Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
SIERRA CLUB'S INNER CITY OUTINGS
introduce a street kid to the wilderness
WILDLANDS ACROSS THE COUNTRY
As a reward, we saw our familiar trails through the eyes of kids who'd
never heard the wind whistling through the trees overhead and whose idea
of a Saturday outing was going to the mall. It was a gift of perspective that
bagging all the 4,000-footers in New England could not provide.
—Craig Kelley, volunteer for the Massachusetts Sierra Club
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John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, believed that if you want people to go to bat for
the environment, you've got to get them out into the wilderness. He said that if people “could
be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in
the way of forest preservation would vanish.”
The Sierra Club has taken its founder's advice to heart, offering hundreds of trips into the
wilderness each year. A quick perusal of its website shows canoe trips, bicycle trips, dogsled
trips, sailing trips, trips for families, trips for seniors, trips for activists, and on and on.
Although all their outings advocate the “exploration, enjoyment and protection of the
planet,” their service trips, roughly 90 of them per year, send volunteers across the country to
do everything from researching whale calving grounds in Maui to assisting with prairie res-
toration in Iowa to building a trail along Arkansas rivers. The Sierra Club estimates that in
man-hours alone, it contributes nearly a half million dollars a year to work projects in state
and federal land agencies.
In terms of changing the mindset of the planet, the Sierra Club's Inner City Outings (ICO)
may be one of the most important volunteer opportunities in the organization's busy lineup.
Volunteers for ICO introduce inner-city kids—kids who probably have never seen a mountain
or a stream, kids who spend all their free time on a computer or a playground—to the majesty
of the Great Outdoors. These trips not only introduce wilderness newbies to the beauty of wild-
lands but also teach them survival skills, teamwork, and self-esteem. Kids who have rarely
seen anything but concrete and man-made buildings learn what it's like to hike a trail, read a
