Fuga de la ciudad y deseo de simplicidad

COFFER from thismustbetheplace on Vimeo.

Produced and directed by Ben Wu and David Usui,

of Lost & Found Films (lostfoundfilms.com).

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE

There's no place like home. It's where we live, work and dream. It's our sanctuary and our refuge. We can love them or hate them. It can be just for the night or for the rest of our lives. But whoever we may be, we all have a place we call home.

Do you ever daydream about leaving it all behind? Wandering into the woods, constructing a cabin, living off the land? That idea of escape and desire for simplicity seems to grow more and more common as our lives increase in pace and urban areas overcrowd. I often find myself envious of, though inspired by, folks like this. Ones who made their dreams a reality. 

(...) John Coffer he made the switch from Floridian condo dweller to master of his magnificent 50 acre domain over 20 years ago and has never looked back. This beautiful short from Lost & Found Films tells his story, and is definitely worth watching. 

While the privileges of wealth can make the transition from cityscape to country kingdom a smooth one, the very nature of homesteading means the serene and simple life can be sustained without an executive income. A little planning and saving at first can get you there. If, like Coffer you plan on mixing old technologies with new (solar panels, wind turbines, internet access), cash on hand is a requirement; however, these are investments into a high functioning, yet slow paced lifestyle that I for one could get behind. 

The great thing is many of us already do practice elements of homesteading no matter what our locale. But what I really want to know is how many of you would actually wander off? Do you plan on retiring to the woods or are you eager to find farmland faster still? Is the city-sacrifice to great to leave behind, or is the countryside calling? 

(http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/lifestyle-switch-headfirst-int-156457)

Retorno a...

Campfire Cologne - Office from Fort Ripper on Vimeo.

remembrance / balmorhea / all is wild, all is silent from jared hogan on Vimeo.

Wild from Matt Brass on Vimeo.

WILDERNESS from Ginevra Boni on Vimeo.

Where is your Wilderness from Salomon on Vimeo.

Younger Brother - Crystalline (Acoustic Mix) from Wilderness on Vimeo.

La cabaña de Bob Marshall, pionero en la preservación de la naturaleza

Bob Marshall

Bob Marshall (1901-1939) was one of the most influential advocates for the preservation of wilderness during his abbreviated life.  He held a PhD in plant physiology and worked for the US Forest Service, but he would also found The Wilderness Society and advocate for roadless wilderness protection throughout the West.  A socialist and minority rights advocate, Marshall wrote “The People’s Forests” and “Arctic Village” among other works.  His activism would lead much later to the formation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Wilderness Act of 1964, and, of course, the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area in Montana, named for Marshall in 1941 by the US Forest Service.

"Cabin" Bob Marshall Wilderness Montana

"Wall Tent" Bob Marshall Wilderness Montana

(...) In 1900, Louis Marshall and friends purchased land on Lower Saranac Lake, where they built six summer camps, dubbing the compound Knollwood. Though he grew up in New York City, Bob Marshall spent his boyhood summers at Knollwood. This was his introduction to the Adirondacks and to the joys of wilderness. Among Adirondack hikers, Marshall is celebrated as the original Forty-Sixer-the first to climb all 46 of the region's peaks above 4,000 feet. He was joined in this feat by his younger brother, George, and their guide, Herb Clark. Their first High Peak was Whiteface Mountain, which they climbed on Aug. 1, 1918, after crossing Lake Placid by motorboat. They completed the 46 with an ascent of Mount Emmons, in the remote Seward Range, on June 10, 1925. It's worth noting that the three climbed MacNaughton Mountain a few days later. Although not on the Forty-Sixer list, MacNaughton was later found to top 4,000 feet, so many people feel compelled to climb it as well. That means the Marshalls and Clark were not only the first Adirondack Forty-Sixers; they were the first Forty-Seveners. When the Marshalls began their quest, they thought there were only 42 High Peaks above 4,000 feet. After climbing these, Bob wrote a booklet called The High Peaks of the Adirondacks, which the fledgling Adirondack Mountain Club published in 1922. The booklet notes that most of the peaks lacked trails and had rarely, if ever, been climbed before. Marshall's favorite peak was Haystack, which sits across Panther Gorge from Mount Marcy, the state's highest summit.

"It's a great thing these days to leave civilization for a while and return to nature," he wrote. "From Haystack you can look over thousands and thousands of acres, unblemished by the works of man, perfect as made by nature."

Later surveys revealed that four of Marshall's 46 are below 4,000 feet, but the Adirondack Forty-Sixers still cleave to the original list. In the decade after 1925, only two people followed in the footsteps of the Marshalls and Clark. Since then, climbing the 46 has become an Adirondack tradition. Nearly 6,000 hikers have done it. Nowadays, hikers can follow marked trails or herd paths to all the summits. Marshall did not limit his explorations to mountains. In 1920, he had enrolled in the state College of Forestry, the school his father helped found. After his sophomore year, he spent the summer at the college's forestry camp on Cranberry Lake. On weekends, he headed into the woods, often on his own, and wrote detailed accounts of his adventures. His goal was to visit as many ponds as possible. In all, he visited 94 ponds, and just as with the High Peaks, he ranked them all for their beauty. He graduated in 1924, fourth in a class of 59. The next year, the Journal of Forestry published his first article in defense of wilderness, "Recreational Limitations to Silviculture in the Adirondacks." Whereas most foresters saw the woods as a source of timber, Marshall saw them as a recreational resource that ought to be protected. He likened a virgin forest to a museum, noting that society spends vast sums on museums and parks.

"But there never was a museum that had a more interesting exhibit than this last remnant of the woods that were, nor a park that could compare with them in beauty." This is a theme he developed and refined in later writings, culminating in "The Problem of the Wilderness," his most famous article in favor of preservation.

Marshall went on to earn a master's degree in forestry from Harvard and a doctorate in plant physiology from Johns Hopkins University. He worked, at different times, for the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In both agencies, he pushed for wilderness preservation. In 1932, for example, he compiled a list of 38 large, roadless areas that he thought should be protected in their primitive state. When this inventory was updated four years later, it included three tracts in the Adirondacks: the High Peaks, the Cranberry Lake region and the West Canada Lakes region. As a result of Marshall's work, the federal government protected more of its forestlands. In 1929, Marshall traveled to Wiseman, Alaska, a tiny prospecting community north of the Arctic Circle. The ostensible reason for the trip was to study the rate of tree growth at the northern timberline, but the real reason was to find adventure. During his two-month stay, he explored the uncharted Brooks Range. He returned to Wiseman the following summer and stayed for a year. Out of this visit came his best-selling book, Arctic Village, a sociological portrait of the frontier community. Marshall shared the royalties from Arctic Village, which was a Literary Guild selection, with the residents of Wiseman.

In his second book, The People's Forests, Marshall argued that the federal government should nationalize timberlands to save them from corporate logging. In a chapter titled "Forests and Human Happiness," he made a case for preserving woodlands to provide people an escape from a crowded world. In his view, the forest offered "the highest type of recreational and esthetic enjoyment." Marshall returned to the Adirondacks and set a record (later broken) by climbing 13 High Peaks and one lesser summit in a single day, ascending 13,600 feet. In a remarkable coincidence, he met another ardent advocate of wilderness, Paul Schaefer, atop Mount Marcy that day. Schaefer was taking photographs to use in a campaign against an amendment to the state constitution that would have allowed the construction of cabins in the Forest Preserve. Upon learning of the proposed amendment, Marshall became incensed and started pacing back and forth.

"We simply must band together," he told Schaefer, "all of us who love the wilderness." A few years later, Marshall and several colleagues formed The Wilderness Society, which became one of the nation's most effective voices for preservation. Long after Marshall's death, The Wilderness Society's executive secretary, Howard Zahniser, wrote the Wilderness Act, which President Lyndon Johnson signed in 1964. Zahniser, who worked on the law at his Adirondack cabin, defined wilderness as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." This is the same definition found in the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan.

So we have come full circle: the Adirondacks inspired Bob Marshall, who founded The Wilderness Society, which hired Howard Zahniser, who wrote the definition of wilderness now used to protect the Adirondacks. The founders of The Wilderness Society regarded the construction of roads as one of the biggest threats to wild lands and resisted calls to open up wilderness to the motoring public. In Marshall's view, once a road is built through a wilderness area, it ceases to be a wilderness area. When the state Conservation Department proposed constructing truck trails in the Forest Preserve, in order to speed access to forest fires, Marshall argued against the idea. He lost the debate, and the truck trails were built (and are used today as hiking trails). In an article published posthumously, he expresses dismay at seeing the truck trail along Calkins Creek near the Seward Range, where he had hiked and camped as a young man. "The tire tracks which blot out the footprints of the deer seem to symbolize the twentieth century which has come to steal from the primeval one of its last remaining interests."

On Nov. 10, 1939, Marshall boarded a train headed to New York City to visit relatives. He was found dead in his sleeper car the next morning, apparently of heart failure. He was 38. The death of such a young man, especially one as vigorous as Bob, shocked all who knew him. The next year the federal government designated the Bob Marshall Wilderness in his honor. A bachelor, Marshall left virtually all of his $1.5 million estate to three causes dear to his heart: socialism, civil liberties and wilderness preservation. He gave money to only one individual: $10,000 to his old friend and guide, Herb Clark. To the rest of us, he bequeathed an enthusiasm for wilderness that continues to inspire hikers and conservationists around the world.

Phil Brown is the editor of the Adirondack Explorer, a news magazine about outdoor recreation and wilderness preservation.
(http://www.dec.ny.gov/pubs/39311.html)

The Bob Marshall Wilderness- Montana

The Bob Marshall Wilderness is located in Western Montana and is named after Bob Marshall (1901–1939), an early forester, conservationist, and co-founder of The Wilderness Society. The Bob Marshall Wilderness extends for 60 miles along the Continental Divide and consists of 1,009,356 acres. The Bob Marshall Wilderness is adjacent to the Scape Goat Wilderness and the Great Bear Wilderness. All three of these wilderness areas make up the the Bob Marshall Complex. The Bob is also very close to Glacier National Park and separated by Highway 2. In the Bob you will find grizzly bears, wolves, wolverines, elk herds, moose, big horn sheep, mountain goats, mountain lion, lynx and many other species

The Chinese Wall is a geological over-thrust formation within the Bob Marshall Wilderness located on the eastern side also known as the Rocky Mountain Front. The Rocky Mountain Front is where the great plains end and the Rocky Mountains begin very abruptly. This location is one of the last places where grizzly bears leave the mountains and hunt for prey in the prairies. The pictures here are from a 5-day trip in the Bob along the Chinese Wall. 

http://forestglenroad.org/bob-marshall/

http://elliottreed.blogspot.com.es/2010/11/bob-marshall-wilderness-montana.html

La emoción y el espíritu de la tierra en Mardy & Olaus Murie

Mardy & Olaus Murie



Mardy & Olaus Murie's cabin. Photo © Melanie Hill



Murie Homestead Cabin. Photo © Melanie Hill



Murie CabinPhoto © Melanie Hill 



Cabin interior. Photo © Melanie Hill 


Murie Ranch


Map of the Murie Ranch.

The Murie Residence was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1990 followed by the Murie Ranch in 1998. The properties were declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

The Murie Ranch

The Murie families, Olaus and Margaret (Mardy), and Adolph and Louise, bought the STS Dude Ranch in 1945. After moving to the ranch, the Muries removed fences so that wildlife could freely pass. For Wilderness Society Director Olaus Murie, the Murie Ranch represented the heart of American wilderness.

The Murie Ranch became a base camp for conservation leaders. These passionate advocates met to campaign for the protection of American wilderness. The Muries’ conservation work culminated in the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act. The Act defined wilderness as a place “untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor and does not remain.” Olaus’ wife Mardy received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

Mardy and Olaus Murie. The Murie Center Archives

The Murie Residence

Olaus and Mardy lived briefly in the Alatna Cabin before moving into the cabin known today as the Murie Residence for the rest of their lives (Olaus passed in 1963 and Mardy in 2003). Olaus published studies about Jackson Hole wildlife while living at the ranch. He argued for ecological boundaries to keep ecosystems intact when legislating park areas instead of drawing arbitrary boundaries. He helped establish the Jackson Hole National Monument in 1943.

Louise and Adolph Murie. The Murie Center Archives

The Homestead Cabin

Wildlife biologist Adolph Murie and wife Louise used the Homestead Cabin as a home and office. Adolph published one of the first studies arguing against the National Park Service’s predator eradication programs. His wolf and coyote studies showed that predators play important ecological roles. Olaus and Adolph’s pioneering research helped move science toward managing ecosystems as a whole rather than managing for individual species.

Olaus Murie in his studio. The Murie Center Archives

Olaus Murie’s Studio

Olaus Murie used his artwork as a scientific tool, sketching and painting wildlife and their habitats in the field and in this studio. He preferred to paint and sketch rather than take photographs. Through science, art and writing, the Muries captured and personified the spirit of wilderness.

How to get there: Drive north from Jackson 12 miles and take a left at Moose Junction toward Moose. Turn left again at the four-way stop signs into the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center parking lot. Park and walk toward the visitor center. From the courtyard you will see an interpretive wayside exhibit and a footpath leading into the forest. Walk 1/2 mile one-way to the Murie Ranch. Or drive west from Moose Junction until you reach the Moose-Wilson Road junction, turning left onto the road. In about 1/10 of a mile, turn left onto an unpaved road that leads to the Murie Ranch. 

Howard Zahniser, Murie Mardie y Olas Murie Cortesía de Wilderness.net

Olaus and Mardy Murie: Alaska's Passionate Protectors

Listen to Howard Berkes' Profile of Mardy Murie on NPR's All Things Considered, 10/21/2003 

Coming Under the Influence of Mardy Murie 

By Nancy Shea, Former Executive Director of The Murie Center, 2004 

The power of mentors to influence ones' life is immense. As a young girl, my mentor was the sea. I was drawn to its wildness, even in the midst of an urban childhood, just south of Los Angeles. The ocean became my primary solace from city life and from my crazy family. Childhood, for me, was swimming into the ocean as far as I dared, past the large pounding waves, turning onto my back, my face to the sun, and floating the currents. I think I was completely unafraid. I know I was happy. 

And now in the middle of my life, I have had the great privilege of coming under the tutelage of Mardy Murie, and to live and work in one of the Murie's places of enchantment (as Olaus Murie called them), Moose, Wyoming. I live and work under the spell of her simple message: be happy, maintain honest relations, create a simple life, do good in the world and nurture a deep respect and affection for wild nature. 

My first connection to Mardy began when I brought students to Mardy's log cabin for lemonade and cookies and I watched the students melt under Mardy's influence. So many letters came back from students thanking me for letting them meet Mardy. Her favorite words of admonishment to these young people frequently appeared in these student letters: You are only half a person if you do not care. 

Six years ago I was hired to begin a center dedicated to carrying forward the Murie's legacy and their message of wilderness preservation, The Murie Center. For the first five years of the center's development, Mardy was our hostess and we shared the Murie ranch with her. We made visits to her regularly and they were always special. Her eyes would light up if we mentioned Olaus or Alaska. And her brow would furrow if we mentioned the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with her concern about its future. I often thought that Mardy's tenacity and long life was connected to her amazing perseverance and the fact that the status of the refuge as wilderness was never secure. 

Many people continued to come and see Mardy right up to her death. They were folks from many, many walks of life who had discovered for themselves a profound connection to this woman. It didn't matter who they were, Mardy always welcomed them into her home. The owls gathered on the ranch, three days prior to her death on October 19th, 2003. She and Olaus had begun their courtship with Olaus calling in the owls for Mardy's benefit. She passed away two days before the 40th anniversary of Olaus' death, and on the same day that she and Olaus had always celebrated their wedding anniversary. 

It is a daunting task to create an institution that carries an entire lifetime of passion, conviction and wisdom. The Center is stepping into the opportunity with a commitment to continue Mardy's work. Mardy is gone but her energy and insistence on the value of wildness is present every day on the ranch. Our hope is that the Murie's ranch will continue to be a place where anyone can come under the influence of this great woman and the wonderful wild creatures that inhabit the land that she loved, so that together our voices for wildness will carry far and all our daughters and sons will inhabit an even more wild world than we do today. 

Margaret (Mardy) Murie is fondly called the Grandmother of the Conservation Movement, but her love of the land began at a young age. Born on August 18, 1902 in Seattle, Mardy moved to Fairbanks with her family when she was five years old. Her step-father was an assistant U.S. attorney. She attended Simons College in Boston but finished her degree in business administration at the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, now the University of Alaska. 

She met Olaus Murie, a biologist, in Fairbanks, and they married in 1924 in a 3 a.m. sunrise ceremony in the village of Anvik on the Yukon River. Olaus had been studying birds in Hooper Bay, and after the wedding, the couple spent their honeymoon traveling over 500 miles around the upper Koyukuk region by boat and dogsled conducting caribou research. 

Olaus and Mardy Murie - Photo gallery

Mardy's adventures growing up in Alaska and as a scientist's wife are chronicled in her book, "Two in the Far North," and in a documentary, "Arctic Dance." Published in 1962 and still in print, the book describes the winter night when she was 14 and Fairbanks caught fire, prompting her father and other men to burn the town's bacon supply as fuel to keep the steam-powered water pump running; her late-winter dogsled trips over thawing rivers; how she became the first woman to graduate from the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines; her marriage to Olaus; the couple's honeymoon, as well as a later river journey taken with their infant son, Martin, strapped to their boat. Additionally, Mardy authored "Island Between," published in 1977, and "Wapiti Wilderness," published in 1966 with her husband as co-author. 

Olaus was born on March 1, 1889, in the frontier community of Moorhead, Minnesota, and had also developed a close relationship to the land during his youth. The son of Norwegian immigrants, Olaus' later interest in natural history can be traced to his childhood along the Red River and its surrounding unbroken prairie. Olaus attended Pacific University in Oregon, where he completed studies in zoology and wildlife biology. After graduation in 1912, Olaus became an Oregon State conservation officer. Between 1914 and 1917, he participated in scientific explorations of Hudson Bay and Labrador, financed by the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh. The Hudson Bay expeditions prepared Olaus for his job as a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey, now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Between 1920 and 1926, Olaus, joined by Mardy after their marriage, conducted an exhaustive study of Alaskan caribou, mapping migratory routes and estimating numbers. After that experience, the two agreed that theirs was a true partnership, and that Mardy would be at Olaus' side wherever his explorations took them. 

In 1927, the Survey assigned Olaus to comprehensively investigate the Jackson Hole elk herd resulting in the classic publication "The Elk of North America." He also authored six other major publications, including Alaska-Yukon Caribou (North American Fauna [NAF] No. 54, 1935); Food Habits of the Coyote in Jackson Hole, Wyoming (1935); Field Guide to Animal Tracts (1954); Fauna of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska Peninsula (NAF No. 61, 1959); Jackson Hole with a Naturalist (1963); Wapati Wilderness (with Mardy, 1966). Although the couple never returned to Alaska to live after their move to Wyoming, for the next two decades Mardy and Olaus made many trips into the wilderness of Alaska. 

In Jackson Hole, Mardy served on the school board and campaigned to support education and the local library. She and Olaus loved to dance, and they helped organize dances for teenagers. During World War II, Mardy did volunteer work, grew a victory garden and managed a dude ranch, while Olaus served as superintendent of the hospital and studied the "coyote problem" in Yellowstone. Olaus was a "tolerated maverick" in the Survey because he disagreed with its policy of eradicating predators. 

Poisoning and trapping of so-called predators and killing rodents, and the related insecticide and herbicide programs, are evidences of human immaturity. The use of the term 'vermin' as applied to so many wild creatures is a thoughtless criticism of nature's arrangement of producing varied life on this planet. - Olaus Murie

In 1937, Olaus accepted a council seat on the recently created Wilderness Society. Combining the logic of a scientist with the passion of an artist, Olaus proved persuasive in helping to enlarge existing national park boundaries and to create additional new units. Olaus' testimony on the unnatural boundaries of Olympic National Monument helped to convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to add the great rain forests of the Bogachiel and Hoh River valleys. Olaus' vocal concern for a more ecological or natural boundary for the elk of the Grand Teton area helped to create Jackson Hole National Monument in 1943 and to achieve national park status a few years later. 

In 1945, Olaus resigned his position with the Survey and later went on to become president of The Wilderness Society in 1950. He was also a president of the Wildlife Society and a director of the Izaak Walton League of America. He received the Audubon Medal, the Audubon Society's highest award, in 1959 and the citation described Olaus as "the personification of the spirit of wilderness." Mardy also worked at various times for the Izaak Walton League and The Wilderness Society. 

In 1956, Mardy, Olaus and other field biologists traveled to the upper Sheenjek River on the south slope of the Brooks Range, inside what is now the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That trip began the campaign to protect the area as a wildlife refuge. The couple recruited former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas to help persuade President Eisenhower to set aside 8 million acres as the Arctic National Wildlife Range, which was expanded to 19 million acres and renamed in 1980. The idea of preserving an entire ecological system became the intellectual and scientific foundation for the creation of a new generation of large natural parks, especially those established by the Alaska National Interests Lands Conservation Act. By the time of his death on October 21, 1963, Olaus had earned a prominent position in the historical ranks of eminent American preservationists. Although he did not live to see the Wilderness Act passed, its enactment was in part attributable to his work and convictions. Mardy, however, attended the signing of the Act, by President Lyndon Johnson, in the Rose Garden of the White House on September 3, 1964. 

After her husband's death, Mardy began writing and took over much of her husband's conservation work. Their log cabin home in Moose, Wyoming, where Olaus had directed The Wilderness Society, became a center for anyone interested in the conservation movement. It was from that house in the woods, now the Murie Ranch that was declared a National Historic District in 1997, that Mardy began writing letters and articles, traveling to hearings and making speeches. She returned to Alaska to survey potential wilderness areas for the National Park Service and worked on the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act that was signed by President Carter in 1980. That legislation set aside 104 million acres of land in Alaska and doubled the size of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Her tireless efforts as a conservation advocate preserved some of the most important wilderness areas left on the planet. 

"I am testifying as an emotional woman and I would like to ask you, gentlemen, what's wrong with emotion? Beauty is a resource in and of itself. Alaska must be allowed to be Alaska, that is her greatest economy. I hope the United States of America is not so rich that she can afford to let these wildernesses pass by, or so poor she cannot afford to keep them."- Mardy Murie - In congressional testimony about the Alaska Lands Act 

Mardy received a great many awards and honors, including the Audubon Medal in 1980, the John Muir Award in 1983, and the Robert Marshall Conservation Award in 1986. She was made an Honorary Park Ranger by the National Park Service and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Alaska. In 1998 President Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Nearing her 100th birthday in 2002, Mardy was honored with the J.N. Ding Darling Conservationist of the Year Award, the National Wildlife Federation's highest honor. On October 19, 2003, Mardy died peacefully at her home in Moose at the age of 101. 

About the Murie Center

The Murie Center was created in 1997 as a non-profit dedicated to carrying on the work of the Murie family. For several years the center shared the Murie Ranch with Mardy, deeply appreciating her life long commitment to wilderness. With Mardy's passing on October 19, 2003, the center is now stepping into her role as a voice for wild places. 

The Murie Center inspires people to act mindfully on behalf of wild nature and explores the importance connection between nature and the human spirit. The center is located on the historic Murie Ranch in Grand Teton National Park, where it carries forward the values inherent in the Muries' teachings: respect for nature, the importance of wilderness, and the opportunities for responsible action. The center accomplishes its mission in three primary ways: 

The center broadens the conservation community by sharing the Murie story and place and strengthens conservation by connecting leadership to a personal land ethic. It perpetuates conservation by mentoring young adults to life choices that support wild lands and sustainable communities. 

The center uses a deeper, more personal form of communication in its work than is often found in public discourse. The Murie Conversation requires engagement of body, mind and imagination. The unique character of the conversations comes from the belief that to encourage a conservation ethic and convince people of the need to live with more respect for nature means one must pay attention to human attitudes, values, relationships and emotions. At the center, people set aside busy work schedules and reconnect with land and the spirit of place. 

There are many ways to participate in the center's work. The center publishes a yearly course catalog that lists workshops and retreats open to the general public. As a friend of the center, folks receive our yearly mailings and newsletters. The center has a bookstore of Murie books and videos. 

The center also partners with organizations to offer meetings, retreats, trainings and other activities that are suited to the simple accommodations on the rustic, historic Murie Ranch. Contact the center to schedule a program or meeting. Locally, the center runs the Teton Sustainability Project to engage the community in practical, Earth-sensitive lifestyle choices. It is the goal of The Murie Center to inspire the protection of wild lands and to encourage communities dedicated to harmonious living within the rest of nature. 

Visit The Murie Center website to learn more: http://www.muriecenter.org. 

(http://www.wilderness.net/NWPS/Murie)

Wilderness Conservation Legacy from Alden Wood on Vimeo.

Charlie Craighead, film producer, held a benefit concert on August 6, 1997 at Jackson Lake Lodge, Jackson Lake, WY, to raise funds for a film he was doing about Mardy Murie, sometimes called the "grandmother of the conservation movement," because of her writings and work in saving our natural resources. John Denver came to play and sing a ballad he had written about Mardy and her husband, Olaus, "A Song for All Lovers," but Mardy wasn't there because it was her potluck bridge night. Mardy was the recipient of the Medal of Freedom, this country's highest honor for civilians and many other awards from the Sierra Club and other environmental groups.

John Denver visits Mardy Murie in her Wyoming home and sings the song he wrote for her and her husband Olas. From the video "artic dance: the Mardy Murie story" available from various sources...a wonderful documentary and a joy to watch. No copyright infringement intended, posted merely to spread the word and remind that the need continues.

http://www.wilderness.net/NWPS/Murie

http://www.nps.gov/grte/historyculture/murie.htm  

Un pedazo de tierra y la experiencia indispensable de Calvin Rutstrum

Calvin Rutstrum

 From The Wilderness Cabin (1961) by Calvin Rutstrum

The cabin as a distinct American style, or as a means to a unique and rewarding way of life, is apparently here to stay.  Its simple, elemental form in our complex modern civilization has retained its color and its meaning.  It persists as one of the best of our living traditions.

While the modern cabin is often so elaborate as to be classified as a house, and the modern house, because of its owner's wish for simple living, can sometimes be mistaken for a cabin, the overlap has fostered, if anything, the basic architectural idea.

The influence of the pioneer's cabin is still very evident.  We have retained much of the picturesque quality of the early cabins and some of their structural principles.  Here the similarity seems to end.  

Biographical Notes

Birth: October 26, 1895, Hobart, Indiana
Death: February 5, 1982, Osceola, Wisconsin

Author and conservationist Calvin Rutstrum arrived in St. Paul with his parents in 1898. Rutstrum worked as a cowboy in Montana in the early 1900s, a medical corpsman in the Marine Corps, real estate and automobile salesman in Minneapolis in the early 1920s, and as a detective investigating bank robberies for the American Banking Association from 1925-40. After World War II, he wrote articles for Minneapolis and St. Paul newspapers and was director of wilderness camping at Lake Hubert Camps. He was a columnist for the Osceola Sun (Wisconsin) from the late 1970s to 1981.  With Sigurd F. Olson, he and other conservationists campaigned successfully to restrict airplane travel across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota in the 1940s. Rutstrum authored fifteen books on wilderness camping, nature, and canoeing.

Selected WorksThe titles below link to the catalog record in MnPALS, the Minnesota Historical Society’s library catalog.  Please click on your browser's back button to return.

• Chips from a Wilderness Log
• Hiking Back to Health
• The New Way of the Wilderness
• North American Canoe Country
• Once Upon a Wilderness
• Paradise Below Zero
• Wilderness Cabin 

• The Wilderness Route Finder

Calvin Rutstrum
From Challenge of the Wilderness 1970

http://outdoors.magazine.free.fr/spip.php?article187

http://collections.mnhs.org/mnauthors/index.php/10001405

http://outdoors.magazine.free.fr/spip.php?article194&lang=fr

http://www.bestmadeprojects.com/post/18951470310/paradise-below-zero-a-review-by-bill

La mirada del legendario ambientalista Paul Schaefer desde su cabaña

Paul Schaefer, with mentor John Apperson, 1947

PAUL SCHAEFER 

Paul Schaefer (1908-1996) was foremost wilderness leader and conservationist for New York’s Adirondacks during the 20th century, and a master builder and restorer of fine American homes and Adirondack camps. Schaefer was an Adirondack guide, hunter, photographer, film-maker, author and premier conservationist, with a national reputation for protecting the Adirondacks’ wild river valleys and wilderness areas and defending New York’s unique “forever wild” Forest Preserve. Schaefer was recognized after his death as one of the 100 top conservationists of the century by Audubon magazine. Recipient of dozens of awards, author of three books about the Adirondacks, and producer of two award-winning documentary films about the region, the name Paul Schaefer is synonymous with Adirondack conservation as well as with rustic homes that blend into their mountain environments.

Paul Schaefer, center, at the Cataract Club. ©Ken Rimany

Defender of the Wilderness

Paul Schaefer - an American and Adirondack Original

By Dave Gibson and Ken Rimany

Paul Schaefer at his Adirondack wilderness cabin, the Beaver House. In the cabin's journal he simply wrote,"Great to be here." One week later on July 14, 1996, Paul passed away. ©Ken Rimany

Paul Schaefer was an American and Adirondack original. Born in September, 1908, and raised near the Mohawk River in Schenectady, he enthusiastically explored the outdoors with his family. They spent summers at the foot of Eleventh Mountain in the Adirondack community of Bakers Mills, where they hoped his mother Rose would recover her health. Here, as a young teenager, Paul fell in with local hunters. Soon he took up hunting and guiding "sports" from Schenectady into these , Adirondack Mountains. With his brother Vincent, he bought a trapper's cabin near a trail winding into the deep woods where many an Adirondack exploration would begin. His friendship and abiding respect for the hardworking people of this valley would remain for the rest of his life. To this day, extended family members still reside near Bakers Mills and North Creek.

At fourteen, Paul left high school to earn a living. Paul learned how to use his hands, and grew from an apprentice carpenter to become one of the finest builders and restorers of early American homes and Adirondack camps in our region. And early in life he began to write about his adventures: encounters with deer, beavers, bears, foxes, owls, mountain people and wilderness, all of which deeply sharpened his senses and fired his imagination. These encounters would, by the early 1990s, captivate readers of his three books and numerous magazine articles.

Speaking about his first book,Defending the Wilderness: Adirondack Writings of Paul Schaefer, Paul reflected on his father's influence. "A book reviewer told me that my writing is consistently good from 1930 through the '80s; 60 years consistently good. I owe it to my father." He went upstairs to retrieve his father's diploma, a degree in classical rhetoric from Canisius College. "The only reason my writing is recognized today is due to my father." And it can be argued, Verplanck Colvin, the famous Adirondack surveyor, influenced Paul's writings, too. Paul began his collection of Colvin's surveys (1872-1899) at a used book shop in Albany. He soaked up Colvin's descriptions of the deep valleys, panthers, wolves and ascents of mountains and the need to conserve the "deep, soaking sphagnum moss" and watershed forests of the Adirondacks from ruination by loggers, railroads and fires. Paul's final book, published just after his death, was devoted to his hero, Verplanck Colvin.

Paul's role as a conservationist was firmly established early in life. At the age of 11, he publicly pledged to be a Conservationist of the Empire State before the State Conservation Commissioner at Schenectady High School. By 1932, Paul established himself as a leader in the growing wilderness movement. He met John Apperson of the General Electric Company. "We sat on his floor, he spoke to us about the problems he was finding on Lake George, the fires burning out of control on Mt. Adams, and other places. Would we help him? Wild horses could not have kept me away." Later that summer, Paul lugged a large camera up Mt. Marcy to document for Apperson those very fires raging on Mt. Adams. Who should he meet on the summit but Bob Marshall, who later founded the Wilderness Society. The two talked about the problem of wilderness here and across the country, and pledged their mutual support for protecting what remained of the Adirondack and American wilderness.

With Apperson as an Adirondack mentor, and Bob Marshall and later Howard Zahniser of the Wilderness Society as national partners, Paul assembled and led the broadest, most effective coalition of advocates for the Adirondack wilderness ever assembled, influencing everyone from governors, to labor unions, to sportsmen, to garden clubs. An eternal optimist, he inspired all he met to get involved in their Adirondack Park and its legacy. As he wrote in the 1940s, "a citizen of New York State may not have title to his land, but he does have an undivided deed to this Adirondack land of solitude, peace and tranquility."

Paul and his allies went on to defeat more than thirty major dams planned to inundate Adirondack river valleys, including the Upper Hudson which would have been flooded by four huge impoundments stretching from the Glen all the way to Newcomb. Thanks to this coalition, Article XIV of the New York Constitution was amended in 1953 to prevent the flooding of any part of the Forest Preserve for river regulating purposes. At a public hearing, Schaefer would often sit in the back of a room and choose to be the last to speak. When in the 1960s Niagara Mohawk pushed to build a dam on the Upper Hudson north of Luzerne, Schaefer rose and described how the dam would inundate a small piece of Forest Preserve along the river. "You can't do it because the Constitution says you can't," Schaefer concluded. In 1969, his efforts resulted in state legislation banning any dams on the Upper Hudson and its tributaries north of Luzerne.

Paul Schaefer influenced the Adirondack policies of nine Governors and countless commissioners and legislators. In 1957, fifteen years before Wilderness areas within the Forest Preserve were designated, he persuaded State Conservation Commissioner Sharon Mauhs to, for the first time, prohibit public motorized access by jeep into what would later become the Siamese Ponds Wilderness Area. In 1958, Schaefer convinced Governor Harriman not to route the Northway, I-87, through what is now the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness and the Champlain Valley. In 1972 and 1975, the Adirondack documentary film he produced with Fred Sullivan and the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, Of Rivers and Men, helped to convince Governors Rockefeller and Carey to respectively sign and expand the Wild, Scenic and Recreational Rivers program. His film with Couch-sa-chra-ga Association, The Adirondack, the Land Nobody Knows won a Cine Eagle Award in 1980. Paul was closely involved in the creation of the Adirondack Nature Conservancy in 1972. He advised both the Nelson Rockefeller and Mario Cuomo gubernatorial Commissions on the Adirondacks.

In 1995, Schaefer led a behind-the-scenes effort to persuade Finch, Pruyn and Company to donate or sell the magnificent O.K. Slip Falls above the Upper Hudson River to New York State. Although that effort failed, Schaefer was convinced that one day the falls and much of the river's shoreline would come into public ownership. Schaefer advised hundreds of young conservationists who came to him for advice that they must be patient to persevere. In 2007, the Adirondack Nature Conservancy acquired the falls and thousands of acres near it from Finch, Pruyn for future designation as Forest Preserve.

Paul also had the common touch.In 1990, a group of young students wanted Paul to agree that NYS Rt. 30 should be torn up from the central Adirondacks because it was antithetical to wilderness. Paul said he admired their idealism, but then asked how many of them had hiked off-trail across the nearby Siamese Ponds Wilderness. None of them had."When you take the time and effort to hike off-trail in this wilderness between my cabin in Bakers Mills and Indian Lake, a distance of about 15 miles, then you can come back to speak with me about closing major highways in the Adirondacks. Until then, you can not claim to understand what wilderness is."

As an apprentice carpenter, Paul was asked to tear down the Pierce Homestead, Niskayuna's oldest, for the Reist family in 1932. He firmly told the Reists he could never take down such an historic building, but he could restore it. This lovely home still stands today. In compensation, the Reists gave him two acres of their land, where Paul built a home at 897 St. David's Lane. Finished in 1935, the home's beams are recycled from Dutch barns and other structures that faced the wrecking ball. The stone facing is Helderberg limestone which Paul brought from the escarpment west of Albany in his Ford Roadster. Later, Paul built additions, including the Adirondack Room. Its great beams also came from a Dutch barn. Paul explained that he would pick up hitchhikers to ride on top of beams to act as counterweights, and the heavier the hitchhiker the better.

The home's cathedral ceiling permitted the construction of a 10-foot by 12-foot Adirondack raised relief map. World War II veteran Col.Hannah taught Paul and dozens of volunteers how to build the map, which took 10 years to complete and paint. Its purpose was to allow the public to understand at a glance the fundamental relationships between Adirondack mountain ranges, lakes, rivers and communities. Today, the map is the educational centerpiece of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks' learning center, the Center for the Forest Preserve.

Paul Schaefer died in July 1996, still championing the Adirondacks. He encouraged the Association, for whom he served 50 years as Trustee and Vice President, to purchase his home, which the organization did from Paul's children in 1999. In 1998, Schaefer was recognized by Audubon magazine as one of the nation's 100 top conservationists of the twentieth century.

Today, Schaefer's home is a conservation heritage site. It continues to be a wellspring of citizen-advocacy for the

Adirondacks and for, as Paul would often say, "the youth of distant tomorrows."

Dave Gibson is the executive director of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks.

Ken Rimany is a photographer and the director of operations for the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks.

Paul Schaefer's practical invention, the Adirondac Cooking Crane.©Ken Rimany 

Plaque ©Ken Rimany

Adirondack Country Cabin: Paul Schaefer 

http://www.dec.ny.gov/pubs/47648.html

http://www.adirondackwild.org/who-we-are/paulschaefer.html 

Canto de la cabaña con techo de paja

Canto de la cabaña con techo de paja del maestro Sekito

He construido una cabaña de paja

en la que no hay nada de valor.

Después de comer me echo la siesta.

Cuando acabé la cabaña apareció la mala hierba.

Ahora ha crecido y lo cubre todo.

El hombre de la ermita sin interior ni exterior,

vive en ella apaciblemente.

No quiere vivir donde vive la gente ordinaria.

No le gusta lo que le gusta a la gente ordinaria.

Aunque la choza sea pequeña,

contiene el universo entero.

En unos pocos metros cuadrados

un viejo ilumina las formas y su esencia.

Bodhisatva del Gran Vehículo

tiene una fe absoluta,

sin embargo,

la gente común duda sin poder impedirlo.

¿Perecerá o no perecerá esta cabaña?

Perecedera o no ahí está presente

el maestro original.

No reside ni al norte ni al sur

ni al este ni al oeste.

Enraizado en la perseverancia

no puede ser sobrepasado.

Una montaña iluminada bajo los pinos verdes

no se puede comparar

ni a los palacios de jade ni a las torres bermejas.

Sentado, con la cabeza cubierta, todo en él reposa,

de esta forma, este viejo monje de las montañas

no comprende nada de nada.

Vive ahí donde está

y no hace ningún esfuerzo para liberarse

¿Para qué disponer con orgullo

de un púlpito

para seducir a sus discípulos?

Dirigid vuestra luz hacia el interior

y dad media vuelta.

La fuente infinita es inconcebible.

no puede ser confrontada ni evitada.

Buscad en los antiguos maestros

y permaneced íntimos con su enseñanza.

Atad la hierba loca

y construid con ella una choza.

No la abandonéis nunca.

Dejad pasar los siglos y relajaros completamente.

Abrid vuestras manos

y caminad inocentemente.

Las miríadas de mundos y los infinitos conceptos

sólo existen para liberaos de vuestras trabas y obstáculos.

Si queréis encontrar el inmortal de la choza

no os escapéis aquí y ahora

de este saco de piel.

Sekito Kisen