It has been a lifetime of positive experiences in nature that has led me here. Playing in the creek behind my house as a child, building tree forts in the woods. Sleigh rides and tobogganing in the fields. Class II-V whitewater rafting on the Youghiogheny River near Ohiopyle State Park in Pennsylvania.
The story begins back in my youngest years and earliest memories. My parents loved the outdoors and would take my brothers and I camping. This was car camping in an old station wagon. Coleman gas stoves and lanterns, old heavy canvas tents, and a wooden camp kitchen box were the equipment of the day. Later my parents owned a camper where we would spend weekends throughout the summer in a campground in North Central Pennsylvania.In June 1976, I participated in my first backpacking trip with a regional church camp, Pine Springs Camp that I had attended since I was a few years younger. The destination was a section of the Appalachian Trail somewhere in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia (sorry, but I don't remember the exact section we hiked - after all that was almost 40 years ago! ).
This experience and others like it provided me with the foundation for a life long love of backpacking and the great outdoors. You can just see my head and one leg ... I'm the tall one on the left side of the photo, black hat with feather.Additional photos I took during the backpacking trip are below. My brother helped me locate these images, which I took using a 35mm camera with real film and developed onto prints. These old photos were scanned and digitized to share here. Enjoy!!
