September 2019

As another summer draws to a close, your adventures may have come, gone, or never materialized. No matter which one of these is part of your Summer 2019 your story, it’s always nice to stay in the adventure mindset.

That’s why we here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education decided to put together a list of books intended to keep you in a wild and adventurous state of mind. This list is not your average adventure book list. It includes fiction, nonfiction, and some that bend and distort the lines of each genre.

Each book selection features its own element of protagonists — ordinary people finding themselves in wild landscapes for joy, escape, and the quest to push into the unknown. You can read these outdoor-oriented titles on the couch, off the trail, or wherever you find yourself. These adventures are portable, capable of being picked up and read during a break at work, in a snug sleeping bag, or wherever you find yourself with a free minute set aside for adventurous thought.

Here then are a half dozen or so of our favorite adventurous titles for your perusal:  (more…)

It’s only been a year and a half since China put a halt to accepting the world’s recyclable waste products, yet the effects are being felt in many countries — and in turn, local municipalities — that are scrambling with the challenge of dealing with their own recyclables, including cans, plastics, papers, and glass.

When laws mandating curbside recycling began sprouting up across the United States in the early 1980s, many Americans balked at the idea of being forced to sort their trash. Decades later, it’s embraced by residents in cities and towns throughout the country. In fact, the entire recycling movement has become as second nature to most folks as breathing.

But in January of last year, China quit importing most foreign recyclables, stating it wanted to address its nation’s own pollution issues. So, when you consider that the United States alone used to send 4,000 shipping containers of recycled goods to China each day, you can see the effect this might have on our recycling habits, especially in locations absent of recycling centers and recycling mills of their own.

As a result, the co-founder and director of operations here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE), Celine Adair, is offering insight and some advice on what each of us can do to curtail the impact of this global event in our personal lives. Specifically, Celine is exploring how the nation’s outdoor, experiential, and adventure-based educators and guides can manage — and thrive — in this new era in the evolution of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

But first some additional background into the severity of the problem. China’s decision has the potential to (more…)