Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder

The Sun, February 2007, Issue 374, page4

In the days before sprawling residential subdivisions, children at play could often be seen traipsing through meadows or climbing trees. Now it's more common to find boys and girls being shuttled from school to computer to soccer practice as part of a fast-paced schedule that leaves little time for daydreaming or exploring nature. The result, says journalist Richard Louv, is "nature-deficit disorder." Louv coined this term, which is not a medical diagnosis, to call attention to the absence of nature in children's lives. In his newest book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin Books), he ties the lack of time spent in nature to everything from childhood obesity to psychological disorders.

Suburban sprawl and busy schedules are just two factors keeping children out of nature, Louv says. Others include the strict focus on academics, what he calls the "criminalization of play," media-fueled fear of child abductions, and overzealous environmental campaigns. Still, Louv is optimistic and believes that people with different political and cultural concerns can find common ground around this issue. Most people above a certain age, he says, remember having a place in nature that was special to them when they were a child.

For Louv, that place was the woods beyond his childhood home in Raytown, Missouri. Born in 1949, Louv was raised by an artist mother and a chemical-engineer father, both of whom encouraged his engagement with the natural world. But nature for the Louvs didn't mean just looking at wildflowers. Every spring, his family would get in the car on a mission to save the box turtles - who were making their annual migration from the ravages of automobile.

 

Research coming out of the University of Illinois shows that a little bit of time in nature dramatically reduces the symptoms of ADHD .... I don't pretend that nature is a panacea, but I do wonder whether some ADHD symptoms might be caused by the fact that we took nature away from these kids in the first place.

 

Cooper (The Sun): Has there been any nature component to federal education reform?

 

Louv: No. In fact, the president's "No Child Left Behind" program is running in opposition to what I believe kids need most. For instance, 40 percent of school districts have either canceled or reduced recess in the belief that more time in the classroom will improve academic performance. Some schools are being built with no playgrounds at all. Even physical education is being cut. I never thought I'd grow up to defend gym! [Laughter.] I was at the St. Louis Zoo last week, and they were talking about how field trips are rapidly dwindling.

What we really need is a "No Child Left Inside" program. Studies done since the 1990s have shown that nature has a positive impact on cognitive development. Schools with outdoor classrooms perform remarkably better across the board than those that focus on standardized tests. Last year the California Department of Education hired an independent research group to look at three school districts that had some kind of outdoor-immersion program, like a sixth-grade camp, as part of their schooling. It found that the kids in those programs did 27 percent better on science testing than kids in traditional classrooms. They were also better at conflict resolution.

In Scandinavia, studies compared how kids play in natural playgrounds - with trees, bushes, and native grasses - versus playgrounds covered with asphalt or turf. They found that the kids in natural playgrounds were far more likely to invent their own games and play cooperatively. I find this fascinating, because teamwork is one of the selling points for organized sports, yet there's more cooperation on these natural playgrounds with no adult hovering nearby. Any of us who built a treehouse or dammed a stream with our buddies remembers what that was like: it just kind of happens. I think it has something to do with the calming effect of nature.

 

Unfortunately, we're moving in the opposite direction, walling up kids and even taking the windows away. The school design movement of the seventies, which continues to have an influence today, replaced standard windows with narrow panes of glass at the top of the wall. They were called "vision strips," though you can't see out of them.

Village calls U.N. chief’s rise destiny

 The News & Observer, Friday, December 22, 2005

 Sangdong No. 1 Village, South Korea – Ban Ki-jong proudly traced his village’s destiny in the shape of a nearby mountain.

 “See how it looks like a crane,” he pointed, “with its wings spread open, ready to fly?”

 “Feng shui tells us this a perfect shape for funneling natural forces into the village,” Ban continued, referring to an ancient belief that some locations are blessed by geography.  “So we’ve known for three centuries that a great man would emerge here.  Now, he’s finally come.”

 That man is Ban’s cousin, Ban Ki-moon, who will take the reins of the United Nations as secretary-general January 1^st.  He was born 62 years ago in this tiny village of about 100 residents in South Korea’s rustic center.  As the villagers celebrate their native son, they are not alone in turning to traditional ideas to explain so august a birth in such humble surroundings.

 Since Ban’s selection by the United Nations in October, almost 2,000 practitioners of feng shui or pungsu in Korean, as well as a few Buddhists, have descended on the village, trying to divine the source of its good fortune, local officials said.  So a host of stories and accounts of Ban’s birth and childhood have emerged, many that make him sound like a sagacious Confucian scholar out of Korea’s dynastic past.

 …In Sangdong, where a third of the residents share the Ban family name, Ban is seen as the fulfillment of a prophecy uttered by the family ancestors who settled the village about 1700.

John and William Bartram, Travelers in Early America - by Sandra Wallus Sammons

William's life was about to take a new turn.

Dr. Fothergill suggested that William take a trip for as long as two to three years.  He should collect seeds, live plant specimens, and make drawings of everything interesting.  Fothergill would pay William the same amount as his father had received as King's Botanist, fifty pounds sterling a year...

...he left on March 10, 1773 on his trip south.

Arriving back in Savannah in late January 1776, William visited some of the friends that he had made, thinking he might not see them again.  Stopping at Darien, it was no longer the peaceful place he remembered.  The woods here were no longer safe.

Riding his horse quietly at sunset near the St. Mary's River, William saw an Indian crossing the path ahead.  Because the Seminole had a rifle in hand and looked very angry, William ducked behind some trees.  No use; he had been spotted.  The Indian turned his horse and raced straight towards the terrified, defenseless young man.  There was no chance to run.  The traveler had never been so afraid of an Indian.  With no alternative, William became quiet, resigning himself to whatever might happen.

Regaining his peaceful composure, he stood very still, looking the Indian in the eye.  This "intrepid Siminole," startled by this lack of fear, was in for another shock.  William stepped towards him and offered his hand in greeting, calling him brother.  At first the Indian pulled back, but then, realizing that this was one white man who would harm no one, the Indian confidently thrust out his hand in peace.  William asked the way to a nearby trading post.  The Indian answered.  Both men went on their way.

Very curious as to the cause of the Indian's anger, William learned at the trading post that the Indian had been mistreated.  The Seminole had ridden off fiercely angry, with rifle in hand, saying that he "...would kill the first white man he met."  Another close call for the traveler!  pages 74-75, Ocean Beach Publishing, Flagler Beach, FL

Journey from the Land of No - by Roya Hakakian

Our world was reinvented.  The flag remained green, white, and red, but an Allah insignia replaced its old sword-bearing lion.  Stamps were redesigned.  The moments of chaos at the university gates, the oil queues, the "Down with the shah" graffiti, became the venerated images on them.  New bills were printed.  Portraits of bearded faces and turbaned heads took the place of the smiling faces and crowned heads.  Censorship was abolished.  Coco was free at last!  Newspapers and magazines mushroomed.  The calendar changed.  On February 12 in 2537 (the year dating from the coronation of king Cyrus) we went to bed.  When we woke up the next day, it was February 13 in 1357 (the year of the prophet Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina).  Overnight, 1,180 years had fallen away--eons of daylight saved for posterity!  Page 145

For the first few days, Mrs. Moghadam only asked questions.  Should religion be passed on by heredity or by conviction gained through independent study?  A euphemism for "Should you or should you not follow your parents into Judaism?  Page 163...

"My dear sisters, daughters of our great revolution!  It's now time for you to learn about the delicious topic of corporeal sin.  Yes, my sisters.  Young and innocent as you are in your pubescent splendor, you are also diabolical."...

"Ah, but I tell you.  I speak of the apocalypse of your hair.  Yes, hhhair.  Such a simple word.  So seemingly dead and blameless.  But, my dear girls, blameless it is not.  It is constantly scheming to reveal itself, peeking out of the scarf, even from under the veil.  It peeks not to reveal itself to me or you, or your peers in this room, but to man.  You heard me right.  Your long, beautiful hair is the very snake that deceived Eve, who, then deceived Adam."  Page 164

The Places In Between - by Rory Stewart, Harcourt Inc.

I thought about evolutionary historians who argued that walking was a central part of what it meant to be human.  Our two-legged motion was what first differentiated us from the apes.  It freed our hands for tools and carried us on long marches out of Africa.  As a species, we colonized the world on foot.  Most of human history was created through contacts conducted at walking pace, even when some rode horses.  I thought of the pilgrimages to Compostela in Spain; to Mecca; to the source of the Ganges; and of wandering dervishes, sadhus, and friars who approached God on foot.  The Buddha meditated by walking and Wordsworth composed sonnets while striding beside the lakes.  Page 75.

The next morning it was still snowing and they tried to persuade me not to go.  They said if there was a meter of  snow in Kamenj there must be two meters in Chaghcharan.  But I didn't want to be trapped in Kamenj for two months.

Wazir, wrapped in three jackets, led Babur and me out through Haji Mohsin's orchards.  he walked with a rolling seaman's stride and kicked the snow high into the air with his tall leather boots.  The snow lay heavy on the thin black branches of apple and mulberry trees and formed a thick crust on the drystone walls.  Babur padded happily alongside us, making his own tracks in the fresh powder.  But it took both of us to drag him across the ice on the river.

As we entered a broad valley, the snow stopped falling, the sun broke out of the clouds, and we saw other footprints.

"Where are you from, Wazir?" I asked.

"I am the man of Commandant Haj Mohsin Khan.  I fought for him during the jihad, went into hiding from the Russians with him in these mountains, and work for him now for my bread.  He is a good man."

No Arms Needed - A hero among us - Discovery Channel

Here we were enthralled, touched and inspired while accidentally finding this tale on the Discovery Channel at 12 noon this Saturday, May 8th, 2004.  It is the story of Marty Ravellette, a Carrboro resident who was born armless and become an inspiration to all of us.  We saw him sitting in Sutton's Pharmacy and eating his eggs with his left foot, he's a lefty.  And this is right next door to Strong's Coffee Shop where we have our dead poet's meeting at lunchtime.  If you get a chance you must see this man's journey of overcoming obstacles to become a self-sufficient and productive individual in society.  There is every chance that you will see him since he currently is a landscaper in the area.  Chuck Stone, journalism professor at UNC, invited him to talk to his students as a subject for reporting details.  As Stone said, "Marty is a wellspring of humanity that washes over them and makes them feel better."

Flight of the Lama - by Isabel Hilton

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE / MARCH 12. 2000 page 50

...But now Ugyen Trinley was 14, and the red-cheeked nomad boy had grown into a young man nearly six feet tall, and he was looking for something more than toys and kind words from Beijing. He had reached an age when the tradition of the Karma Kagyu demanded that he begin to receive the teachings of his lineage - that he become the latest link in a chain of oral transmission that stretches back, unbroken, for nearly a thousand years. Each previous incarnation of the Karmapa had received the teachings from a master lama (the word lama simply means "teacher") who had himself received them from a previous incarnation of the Karmapa.

    But how was Ugyen Trinley to receive those teachings? Tai Situ Rinpoche and Gyaltsab Rinpoche, the masters anointed to teach him, were both in India, part of the vast Tibetan diaspora that had formed in the aftermath of the failed 1959 uprising against the Chinese. Ugyen Trinley had made repeated requests to travel to India to study with them; they, in turn, had asked for permission to visit him in Tibet. But since Tai Situ Rinpoche's last trip, in 1993, Beijing had refused.

    At same time, the young Karmapa was developing a mind of his own. Kagyu monks tell of the Karmapa's reluctance to pay homage to the Panchen Lama (the second most important reincarnate lama, who was chosen by the Dalai Lama against the wishes of the Chinese and then disappeared with his family after being apprehended by Chinese security forces). Or of the time the Karmapa slapped the face of a Gelugpa lama in a dispute in 1995.

    Then there was his general reluctance to toe the Communist Party line. When the local party representative asked him last year to read a speech prepared by local party officials, he refused. "Do you wish me to say," the Karmapa inquired, "that I am giving this speech on your behalf?" The startled party representative explained that the speech was to be delivered as though it was his own.

    "In that case," said the Karmapa, "I have no need of this text." No speech was given.

    Word of the Karmapa's discontent inevitably filtered out. The Dalai Lama was alarmed to hear last year that the Karmapa wanted to leave; he feared for the boy's safety. A message was hastily sent, counseling patience. The Karmapa waited, but with a growing conviction that the longer he did, the harder it would be to escape. Already he was under surveillance: in addition to the spies and informers, uniformed security personnel controlled access to the monastery and scrutinized the Karmapa’s mail. He could not leave the monastery for any reason without the permission of his Chinese-appointed management. He had begun to feel like a prisoner

TO ESCAPE WAS A TERRIBLY RISKY ENTERPRISE. but for his followers, the Karmapa is a bodhisattva, a manifestation of the Buddha, whose vision goes beyond the mundane. He saw his flight as his spiritual destiny, a conviction that was reinforced by a prophetic dream more than 100 years old. In the 19th century, a Kagyu monk named Chogyur Dechen Lingpa dreamed about the lives of 21 Karmapas. He described his dream to the abbot of Karma monastery, who painted the prophecy as he had been told it. In the painting, which survives, the 17th Karmapa is depicted sitting beneath a pine tree, in discussion with a monk who is understood to be Tai Situ Rinpoche. The landscape of the painting, Ugyen Trinley pointed out to a trusted follower, did not look like the barren valley in which Tsurphu monastery sits. It did, however, bear a striking resemblance to the landscape in which Tai Situ Rinpoche has built Rumtek, his monastery in Sikkim. To the Karmapa, the message was clear: he would go to India and, as it was prophesied, he would get there safely.

    Perhaps that thought offered some comfort to the little group as they drove through the chilly darkness toward Lhasa, for they knew that the most dangerous part of the journey lay ahead. Some 20 miles away, near the river Tolung on the outskirts of Lhasa, a third lama and his driver waited patiently. They had taken a taxi loaded with provisions to the rendezvous spot.

    The third lama looked at his watch and guessed that, if all went well, the escape party would arrive in half an hour. He, too, had told his friends and family that he was planning a business trip. He had warned the driver to prepare for a journey of some 15 days, to a destination that would be revealed to him later. Now, as they waited in the darkness, it was time to let his driver in on the secret. Was he ready to join? He was. A few moments later, the Mitsubishi picked them up and, the party complete, headed to western Tibet.

    The Karmapa had entrusted the planning to one man in his entourage; he in turn had chosen two more. The Karmapa had insisted that his escape must be accomplished before the Lunar New Year, which was Feb. 5. They had had just over two months to prepare for this moment.

    The three men had been under no illusions about the scale of the challenge on which they were embarked: to smuggle Tibet's most prominent reincarnate lama out of a heavily guarded monastery, run for a border that at its closest point was some 200 miles away, cross that border unnoticed and somehow reach Dharamsala in northern India, the exile home of the Dalai Lama. It was a project so audacious that many continued to believe it was impossible, even after it had been successfully completed.

    All three men were devotees of the Karmapa. "The Karmapa is the embodiment of the active principle of the Buddha," said one of those involved. "His wishes must be obeyed. So I felt a very strong sense of conviction and inspiration." At their first meeting, in Lhasa, two months before the escape, the three had sworn an oath. "We swore that, until our goal was achieved, we would not reveal it to a soul."

    The route that the party now took was one of several they had considered, each with its own set of dangers. This one ran through western Tibet to Mustang, in Nepal, about 400 miles from Lhasa. It was extremely long but relatively unguarded, and it had a number of other advantages. The road, while not good, was passable with the right vehicle as far as the border, and the border crossing itself was often unmanned. Finally, to cross into Nepal a traveling businessman did not need a passport but only a permit, which could be obtained from an army camp near the border.

    The planners knew that once they got over the border, whatever difficulties they encountered would be secondary. They also knew that until that moment, there would be no second chances. They had prepared meticulously, and they knew exactly what lay ahead. A few weeks earlier, two of them had obtained permits for a business trip and had reconnoitered the route as far as Lo Manthang, just inside Nepal. They had taken photographs and noted all the potential dangers - primarily, Chinese checkpoints (manned on some occasions but not others) or army barracks. They returned to Tibet - their mission apparently unremarked upon by the security services - with a detailed understanding of what they had to do. They submitted their plan, along with the photographs, to the Karmapa for his approval.

    They knew that good cover stories were essential so that the preparation of vehicles and supplies would not arouse suspicion. Neither the fund-raising trip nor the business trip were unusual events, and the purchase of the Mitsubishi - a more suitable vehicle than the truck that had been used for previous fund-raising trips -was made without attracting attention.

    Finally, the Karmapa announced his intention to observe an eight-day religious retreat in his private chambers. The retreat, nothing out of the ordinary for him, provided eight days in which the watching eyes of the monastery spies would not expect to see him. Only his teacher and his cook would attend him behind the closed door of his private apartments. The date had been set for the 21st day of the 11th month in the Tibetan calendar - Dec. 28.

    Thus far, the plan was working well, but they had a long journey ahead and a border to cross. They drove on, stopping only to change drivers, all that night and all the next day. The small checkpoints that the two scouts had so carefully logged were all unmanned. It was not until 11:30 p.m. on Dec. 29, the second night of their escape, that they reached a section of the road that they knew to be dangerous. They were nearing the border, and the road ran within 800 yards of the first of two Chinese army camps. Anywhere in the vicinity they risked being stopped and questioned.

    It was already dark, but not, they decided, dark enough for the risky passage ahead. Two of them were to drive past the camp without lights. The rest, including the Karmapa, would take to the mountains on foot and rendezvous back on the road, beyond the danger zone. They waited until 1:30 a.m., then three men and the Karmapa slipped out of the vehicle and began their arduous climb. They dared not use any lights, and the night was dark and cold. They picked their way through thorn scrub, frequently stumbling in the dark.

    It was four hours before they reached the road on the other side of the mountain, their hands lacerated by thorns and their legs bruised from frequent falls. To their dismay, there was no sign of the Mitsubishi. Had the others been captured, they wondered. Had they missed them in the dark? Had they fled after wrongly assuming that the party on foot had been captured?

    The little group rapidly calculated their options. Even if the S.U.V had been intercepted, they might still make it to the border on foot, even without provisions and despite the bitter weather. If the vehicle had simply missed them, perhaps they could still meet up. It was still dark, but dawn was not far off. They decided to stay on the road as long as it was safe and to walk in the direction of the border, in the hope of finding the rest of the party. To walk toward the camp invited disaster, and if the vehicle had already gone by, they reasoned the driver would eventually realize his mistake and turn back. An hour later, to their inexpressible relief, they made out the Mitsubishi driving slowly toward them. It had overshot and, as they predicted, was coming back to look for them.

    The second army camp lay two hours farther down the track. It was there that Tibetans traveling on business could obtain a permit to go into Nepal, but now, in that bitterly cold early morning, nothing seemed to be stirring. The choice was to take to the hills or to risk driving straight through. They drove through unchallenged. Half an hour later, they reached Nyichung, passing the pillar that marks the unmanned border with Mustang, Nepal. They drove across.

    On the Nepalese side of the border, the track was hardly fit, even for an S.U.V Besides, the party had no permit to drive their vehicle in Nepal, and they did not want to attract official curiosity. So they left the vehicle in the care of a family on the Mustang side of the border, telling them they would come back for it 'in a few days.

    To continue their trek, they hired horses and rode to Lo Manthang, two hours away. There, in the house of a Karma Kagyu devotee, they had their first night's rest since they had fled Tsurphu. Early the next morning, Dec. 31, they rode on. They traveled without a break for another complete day and night until 7:30 the following evening, when they reached the Manang district, a popular spot for trekkers in the shadow of the Annapurna Range. They spent the night there in a tourist lodge. The next day, Jan. 2, they rode by helicopter - in this terrain, it is either yaks or helicopters to the outskirts of Katmandu, the Nepalese capital, then took a taxi across the border into India. The Nepalese border guards were happy to accept a bribe to overlook their lack of travel documents.

    From the Indian border, their incredible journey continued. They took a rickshaw to the nearest railway station - at Gorakhpur - where they boarded a train to Lucknow. In Lucknow, they hired another taxi, and after a further 24 hours of continuous driving, they reached New Delhi, the Indian capital, on the evening of Jan. 4. There they changed taxis and drove on through the final night of their journey to Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama. Disaster threatened on the final leg of the journey as their car skidded off the road in a fog. Miraculously, as the Karmapa's followers see it, nobody was injured. Finally, at 10:30 on the morning of Jan. 5, they reached Dharamsala.

    Since leaving Tsurphu eight days previously, they had slept only twice in a bed. They had made it against extraordinary odds, but their euphoria was tinged with fear for those left behind.

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He's Big, He's Bad, He's ... Japanese?

Running wild with C. W. Nicol, proud citizen, silly celebrity, and stubborn environmentalist (Outside, May 1999, page 55, Field Notes, By Jeffrey Bartholet)

We're in Bashõ territory, yet nothing seems quite right. It's not just the giant Plains Indian teepee that's standing in the midst of this Japanese forest of beech and sycamore, cedar and chestnut. Nor is it the Welsh name given to the place - Afan Ar Goed, meaning Valley of Woods. Stranger still is my companion. What would Bashõ, the, great haiku poet who wandered the Japanese countryside in the seventeenth century contemplating the wondrous evanescence of all living tings, make of contemporary Japan's most famous naturalist - a bearded, lumbering bear of a man named Clive William Nicol? Snow-crusted forest / Big boots clomp-clomping, Hey, wow / The guy from TV!

 Hmmm. As we tramp through these woods near Mount Kurohime, in Nagano Prefecture, we stop to ponder a small stream, lined with cement by order of Japanese bureaucrats. On the far side is a forest of spindly cedar trees, planted by government foresters after the area was clear-cut decades ago. On our side is what Nicol calls his legacy, 45 acres of damaged woodlands that he bought piecemeal over the last 14 years for well over $2 million in hard-earned book royalties and television appearance fees. "Listen," says Nicol, as he tilts an ear toward the cement gully at our feet. "You don't hear the gush and tinkle of the water through rocks, the music of a stream. There are no eddies and pools for the fish. It's dead." 

The stream is government property-a lost cause. But together with a hired woodsman and other Japanese nature lovers, Nicol is nursing his forest back to health. Since he started buying up this land in 1985, he and these cohorts have reintroduced several species of trees, built beehives, constructed two ponds, and cataloged 93 species of birds, more than 700 species of insects, and 20 types of violets. The woodpecker population has quadrupled, foxes hunt here, and bears have come down from the mountains to feed. Kingfishers have nested near the ponds, which also have attracted frogs, ducks, and wagtails. Walk through his woods in the spring, Nicol assures me, and you'll hear birdsong and other signs of abundant life. But from the neglected government forest, where saplings were planted willy-nilly and fight one another for sun and nutrients, you'll be lucky to hear anything at all. 

Preaching the environmental gospel in the chilly quiet of his woods, Nicol is as serious as an oak. But I won't have to wait long for his doppelgãnger to appear, the shameless showman and larger-than-life "nature guy" with the booming voice, hearty laugh, and mischievous twinkle in his eye. Many Japanese call him Aca Oni, or Red Devil, a sobriquet that recalls shipwrecked Europeans of centuries past-the sort of rapscallion gaijin who features in a James Clavell novel. The name suits Nicol, partly because of his ruddy face and russet beard, but also because he loves to play the backwoods barbarian, wild and free in the land of the lockstep salaryman. 

Being the nature guy is a great gig, and not just because it has made Nicol a millionaire many times over. It's also great because if you are the nature guy, you can expend your considerable charm being the plain-speaking troublemaker who's trying to turn Japanese environmentalism inside out-or from a more global perspective, outside in.

 Read the rest of the article in Outside magazine's May 1999 issue.

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From:  The Ray Way, by Peter Potterfield (Backpacker Feb. 1998)

...amounts to an almost total repudiation of what Jardine terms "standard backpacking style."  It was as if he were saying to backcountry travelers, "Excuse me, but just about everything you've been doing up 'til now is wrong."

    In typical Jardine fashion, the Ray Way was developed through intense personal experience, starting with his first long distance hike, a Pacific Coast Trail trek, in 1989.  "That first day...it was like we were going to the moon."  The outcome, he says was always "in question."   Even so, he and his wife Jenny arrived at the Canadian border 4½ months later.   It had been a rewarding journey, but a physically rigorous one.

    He went on to do the other two legs of the Triple Crown of American Trails - the Appalachian and Continental Divide - and along the way watched far too many hikers suffer, often becoming exhausted, discouraged, and eventually quitting.  There had to be a way to make long hikes more than grim ordeals.

    In 1994 Ray and Jenny hiked the PCT a third time, covering the 2,700 miles in only three months and four days - almost 45 days quicker than the first time.  They didn't walk any faster, they just spent more hours each day on the trail.  "That hike was pure joy," says Jardine.   "With the focus no longer on whether or not we could finish, we could enjoy how much fun it was to spend months in the wilderness."  Never had he felt so in tune with the wild.

    And thus was born the Ray Way, a blend of philosophy and innovative techniques culled from the hard lessons learned while hiking more than 12,000 total miles.  At the heart of the system lies an unstinting reduction in pack weight.  In Jardine's eyes, pack weight is the total weight of the pack, minus food and water.  On his first PCT hike, Jardine's pack weighed about 25 pounds.  On his third hike, it was less than 9 pounds(!)

Read more about Ray in the following links:

Ray Jardine's Adventure Page

The Ultralight Backpacker

Ray Jardine Biography

Ultralight Philosophy in Backpacker magazine