|
|
May/June 2008 While Americans in general are getting out less and less, the family vacation in the big outdoors is alive and well among Sierra Club members. Sierra asked readers of the Sierra Club Insider e-newsletter to send us their stories about family holidays that changed their lives; a sampling follows. Want to share your own story of a transformative family vacation? Click on the link below, and we'll post the best in coming weeks.
It was a strange and magical place, Pine Island, New Hampshire. According to Mr. Brown, whose family ran the nearest marina, some of the oldest and tallest trees in the entire region protected our island. Lake Winnipesaukee, in which our island rested, was one of the largest lakes in New England. Carved out by advancing glaciers millions of years ago, its quartz bottom attested to the crystalline energy within. It was the perfect place for a game of hide and seek. My favorite building on our island was the cottage, a weatherworn, carefree place where my family stayed during our summer vacations. I made it my business to name every chipmunk, turtle and fledgling I found on the property. Each morning, I made the rounds of burrows and bushes, ensuring all babies were secure and accounted for. Later, on hot afternoons, I caught sunfish with baited hooks from the edge of the dock and then gleefully released each before their pink-gilled panic could get the better of them. Twisting, wriggling rainbows – what glorious trophies, even if only to be raised overhead for an instant. Each year, a new freshman class of Canadian goslings grew into their smooth, silver-grey uniforms just before earning their wings at flight school. At the end of the season, after a few faltering touch-and-go's, they sounded a loud, triumphant, "Goodbye, see you next year!" and away they flew, circling once with their wings dipped low in salute to the island they, too, called home.
Late at night, as I lay in bed, the trees would whisper to me, telling tales of magnificent dawns and mystic creation, telegraphing messages from the farthest reaches of the lake. As loons called across the water during what was to be my last summer on the island, I reveled in my first love's kiss.
As our world becomes busier and busier, the family vacation has gone the way of cassette tapes and rotary phones. Instant communication has eroded the sense of adventure on the open road. Luckily for me, the importance of spending time with my family in far-off lands is still a constant value that we hold dear. My parents took my sisters and me all over the world; wanderlust was one of the first words I knew or understood. On my fortieth birthday and my mother's seventieth, my mother took me on a grand escapade to Argentina. I had spent many trips over the years with her, from riding horses across Morocco to visiting her childhood home in Taxco, Mexico. Always kindred spirits, we shared the need for adventure and travel. On this trip, I realized the frailty of my mother for the first time. She needed more help getting up the stairs; I worried about her falling and hurting herself. But as I rode horses across the Patagonian landscape, I felt like a girl in her twenties and my mother a woman of her fifties. How many adventures did we have left together? One evening on our trip, my mother recounted a tale of cruising down the Amazon in 1952 with her mother with a boatload of fruit and exotic animal skins. Her mother now gone, all she has is the memories of traveling through life's adventures as mother and daughter. What I treasure most are memories of traveling with my mother, lost on some dark highway in the middle of South Africa or in lockdown in a prison in Mexico. My mother was always there with encouragement and a sense of adventure, wanting more. After traveling for forty years with her, I know that traveling is what binds us together and makes us whole.
Every year during the 1950s and '60s, my family went to the old Sierra Club campground at Tuolumne Meadows in the upper reaches of Yosemite. We three sisters ran free pretty much all day. We floated the river alone on air mattresses down to Delaney Creek, made forts near our camp out of chunks of granite, and hid under the old wooden bridge while pack trains clomped over us. As young teens, we hiked up Lembert Dome by ourselves, searching for arrowheads, animal bones, and flowers. At night or during afternoon thundershowers, we joined the adults around the fire, hearing memorable mountain stories and enjoying the camaraderie. Later, I would hunker down in my sleeping bag and wait for shooting stars, hearing the distant murmurs of adult voices. Our family always included a backpack trip in our stay, hiking out from Tuolumne for four to ten days, sometimes twice a summer. I loved the forays into the high country. We girls scrambled over rocks, made "houses" in the stunted white bark pines, circled shimmering lakes, and wiggled into talus "caves." We also learned from our parents the names of familiar alpine plants, tried to creep up for close looks at marmots and picas, raced frogs, and, if we were lucky, saw a bear. I looked forward all year to those summer Sierra trips. My husband and I have carried on the tradition with our own two kids, moving our operation to the National Park Service camp at Tuolumne. We have never missed a summer backpack trip, starting when our girls were two and four. They still backpack with us each year, and most recently, as young adults, joined us for a memorable month-long trip hiking the entire John Muir Trail.
By the time we reached home, we were all ready for our own beds and shower. But somewhere between the swarm of ladybugs at Devils Postpile, the orcas off the San Juan Islands, the caribou crossing the road between Banff and Jasper, waking to the whinny of wild horses outside the tent in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, hearing stories from the great-great-great-grandson of Chief Red Cloud at the Agate Fossil Beds, seeing playful river otters in the shadow of the Grand Tetons, and the sweeping vistas of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, our kids forgot to miss television, Nintendo, even our annual visit to Disneyland. We don't know whether or when we'll be able to pull off another family vacation like that one, but every few weeks one of the kids will say, "Remember on the trip when . . ." and we know it's time to take off again, if only for a weekend.
In the summer of 1993 between my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I left Northern Virginia to spend the summer with my dad in Colorado. My 18-year-old brother came out for part of the summer, and for about three days we took off to the mountains. At the time, I had never heard of a "fourteener" or a "treeline" and didn't know of anything called mountaineering. We visited the abandoned mining town of St. Elmo and camped at about 11,000 feet near a stream. (I'm omitting the part where my dad tried to force our borrowed pickup through a narrow pass partially covered with snow, almost rolling it down the mountain. Luckily, he had turned to my brother and me before the maneuver and said, "Genetic material, out of the car!" We were all unscathed, except for my dad's ego.) This was the first time I'd been camping. We spent the days eating breakfasts cooked on a Coleman stove in the open air and saltines with sardines for snacks. We scrambled on boulders, explored green valleys, and drank in the view. I was fifteen, and a whole new world opened up for me. How did that trip affect my life? I ended up abandoning the East Coast to attend the University of Colorado, then came to California to work and become a climber and backpacker. I discovered that watching the sunset is more fulfilling than watching television, that moving a great distance under my own power feels better than any joy ride, and sleeping under the stars can be more cozy than sleeping under a roof. When I was 15 years old, my parents took my younger brother and me on a five-week trip across the country in a borrowed camper. I insisted on going to Carlsbad Caverns to see the bats and we went to Four Corners, Betatakin, the Mittens, and the Grand Canyon. While standing on an outlook on the Grand Canyon, there was a thundershower and our hair stood on end from the electricity. My favorite place was Yosemite, which was amazing, its beauty almost surreal. We returned through Nevada, driving north to the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Mount Rushmore, the Badlands of South Dakota, and came back through the Midwest. Then we had to drive straight home to Maine. On that trip, I saw my first coyote and we drove through Bryce Canyon by moonlight. The trip allowed me to have an understanding of the wisdom of the people who founded our national parks. Today, I fear they would otherwise be covered with condos and theme parks. In recent years, I took my daughter to the Everglades. It was sad to learn what is happening to the ecosystem there. My daughter is now a freshman at the College of the Atlantic where she plans to learn to become a biology teacher to influence future generations.
I did not want to spend my last week of summer before my first semester at college with my family. However, this was my first backpacking hike up a mountain. My family and I had spent the night in a quiet little cabin in Estes Park, Colorado with a creek flowing through our front yard. Our destination was Glacier Gorge Trailhead near Bear Lake. We began heading towards Jewel Lake, high in the mountains. After about thirty very long minutes, we made it to Alberta Falls. The water fell almost thirty feet to a pile of rocks below where water was misting around. Our next stop was Glacier Falls. We continued our walk, climbing steadily upwards and circling a small mountain. There is no way that someone can walk in the mountains and not be moved by their beauty and learn to appreciate the nature around us. Hearing water again, we made our way to Mills Lake. There is something astonishing about lakes thousands of feet above sea level in the mountains. Jewel Lake was our final destination. We slowly returned to our vehicle a little after 1 p.m. I looked at the sky, darkening as clouds rolled in over the mountains, and was relieved to be back. I feel honored to proclaim that I hiked up a mountain, 10,000 feet above sea level. As a result of my hike into the mountains, I feel a personal responsibility to educate people on environmental issues. We need to slow down and enjoy our planet. For several years when I was a child, my parents and I would drive from Florida to the North Carolina mountains to spend a week or so camping. I have memories of places like Mile High Campground at Balsam Mountain and Mount Mitchell, of me bathing in a plastic trash bag full of warm water supported by an old inner tube, and of wind and rain that we thought was going to knock the tent down. We were camped somewhere along the Blue Ridge Parkway and hadn't been in the tent long. There were still plenty of other campers up and about, so there was a bit of light. We heard a grunt outside the tent, not far away. I rolled over in the direction of the sound and saw it: a bear, silhouetted on the side of the tent. We stayed in the tent. The bear wandered off in search of food. He or one of his cousins eventually found some dog food in the back of an SUV that hadn't been properly secured. I don't remember much more about that night. I'd just as soon not have a bear so close to my tent again, but I wouldn't trade the memory for anything.
Our three Florida-born-and-raised kids had never played in snow. Seeing snow on TV only, Jaclyn, 9, and Logan, 10, seemed to expect something more like the white sand of Siesta Key Beach. Seventeen-year-old Jared was about to leave for the University of Florida and this was our last good chance for a spring break together. I felt guilty that we had not exposed him to the chill of a good sled ride or snowball fight. They loved a few days in the mountains of Utah.
My son and I just got back from a ski trip to Steamboat, Colorado. I was very impressed with their efforts in recycling and using wind-generator power to run some of their lifts. My son and I love to ski/snowboard. It was the greatest trip just hanging together — not always easy with a teenager. I know that it wasn't just the naturalist setting. I am involved with ski racing with the North American Airline Ski Federation and get to many ski areas. I have never been so impressed with the commitment to environmental concerns as with what is displayed at Steamboat.
It was 1988 and we were on our way to the West Coast on a family vacation. I was 15 and by this point in my boyhood my parents and I had explored much of our home state of Wisconsin. This trip was going to be different. You could tell something was up by the months of preparation that my father put into packing the car. He had hitchhiked to California back when he was just out of high school. This was a sort of reunion tour for him I suppose and we were his roadies. When we finally approached the entrance of Yellowstone National Park, the sign read, "Park Closed." More than 793,000 acres (36% of the park) were affected by fire that year. $120 million was spent and 25,000 people participated in the firefighting effort. I remember realizing the scale of it all. There was more to life than skateboarding and the ongoing popularity contest at school. These were still important things to consider but they didn't compare to those fires in Yellowstone or those giant Redwoods in California. Those vast plains, mighty rivers and towering mountain peaks helped me realize that there was more to life than what my high school ecosystem suggested. I went on to obtain a degree in Environmental Science and then quickly submerged myself in that Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. For the past ten years I have guided people through some of the world's finest national parks. My job is easy; the parks do all the work. All I have to do is introduce a few facts here and there and then let curiosity and wonder take over.
I spent every summer vacation from the time I can remember in summer school. This was not your ordinary summer session spent cooped up in a schoolroom. This was live education, consisting of long field trips led by my parents. My father, a research chemist, went to professional conferences all over the country. Instead of taking an airplane, he packed up the whole family and drove us there. By the time I left for college, I'd been through all 48 continental states, plus Canada and Mexico. Father was a storyteller. Everywhere we went, from Cape Cod to the Serpent Mounds to the La Brea Tar Pits, he had a tale to tell, sprinkled with facts about megaliths and moraines, dawn redwoods and dinosaurs, mini balls and arrow points. Sometimes the facts seemed a little suspect, like the story about the hairy catfish that climbs into trees, but that just made summer school all the more enchanting. Our mother, a lover of birds and plants, added fascinating tidbits about tufted titmice and hoary puccoon, burrowing owls and saguaro cactus, as well as the various uses of herbs and native plants. Family vacations continued when I had a family of my own. Many summers were spent at Stony Battery Lodge, a rustic Ozark cabin overlooking a creek where a Civil War battle was fought. The boys experienced the same the delights I did as a child – bouncing across the swinging bridge, listening to coyotes at cry at night, hunting for mini balls along the creek bottom and arrow points along the banks. Grandpa taught them how to fly fish and how to identify mushrooms. Grandma showed them where to find the tastiest watercress in the springs that feed the creek. I took them for their first whitewater canoe trip down the Current River. The kids have grown up and moved away, but we still continue the tradition of family vacations, with 4th of July at my sister's cabin in Kansas. The men and young ones set off of fireworks piled on long tables set up by the fire ring, while the women sit in lawn chairs to chat and enjoy the show. Now I'm a grandmother and it's a down-to-earth, made-in-heaven joy to watch my grandson chasing fireflies along the banks of Oakley Creek. I'm 19 years old. And so far, my generation has to figure out ways to clean the air, preserve water, stop global warming to save the glaciers, and rescue the rainforests. And now, we need to find a way to preserve another precious resource, the family vacation. Our vacations have been truly life altering. Learning to appreciate and enjoy nature was a small bonus in comparison to the family bonding and great memories that we all have. My first memories of an outdoor adventure were in Boulder, Colorado. My parents drove us out there, from North Carolina, to visit some friends and hike around. It was an extensive drive, but worth it. We hiked every day, visited a local gold mine, and I experienced large amounts of snow for the first time. I remember the snow was up to my parents' knees! It is there that I picked up my love for being outside and being with my family. We still laugh about the number of times I fell while hiking (I was at an awkward and clumsy stage) and how disastrous meeting up with their friends was (they were the messiest, most unorganized people ever). But it was a great vacation and we all had a good time. It disturbs me that the vacation is disappearing. I'm going to try my best to drag my kids around the outdoors, because in the process, they'll learn to love the planet. And they might even get closer to their family. And that is a very valuable resource.
When I was young my family took regular trips to Shenandoah National Park along the Skyline Drive in Virginia, and our favorite spot to hike was along the Appalachian Trail near Beagle Gap. The sky was so wide and bright above us, and the sea of grasses and wildflowers we hiked through rippled and eddied in the strong winds. We gathered fallen milkweed pods, split them, and let the seed whisk along the trail ahead of us in drifts of white. Once we visited the very cusp of a new spring and it was bitingly brisk. Bumblebees clinging to early flower heads were too cold to fly or even move, and we stroked their fuzzy backs while they sat insensible. On another trip I found a musket ball left over from earlier times, and realized that many more before me had walked the same trail on quests of their own. From an early age I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: a biologist. And I never wavered in my desire. Today I work at a university studying the effects of environmental toxins on freshwater fish, and I know I owe the direction of my professional path to the hiking and camping I did on our family vacations when I was a child. More importantly, I owe to those trips the very personal and spiritual feeling of being connected to a larger world, of being a part of something wide and grand and wonderful. Standing on the top of a mountain, looking out over Beagle Gap, winded from my ascent, I felt like a very fragile piece in an infinitely intricate puzzle: somehow both insignificant and integral to the whole. Without these wide-open spaces and the determination of my parents to show them to us, I may never have had these experiences.
Growing up in Bolton, Connecticut in the '60s and early '70s, I don't remember us ever staying put during vacation time. My father liked to explore new landscapes. My mother enjoyed people watching and was a lover of nature. We primarily divided our winter, spring and summer holidays within the Northeast: Long Island and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, but twice we ventured beyond the Mississippi on two cross country family trips. I was always happy to get away and see more of the world. We had the best of both worlds. My father had a geography background and a scientific bent. He would teach us about the contours of the land on vacation trips--about how tides work when we spent summers in Cutchogue, Long Island, and that glaciers had formed many of the mountains in New Hampshire. My mother was a poet. She taught us the power of observation. Her subjects were often living things and objects of nature: weather, wildlife, mountains, and oceans. On the shores of Long Island beaches, we would collect shells and listen to the ocean with the shells held up against our wet ears and find sand cookies to serve our make believe mermaid friends, along with a bit of seaweed salad sprinkled with pebbles of sand. Usually at least once a year we would gather all the slides from the previous vacations and watch--nodding off sometimes at the landscape only slides, but perking up when we'd see ourselves or some interesting character we'd met on our trip or at the sights we'd seen or how young and silly we all looked those previous summers. I can't imagine what our family memories would be like without those family vacations. They are so much a part of us and our conversations . . . and continue to be an essential part of the stories we retell when we get together. I'm on a personal mission to convince families to eschew Disney World in favor of "real" vacations--holidays that celebrate our natural world and ourselves, rather than a fictional rodent in a fairy-tale world. Two years ago, my husband and I took our two older kids (then aged five and seven) to Belize to visit a series of eco-resorts. I'm a travel writer who focuses on environmentally and socially responsible travel and we'd "won" the trip at an eco-auction. So . . . off we went, wondering if our city-slicker kids were ready for a week without air-conditioning, television, or processed foods. That trip changed their (and our!) lives. I remain more convinced than ever that families can better reconnect without all the noise of our commercialized consumer world. My kids were fascinated by real-life dolphins (that hadn't been trained). Stingrays! Clown fish! Crabs! Wolf spiders! Sea turtles! And so much more. My five-year-old son learned to cast a rod. My seven-year-old daughter spent hours beachcombing, careful to replace any overturned stones or shells to ensure that critters' homes were preserved. They tried food they thought they "hated." They never once asked for television. They collapsed into bed each night and awoke each morning to the otherworldly chorus of howler monkeys outside our windows. We spotted toucans, macaws, parrots. . . . It was at least as colorful as a Disney movie, but this was real life! In short, it was a spectacular vacation that my children still talk about. And that my husband and I cherish.
In the summer of 2006, my husband and I took our then five-year-old triplets on a weeklong camping trip in Estes Park, Colorado. We stayed at the wonderful Estes Park Campground, located in the foothills of the Rockies. After a long drive from Illinois, the kids reveled in the beautiful surroundings and fresh air. We spent cool mornings watching the sunrise over the mountain peaks while enjoying breakfast, and filled our days with long hikes, bike rides, and relaxation surrounded by the most amazing scenery. Our kids could not believe how blue the sky always was and how big the mountains really were! The highlight was climbing up to a snow-capped peak and having a snowball fight in the middle of July! Evenings were spent roasting marshmallows and looking at the most gorgeous star-filled sky we've ever seen. Listening for the rustling of animals at night always kept the kids (and mom) on their toes as well. The best part of the trip was the time spent together with no television, computers, or video games. We enjoyed each other's company, the wonders of nature and became really good Uno players! This is a trip the kids still talk about and we are hoping to recreate it again in 2009. Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use |
|||||||||
In the summer of 2005, my wife and I decided to take our son and daughter on a trip we'd all remember forever. We piled into the car and took off for a grand circle of the American and Canadian west: 51 nights in sleeping bags; 9,188 miles; 12 states; 2 provinces; 25 U.S. national parks and monuments; 6 Canadian National Parks; 26 mammal species; and countless birds and trees. 
