Get a summary of news items delivered to your Inbox (nearly) every week—
subscribe to NEOC Update.
For the picnic, NEOC will provide plates, flatware, cups, punch, and cookies. Bring a main dish for yourself and your family, plus a potluck item to share with everyone. For the potluck part, bring either a salad/sidedish, or a dessert to share. If your last name begins with A – M, bring a dessert; last name N – Z, a side dish.
A lawn chair or two would be a good idea. Bug repellant would be an excellent idea! For the supermarket-challenged we will either order some pizzas, or have some extra hamburgers and hotdogs (if the grill permit comes through). There will be games and prizes for the kids, and the club library will be available for loans and returns.
Picnic Coordinator: Joanne Sankus. Can you help out flipping hamburgers or serving pizza? Please contact Joanne.
Nadya Popova, a former professional orienteering coach in Russia, will be conducting an orienteering training camp for juniors, age 9+ at the beginner - intermediate (White, Yellow and Orange courses) skill levels.
The camp will take place Friday, June 29 - Tuesday, July 3, 2012, at the Blue Mountain Reservation's Trailside Lodge in Peekskill, NY.
For more information, please contact Nadya.
Are you receiving the NEOC Update e-mail? It goes out (almost) weekly to all members, and anyone else who requests it.
If you don't see messages from "NEOCnews" in your In-box, try the following:
by Peter Amram
Although Norman Maclean is best known for his 1976 collection of fiction, A River Runs Through It, his posthumously published Young Men and Fire (Chicago, 1992) also attracted considerable attention, including a National Book Critics Circle Award. Young Men and Fire is an examination of a disastrous 1949 forest fire in Montana in which thirteen smoke jumpers were killed, and it is, inevitably, a somewhat melancholy essay.
MacLean’s adult life was spent as a professsor of English at the University of Chicago, but as a youth he had worked in the western forests, and he retained strong affection for nature, an affection which he expressed with terse perspective. In River, for example, Maclean recounted having once belonged to a USFS crew which “did what we had to do and loved the woods without thinking we owned them.” And in Young Men, Maclean declared, “Your best friend when you feel curious about what you are walking on is usually a good map, if you can find one.” He continued with this affirmation, and warning:
The training camp was held at Blue Mountain in Peekskill NY on March 24th and 25th, 2012. It was run by Erin Schirm with help from Janet Porter, Neil Dobbs, Jeff Saeger, Judy Karpinski, Barb Bryant, Tim Parson, Bernie Breton, Mr. Barker, and maybe some other people.
Unfortunately, at the last minute the lodging fell through, and the organizers had to restrict attendance to only the advanced juniors. So kids working on white, yellow and orange couldn’t come. There were about 20 juniors there, including some cadets from West Point.
I drove down with my mom and my friend Rachael Harkavy. At one point we heard that the training was only going to be on Saturday, so we planned for that, which meant we couldn’t stay for the morning training on Sunday.
The first exercise on Saturday was corridor orienteering: about 3.5 kilometers, where most of the map had been whited out except for a narrow strip. I thought this was supposed to be a compass exercise, but for me it was mostly a feature-reading exercise. I did this together with Evalin Brautigam. Working with her was pretty easy, we worked well together. Most of the time we switched off leading the legs.