 to see so many familiar faces, and also so many new faces too, so we just moved to Mopular ourselves a year and a half ago now, so it's fun to facility meet everybody, you know, one presentation at a time. So, I just want to make a couple of announcements and a couple of quick thank yous. First of all, I want to say a big thank you to our sponsors for our whole National Journey series this year. Hungry Mountain Co-op, whose reputation recedes them. Hungry Mountain Co-op has been great to us over the years, and we're delighted to have them underwriting naturalist journeys. And also this year, Greenvest is another one of our major underwriting sponsors for our naturalist journeys. They're a sustainable, or they're a socially and environmentally responsible investing company that is new to town here. At least they have a branch that's new to town here, and so we've been getting to know them a little bit, and they're delighted to help support what we do here, so thanks to Greenvest as well. A couple of quick announcements about other upcoming programs that we have coming up. So, last week, the Blizzard, unfortunately, canceled, Chris Shadler's Eastern Coyote talk, but that's rescheduled to next Friday, the 28th, so if you want to come and learn about the real Eastern Coyote from Chris Shadler, please do join us. I've heard her presentations be compared to those of Jane Goodall, so I hear she puts on a good show, so come back next week for Chris Shadler. Also, the week after that, March 6th, our very own local Charlie Cogwell is going to be here talking about his research into pre-settlement forests and telling us about what our Northern Forest looked like several hundred years ago based on all the research that he's been doing over his entire career. And then a couple weeks after that, it's our last naturalist journey's presentation March 20th, and that's by Kai Coych, who is relatively new to the Mad River Valley, but he's been studying moose in Yellowstone and Isle Royale for the last many, many years, and is a friend of many of us around the area, and so we're delighted to have him here too. So, keep coming back, several more present naturalist journey's presentations to go. I also want to say a big thank you to the Northeast Wilderness Trust for making this all possible tonight. The Northeast Wilderness Trust has been a great kind of partner organization for us to work with over the last few years here. We were just kind of chatting over the last couple months. The Wilderness Trust is kind of working to think about carbon, wilderness-based carbon offset programs, and we here have been thinking about how can we offset the carbon of our adventures afar or trips that we do around the world, go birding, and that sort of thing. So we're really excited to be partnering so that the trips that we start offering in the future can be completely offset by wilderness-based offsets. So excited for that conversation to progress, and thank you guys for helping make that happen. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Sophie from the Wilderness Trust to introduce Tyler. Thank you so much, Sean. We're really delighted to be here at the National Manager Center. I've been to so many of these presentations myself, and I'm so excited to hear Tyler's presentation. I'm just going to give our quick spiel for those of you who maybe haven't heard of Northeast Wilderness Trust before. My name is Sophie. I am the outreach coordinator for our organization. We're a small group of six staff. Our main base is right here in Montpelier, but we have one person who works in Massachusetts, and we work all over the northeast and out on the acts, and we protect wilderness in these places. So far we've protected more than 35,000 acres across the northeast, and working across this region we are the only land trust that protects specifically for ever wild places. So what that means is that every place that we protect will not be logged or cut in any way, and so in the future each place that we protect, each of those 35,000 acres, will be a future old growth forest, which is pretty incredible what you think about how much old growth exists right now in the Northeast. We are part of trying to see the future of the Northeast region become a place where 10% of the forests are wild places, and this is important for us. Our mission is sort of to do this for nature for its own sake first, and of course we as people have so many benefits from that, such as clean water, clean air, all the while let's get to encounter and the experiences of being in the wild for 7,000 miles or more, and we like to think about what's happening on the land for the plants and the animals and the mushrooms and everything else first. So thank you so much for having us. Before I introduced Tyler, I just wanted to make one other announcement. We just learned that we'll be the recipient of Caledonia's spirits benefit program next month. So we're really excited. We love that they do this for local nonprofits like the North Branch, and so we're going to be having staff social cocktail hours, so if you want to stop by on Wednesdays between 4 and 4 30 at the bar, we'll be hanging out and we're hoping just to like meet and chat with people and tell people about wilderness and enjoy similar delicious drinks. So maybe we'll see you there. Without further ado, I'll turn it over to Tyler, who works at the Adirondack Mountain Club. He's very here at my part as well. He works in the outdoor education program management and he's here to tell us about hiking 7,000 miles across the West Coast, the East Coast and New Zealand. Thank you Tyler. Thank you Sophie. So thank you first and foremost North Branch Nature Center. This is my second time here and this building is incredible. I'm very happy and thrilled welcoming me today. Really appreciate it. And Sophie, thank you in the Northeast Wilderness Trust. I cannot think of a better chance to fight for wilderness than with a beverage in your hand. So I'm really excited to share about my little walk in the woods with you all now. I'll stick around for questions at the end. So my name is Tyler Sokash. I grew up in the Adirondack State Park just across Lake Champlain. If you look out into the distance to the West, you'll see the Adirondack Park and my parents still live in a little town called Old Forge, New York. I've got a younger brother who still lives there as well and I now live a little closer to Lake Placid but still consider myself a local of the Adirondacks for sure and I grew up hiking, fishing, paddling, mountain biking the trails around Old Forge and even going to the Enchanted Forest Water Safari where the fun never stops. That's another story. So I'll talk a little bit about my background before I get into the walk in the woods. This is a self-deprecating picture of me with a sippy cup in my hand hiking Bald Mountain, one of our local fire tower mountains in the Adirondacks and I didn't realize it at the time when I was young that I was privileged enough to grow up in the largest protected land area in the lower contiguous 48 states. At 6.1 million acres maybe some of us might not even know it now even though we're just across Lake Champlain. Right over there is the Adirondack Park, the biggest park in the lower 48 but 6.1 million acres what does that mean? If you combine five heralded national parks Great Smoky Mountains on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee add on Glacier National Park in Montana Yellowstone predominantly in Wyoming Yosemite in California and finally toss in the entire Grand Canyon of Arizona if you add those five together they easily fit inside of the Adirondack Park you can fit the state of Vermont inside of the Adirondack 6.1 million acres is a lot. Oftentimes when we think of our favorite memories of exploring outside they're often intertwined with wildlife encounters and when I was younger actually while hiking along the shoreline of Lake George not too far from Vermont in the southeastern Adirondacks I was startled by a family of frolicking fishers bounding over a downed hemlock tree and I had never in my life seen a fisher before I was thrilled beyond belief and that memory is still seared in my mind it's sometimes hard to realize that when you're in the Adirondack State Park that has 103 vibrant thriving small-town communities interspersed throughout the park's borders you sometimes forget that this isn't just a playground for you it's also home for the 53 mammals that call the Adirondacks home the 35 amphibian and reptile species and the 200 plus avian species that will migrate through so this seeing wildlife and realizing that it calls the same place home as I do that meant a lot to me when I was younger and perhaps it was that connection with wildlife that got me into outdoor education I started working at the Adirondack Club in 2009 and while at the Adirondack Mountain Club I met great people who also loved exploring nature and going outside one of my colleagues Seth Jones and I we'd we'd done it all we'd we'd hiked the 46 high peaks those 4,000 foot peaks across the Adirondack high peaks region we had both paddled the 90 miler the 90 mile Adirondack canoe classic from my hometown of Old Forge to the village of Saranac Lake and we'd even done the fire tower challenge climbing the 25 fire tower peaks in both the Adirondack State Park and the Catskills so what else was there to do we set off to hike the 136.8 and you can't forget about the .8 mile Northville Placid Trail I know it's a little bit shorter than the long trail but it's our very own through hike across the Adirondack so I never done something like this before it was the year 2014 and I had never gone on a long distance backpacking trip and maybe that can resonate with some of you now in this room so I'd never done this before I was green fresh to this idea we set off to do it halfway down the trail my colleague Seth injured his ankle he was unable to continue but I said goodbye to him persevered through the high peaks wilderness and when I came out on the other side into Lake Placid New York at the northern terminus of the trail I saw through the trees it was May the foliage hadn't popped yet I could see the tower of the atmospheric right the atmospheric science center on top of Whiteface Mountain the fifth tallest peak in New York State and it was in that moment while the Sun was glinting off that tower that I realized holy cow I just walked here from Great Sock and Dog a reservoir Northville New York at the bottom of the park and it gave me a reckless sense of self-confidence reckless enough to consider and the on the heels of this through hike across the Adirondack State Park I I was back at work and in grad school in Rochester New York New York State's third largest city and while I was in my cubicle in the day and living in squalor with five other guys including my brother in a house in downtown Rochester at night I started to envision an idea in my head I thought what if I hiked the Pacific Crush Trail the Pacific Crush Trail 2,650 miles from the 49th parallel at the US Canadian border traversing its way through 48 wilderness areas seven national parks multiple national monuments to Campo California a buddy against the border of Mexico then I had the audacity to then Google does New Zealand have a through hiking trail and they do since 2011 Teotaroa in the Maori indigenous language that translates to the long pathway the long pathway three thousand and seven kilometers from the tip of the North Island at Cape Reinga to the tip of the South Island at a town called Bluff then I had the gall to type into the Google machine how long does it take to hike the Appalachian Trail the venerable AT at one two thousand what is it two thousand one hundred eighty nine miles traversing fourteen states two national parks twenty five wilderness areas starting at Springer Mountain the southern terminus in Georgia to Katahdin the highest peak in Maine I was ostensibly earmarking dollars that I was saving at work to buy my first vehicle I wanted to buy a 2015 Subaru Crosstrek a tangerine one with a sleek interior high clearance for the Northeast snows but then this idea popped into my brain and I had to ask myself do I want to stare out of my attic window at a 2015 tangerine Subaru Crosstrek or did I want to pursue something bold and when I did the math I added up the flights the new gear feeding myself for a year I hit enter on the calculator and fortuitously enough the dollar amount on my calculator was the sticker price of the Crosstrek so I quit my job went to Rochester International Airport was actually right before that before leaving I did decide to test my strength to test my stamina there's another new through hike it's actually a loop hike in the northwestern Adirondack it's not too far west from Tupper Lake along state route three on the way to Watertown I tried to test my skills and my gear on the cranberry 50 there's a 50 mile loop hike around the lake who do you employ for such a task but my colleague Seth Jones was bold enough to come back with me once more you realize things you realize I need a new tent I need to put batteries in my headlamp so before you embark on a long journey it's definitely a good idea before you endeavor to try a marathon sign up for a 5k first make sure you've got what it takes before you hit the trail so I leave Rochester New York and as I'm flying to SeaTac between Tacoma and Seattle and we're on our descent and we've put our tray tables up and our seat backs in the upright position I tapped the guy next to me who is fortunate enough to get the window seat and I said hey do you mind open in that window because I had never seen this landscape before I wanted to see what it was like and voila out of the passenger window and the airplane you could see certain strata volcano it's like Mount Rainier it's a little bit harder to see but Mount Adams and even further with the naked eye you could see Mount Hood the tallest peak in Oregon and I had to say to myself oh my goodness I'm a walk about to walk through these valleys past these behemoths when you start on the Pacific crest trail it's not much unlike stumbling your way through a Dr. Seuss book you begin in the Poseidon wilderness that abuts against the US Canadian border it has the largest denizen population of links in the lower 48 US states and you start through the Poseidon wilderness you make your way past Hopkins Lake past bit blizzard peak to an obelisk at the very border with Canada and it's in that moment that you realize oh my goodness I'm about to walk to Mexico if you can be so lucky because only 20% make it as you go southbound on the Pacific crest trail you walk through beautiful wilderness areas in the state of Washington chiefly the granite peak glacier excuse me this is the Glacier peak wilderness and past Lake Chelan the third deepest lake in the country you do dangerous things like putting your feet over perilous precipices jumping into lakes like Lake Micah that just had their ice out and doing things like the Kendall catwalk that I didn't tell my mom about until I got home sometimes people ask me Tyler what was singularly your favorite moment from the Pacific crest trail and this sunset behind Mount Rainier sure surely ranks highly on my list it was like I experienced a Crayola crayon cannabis of color and it was here that I decided to embrace the challenge provided by our wilderness areas in the United States I thought here if I can hike through the night I'll make it to the heart of the goat rocks wilderness by sunrise clamoring over steeper rats and behind some snow fields I made it you could see elk in the valley below you could see Mount Rainier to the northwest Mount Adams to the southeast and looming in the distance was of course Mount St. Helens with the top third of its summit blown to smithereens I was encircled by wildness couldn't believe that two weeks before this I was in a cubicle and it I was brought to tears so wilderness areas do a number of things for us that we don't think about every day they clean our water wilderness areas clean our air and way up there they also provide a home for wildlife so that they can live out a free willed existence and raise their young in a safe secure intact vast habitat we want those things and despite the odds making it to Oregon meant a lot to me I almost quit the trail in Washington State due to blisters low morale being away from my family you make a lot of unspoken sacrifices when you do a long hike even on the long trail of Vermont you miss anniversaries you miss weddings you miss funerals you miss family events you miss the people back home so you do have to endure a lot of mental toil on the trail but luckily making it to Oregon I met someone who changed my perception of this journey it became less self-serving in this moment when I stepped into Timberline Lodge opened by FDR in the 1930s on the slopes of Mount Hood and it's also the exterior shots of the shining so you've probably all seen it before and when you walk into this gorgeous vast building Steven Tyler from Aerosmith actually just took off in a helicopter right before I walked in so I was already star struck but I see someone else who I recognize someone from Backpacker magazine with his sunburned skin and sinewy physique it was Billy goat the the historic through hiker who had hiked the Pacific Crest Trail ten times and I march right across the dining room and introduce myself to Billy goat and sitting down at the breakfast buffet and nothing looks better for a through hiker than a breakfast buffet sitting down at the breakfast buffet with Billy goat I asked him a similar question Billy goat what's singularly your favorite moment from all of your long distance hiking and he turns to me and it's as if someone dims the lights muffles the sound hmm and he goes do you want to know the single greatest thing that I've ever seen so there I was in the Great Basin of Wyoming on the Continental Divide Trail when suddenly out in the fields in front of me there were not one but 200 wild horses galloping in the fields below suddenly one of them broke off from the pack down from a canter into a trot right up to me that horse shook its mane right at me do you want to know what that horse said not in English mind you that horse said to me come on come play with me do you want to know what I said back and I actually had chocolate chip pancakes oozing out of the corner of my mouth waiting at baited breath for his next sentence and he said in English mind you I said to that horse I would but I can't run that fast so Billy goat starts to teach me that the trails more than this self-serving pilgrimage Billy goat starts to teach me that you're going to be sharing these public lands with wildlife that call them home and he was humble enough to give wildlife the space it needed to live out a free world existence in that incredible wild place the mystery of that let the horses be despite the odds you make it through Oregon you see great things like gosh climbing the lightning rod of the Cascades Mount Thielson jumping in to the deepest lake in the contiguous 48 States Crater Lake Oregon's soul National Park jump over the Sun in the sky like 12 in this area but as you begin to put the Cascades in your rear view mirror you're staring down from the summit Sonora pass here you cook 10,000 feet just above the pass for the first time you're staring down John your country in the serenity battering and as you walk through these white rock valleys of Yosemite National Park Kings Canyon National Park Sequoia National Park you feel like an aunt at the base of a chalice these are our public lands assuming you have the ability to travel that far from Vermont you could go see these places too and near hot at 11,000 feet or the outlaw of Arrowhead Lake are just a glimpse of the beauty that our public lands possess but the trail is more than views you sometimes walk these arbitrary paths with people who are going the same direction as you and you form trail families that help enhance the experience in my trail family we dug ourselves the wrong way gang all the north founders pass us 2000 strong only 90 of us were going south the wrong way gang and I persevered pressed on we did the eight mile side trip to the summit of Mount Whitney at 14,505 feet the tallest summit in the lower 48 and as the Sun crested the horizon over Death Valley National Park we sang in unison oh say can you see I would say that I I would argue that I I never felt more alive than while hiking the consider crush trail and I honestly I never felt more American and when you and through the seras you still have 703 miles of the Mojave ends of Rago deserts and ecosystem that's so foreign to us here in the Northeast and it made for a wonderful finale but when you make it to the border and when you have that newfound patriotism you have to leave the country and head to New Zealand and I promised myself and I had saved that money and I didn't buy that Subaru cross-track I have enough money to fly to New Zealand and start to have a long pathway now instead of a doctor book it honestly feels like you're lumbering through middle earth so if you're thinking about going to New Zealand the North Island is truly a pastoral paradise and there's some beach walking too and you start off by actually trekking down the 90 mile beach you trek across the country through the bush as they call it in New Zealand and you're not trekking you're tramping and when you get across the bush you end up at the Pacific Ocean and so it's really a wonderful experience being along the Tasman Sea the Pacific Ocean but then when you get to the heart of the North Island it turns into this tremendous volcanic landscape it's called Tongari or National Park it's the sixth ever protected National Park in the world Mount Nerahoe is actually the filming location of Mount Doom where Frodo pucks that ring into the bottom of the volcano I would say that my favorite part of trekking across the North Island was the trail family that I made there and I think what really distinguishes Taroa from other long trails is that it's actually an international experience in my trail family where people from of course New Zealand but also Australia and Switzerland France Germany other Americans do but these people who come from different backgrounds who have different beliefs who have different sets of ideas they truly challenge you to be the best possible version of yourself even if you don't recognize it at the time so I'm tremendously thankful for the immersion experience that Taroa provided me my favorite moment along the North Island Taroa along pathway was the Wonganui River journey when you actually trade your hiking boots for a canoe and a paddle and as you work your way southbound back to the Tasman Sea you paddle by beautiful waterfalls you paddle by beautiful embankments and escarpments but what really made this moment special was when we pulled our canoes ashore to a marae a Maori community center in Pichuari the tribal leader there greeted my trail family and welcomed us into the forfeit your welcoming ceremony invited us into the marae itself and went into his ancestral talk Cowrie trees New Zealand's old-growth cowweed trees they once touched the sky and then the Europeans came and they cut down our cowrie trees to build the great cities of Christchurch and Auckland to need it but my 101 non-seller ancestors chose not to bargain away the cowrie trees you see here do you want to know why the 101 ancestors chose to be non-sellers it's because these trees made my ancestors a promise these trees spoke to my ancestors and said if you do not cut us down we will never cut you down Pichuari taught me something about planetary modesty and as you get through the tower ranges and hop on a boat in Wellington you go across the cook straight suddenly this trail is transforming me you begin to realize when you enter places like Nelson Lakes National Park in the South Island that protected tracks of land don't miraculously protect themselves it takes the passionate conviction of people people like Pichuari's ancestors people like you all to protect land so I mentioned that the North Island was pastoral paradise the South Island is backpackers bliss you go above treeline you walk across three wide bridges and forward rivers like the Rakaia you get to still do those classic things like her cheek jump into glacial links and you'll see wildlife like Kia's the world's only alpine parrot things that you've never experienced in your life but yet again you're seeing world heritage sites national parks you're going along these great walks in New Zealand inevitable resources that people made the proactive long view decision to protect land but darn it I made myself a promise and I didn't buy that car so when the trail ends I had to wave goodbye to my New Zealand friends fly to Atlanta Georgia and hitchhike my way to Emichola Falls and walk up to Springer Mountain the southern terminus of the Appalachian trail the plaque reads a footpath for those who seek fellowship with the wilderness and that's the very first white blaze of course that delineates your path to Katana you'll see a lot of those the American Southeast is spectacular you traverse these enchantments of southern balls that are exposed you actually go through fields of wildflowers and even in Great St. Highlands in southern Virginia you walk through a little paradise with filled with fair on ponies and you can't help but remember everything that P2 area and Billy go are telling you about how magical our public lands truly are of course you see those iconic scenes like McCaffey's knob buzzard rocks Shenandoah National Park but as you enter the mid-Atlantic you're never out of earshot of planes trains automobiles you don't walk through any woven as areas Maryland Pennsylvania in the spirit of wildness begins to fade then you enter New Jersey you see birds of prey soaring over the Delaware River porcupines and blow across your path and black bears too and you begin as you work away from New Jersey along the Kittitini range to High Point walk a wildlife refuge into New York State Harriman State Park Connecticut the Housatonic River Valley Bigger Mountain Massachusetts Sages ravine Mount Everett and you get all the way up to Greylock see the sunset there you enter this interconnected patchwork of motor-free landscapes they're getting a little bit bigger and bigger as you progress into Vermont the library of wilderness area Blackston very low in this area you work to age in New Hampshire the presidential range driver of wilderness area you begin to experience that same magic that you felt in the Pacific Crest Trail right here in the Northeast once again I felt like I was fortunate enough to embrace a fair share of wildness on this journey both physically spiritually emotionally of course Vermont New Hampshire main sunny visually people on the trail fantastic dogs a little bit more of them but then you get to the 100 mile onus of Maine and for once in a long while you see this vast tract of unbroken forests the likes of which you haven't seen since the Satan wilderness in Washington State or in the Sierra Nevada through the Cascades of the West Coast when you finally make it to Katahdin you know it's really tough to end a long trail and it's harder still when you were blessed to finish three and I started to ask myself how do I change how can I articulate the value of wildness to others and what color super did I want to get again that matters less but I did get a call from the Adirondack Mountain Club just outside of Lake Plaston New York I was vlogging at the time about my journey going through that transformation internally and they called me and said well apparently you still really like to hike and so they invited me back to be an other educator and we along with my colleagues we execute this program called the three seasons at Hartlake and I know the North Branch Nature Center hosts similar naturalizing programs out here in the bowl connect kids with nature when you begin to foster an appreciation for a place you can begin to value that space and also you maybe can begin to love it so we take kids up our little mountain Mount Joe they come up a mountain for the first time that excitation is spectacular they snowshoe for the first time in the winter on Hartlake which is frozen right now of course and in the spring we work on our math and cooking skills together and we traverse the property so I saw the value in education I thought what else can I do the Adirondack Mountain Club is a provider of all forms of leave no trace education and I wanted to take it a step further every single time I go out on an adventure on public lands I do my best to bring back the things that don't belong there you know once in a while you'll find micro trash on the trail it's usually accidental sometimes you'll find a little bit more nefarious marks on the trail here and there you pick those up too and I started to realize the value in making a place look beautiful again education was a great place to start so I started to get a little bit deeper and I started to juxtapose in my mind why was the Pacific crest trail seemingly so much wilder than the Appalachian Trail and the interest in the numbers on the AT you cross a road every four miles which means you can only walk into the woods for two before you're already coming back out on the Pacific crest trail you only walk through four towns and when you look at our federal and state protected wilderness areas you can start to surmise a startling statistic East of Denver only 1% of our landscape is protected as motor free wilderness that's if you add state federal and tribal wilderness areas we do a little bit better west of the Colorado Rockies but in the lower 48 less than 3% of our land is motor free wilderness if you were to add all of those wilderness areas together it would easily fit inside the state of Minnesota the culprit of course roads roads are important they got they got me here tonight but there are 4.12 million miles of motorized roadways across the United States of America and with every bifurcated habitat comes an impact that I don't think we can conceptualize in our daily lives but we really zoom out the microscope and think back to 420 years ago before Jamestown certainly the natives of the Americas lived in a harmonious relationship with the land certainly altered it but in terms of motorized recreation things have certainly changed a lot in the past 400 years and when you look at a night sky image of the United States things also become a little more apparent in civilized you see a few dark spots though cheaply the Marjory-Stoneman Douglas wilderness area the largest wilderness east of the Mississippi the boundary waters wilderness in northern Minnesota and the third largest section of hypo in this area in the Adirondacks with oki finoki swamps traveling Florida and Georgia it's appropriate that I mentioned Florida a few times there's a couple from Florida doing this project called project remote where they're calculating the most remote spot remaining in all 50 states and they actually bend to the 14 states of the AT traverses and if you do the math excluding a few outliers that have roadless islands in the middle of the Atlantic along the AT the most remote spot in any state on average is about four miles four miles away is how far you can walk into the woods getting away from the sounds of civilization I'll highlight Vermont real quick 2.6 miles that spot that remote spot in Vermont is near Born Pond just west of Stratton Mountain in the library wilderness area that's your most remote spot left is 2.6 miles from the road so I started to think about this because I'm from the Adirondacks I wanted to I wanted to have an impact here I wanted this walk to mean something for other people so along with the group called the Adirondack wilderness advocates we calculated the most remote spots are meaning in New York State it's no surprise that those spots are all in the Adirondacks and what you're seeing highlighted in red are the areas in which you can get three miles or more away from a road or snowmobile trail only 5% of the Adirondack landscape is more than three miles away from mechanized recreation and I want to draw our attention to one spot in particular, Boreus Ponds. It's actually one of the newest additions to New York State's forest reserve our state protected public lands and for a long time this is my favorite spot in the world Boreus Ponds is beautiful it's the largest high elevation wetland complex in New York State so there's only one of them it's not too far south of Mount Marcy New York State's tallest peak that's got that's actually in the background for those of you who have hiked over in the Adirondacks and saw teeth just obscured by the trees it was a place when it became publicly accessible in 2016 that I fell in love with real quick I visited five times in all the seasons and when the Adirondack Park Agency was going to decide the fate of this newly purchased land would become wilderness for ever while motor-free would become another roadside picnic area the APA or Adirondack Park Agency was about to decide and the day before they were going to make the decision along the Adirondack Wilderness Advocate we collected 1,882 petitions and put them in my backpack and I wanted to walk 47 miles from the beginning of the Boreus Ponds track Ponds are located here through the High Peaks Wilderness Area just over the shoulder of Mount Marcy out along the Northfield Placid Trail where this whole story started for me and six miles of roadway to Grave or New York where the APA would decide it's making that stay so we got all those petitions from around the country and I set off just just before sunrise at Wolf Pond my friend Brendan who took this picture he said to me how happy is your backpack and I remember just quick thing back home I hope it's heavy enough because I wanted those letters to mean something to those people so I made it to Boreus Ponds after just over a two-mile bushwhack you could see all the logging roads are already new wild man made it past Marcy Swamp and up to at the time this was a November hike to a frozen lake here at the clouds the highest pond source of the mighty Hudson River that would eventually flow into the Atlantic Ocean just past the Statue of Liberty and it was during this walk that I got frustrated really frustrated I was mad adrenaline was coursing through my veins I was mad that we needed to fight for a wilderness area in a world that has constantly had more people added to it and was constantly being more developed I was mad that the landowners didn't see the innate values of New York State's remote spots one of the few spots left that was three miles or more from the snow I was really mad in the middle of the night I was hiking through midnight ice broke free from a rock precipice and smashed on the trail in front of me and that's when the adrenaline really hit but as I went past that that ice fall I saw something in the snow that brought everything home to me it was a print a track a moves track we don't have as many moves and we had around that so there's only 400 I think statewide in New York State so that was a big deal for me and I remembered in that moment that Boreas Ponds needs to be wilderness not for me that would be subservient before the wildlife that calls the Boreas contract home and for the unborn generations of Americans who were here at this place I was surprised honestly when I got to the road that there was another group of wilderness advocates that might be there wasn't expecting this and we all together carried that backpack with 1882 letters marched to the doorstep of the Adirondack Park Agency and together we lifted this torch of preservation out of the pack and presented it on the podium to the APA Commissioner thanks it didn't work but at least in me I got to see what it's like to be active and you know you can't just wish for things to get better in your community if you try to grab a wish you grasp nothing but air so it was important for me to take a stab at grabbing a microphone grabbing a pen putting my backpack on doing something tangible to protect those intangible qualities of wildness that would take for granted silence solitude remoteness the fact that this is habitat for other creatures that call that place home but there were other victories since my walk that I wanted to highlight one of them special thanks to the Northeast Wilderness Trust but the first involves another organization called Tompkins Conservation and in January of 2018 Christine Tompkins former CEO of Catagonia and now the head of Tompkins Conservation along with her late husband Doug Tompkins who helped found it those two humans along with Michelle Bachelet then president of Chile signed in January 2018 a 10 million acre wilderness pack and with the scoop of a pen that easy new national park from age old reserves were upgraded to National Park and Wilderness status in the area nearly double the Adirondack Park was created overnight and I was very lucky with the help of Tom Butler of Tompkins Conservation to go see this newly rewilding landscape just like the Boreas Ponds track was rewilding I got to go through Cerro Castillo National Park Patagonia National Park Patagonia National Park a landscape that doesn't just protect the alpine highlands but protects the lowlands the prairies places that are often stopped at in conservation attempts and just in the last 10 years since this land was protected by Tompkins Conservation these once blackened soils are revitalizing and indigenous endemic wildlife is returning like the Darwin Ria like Puma so when I got back from Patagonia tempted to see how rewilding could work in New York State although Boreas Ponds wasn't saved as a full-blown wilderness landscape we got close we got half of it preserved as wilderness thanks to the help of people across the state and across the country I started to wonder what you were and you pick your favorite animal for me it might be fishers what if you were a fisher and you were to lap water from Lake Champlain and then in order to escape the irreparable harm of climate change in order to find a mate to propagate their species in order to find a habitat to raise your young safely in away from people predators in cars with axel and wheels how could one travel from Lake Champlain and move through a wild way to the Adirondack-Hypics region I endeavor to try this I convinced my friend Wade to go to Willisboro Bay on Lake Champlain we walked up rattlesnake mountain after visiting the state boat launch at Willisboro Bay we then walked into the Taylor Taylor con wild forest summited Pocomoon shining one of our cherished fire tower mountains in the eastern Adirondack you can see it from over there and on the way to see this new landscape this hopeful eagle mountain wilderness preserve that was on the docket to potentially be purchased by the Northeast Wilderness Trust and to be saved in perpetuity as a forever wild wilderness landscape at 2,000 2,400 acres that might not sound like a lot but if this area would be saved as wilderness you could walk to the heart of that preserve and get nearly 2.6 miles away from a road or snowmobile trail which is Vermont's current wildest space possible statewide so I wanted to see it for myself and I wanted to fight for a new landscape that could potentially be protected in the Adirondacks and as we marched to see the Eagle Mountain wilderness preserve through the snow and I'm used to seeing boundary tracks of Martin they're all over the Adirondack Lodge and Heartlake Program Center property but these tracks were much bigger much longer but still had the boundary gate and I was reminded of being a kid on Lake Lake George and seeing that family of frolicking fishers and low and behold after a decade I see these fisher tracks again that underscores the importance of protecting this land and here's the victory if you want to go home and feel good the Northeast Wilderness Trust on May 24th 2019 purchased from the Rogers family the Eagle Mountain wilderness preserve and I know a bunch of us in this room have heard about or been there there and I gotta say this this isn't one of those heralded alpine ecosystems the T-tons you know the Sierras no this is an integral low land wetland complex where coyotes black bears fishers Martin American toes American bullfrogs and New York State State fish the brook trout the mountain safely called the Eagle Mountain Wilderness Preserve home so thank you Northeast Wilderness Trust for protecting New York's newest wilderness area with ten minutes ago I have one more slide and it's a slide I think appropriately of glorious times although we were unsuccessful in saving one of New York's last remaining remote places as a whole wilderness area I have to back to going there for the first time this was my first visit on the heels of getting off of the Appalachian Trail I still had the golden locks from Sun from being in the Sun for a year and while at White Lily pond in the heart of this tract you know I couldn't help but think of being on the Pacific Crest Trail again and the Poseidon Wilderness and I also while on the Pacific Crest Trail really felt like I was in that Dr. Seuss book and you can't help but if you've read the Lorax to think of this scene as a vast array of truckilla trees from the Lorax but I also on this first visit to the Boris Ponds track I saw red fox tracks in the mud brown barbell boots if you will and if I may I saw my first Merganser family and American woodcock at the same time I've never seen an American woodcock for timber doodle before in my whole life I'll call those as Dr. Seuss would the swami swans but we have to think about the submerged world of the humming fish or New York State State fish the brook trap and only 11% of brook trap habitat remains intact from its historical range in the Eastern United States but they currently live here in the Boris Ponds track at least for now and you can't help but remember back in the Lorax when the Lorax and the Lumpter are having this guy a tribe and you know who knows who's right they're both a bit cool to one another but at one point the Lorax argues you're bumping the pond where the humming fish hung no more than they hope for their bills are all done so I'm sending them off over their future is dreary they'll walk on their fins and go woefully weary in search of some water that isn't so smeared I got terribly mad I yelled at the Lorax now listen here dad all you do is yeah yeah and say bad bad bad bad well I have my rights sir and I'm telling you I intend to go under it just as I do for your information you gorex I'm figuring and figuring and figuring and figuring turn the more truck you the trees in the needs which everyone everyone everyone needs and at that very moment we heard a loud whack from outside in the fields came a sickening smack of an ax on a tree and we heard the tree fall the very last truck you a tree of them all no more trees no more needs no more work to be done so enough time my uncle's in ants everyone all we've needed by they jumped into my car and drove away under the smoke smuggled stars now that was left me the bad smelling sky was my big empty factory the Lorax and I the Lorax said nothing just gave me a glance just gave me a very sad sad backward glance as he lifted himself by the seat of his pants and I'll never forget the grim look on his face as he hiked himself and took leave of this place through a hole in the smog all that the Lorax left here in this mess with small pile of rocks with the one word unless whatever that meant well I just couldn't guess that was long long ago but each day since that day I've sat here and worried and worried away through the years while my buildings have fallen apart I've worried about it with all my heart but now says the ones there now that you're here the word of the war actually is perfectly clear unless someone like you there's a whole awful lot nothing's going to get better it's not so catch calls the ones there he let something fall it's a truck you the last one of all you're in charge of the last of the truck you see and truck you look trees are what everyone needs plenty new truck you look treated with pears give it clean water and feed it fresh air grow a forest protect it from axis that then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back thank the North Branch Nature Center I want to thank the Northeast Wilderness Trust two admirable organizations with incredible mission statements that are doing the kind of good work that helped make the world better every day with every program with every initiative I look to believe that the other amount of that too in New York State and we are all in this together these little victories can happen with passionate people with conviction passionate people like you passionate people like Billy go passionate people like P2 Aries ancestor we can all do it and I just want to encourage you all and I do you all to enjoy your public lands everything from the top of Mount Mansfield to the top of Mount Campbell some to Hubbard Park acre matters and if not for you it matters for the red squirrels for the white breasted not have it matters for the kids that are gonna grow up in these communities and get a chance a chance an opportunity to explore America's wildlands I'll stick around for questions and I'm happy to take some now but thank you all very much thank you so I also understand it's almost eight o'clock so if anyone has to depart oh no problem thank you for traveling all this way to come to the North Grant Center tonight do come back for the future presentations in the actual experience but I will happily stay up here for the next you know ten minutes and answer anything's on the table go ahead thank you thank you for your passion you're welcome my first backpacking trip was in the Adirondacks really it was wonderful and I saw Martin which I didn't even know it was yes go to the library and look it up and you indicate that their population is doing very well in New York State yes I know in Vermont not as well there aren't as many American Martins in the state of Vermont there are fishers there are fishers though that's okay yes I really hope that we have good deep freeze this winter so you get a few scampering founders across the lake and come back over to the Green Mountain State but we are thankfully I see Martin tracks every time I go on a winter hike the winter world reveals the mysteries of the wilderness I believe because suddenly the tracks are in the snow and there are also tracking courses taught here I should love for you all to know but yes there are plenty of American Martins in the Adirondacks and that's a great thing for biodiversity it's part of the tapestry of life that we love thank you for noticing anyone else thank you sometimes people just want to know how to eat food on the Appalachian trail but go ahead yeah just like yeah so it is more popular to go northbound I have some theories as to why but I'll give you four reasons why you should consider a southbound winter hike at least on the Pacific Crest Trail but many of these apply to the AT maybe to the long track as well one when you depart in the month of July early early early July or late June depending on the snowpack the state of Washington is gorgeous in June July August people in Seattle don't want you to know this they have the best summers in the United States of America it's when it's October that you want to leave that it's just as rainy as Rochester New York and Florida knows I know that's true but so the weather that's not here in those states is fantastic meanwhile the northbounders if they don't get there until October 1st they're sometimes blocked from Canada because of the falling snow in the Cascades so Washington is beautiful in June and July second reason the mosquitoes by the time you start in July happen then are dead as you go south all the mosquitoes down south of already hatched and been hopefully eaten so as you are south you're walking through fewer and fewer mosquitoes I found that to be attracted three yes fires are part of the life cycle of our Western ecosystems and a lot of those ecosystems are fire climates meaning they're important that fires are supposed to happen there well thankfully to the intrepid volunteers and brave fire crews and then women who put out those fires most of the fires are put out for south on heckers but the northbounders get them every single week so you miss a lot of the forest fires and then finally you get to the Sierras in September all the kids have gone back to school you get to walk through John Newark country and no one else is there now that's the limiting factor getting past Mount Whitney before October 1st or else you have the same problem as the northbounders do up at in the Cascades so I started July excuse me June 6th and walked 21.72 miles a day and missed the first snow storm by one week so I could have started earlier in June but the real reason why I went southbound wasn't I didn't know those factors leading into it the real reason is time if you have a window of opportunity you're at a crossroads in your life for some people it's an educational milestone for others you're between jobs or at retirement those are three decent crossroads to think of an ambitious through high or something like that I actually finished grad school on June 24th so I turned in my final paper it was too hot to start in the Mojave Desert in late June but it's perfect starting time for a sad time so it just matters what timing is your crossroads at if you could start in April you go northbound if you could start in June you go southbound and the summer leave as you walk down towards the equator essentially so for me at this time grad school ended on June 24th too hot in the summer to go to Mojave perfect for the Cascades so I got lucky I guess beginners love it if you will is there another place in the wilderness yes honestly my next goal truly is the long trail of Vermont yes of all the world you know why I feel like in Burlington you get the best sunset every day in the adirondacks if you're a little ride you get the best sunrise every morning over Lake Champlain and when you hike the mountains in the adirondacks you don't we look at you all we look at the Green Mountains we look at the silhouette of the Green Mountains and you know what's on that silhouette the long trail so ever since December 22nd 2006 when I climbed my first high peak in 2006 but I've stared at the Green Mountain enchantment with admiration yet I just haven't had the time and I just got to either save up three weeks or so a vacation or maybe be between jobs but that's my next one the long trail 270 miles of mountain believe it's not funny to hear that that's what I really love to do just because I always see it I'd love to actually experience it but I'm parts of it the AT in the long trail overlapped with a southern 105 miles from the Massachusetts border to Killington but then as main junction the AT dogs East towards Woodstock and Humper and if you go north from there you're heading up towards territory so in beyond great question I would love to do you want to do I'm looking for ideas where is it is it in it's in Colorado so the 10th Mountain Division huts are up there you know I'd like to do there I would do it by ski yeah yeah that would be amazing well it's just after a I'm going to stay up here and just hang out for about 20 minutes 25 minutes as long as the North Branch Nature Center last year before they gave me the boot thank you all very much for coming