Quarterly Newsletter of The Mountain Spirit Institute

Published Quarterly
July/Aug/Sept Online Edition
#2: July 26th, 2007

The 2nd Annual Sunapee SunFest on Holistic Health & Sustainable Living!

Mountain Spirit Institute will again be sponsoring the Second Annual Sunapee SunFest to be held at Mt. Sunapee, September 15th, 2007 from 10AM to 7PM. Executive Director Randy Richards says of last year's event, "This was our first attempt as a holistic health and sustainability festival. We had a great reception and lots of regional interest." He added, "there were about 650 visitors, and that's expected to double this year".

The event will host nearly 80 vendors, thirty speakers, a number of healing sessions such as massage and Chinese medicine, demonstrations of solar, wind and biodiesel technologies as well as live music and an old growth hike led by educator Dave Anderson of the Society for Protection of NH Forests.

"The event," says Richards, "seems to address a need in the region for knowledge about how to do something to improve our lifestyles in a healthy way, both personally and globally."

In 2005, Mountain Spirit Institute was approached by two members of the community who asked the organization to be one of three sponsors of the event. When no other organizations came forward, Richards' board made the decision to be the sole sponsor of event. " There's more responsibility in doing this solo", says Richards, "but it hopefully furthers our organization's mission and goals." Mountain Spirit Institute, started in 1998, with its mission to "facilitate one's reconnection to self, each other and the environment". MSI's role in the festival evolved from an invitation of sponsorship to the festival being one of its key educational programs and fundraisers.

Some of the vendors will include NH Sustainable Energy Association, Outward Bound USA, All Terrain and Borland of Sunapee, NH, Sundance Solar, Kearsarge Indian Museum, Satori Reiki , Center for Sustainable Medicine, Pacha Mama of Concord, NH as the official bookseller, Grappone Toyota with its Prius hybrid technology, as well as NH Peace Action and PriortiesNH. Two organizations from Utah will be represented and literature will be available from such organizations as the World Watch Institute and Union of Concerned Scientists.

An additional presentation room has been added this year to accommodate more speakers. Of the thirty speakers, 2-time Ski Olympian and 3-time World Cup Downhill Champion Holly Flanders will speak on healthy lifestyle choices in a hectic world. Jan Pendlebury will cover the environment from her work at NH Global Warming/National Environmental Trust. Laura & Gill Richardson, Co-Founders of the NH Sustainable Energy Association will introduce easy ways to reduce one's "personal carbon footprint", Deb Marshall, a health practitioner from Wilmot will speak on Chinese medicine and acupuncture.

Music includes local legend Click Horning, the powerful duo of brothers Walt and Dominic Kutylowski, better known as Fathands, and bluegrass music performed by Woody Pringle and Beth Eldridge of Bradford, NH.

There will also be demonstrations by Chris Mulcahy on wilderness survival skills such as bow drill fire-making, Jay Mankita and others on bio-diesel automobile conversions, and yoga teacher John Schlosser on "The Common Man's Yoga" as well as massage and energy work sessions available to the public.

The event serves not only to educate and inform, but also to aid in Mountain Spirit's efforts to further its program goals and mission statement through its Annual Fund. For more information on the Sunapee SunFest, to volunteer, be a vendor or see about Mountain Spirit Institute's programs by visiting their website at www.mtnspirit.org or call 603-763-2668

Read New Hampshire's Governor Lynch/SunFest 2007 Welcome Letter

To be a vendor at our Sunapee SunFest download the following documents and apply.
2007 Vendor Invitation Letter
2007 Vendor Contract
Forms require free Acrobat Reader:


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Peru/USA Music Program Planned for Summer/Fall 2008

Mario Montalvo, Guillermo Seminario, and Augusto Taype, (pictured front row at right) of the band Chimu's will be arriving in New Hampshire for their first visit to the US ever to perform and educate about traditional Peruvian Folklore music. They will be in the US under sponsorship and invitation of MSI. Says Randy Richards, "It's been quite a roller coaster but once I committed to the project, it looks like we're actually going to have them visit us.!" There are a lot of details regarding visas and permits, and Richards had to postpone the trip originally scheduled for Fall 2007 due to the amount of documentation required. However the process continues under the same "performer's visa" application, only the date changes to 2008. "We're in too deep to bail on this worthwhile program" says Richards. Guillermo Seminario is the musical director of the band and plans on doing as much teaching about their Peruvian instruments as playing them. They are currently scheduled for a wide variety of venues ranging from an opera house to a large holistic health expo in Massachusetts and of course the Sunapee SunFest in New Hampshire. For a full schedule of Chimu's projected itinerary, see their webpage at www.mtnspirit.org/Quechua.html

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Peru/USA Music Program Needs Your Support - An opportunity presents itself.

MSI is sponsoring the band Chimu's but needs your support. Any donations are welcome to help cover airline and travel costs from Peru and while they're in the USA (Costs of $3100.).We are also accepting local Business Sponsorships.

On their first trip to the USA, in the Fall of 2008, MSI is depending on donations from the public and other sponsors. Your tax-deductible donations can be sent to MSI, POB 626, Sunapee, NH 03782. Thank you! We hope to apply for available grants, given the staff and time, until then however, we thank you for your support on this worthwhile project.

 

 

MSI's First Fundraiser event goes well.

Held at Sandy Rowse's Foxstand in Springfield, NH, our first fundraising event went well. Support was good and all enjoyed the presentation on The Value of Wilderness in Today's Society produced by VP Bob Stremba, with some input by Randy Richards. The presentation is based on a book Dr. Stremba has recently written for univeristy level professors on outdoor education. Doug Kibbie, MSI's marketing and development director, explained our fundraising goals for the next six and twelve months and beyond. He also explained our program plans. A sincere thanks to Sandy Rowse for graciously hosting our event at Foxstand!

Mountain Spirit Institute Seeks Interested & Qualified Board Members

If you, or someone you know is interested in getting in on the ground floor of our developing non-profit organization and has some background in board participation, or is willing to learn, please contact us. We are looking for board members willing to put in about 10 hours per month, help in the fundraising efforts needed to bring Mountain Spirit to the next level, and to help guide the organization based on its mission. Experience or an interest in development/fundraising and/or business management is helpful. Our current business plan is available for download in PDF format on our support page.

 

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Salt Lake Integrative Health Conference Presentation - Well Received

Randy Richards, founder and Robert Stremba, Ph.D., Vice President of Mountain Spirit Institute, Sunapee, and Program coordinator of Adventure Education, Fort Lewis College, Durango Colorado, presented on "Nature Deficit Disorder and the Importance of Wilderness" at the fourth annual Integrative Health Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah in May, 2007

Their presentation, which included an outdoor mini-solo, was well attended and well received. It was a great opportunity to get the word out about MSI's mission and programs.

The conference focused on professional healthcare providers who are integrating and pushing the envelope of holistic practices in their work. The event's title was "New Paradigms for Healing: The Science of Integrative Health"

The annual event has three main themes:
- Body, Mind, Spirit Modalities: Science and Experience
- New Understandings of the Biology of Wellbeing
- Healing the Individual, Family, Community, and Environment

 

Kathleen Hurley wins journalism award for her Kearsarge Magazine feature "The Alternative Article - A Look at Alternative Medicine Options in the Kearsarge/Lake Sunapee Area" which featured MSI program The Art of Living with Theo Paredes, PhD

Mountain Spirit's Art of Living program was featured in Kearsarge Magazine in an article written by Kathleen Hurley of Portsmouth and Newbury, NH. The article covered various healing techniques in the area but featured Peruvian Senior Theo Paredes of Cusco Peru who visits the area under invitation of Mountain Spirit Institute and conducts workshops in Andover NH. The article told of the workshop and Sr. Paredes' teaching philosophies and practices.

The APEX Awards for Publication Excellence is an international competition that recognizes outstanding publications from newsletters and magazines to annual reports, brochures and Web sites. This year, there were 5,000 entries and 1,521 awards. In the writing category, there were 785 entries and the fall 2006 issue of Kearsarge Magazine was one of 44 Award of Excellence winners. This is the second year in a row that the magazine has won an award; the premiere issue of Kearsarge Magazine (Summer/Fall 2005) received an Award of Excellence.

Kearsarge Magazine ( www.kearsargemagazine.com ) takes a thoughtful look at what is happening in 15+ towns in the Kearsarge/Lake Sunapee area. Kathleen has been a participant in the Art of Living program, and volunteers her time and expertise with the Sunapee SunFest.

Many thanks to Kathleen and publisher LJ Whitcomb for their support of MSI and the Sunapee SunFest.

Last Child in The Woods Author Richard Louv Speaks in Park City, UT

Executive Director Randy Richards heard Author Richard Louv, (Last Child in the Woods) speak in Park City, Utah on July 11 to a full audience.The event was sponsored by the Trust for Public Lands. During the Q&A portion, Richards made mention of a PowerPoint presentation on the Value of Wilderness created by MSI Vice President Bob Stremba. Stremba's presentation, based in part on a college level textbook he's writing for the Adventure Education professors, was shown recently in Salt Lake at the Integrative Health Conference and at a recent MSI fundraiser event. Louv was interested in the Powerpoint presentation which Dr. Stremba will be sending to him.

At Louv's Park City appearance, he proved to be a very insightful and compassionate about our children's dilemma. He talked about how successful the book has been since its release and how the Secretary of the Department of Interior, and his department, as well as one of the largest land developers in the country have taken his message to heart.

Louv stated, "The rise in ADD, drugs, childhood obesity, depression and other issues could be the result of putting kids under what he calls "house arrest" based on a culture of conditioned fear. Statistics, according to Louv show that the fear is, on the whole, relatively unwarranted. "Stranger kidnappings" have been on the decrease, and the majority of kidnappings are by known people. Frivolous liability lawsuits have also been on the decrease. Louv says "fear is permeating society and we need to face it."

He asked the audience if they could remember their favorite place in nature as a child. He then asked the fundamental question, "Will future generations have that natural place they grew up with, in their heart? Will they have it to go to when they are older? Louv added, "This is the first generation that, statistically, will die younger than their parents due to child obesity and other health related factors..

Louv has started the Children Nature Network. Its goal, to bring people together on the net and in person...a vision of support which he expects is a movement that will precede the book.

Louv's two main closing points were:
1) One's health will improve with the active addition of nature to their lives in physical emotional and spiritual aspects.
2) Everything must change: We must come up with new kinds of designs for living. Cities, living situations and patterns must evolve. Our goal should not just to make things "sustainable" but more progressive.

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Aaron Russo's Blockbuster Film

MSI occasionally shows films in the Sunapee region presented under our banner "MSI Film Series". So we're making mention here of a noteworthy film.

Aaron Russo's documentary From Freedom to Fascism, has been making the rounds throughout the USA, but not in mainstream theatres. Russo, best known for producing The Rose with Bette Midler, and Trading Places with Eddie Murphy, has filmed Freedom to Fascism to present a well balanced report of the 1913 Federal Reserve Banking Act and how the 16th amendment of the constitution never actually conveyed new powers to the government to levy taxes on wages.

MSI will be showing the film at our Sunapee SunFest on September 15th. We're also planning on purchasing a number of copies from the producer (if not backordered) at wholesale educational prices. If you're interested in purchasing a copy at our cost, please contact us or Russo's website directly.

Last minute addition: If you have not seen Michael Moore's Sicko, you may want to check out this candid snapshot of our health care system in the USA. Being shown in theatres throughout the USA

Recipe for a Cooked Election by Greg Palast

A nasty little secret of American democracy is that, in every national election, ballots cast are simply thrown in the garbage. Most are called "spoiled," supposedly unreadable, damaged, invalid. They just don't get counted. This "spoilage" has occurred for decades, but it reached unprecedented heights in the last two presidential elections. In the 2004 election, for example, more than three million ballots were never counted.

Almost as deep a secret is that people are doing something about it. In New Mexico, citizen activists, disgusted by systematic vote disappearance, demanded change - and got it.

In Ohio, during the 2004 Presidential election, 153,237 ballots were simply thrown away - more than the Bush "victory" margin. In New Mexico the uncounted vote was five times the Bush alleged victory margin of 5,988. In Iowa, Bush's triumph of 13,498 was overwhelmed by 36,811 votes rejected. The official number is bad enough - 1,855,827 ballots cast not counted, according to the federal government's Elections Assistance Commission. But the feds are missing data from several cities and entire states too embarrassed to report the votes they failed to count.

Correcting for that under-reporting, the number of ballots cast but never counted goes to 3,600,380. Why doesn't your government tell you this?

Hey, they do. It's right there in black and white in a U.S. Census Bureau announcement released seven months after the election - in a footnote. The Census tabulation of voters voting in the 2004 presidential race "differs," it reads, from ballots tallied by the Clerk of the House of Representatives by 3.4 million votes.

This is the hidden presidential count, which, with the exception of the Census's whispered footnote, has not been reported. In the voting biz, most of these lost votes are called "spoilage." Spoilage, not the voters, picked our President for us. Unfortunately, that's not all. In addition to the three million ballots uncounted due to technical "glitches," millions more were lost because the voters were prevented from casting their ballots in the first place. This group of un-votes includes voters illegally denied registration or wrongly purged from the registries.

Joe Stalin, the story goes, said, "It's not the people who vote that count; it's the people who count the votes." That may have been true in the old Soviet Union, but in the USA, the game is much, much subtler: He who makes sure votes don't get counted decides our winners.

In the lead-up to the 2004 race, millions of Americans were, not unreasonably, panicked about computer voting machines. Images abounded of an evil hacker-genius in Dick Cheney's bunker rewriting code and zapping the totals. But that's not how it went down.

The computer scare was the McGuffin, the fake detail used by magicians to keep your eye off their hands. The principal means of the election heist - voiding ballots - went unexposed, unreported and most importantly, uncorrected and ready to roll out on a grander scale next time

Like a forensic crime scene investigation unit, we can perform a post mortem starting with the exhumation of more than three million uncounted votes:

• Provisional Ballots Rejected. An entirely new species of ballot debuted nationwide in 2004: the "provisional ballot." These were crucial to the Bush victory. Not because Republicans won this "provisional" vote. They won by rejecting provisional ballots that were cast overwhelmingly in Democratic precincts. The sum of "the uncounted" is astonishing: 675,676 ballots lost in the counties reporting to the federal government. Add in the missing jurisdictions and the un-vote climbs to over a million: 1,090,729 provisional ballots tossed out.
• Spoiled Ballots. You vote, you assume it's counted. Think again. Your "x" was too light for a machine to read. You didn't punch the card hard enough and so you "hung your chad." Therefore, your vote didn't count and, crucially, you'll never know it. The federal Election Assistance Commission toted up nearly a million ballots cast but not counted. Add in states too shy to report to Washington, the total "spoilage" jumps to a rotten 1,389,231.
• Absentee Ballots Uncounted . The number of absentee ballots has quintupled in many states, with the number rejected on picayune technical grounds rising to over half a million (526,420) in 2004. In swing states, absentee ballot shredding was pandemic.
• Voters Barred from Voting . In this category we find a combination of incompetence and trickery that stops voters from pulling the lever in the first place. There's the purge of "felon" voters that continues to eliminate thousands whose only crime is VWB - Voting While Black. It includes subtle games like eliminating polling stations in selected districts, creating impossible lines. No one can pretend to calculate a hard number for all votes lost this way any more than you can find every bullet fragment in a mutilated body. But it's a safe bet that the numbers reach into the hundreds of thousands of voters locked out of the voting booth.

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The test kitchen

But do these un-votes really turn the election? Voters from both parties used provisional or absentee ballots, and the machines can't tell if a hanging chad is Democratic or Republican, right? Not so. To see how it works, we went to New Mexico.

Dig this: In November 2004 during early voting in Precinct 13, Taos, New Mexico, John Kerry took 73 votes. George Bush got three. On election day, 216 in that precinct voted Kerry. Bush got 25 votes, and came in third.

Third? Taking second place in the precinct, with 40 votes, was no one at all.

Or, at least, that's what the machines said. Precinct 13 is better known as the Taos Pueblo. Every single voter there is an American Native or married to one.

Precinct 13 wasn't unique. On Navajo lands, indecision struck on an epidemic scale. They walked in, they didn't vote. In nine precincts in McKinley County, New Mexico, which is 74.7 percent Navajo, fewer than one in ten voters picked a president. Those who voted on paper ballots early or absentee knew who they wanted (Kerry, overwhelmingly), but the machine-counted vote said Indians simply couldn't make up their minds or just plain didn't care.

On average, across the state, the machine printouts say that 7.3 percent - one in twelve voters - in majority Native precincts didn't vote for president. That's three times the percentage of white voters who appeared to abstain. In pueblo after pueblo, on reservation after reservation throughout the United States, the story was the same.

Nationally, one out of every 12 ballots cast by Native Americans did not contain a vote for President. Indians by the thousands drove to the voting station, walked into the booth, said, "Who cares?" and walked out without voting for president.

So we dropped in on Taos, Precinct 13. The "old" pueblo is old indeed- built 500 to 1,000 years ago. In these adobe dwellings stacked like mud condos, no electricity is allowed nor running water - nor Republicans as far as records show. Richard Archuleta, a massive man with long, gray pigtails and hands as big as fl ank steaks, is the head of tourism for the pueblo. Richard wasn't buying the indecision theory of the Native non-count. Indians were worried about their Bureau of Indian Affairs grants, their gaming licenses, and working conditions at their other big employer: the U.S. military.

On the pueblo's mud-brick walls there were several hand painted signs announcing Democratic Party powwows, none for Republicans. Indecisive? Indians are Democrats. Case closed.

The color that counts

It wasn't just Native Americans who couldn't seem to pick a President. Throughout New Mexico, indecisiveness was pandemic ... at least, that is, among people of color. Or so the machines said. Across the state, high-majority Hispanic precincts recorded a 7.1 percent vote for nobody for president.

We asked Dr. Philip Klinkner, the expert who ran stats for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, to look at the New Mexico data. His solid statistical analysis discovered that if you're Hispanic, the chance your vote will not record on the machine was 500% higher than if you are white. For Natives, it's off the charts. The Hispanic and Native vote is no small potatoes. Every tenth New Mexican is American Native (9.5 percent) and half the remaining population (43 percent) is Mexican-American.

Our team drove an hour across the high desert from the Taos Reservation to Española in Rio Arriba County. According to the official tallies, entire precincts of Mexican-Americans registered few or zero votes for president in the last two elections. Española is where the Los Alamos workers live, not the Ph.D.s in the white lab coats, but the women who clean the hallways and the men who bury the toxins. This was not Bush country, and the people we met with, including the leaders of the get-out-the-vote operations, knew of no Hispanics who insisted on waiting at the polling station to cast their vote for "nobody for President." The huge majority of Mexican- Americans, especially in New Mexico, and a crushing majority of Natives (over 90 percent), vote Democratic.

What if those voters weren't indecisive; what if they punched in a choice and it didn't record? Let's do the arithmetic. As minority voters cast 89 percent of the state's 21,084 blank ballots, that's 18,765 missing minority votes. Given the preferences of other voters in those pueblos and barrios, those 18,765 voters of color should have swamped Bush's 5,988 vote "majority" with Kerry votes. But that would have required those votes be counted.

The voting-industrial complex

New Mexico's Secretary of State, Rebecca Vigil-Giron, seemed curiously uncurious about Hispanic and Native precincts where nearly one in ten voters couldn't be bothered to choose a president.

Vigil-Giron, along with Governor Bill Richardson, not only stopped any attempt at a recount directly following the election, but demanded that all the machines be wiped clean. This not only concealed evidence of potential fraud but destroyed it. In 2006, New Mexico's Supreme Court ruled the Secretary of State's machine-cleaning job illegal - too late to change the outcome of the election, of course.

But who are we to second-guess Secretary Vigil-Giron? After all, she is a big shot, at the time president, no less, of the National Association of Secretaries of State, the top banana of all our nation&rsquos elections officials.

Vigil-Giron, after putting a stop to the recount, rather than schlep out to investigate the missing vote among the iguanas and Navajos, left the state to officiate at a dinner meeting in Minneapolis for her national association. It was held on a dinner boat. The tab for the moonlight ride was picked up by touch-screen voting machine maker ES&S Corporation. Breakfast, in case you&rsquore curious, was served by touchscreen maker Diebold Corp.

At the time of this writing, Vigil-Giron is busy planning the next big confab of vendors and state officials -- this time in Santa Fe, "the city different." But aside from Wal-Mart signing on as a sponsor, nothing much is different when it comes to the inner workings of the voting industrial complex.

Except for one thing.

Where's the action?

While Vigil-Giron is greeting her fellow Secretaries and casually introducing them to this year's vendors, it is likely she'll keep quiet about a few things. Voter Action, a group of motivated citizens, some jumping into activism for the first time, sued the state of New Mexico in 2005 over the bad machines and the failure to count the vote. The activists ran a public campaign with their revelations about New Mexico's broken democracy. Last year, Voter Action invited our investigations team to lay out our findings to huge citizens' meetings in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Soon, the whole horrid vote-losing game was on local community radio and TV stations. It worked.

Governor Richardson, who ducked the issue for three years, and his Secretary of State, once openly hostile to reform, had to relent in the face of the public uprising. In February of 2006, Richardson signed a model law requiring that all voting in the state take place on new paper ballot machines, with verifiable tabulating systems. Richardson now claims the mantle of leader of the voting reform campaign.

Voter Action, successful in New Mexico, is now pursuing lawsuits in seven states to stop the Secretaries of State from purchasing electronic voting systems which have records of inaccuracy, security risks, and have been proven unreliable.

In New Mexico we learned, once again, that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. To protect your right to vote, you must know what is happening in your state - before, during, and after Election Day - and be willing to hold your leaders accountable.

Reprinted from YES! Magazine , PO Box 10818, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110. Subscriptions: 800/937-4451  Web: www.yesmagazine.org

Mountain Spirit's Website Continually Updated

Check out www.mtnspirit.org for regular updates on programs, plans and vital resources on holistic living, wilderness skills and sustainability as well as traveling and spiritual aspects of life.

Because we are able to update the site in real-time, www.mtnspirit.org will continually have new usable and important information on programs and resources. Watch for updates on Lake Titicaca, Mountaineering, Yoga, Utah programs, our Film Series, wilderness as well as cultural immersion programs, and most importantly spiritual and wilderness connection programs in the US and abroad. Workshops will be added and updated on a regular basis. Don't hesitate to contact us regarding programs or any aspect of MSI.

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The Awakening - A Life-Changing Experience

R Richards and H. Flanders recently participated in a powerful program called "The Awakening" in Midway Utah. The name might seem a bit presumptive, but the two truly had life transforming experiences.

The program's founder, Salt Lake City based Gary Acevedo is a gifted teacher and visionary who is following his dream for a better world by having created a variety of workshops. His core program is called The Awakening. He considers himself a "Johnny Appleseed of sorts" who "trains the teachers and facilitators" in a variety of counseling therapy, teambuildling, self-realization and relationship awareness techniques. And from our observations, he's living his dream in a big way by facilitating a dramatic change in people's lives for the better.

Within minutes of being in one of Mr. Acevedo's workshops, it becomes clear he is a gifted speaker and a real human being who comes from the heart. During one workshop, Acevedo was able to bring together people from varied backgrounds and ages (from young teens to the elderly) into deep connections with each other and themselves. So what's the core of his teachings? Very down-to-earth common sense techniques. But for the whole picture, check out their website at www.dreammakersacademy.com For details, and for information about the program being offered in New Hampshire, please check MSI's website on a regular basis or give us a call.

Where and When
To Be Announced

Blue Water Farm
Andover, NH

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Guide's Half-Hour : MSI's Roots - Kurt Hahn

In mountain guiding, the term "Guide's half-hour" is the short time period the guide takes for himself at the end of a long day, after the clients have been cared for, their meals done, equipment is organized, and the assistants are briefed for the next day. It's a time to unwind, go bouldering, do a short climb or to sit under the stars. Here' the founder's half-hour of editorial:

"It is the sin of the soul to force young people into opinions - indoctrination is of the devil - but it is culpable neglect not to impel young people into experiences. "
Kurt Hahn, Founder of Outward Bound and Gordonstoun, England

Sometimes it's hard for people to get their head around Mountain Spirit's Statement of Purpose and Mission Statement. What did I really had in mind when I started MSI. Even board members have been known to query from where the combination of a holistic learning center and a wilderness experiential program, such as Outward Bound came. How does it work? A few, who have outdoor leadership experience and a deep spiritual connection with nature have gotten it, Craig Cimmons and Bob Stremba to name two.
I have a vision, and in addition to my years in the mountains, here's also where it came from:

I taught wilderness programs for Outward Bound throughout the Pacific Crest range from Washington State to Baja, Mexico and a bit in New Hampshire. What was meant as a hiatus from mountain guiding, my job at Outward Bound actually helped me crystallize what wilderness education means to me. While on the trail, with groups, or sitting solitary on a peak, I would keep a journal of ideas on what my particular vision of wilderness and spiritual experiential (espiritential) education meant to me. Those notes on little pieces of paper, made it to a business plan, and then to MSI's mission statement and our current Case Presentation and website.

Kurt Hahn, the founder of Outward Bound was a visionary educator in Germany and England. He considered it of vital importance to empower young people and impel them into life transforming experiences. He thought is was a crime to rob them of their motivation to learn, which he observed in most classrooms of the day. He not only founded Outward Bound but other schools and programs where he definitely left his mark. Hahn had an uncanny ability to see the future of our youth. If you get a chance, see Dr. Robert Stremba's presentation at one of our fundraisers, or the Sunapee SunFest, which quotes and dovetails nicely, both Hahn and Richard Louv's book The Last Child in the Woods.

"There is more in you than you think" is an inscription found on the wall of a family home in Belgium before World War II. It became the motto for the school Kurt Hahn founded in Britain, Gordonstoun, and the leitmotiv of his philosophy: that each of us has more courage, more strength and more compassion than we would ever have fathomed. Kurt Hahn's calling in life was to help people around the world realize this truth about themselves.

To find out a bit about Kurt Hahn go to a website devoted to some of his readings and quotes and accomplishments. The paragraph above was taken from the site. You'll then get a glimpse of what I'm up to with MSI.

Oh, one last thing! Many thanks to the following former board members: Becky Bowles for serving on the board, presenting and organizing the first Sunapee SunFest, and coordinating the Art of Living Program; John Herrington for serving on our board; To Deb Smith for serving at president of our board and helping with the SunFest and Sunapee Community CoffeeHouse; to Cricket Hanna for serving as president of our board and being so helpful in MSI's filing for non-profit status. We wish you all the best.

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Published by R. Richards, Executive Director, Founder,
Mountain Spirit Institute

www.mtnspirit.org

Please address comments/corrections/questions to randy@mtnspirit.org

Sunapee SunFest images courtesy: Annette Vogel
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