campout that has been held on federal lands around the country each year since the early...

GADSDEN, Ala. - The throngs filling campgrounds across America this weekend will include hardy outdoors types and those who prefer creature comforts, but they'll have at least one important thing in common: Nearly all of them are white. ADVERTISEMENT A small but committed group of campers is trying to change that by growing a generation of black campers, one person at a time. The National African-American RVers Association is composed almost exclusively of black people who camp, although it includes a few whites and Hispanics. The group doesn't have much money to buy ads or solicit new members. Instead, it...

The throngs filling campgrounds across America this weekend will include hardy outdoors types and those who prefer creature comforts, but they'll have at least one important thing in common: Nearly all of them are white. A small but committed group of campers is trying to change that by growing a generation of black campers, one person at a time. The National African-American RVers Association is composed almost exclusively of black people who camp, although it includes a few whites and Hispanics. The group doesn't have much money to buy ads or solicit new members. Instead, it always holds its major...

CASAR — Nancy Leedy and Joanie Beasley are unabashed environmentalists, Christians and lesbians. But some people give the couple and others like them a hard time about their lifestyle. The couple has been bounced from church to church in the county — told not to attend or to attend only at early, less-attended services — and is at times ostracized by their community, they said. The solution? A camp dedicated to creating a friendly environment for all types of people: straight, gay, bi-sexual, lesbian or transgender. Born from a stretch of nature a short distance across the Cleveland-Rutherford county line,...

Fewer people are visiting national parks and taking part in outdoor activities such as camping, according to new research that suggests people are falling out of love with the natural world.The study by US conservationists discovered an "ongoing and fundamental shift away from nature-based recreation" that they say could threaten future efforts to preserve wilderness areas. The experts say people now make up to 25% fewer trips than they did in the 1980s, and say the rise of computer games could be to blame.Oliver Pergams, a biologist at the University of Illinois, and Patricia Zaradic of the US Environmental Leadership...

Old fashioned values stand firm in a high tech world http://www.villagevoice.com.au/article/20070806/LFS07/708030330/ http://tinyurl.com/34qcm3 Source: Village Voice Balmain Author: Nicole Hasham Posted: Mon 6 Aug, 2007 In an era when pitching a tent generally means clipping plastic poles to a dome-shaped piece of nylon, knowing how to tie a knot may seem a little quaint. But for the young members of the Leichhardt 1st Scouts group, knowing how to square lash two wooden poles can mean the difference between a good night's sleep and a face full of canvas. "When we camp we use old army tents like they used in World...

'Utterly cared for': Minister writes of finding peace, link to God in nature http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070726/Lives/707260476/1047/Lives http://tinyurl.com/2uf995 Jul 26, 2007 CHRISTINE COX Tribune Staff Writer John Lionberger, a United Church of Christ minister and religious author, admits there are times when he is tempted to not believe in God. "Faith just isn't a head thing at all. I could talk myself out of God just in a heartbeat," he says in a telephone interview. "But if I listen to my heart, I think that's the truer voice. That's the grounded voice. I guess, the ancient voice." It's a voice he didn't hear...

An 11-year-old boy is killed by a black bear overnight at a popular campsite in American Fork Canyon. This morning authorities are searching for the bear. The boy was asleep inside a tent he was sharing with his family at the Timpooneke Camp area, about 10 miles up the canyon. The family was camping about two miles up a dirt road from that campground. The boy, his mother, stepfather and a 6-year-old brother were sleeping in a large tent with several sections, and the 11-year-old was in a section of the tent by himself. Around 11 p.m. family members heard...

<p>WHITE HAVEN, Pa. — A bear tried to pull a Girl Scout out of her tent during a camping trip, the girl and scout officials said.</p> <p>Celeste Tietz, 11, said Wednesday that she managed to grab a tent pole and slide out of her sleeping bag as the bear was tugging at it early Sunday morning at Camp Mosey Wood.</p>

Scouting leaves positive glow http://www.fergusfallsjournal.com/news/2007/feb/02/scouting-leaves-positive-glow/ http://tinyurl.com/yraqhv By Dave Churchill, The Daily Journal Published Friday, February 2, 2007 For reasons unknown, the Northern Lights Council of the Boy Scouts mailed me a copy of its newsletter last week. I don’t have a connection with the council, haven’t had much involvement with the Scouts for several decades, but the newsletter’s arrival was the second reminder this month of my Scouting past. Earlier in January, I was having lunch in a cafeteria-type place and, as I walked to a table with my tray, another diner called out, “Hey, were you at Philmont?” He...

SHIRAZ, Iran -- Honking horns. Gridlock. Crowded stores. In the United States, camping offers an escape from the sounds and hassles of city life. Here, families from surrounding villages and towns travel into this city of nearly 4 million to pitch tents right in the middle of the urban hustle. It's vacation, Iranian style. Increasingly popular among families seeking a change of scenery, but more and more irritating to city officials who must handle the influx, urban camping has changed the face of Iran's cities during the warmer months of the year. Earlier this month, brightly colored tents dotted the...

Ten ways scouting outranks televisionhttp://www.auburnpub.com/articles/2006/08/30/news/lake_life/lakelife03.txt http://tinyurl.com/pex7t By Don Grillo Wednesday, August 30, 2006 10:12 AM EDT Any time of the year is a good time for parents to enroll their sons in Scouting. But most boys join Scouting in September and October. During this period, annual recruiting programs are conducted by Cub Scout Packs and Boy Scout Troops throughout the Cayuga County Council. Boys are attracted to Scouting for the obvious reasons - camping, hiking, uniforms, pinewood derby races, earning badges and awards, making new friends, learning new things and having fun. Parents want their sons to join Scouting because...

Camping and Lewis and Clark BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on April 7, 1996.) Now that it's warmed up, I'm thinking about camping. Don't misunderstand me: I'm not thinking about actually going camping, in the sense of venturing outdoors and turning my body into an All-U-Can-Eat buffet for insects. I'm just thinking about camping. What got me on this topic is a book I'm reading, called ''Undaunted Courage,'' by Stephen E. Ambrose, about the ultimate camping trip: the Lewis and Clark expedition. If you're a product of the U.S. educational system, you no doubt...

Nature-deficit disorder is ruining our kidshttp://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20060816/OPINION/108160053 http://tinyurl.com/zchy3 by jim stiles August 16, 2006 No matter how old I live to be, there will never be a place so full of mystery and adventure as a place of my childhood called The Woods. The stories that grew out of those trees still kindle powerful feelings, even after all these years. My friends and I knew the place was haunted. It had no boundaries, and in our 10-year-old minds, it went on forever. Jump ahead a few decades to a familiar topic: the commercialization of wilderness. What created the demand for such...

Finding God on the Mountainhttp://www.beliefnet.com/story/197/story_19711_1.html A scoutmaster discovers he had to get lost in order to find what was missing from his life. By Tony McIntosh I'm a scoutmaster for a small Boy Scout troop in my town. This summer during camp I went along with two of the older scouts--my son, who is 14, and another boy, 15--on what's known as "The Adventure Trek," a 28-mile backpacking trip that includes two days of white-water rafting. Our troop had gone backpacking in the past but never like this, so it was going to be a challenge for all of us....

A disconnect at camphttp://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1154728213922&call_pageid=970599119419 http://tinyurl.com/mb4ox Kids are OK with new no-cellphone rules, but not so for some of their parents Aug. 5, 2006. 01:00 AM FRANCINE KOPUN FEATURE WRITER Ali Goodwill, 14, spends three hours a night on her cellphone. "I usually have to gossip with my best friends, and I just talk with random people for another hour. ... I love my cellphone so much. ... It's my baby." So you would think there would have been tears, tantrums, perhaps a smuggling incident, when the Grade 9 student was asked to hand over the phone at the gates of...

Scouting survives: Even in high-tech age, youths learn to 'Be prepared'http://www.herald-mail.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=144116 Sunday August 6, 2006 by CANDICE BOSELY candiceb@herald-mail.com TRI-STATE - These are a few of their favorite things: Cell phones and cookies, iPods and pop-up tents, video games and wilderness badges. Seeing teenagers - and children even younger - talking or sending text messages on cell phones, fiddling with mp3 music players and playing video games are common sights. Girl Scouting and Boy Scouting might almost seem passé, given the associated images of camping, surviving in the wilderness and sleeping in wooden cabins at camp. But it's not antiquated...

A boy tries to light dry grass under a pyramid of twigs. Eventually, it catches and he lies on his side to blow the embers into crackling life. Tonight he and his friends will dine on a thin stew made of thistles and heather leaves, cooked over the fire. They will sleep in a makeshift bivouac on a bed of ferns. This is not a scene from Swallows and Amazons. It is an increasingly popular kind of educational holiday for children. On this particular course, groups of children aged from nine upwards will be pretty much alone. They have a...

Want healthier kids? Send them outsidehttp://www.dailyherald.com/story.asp?id=212657 BY JASON KING Daily Herald Staff Writer Posted Monday, July 31, 2006 Sean Taylor watched as 5-year-old son Payton played "snake tag" with other children at the Grant Woods Forest Preserve in Lake Villa. The father and son were participating in the Lake County Forest Preserve District's Knee High Naturalist program, which focused on snakes that day. Taylor said he wants his son to play outdoors as much as possible and, luckily, Payton loves to do so. "If he stays inside all day, at night he's just crazy," said Taylor, of Lake Villa. "He...