A short photo gallery from Mesa Verde National Park on Venture There.com and USA Today Travel : http://www.venturethere.com/photos/album/Mesa-Verde-National-Park/268.html ...
Travel is an event of transformation. In 1961 a long bus ride from Washington D.C. to New Orleans changed the world forever. But the PBS American Experience documentary “The Freedom Riders” will likely do little to alter your perspective of a journey upon the open road. Instead I hope that it will open your awareness to the fear and vulnerability a conspicuous minority will face even today while traveling and exposed to the hostility of an entitled majority.
Yosemite Valley California, president day: I’m walking with my recorder along a wooded path with a long bearded man wearing period clothing circa 1890, a tweed coat, a wool vest with a red pocket square and wide brimmed hat. Ahead of us is Yosemite Falls, a massive flowage of water running white and fast, churning with melted snow from the high country upstream. The man describes a fanciful vision of what we see.
"Can you imagine? Can you imagine if in the midst of its headlong descent with all this whirling fairy springtime spray and those rushing comet tails that the fall was suddenly frozen solid and then carried bodily out into the middle of the valley that we might go around it and see it from all sides in the sunshine,” he says. “Oh was a show it would make. This colossal white pillar half a mile tall adorned with airy flowing drapery as if chiseled out of white marble.”
Who better with whom to tour one of America’s greatest National Parks than the man himself John Muir. As if transported back in time I had the rare opportunity to get his impressions on Yosemite today.
The idea of wilderness conservation would seem to be a foregone conclusion. But at the turn of the last century private interests of corporate greed may well have developed the wild and scenic places we enjoy today well out of existence. Prized then for their vast resources of timber, fresh water and minerals these lands are valued now more for their intrinsic beauty and awe-inspiring tranquility. Had it not been for the passionate and articulate voice of a Scottish-American from Wisconsin our system of National Parks and Conservation Areas may have never been established.
John Muir will long be remembered as the founder of the Sierra Club and a great advocate for the protection of the natural world. A new PBS American Masters documentary of his life tells the story of early experiences that formed his character to become the man we know today. Directed by Catherine Tatage John Muir in the New World provides the back-story that details many of the little known influences of his upbringing that inspired him to venture west and explore what remained of the North American frontier.
National Geographic Young Explorers Dashiell Masland and Trevor Frost are contending to save the world, at least a small piece of it. Hoping to continue work in progress both are angling to raise awareness for the preservation of wild animal species in remote corners of the planet. Going head-to-head in a competition for funding to support their respective conservation projects, the two want your vote in the Expedition Granted contest.
As part of Expedition Week that starts April 3rd on the National Geographic Channel, viewers are invited to register online and cast their ballots for the explorer they like best. With the added incentive of winning a free trip to the Galapagos Islands for themselves, voters have the chance to provide Trevor or Dash with an expedition grant worth $10,000.Protecting the environment for future generations is great idea. In fact it’s a notion so simple that you might wonder why it took a White House committee 10 months, 52 public listening sessions and a 116-page document to express what any lover of nature knows by heart. Unveiled in February by President Obama, America’s Great Outdoors report offers a comprehensive list of recommendations to preserve wilderness and recreation areas throughout the United States for decades if not centuries to come. It’s a thorough series of proposals that provide...
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