There are few activities that provide a greater explosion of sense and emotions than putting foot in a new land — a foreign place where you have to navigate language, landscape, and culture practically the instant you arrive.

Memories of stepping off a plane and heading out of the airport in Kathmandu, Port Au Prince, and Guatemala are forever stored and accessible in my brain’s happy file. Prominent among these are the new smells, the architecture, the people, and the only slightly realization that you’re not in Kansas anymore. Or North Carolina or wherever it is you call home.

And the places to which we travel, and the experience we take away from those adventures are tied directly to how safe we feel while out exploring.

As more of us prepare to climb on planes, trains, and boats again, NCOAE wants to share some of the safety and risk mitigation tips we have learned along the way when traveling far from home with clients from all walks of life.

With the tips we offer below, the focus is on adventure travel and ecotourism. Don’t neglect to research basic travel tips as well.

Let’s get started:

Prepare a Checklist

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If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you may recall that Education Without Walls (EWOW) began more than a decade ago here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE).

Today, EWOW has become a successful organization — a self-sustaining not-for-profit complete with its own administrative staff, board of directors, programs, and funders… all of which are focused on providing academic and life skills guidance for motivated teens with financial need.

With that as background, the rest of today’s post focuses on what this fledgling organization has been up to since spinning off from NCOAE, and what’s on its horizon.
The Big 24
The organization’s first big fundraising event — The Big 24, which aims to raise enough funds to award one-year scholarships to 24 deserving students — begins this Sunday (Aug. 15) and runs through Oct. 15, culminating with a first-ever “Evening Without Walls” fundraising event.

For information on The Big 24 and how you can help, please The Big 24 webpage or contact EWOW’s Executive Director, Celine Adair, MA, LMFT by email or by calling (910) 515-9157.
Summer Expeditions
Education Without Walls has always been focused on merging meaningful outdoor adventures with ongoing mentorship to assist aspiring students in identifying and accomplishing their

Editor’s Note: Below is final part in Stephen Mullaney’s three-part series of essays about encounters with bears in the backcountry. The first essay in the series recants the shock Stephen experienced with one particular bear encounter, while the second essay in this series attempts to find humor in a persistent bear taking up quarters in an NCOAE camp late at night. This time around, Stephen — who serves as Director of School Partnerships here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE) — writes about a timing issue.

Decision Time for the Trailbike Rider

When NCOAE offers larger courses or custom outdoor education courses, we try to have a floater in the field. The floater is an instructor who knows the course area, can navigate to multiple groups in a single day, and has the ability to be flexible and help out when groups are in need of extra support.

I enjoy being a floater because it allows me to see the NCOAE field staff in action. To watch an NCOAE instructor teach is inspiring to me. It also has the added benefit of allowing me to discover different approaches to teaching our curriculum. As a result, being a floater is akin to real-time professional development.

On one particular wilderness course for which I was the floater, we 11 crews/groups in the field. Because of the distance between the groups, the terrain that would need to be traversed, and the need to reach groups quickly, I figured using a trail bike was a no brainer. I could get to each group every four days and still be able to respond to any group that may need outside support in a quicker fashion. 

Our intrepid Director of School Partnerships’ trail bike, used to support groups in the backcountry.

Each day I woke up, left the crew with which I had spent the night, and headed off to meet the next crew before they had even had their breakfast. Then I was off to the next group before lunch, and I usually showed up to meet my final crew for the day a little before dark. Or very much after dark depending on circumstances.

Editor’s Note: In this, the second installment of “The Three Bears,” we’ll hear from NCOAE staffer Stephen Mullaney tell yet another true tale about confrontations with bears. In this post, he’ll attempt to find the humor in a persistent bear taking up quarters in an NCOAE camp late at night. But let’s let Stephen tell the story:

The spot where this particular bear adventure occurred is conveniently located near an area we used for climbing instruction. Unfortunately, the site is also known for its occasional bear activity, and with proper planning and risk mitigation, can be safely used for that purpose. This was an outdoor education industry training trip, and all participants were adults with lots of experience guiding in the backcountry. 

We had finished cleaning up camp, putting our bear canisters well away from campsite and had settled down for a well-deserved night of sleep after a long day of climbing. I laid down in my hammock and was asleep in an instant.

Having spent an incredible number of nights sleeping in the woods, I have learned the difference between a stick or branch falling, being blown by the wind or being cracked in half under the weight of a large animal.

The crack that woke me up was the crack made by the weight of a large animal.

I rolled over, lifted my tarp, and took stock of the situation. I didn’t get out my hammock, because I didn’t want to fully wake up if everything looked copacetic. No more sound means more sleep, and I rolled over and fell back to sleep.

Crack!

There it was again.

I repeated my previously approach of taking a peek while buried in my hammock. However this time the cracking continued, and I was able to

When folks find out that my work often takes me into the backcountry, one of the first questions they usually ask me is, “Have you ever had a run-in with a bear — a bear encounter?”

After I tell them that I have had run-ins with bears in the backcountry, they ask what’s that’s like. And that’s when I share that there are many emotions attached to an encounter with a bear in the wilderness, ranging from shock, to humor, to the sudden and unexpected “meet and greet” where you wonder, “Am I going to have to physically engage with this bear?”

First up in this three-part series on bear encounters in the backcountry is a true story about ashocking bear encounter.

A Shocking Bear Encounter

It was Day Two on a multi-day backcountry expedition when someone in the group needed to stop and use the facilities, meaning off the side of the trail. The hiker asked for the “Poop Kit,” which contains hand sanitizer, a trowel to dig a hole and everything else needed for a semi-comfortable sitting.

Brown Bear Image © by JT Ray

Problems arose when no one could find the kit. As an aside, when traveling as a group, each participant is responsible for carrying the same communal gear each day — that way, nothing gets lost. So, who had been carrying the kit for the entire trip?

A voice spoke up, “I’m supposed to have it, but it’s not in my bag.”

Someone else said, “I saw it by the fire ring this morning while we were getting ready to head out.”

Not too happy, I looked at my co-leader and told him, “One of us needs to hike back and get it while the other gets the group into camp.” I lost the coin toss, and prepared to head back to get the kit. Wanting to travel light, I hung my backpack up in a tree, grabbed a snack and a bottle of water and headed the four miles back to the previous night’s campsite. 

Here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education, we’re known for bringing gourmet meals to the wilderness. And since we carry all our food either on our backs or in our boats, we try to pack ingredients that begin in their lightweight dehydrated form. That makes for an easier time on the trail, and it leaves room in our packs for fresh vegetables and fruit to mix things up.

Meals in the backcountry offer a variety of options — from meat and grains to fresh baked bread and pizza made from scratch. Our students learn to cook meals on the trail, often developing cooking skills that they can bring home to the front country.

Here are some our staff members’ and students’ favorites from the trail that you might want to prep and cook on your next outdoor adventure:

Blueberry Pancakes

Who doesn’t like pancakes first thing in the morning? This trail-proven recipe is sure to get your day started on the right footing. Blueberries, after all, are more than just sweet and nutritious — they’re also known to play a role in reducing muscle damage, especially after strenuous exercise.

Here’s our recommended recipe for blueberry pancakes:

There are always lessons to be learned on the trail, and they aren’t always related to building a campfire, setting up a tent, or leaving your campsite cleaner than when you arrived.

Some of these are life lessons that fall in the category of treating others as you would like to be treated and adhering to the principles of human kindness. Take, for instance, an experience I had while hiking along a stretch of the 2,200-mile Appalachian National Scenic Trail, or simply, the AT.

For days, I kept running across hikers along a Massachusetts section of the AT, and often during our short conversations, they would tell me stories about a “Cookie Lady” on up the trail. It got to the point where it seemed every other hiker told me, “You just gotta stop at the “Cookie Lady’s” house. Best cookies ever!”

Then these thoughtful fellow travelers would painstakingly give me directions to a blueberry farm just off the trail in western Massachusetts. It seems Marilyn Wiley, along with her husband Roy, owned the farm in rural Washington, Mass., that had several outbuildings, including one with what appeared to be storing a small airplane.

And since buying the place back in 1983, Marilyn Wiley would walk out front and hand out her scrumptious cookies to blueberry pickers and hikers passing her farm on the Appalachian Trail.

A few days into that part of my trek, I found myself approaching a country road in western Massachusetts in search of