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Junior Training Camp: June 29 - July 3, at Blue Mountain
Nadya Popova, a former professional orienteering coach in Russia, will be conducting an orienteering training camp for juniors, age 9+ at the beginner - intermediate (White, Yellow and Orange courses) skill levels.
The camp will take place Friday, June 29 - Tuesday, July 3, 2012, at the Blue Mountain Reservation's Trailside Lodge in Peekskill, NY.
For more information, please contact Nadya.
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by Peter Amram
Although Norman Maclean is best known for his 1976 collection of fiction, A River Runs Through It, his posthumously published Young Men and Fire (Chicago, 1992) also attracted considerable attention, including a National Book Critics Circle Award. Young Men and Fire is an examination of a disastrous 1949 forest fire in Montana in which thirteen smoke jumpers were killed, and it is, inevitably, a somewhat melancholy essay.
MacLean’s adult life was spent as a professsor of English at the University of Chicago, but as a youth he had worked in the western forests, and he retained strong affection for nature, an affection which he expressed with terse perspective. In River, for example, Maclean recounted having once belonged to a USFS crew which “did what we had to do and loved the woods without thinking we owned them.” And in Young Men, Maclean declared, “Your best friend when you feel curious about what you are walking on is usually a good map, if you can find one.” He continued with this affirmation, and warning:
The training camp was held at Blue Mountain in Peekskill NY on March 24th and 25th, 2012. It was run by Erin Schirm with help from Janet Porter, Neil Dobbs, Jeff Saeger, Judy Karpinski, Barb Bryant, Tim Parson, Bernie Breton, Mr. Barker, and maybe some other people.
Unfortunately, at the last minute the lodging fell through, and the organizers had to restrict attendance to only the advanced juniors. So kids working on white, yellow and orange couldn’t come. There were about 20 juniors there, including some cadets from West Point.
I drove down with my mom and my friend Rachael Harkavy. At one point we heard that the training was only going to be on Saturday, so we planned for that, which meant we couldn’t stay for the morning training on Sunday.
The first exercise on Saturday was corridor orienteering: about 3.5 kilometers, where most of the map had been whited out except for a narrow strip. I thought this was supposed to be a compass exercise, but for me it was mostly a feature-reading exercise. I did this together with Evalin Brautigam. Working with her was pretty easy, we worked well together. Most of the time we switched off leading the legs.
by Ian Smith
Two A-meets, or national competitions, were held in March: the US Classic Championships in North Carolina and the 16th Flying Pig in Cincinnati. A-meets are major events sanctioned by the national federation, OUSA. Compared to local meets, A-meets are higher quality events, with months of advance planning, better courses, more stringent secrecy, and novel terrain. Results from A-meets are used to produce end-of-year national rankings.
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| North Carolina: A map sample from the Blue Course from Day 2 |
One of the best parts of A-meets is running in different terrain on unfamiliar maps. You can only run on a local map so many times before it becomes routine and memory is as much an asset as the map. At the start of a race on a new map, you boldly run into the unknown. Each terrain type invites certain techniques and poses distinct challenges. There are two upcoming A-meets near New England: the annual West Point A-meet in West Point, NY on the weekend of May 5, and NEOC’s own creatively named Western MA 5-Day: five races packed into two days on May 26-27 in Amherst, MA. Because of the extensive logistics involved, competitors must register for A-meets weeks ahead of time. Early registration for both West Point and the Western MA 5-Day closes in mid-April, so register now! Links are on the NEOC schedule page.
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