RobKesselring.com

Off to the Big Thicket

rkesselring — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:52:49 +0000

I have been a bad blogger. Life got in the way. I have had the good luck to speak at the Indy Quiet Sports Expo, the Duluth Pack Store travel series and Canoecopia where I had a chance to sit next to Becky Mason who was selling her splendid new freestyle canoeing DVD. But now it is time to put the paddle in the water. I was invited to join a trip to the Big Thicket swamp in SE Texas. I leave tomorrow. It should be great fun and I thought it would give me a leg-up on the paddling season. However, this has been a very mild winter and Minnesota rivers are already running and the lakes are opening three weeks ahead of the average for the last 25 years. But the Thicket, with the chance at spying the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, is a great opportunity. After that, a run down the Ozark’s Buffalo River with the Central Indiana Wilderness Club before returning home. Both my August BWCA Wilderness trip classes are almost full, I might open a third section. But still lots of spaces available in the spring bird ecology programs. Happy Trails out there and I will work to be a better blogger.

changing our roles as wilderness advocates

rkesselring — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:11:28 +0000

Interesting article on front page of Pioneer Press today, Sunday 1/8/12, from the Washington Post, “If we can fix the world, should we?”

It addresses the emerging need to “manage” ecosystems in the post-wild world. As inept as humans have been in the past in attempts to positively manipulate the natural world, I think we need to try again. Aggressive fire suppression in the caribou range of the sub-arctic being one example, clearing blowdowns and careful reseeding efforts after BWCA fires being another.

Change is happening too fast for slow poke Mother Nature to react quickly enough to positively adapt. A sliver of proof is we have already, this January, recorded the highest night time low in Minneapolis since those warm “greenhouse” years following the Krakatoa eruption in 1883. In the past few years states are recording new record low barometric pressures at an alarming rate. So the near future looks like more storms, more droughts, more burn-to-the-rock wild fires, more bugs and runaway opportunistic invasives.

We mucked up this planet, it’s up to us to now to mitigate the carnage.

Instead of leave no trace we need to start making things better and helping the planet heal.

On a selfish note I am working to get Lifetime to open their large indoor pool in Lakeville for freestyle canoeing a couple times this winter. Anyone one out there game? Warm water!

A friend shared this Wabikimi wildfire pic from last summer

The Website

rkesselring — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 22:08:07 +0000

Just about ready to go public in a major way with the Website. Those of you that have followed me over the years and have noticed that my old rk.com site has been down for six months, thank you for your patience. Putting this website and blog together reminds me of my Thekehili canoe trip many years ago in the Canadian sub-arctic. It was a route and a river that even the most accomplished of arctic canoeists had never even heard of. My mother has just died so I had not really focused on the planning. The maps were so bad they showed river connections that were not there and one whole day we were lost in a huge swamp that was not even depicted on the map. Late in the trip wild fires raged around us putting our lives in peril and totally disorienting us in the smoky gloom. After a couple weeks of that and when I devised an easy downstream route back to Nonacho Lake where we started, I jumped on it and turned our proposed epic journey into a loop. I always have regretted that decision, feeling as if I quit the mission, which I did. But last night my niece, Karen Kelley, and companion on the Thek (and absolute crackerjack expedition canoeist) casually said, “If we had not turned that trip around, we would have never made it.” So there you go. But why does the Thekehili expedition remind me of this website? I don’t know, but I am not going to quit on it. That is unless Terry, my web expert, abandons me. One thing different about building a website from a canoe trip gone bad is: if things get really ugly you can just turn off the computer and go to a nice warm bed and then try again in the morning. On a canoe trip you bleed out.

Website Taking Shape

rkesselring — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:57:24 +0000

Happy to announce that by midnight tonight most of my new website will be up and running. I especially want to draw your attention to the “guided canoe trip” section. These are going to be some terrific trips. I hope people don’t think they are too expensive. Actually they are running about 50% below market, but I know many of the people that follow my adventures are not accustomed to guided trips and these fees may seem a trifle dear. Let me tell you, by the time I go through all the hoops and pay all the fees, unsnarl all the red tape, pay liability insurance and marketing costs; these trips will be a real bargain and will likely be non-profit! But the good news? I get to go to some really cool places with some really great people. So join up. These are real adventures.

One trip is in danger of not filling and that is a travesty. At one point I had 8 people signed up with me to go down the lower canyons of the Rio Grande. This will be an amazing expedition with truly awesome canyons, gem-like hotsprings, hidden back in the cane …plus a backdrop of blue cloudless skies — warm days in early February!

I think I know what is happening. All 8 of my paddlers were guys and I think their wives and daughters have been watching too much CBS News. They see people on the Mexican border getting riddled with bullets and decapitated bodies floating in the Rio Grande. Hey, this is way downstream of where we will be paddling. We are up in the desolate tall canyons. Just friendlies where we are and not too many of them. Fewer people, in fact, than ever in human history. The Comanche are just about gone, the drug runners are downstream, the wacko vigilante minutemen are running scared. All that’s there now are just a few cowboys on horseback, the odd little adobe homestead and maybe a few migrant workers sneaking across. It’s empty, lawless and awesome. It will be like 1912 not 2012 and if you watched the movie True Grit and wished you could have exchanged places with those characters, here is your chance.

So I am still looking for some adventurers with grit. The water is record low, meaning no rafts, just canoes and darn few of them. And you can be paddling one of them. Dave Smith and I once looked into starting an ambulance service. Our motto was going to be, “DOA, you don’t pay”. I am making a similar offer for those with grit that choose to paddle the Rio Grande with me. Complete refund for anyone that comes home in a box. I was down there last winter, it’s safer than Apple Valley, let’s go.

Rob Kesselring’s New Website and Blog

rkesselring — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 04:42:18 +0000

This is my new blog and website. As of today, December 15, you can see that most of it is under construction. Terry Rasmussen is helping me with the design of the website and how to make changes and posts. I am technology impaired but Terry knows his stuff and I hope soon to have a functional site that is ready to roll. The purpose of the site will be to informally share information about my professional company, Uncommon Seminars LLC, including seminar information, canoe trips, articles and also interactive feedback from participants. I also wanted a platform to share canoeing and bushcraft knowledge, pictures and videos. I am also going to have a store where readers can purchase my books and download articles. It is a learning journey for me so at least in the early stages I hope you have patience with me as I work out the bugs. Happy Trails -Rob