What if we had a chance to let our new president know what is important to us. How do we want to change the direction of the country?

Change.org is doing just that. It allows anyone (who registers, of course) to put forth ideas. The most popular idea will be sent to the Obama team. Anyone can vote on it.

One of the proposals that caught my eye is from Anne Whisnant, a historian and author of Super-scenic Motorway: a Blue Ridge Parkway History. Anne proposes to revitalize our national parks by employing young people in a new type of CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp.).

I don't know why they have to be young and they certainly don't have to be male, but other than that, I think it is a great idea.

Look at her idea and if you agree, vote for it.

The Bush administration has finalized a decision to allow concealed, loaded firearms at 388 of 391 national park sites. That includes the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The administration did not listen to the vast majority of comments from people who said "no" to allowing guns in National Parks. Nor did they listen to the professionals such as the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, the Association of National Park Rangers, the Ranger Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, and the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA).

What gets me upset is that these folks have never spent a night (as an adult) sleeping cheek to jowl in a shelter or discussed (argued??) about where to put up a tent. I wonder when and if they've ever camped or backpacked in a national park.

Look at the ruling. Yes, that can be overturned with the next administration but are we going to have the will and energy to do it? Again, write to the Secretary of the Interior:

Dirk Kempthorne
1849 C Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20240
Dirk_Kempthorne@ios.doi.gov
   

On Thanksgiving day, Lenny and I walked our A.T. trail for the last time this year. We have a five-mile section from Rice Gap to Devils Fork Gap on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee. It's not a particularly outstanding section, more like a typical A.T. section in the South.

The day started out cold and we had overdressed. By midmorning, with clipping and sawing, we had shed most of our top layers. We got a new hand saw, a Silky, which worked so much better than our old bow saw. Still we found at least two blowdowns that we couldn't handle. We needed to report it to the CMC trailcrew. They have the big guns, or at least, the power saws. We also break up fire rings that are on the trail; those are illegal. Yes, we did hear hunters because our trail is in the Pisgah Forest. We wore orange and hoped they got a deer.

We met a southbounder, Mountain Goat, a young woman who had graduated college and started on the trail in Maine  in July. She seemed in good spirits and eager to get into the Smokies. I offered to take out her trash, which is the best thing to offer a long-distance hiker.

I did give thanks that I live so close to the A.T., and that we are entrusted with taking care of it. That's the way most trails in the U.S. are maintained, by volunteers. This is the hardest physical work I do. Hiking 19 miles in the Smokies is not as hard on my back as the bending, twisting,  reaching I do when I maintain the trail. That evening, I slept on the floor, still thankful.