WHY THEY DO THE THINGS THEY DO

National park landscapes can be ruggedly demanding and quick to snuff out lives. These landscapes are not city parks, and some visitors tend to forget that. With hopes of instilling visitors with more respect -- not fear, but respect -- for their surroundings, the Park Service has been working to better educate visitors to the dangers in the parks they're entering.

Part of the education program is internal, as well, to get SAR crews to accept that they're not immortal and that they constantly have to be assessing their own safety during missions. “In the past the culture was ‘mission at all costs.’ You do the mission," explained Dr. Sara Newman, the Park Service's current risk management program director. "And part of our culture of rescue, of 'get out there and do whatever it takes for a mission,' is part of what results in accidents, and this attitude of 'we are rewarded for being heroes.'”

"It’s a new cultural shift, really, in how we look at all the activities we do, not just search and rescue. It’s anything, whether it’s going up a ladder and fixing something or deciding whether or not, after hiking 10 miles to get somewhere and you’ve forgotten your PPE (personal protective equipment), your eye gear or your gloves, do you still do the job, or do you walk back and say 'I couldn’t do it today'?" This approach entails more than simply writing down a series of safety checks NPS employees must run through before they embark on the task at hand.

“One of the essential parts of our program is to educate the public about the fact that the responsibility for a lot of their safety really lies with them," Dr. Newman said. ‘I found a woman walking up Mount Rainier in high-heeled shoes. I think she felt she’d get a better grip on the snow. Or somebody at Haleakula at the top, it’s 30 degrees, in flip-flops and shorts. I asked her if she knew it’d be that cold and she said, 'Well, I was in Hawaii, I thought it’d be warm.’ People don’t necessarily prepare.”

Yosemite officials also have been working in recent years to ingrain safety into their visitors, according to Roger Farmer, the park's safety and occupational health officer. “We don’t want to inundate them at the entrance stations with all these safety requirements, and we don’t want to inundate them with signs along the trail," said Mr. Farmer. "We want the wilderness experience to be that, a wilderness experience. But every way we can to educate -- using podcasts and using unique things that actually speak to the youth of today, we’re in a little different generation where the iPod is something we need to take advantage of for educating."

Yosemite officials often station their SAR bus near the Happy Isles Trailhead -- a key intersection in summer for folks heading up to the Little Yosemite Valley or Half Dome -- as well as at other busy trailheads so rangers can explain search-and-rescue techniques and safety lessons. They also have on regular patrol in and outside the Yosemite Valley rangers whose mission is to explain risks to visitors, answer questions, and, if necessary, respond to emergencies.

Unfortunately, not everyone is open to hearing about safety issues before they venture down the trail. "It’s pretty predictable who will get injured with that kind of attitude, and it is the young males (who will) probably be focused on the task at hand rather than taking a little bit of time to prepare better," said Mr. Farmer. "Most folks, most visitors will be open to the idea of gaining a little bit more knowledge about something they’re going to do, particularly hiking. You’ll see some people just kind of shrug. They’re wearing flip-flops and they’re carrying one bottle of water and they’re taking off to go to Half Dome. You kind of question them and they’re, 'Oh, whatever.'"

One such case, he said, was one of the women who died in a fall from Half Dome a couple of years ago. "People get to the base of Half Dome and it's really too late then (too urge them not to go up) if it’s lightning or there’s a storm on the horizon. ‘I hiked here, I came here to do this.’ That was the attitude of one of the ladies that died," he said. "There was a group of four and the clouds parted for just a bit, but it was still wet and the cables were down, and they went up and one of them slipped and died coming down. And it kind of that attitude, ‘Hey we’re here, this was our goal.' That’s what we’re trying to figure out with the social science stuff, is why people take those risks."

Read the entire article at  http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2009/04/national-park-service-hoping-better-informed-visitors-are-safer-visitors

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     “Pliny, the great Roman naturalist, put it in these three words: Luci et silentia. “The groves and their silences”. He was explaining that primitive men used to dedicate to a god some particular tree that was especially tall, …but now sophisticated Romans like himself “worshiped the groves and their silences as much as statues shining with gold and ivory”.

    I think I know what Pliny meant, although I am primitive enough myself to pay homage to a beautiful tree with a hug. Woods and forests give many people today a form of religious experience, as it’s there that you celebrate a kind of compact with nature. A wood embraces you like the walls of a church. There are shafts of light from high windows, soaring sculptured columns, the tang of resin as sweet as incense, and the therapy of silence.  Sadly, silence is hard to come by these days even in the remote forest. Everywhere you hear the triumphant hymn of the chainsaw. A Douglas Fir on Canada’s Pacific coast takes 500 years to reach maturity. It can be cut down in five minutes and before long it’s a truck load of logs heading for the pulp mill or lumber yard. What hope is there that our grandchildren will see the world’s great forests that survive today?

    The new perception of eco-doom may not have a bad result. It sends fear down the spines of people unmoved by the thought of tree frogs lost from Sumatra. Of course it will cost a great deal of money to save old growth forests from the chainsaw. But we may not have much choice. Perhaps we shall eventually say, thank goodness for global warming. As Voltaire might have put it, if global warming didn’t exist it would need to be invented.”

Thomas Pakenham, Forward of Mythic Woods by Jonathan Roberts.

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College Professor and avid bird watcher wanders into being lost

By Greg Brecht, Special to the St. Petersburg Times Sunday, August 1, 2010

Bone tired and thirsty, I had been walking for hours. Suddenly the quiet around me was shattered by a rhythmic thump-thump-thump. I looked up through dense tree branches and saw a helicopter. A big helicopter, with red Coast Guard markings. For a few seconds I couldn't figure out why they were this far from the coast. Then it hit me. They were looking for me.

My wife, Lynn, and I are avid birders, so when a friend from the University of South Florida invited us to go camping for a weekend, we eagerly accepted. We went along with a group that regularly camped in the Croom area of the Withlacoochee State Forest because of its equestrian trails and excellent facilities for horses and riders. We were in it for the birds, and thus hoofed it on foot.

On Saturday, we saw a new species for us, Carolina chickadees, a "lifer" as birders call adding another species spotted to their life list. On Sunday morning, hoping for more birds, we went for an early walk on a trail close to the campsite. It was about 8 in the still-cool morning when we finished the trail. Lynn wanted to go back to the campsite, but I wanted to hike a little more. She waved and said, "Don't get lost." I waved back, but was a little bit irritated at her remark, as I have an excellent sense of direction.

Walking through the woods on this May morning was pleasant. There was no hum of distant traffic. There was a background chorus of cicadas and crickets, and the occasional rustle of a breeze in tree branches. I didn't see any birds, but it didn't matter. I had traveled light, with birding binoculars, a guidebook to Eastern birds and a couple of cough drops. It was easy going.

After an hour or so I began to wonder which direction the camp was. I kept finding bits of trail that seemed familiar, but all they led to was more trail. I did notice gravel roads every so often, which I presumed were for fire control. I didn't have the good sense to just sit down and wait until someone came by. I was lost.

Maybe two more hours passed, and I kept walking. It got warmer as the day went along. I got thirstier and thirstier and had little sense of how important it is not to get dehydrated. I found no streams and no pools, and even if I had, the water likely would have been dangerous to drink. This wilderness area was nothing like the kindly county parks I was used to, with their readily available water and restrooms.

I kept walking. A bit of trail would look familiar and lead to more trail. I must have hiked 15 or 20 miles. I had neither a map nor a cell phone. The sun got lower and lower, so I decided to find a place and stay put for the night. I found a tree trunk lying next to a gravel fire lane. I ripped my sweatshirt and put it on the log. I was so tired it felt fairly comfortable. That's when I heard the helicopter. I yelled and jumped up and down, but there was no way they could see me through the trees.

Night soon came. I sat on my log by the side of a fire lane, grateful for a little moonlight, listening to the sounds of the night and wondering what a pack of wild hogs could do to a lost hiker. I remembered horror movies in which unnameable creatures jumped out of the dark onto unwary campers. I recalled stories about snakes and alligators. And I wondered what facing my wife would be like.

I was alone with my thoughts for hours. Then I heard distant voices. The voices got louder and I shouted, and suddenly I was in the beam of several flashlights at once. I felt a dog's wet nose pressed against my knee. Police dogs had followed my scent and found me. Relief overpowered my considerable embarrassment.

Everything after that became a blur. I found myself in an emergency vehicle being examined by EMTs. They found nothing wrong except dehydration. I declined transport to a hospital, and was soon back at the campsite.

There I was, fully aware that my stupidity had caused a lot of people a lot of inconvenience. My wife had spent hours driving trails with the park ranger looking for me. The other campers had spent the entire day searching. I really couldn't say anything to them except "Thank you," and "I'm sorry." Not only were the Coast Guard, park rangers and police dogs searching for me, even the Boy Scouts were mobilized. All told, more than a hundred people. I shudder to think of how much it all cost.

My wife had the good grace not to say, "I told you so!"

http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/sunday-journal-deep-in-a-forest-the-seeker-becomes-the-sought/1112134

Greg Brecht is an adjunct professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, teaching, among other things, professional writing and humanities.

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SOLAR POWER OF RADIO GEAR IN THE WILDERNESS

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