Outdoor Heritagekeeper

Greetings to all members of the Outdoors Blogging community and to those who read the blogs found within this community.

O’fieldstream is pleased to sit by the fires of this group of bloggers.  We share a very common interest: The Outdoors.

O’fieldstream began over 14 years ago with a different name and a more specialty focused outdoor activity: Fly-fishing. Then eight years ago, O’fieldstream tested its legs as an email communication.  We test our tone on a number of individuals back in the early days of the Internet. We were testing the popularity potential with the non-technical world. Topics of discussion ranged from fly-fishing to how to avoid deer ticks to how to take better outdoor photos. And the focus groups were even broader.

I began blogging - in my technical world - during the early days of the late 90’s.  Those were the days when most folks had no idea what blogging was. I started the first O’fieldstream blog in February of 2002, using Radio Userlands “Radio”, and played with it for a year or so.

In June of 2003, after a seven year absence, I resubmitted for membership into the Outdoor Writes Association of America.  Accepted, I made my plans to attend the national meeting that year in Columbia, MO. I planned to introduce the concept of blogging to several members who were friends and colleagues.

I have a history with OWAA going back to 1990, when I began as a student member. I was in Purdue University’s Fisheries & Aquatic Science program at the time. In 1994 I introduced OWAA to the Internet, when I delivered the first copy of the Mosaic browser on PC and Unix to the University of Maine at that year’s national OWAA conference., in Orino.

The idea of blogging was received with roughly the same level of interest as the Internet in 1994, zilch. But, unlike the ‘uptake’ on the Internet, blogging has forged forward onto the technology scene. In less than 4 years, blogging has become far more than a fad. Blogging is now a viable form of publication and business model. On that level … it’s wake-up time!

In late 2002 a serious illness began that by the late fall of 2003 took me totally out of the living, earning, and contact w/humanity scene for the next 3 years. Along with it went all of my outdoor and technology work efforts. You know the old saying, “Out of sight, out of mind.”  I tried to maintain contact, but it was of little effect.

I am now better; a long story.  Though better, I am just now getting back ‘in-the-saddle’.  Despite being unable to really connect with the business world, I’ve been ‘in-the-game’ - learning and thinking - the whole time.

The roots of O’fieldstream start much earlier, back to the days when I was but a wee nub walking the stream banks and forested hills of our western Indiana farm. The banks of Pine Creek was the line between prairie and woodland. My earliest remembrances are solidly around an interest in, and love for, the outdoors.  Yet, even with my nose stuck in every magazine and book I could get on the subject of the outdoors, I never imagined I’d one day be communicating about the Outdoors, in so many different mediums, across the face of the planet at near light-speed!  Nor do any of you.  But here we are.

Most of all I had no idea how important it would become to document, archive and preserve - for future generations - those little things I took for granted, like so many others around me; then … and now.

You will find a common theme when reading this blog and my other companion publication:

• O’fieldstream Outdoor Journal
• The O’fieldstream Journals
• Field/Stream Bio Blitz
• Project HP3
• Heritagekeepers and
• Outdoor Heritagekeeper

.. as well as many others on various other outdoor on-line platforms … have a consistent theme.

O’fieldstream and Heritagekeeper promote the notion that in order to regain and maintain our connection with the Outdoors we must:

This isn’t some new age thinking or softening of the outdoor experience’. This is the reality of what so many for the past 100 years have slowly lost sight of:

The ONLY economics for survival, in such basic times, are knowledge, understanding and wisdom based upon a collective Outdoor Heritage. These essential elements of social survival come through our common association with our Outdoor Heritage, passed down from generation-to-generation.  With the loss of most - if not all - modern conveniences we will, still, be able to continue to survive.  Without these social basics, we can only revert to a savage version of the daily reality of survival first; at all costs; which our ancestors left only a few short decades past.

Today, however, we find ourselves in a very different predicament than our ancestors. Today we live in a world crowded by humanity. A world with greatly reduced natural resources. And a world where we have grown unaccustomed to the hard manual labor required to remain healthy and alive in a far less civilized - and comfort oriented - station.

The fact is, many people today would not survive such a reversal in daily life.

Our society is so fragile that we don’t need a major calamity to occur to thrust us - permanently or even temporarily into such turmoil. We only need look back at the aftermath of hurricane destruction on the Gulf Coast to see the truth in that statement.  We don’t even need to have a natural event like that to cause shock waves of fear and loss.

In August of 2003 a single squirrel, shorting out a conductor line in a substation in Ontario, Canada took out nearly the entire eastern electric grid for only 2 days. The financial losses were staggering. And that is not considering the trauma caused by any number of social ills’ in the affected area: robbery, looting, vandalism, rape, assault, murder.

This is not meant to be a doom-n-gloom commentary, but a reality check.  We need to remember that no matter how “civilized” [aka, soft!]  we become - we still live in a world that is prey to the natural activities and cycles of the planet on which we live.  Our electric run society is extremely vulnerable to disruption by the smallest of variables. To survive such disruptions we must never loose touch with our Outdoor Heritage and its inherent value to us at all times.

Unfortunately -for the most part - we have lost touch.

For this reason O’fieldstream raises the issues and evangelizes the importance of Heritage and Heritagekeeping.  Heritagekeeper covers many issues. For this blog and group, our focus will be on Outdoor issues.

I hope you all will continue to read, make comments and work with O’fieldstream to raise this and other important issues within the Outdoor Community.  We need to specifically reach out to those who have lost sight of the importance of the Human-Nature interface.

Remember, “The real world is outdoors. Go to it!” ™

O’fieldstream
Outdoor Heritagekeeper

Technorati : age, conservation, family, fishining, heritage, heritagekeeper, hunting, legacy, net500cg, ofieldstream, outdoors, preservation
Del.icio.us : age, conservation, family, fishining, heritage, heritagekeeper, hunting, legacy, net500cg, ofieldstream, outdoors, preservation
Ice Rocket : age, conservation, family, fishining, heritage, heritagekeeper, hunting, legacy, net500cg, ofieldstream, outdoors, preservation
Flickr : age, conservation, family, fishining, heritage, heritagekeeper, hunting, legacy, net500cg, ofieldstream, outdoors, preservation
Zooomr : age, conservation, family, fishining, heritage, heritagekeeper, hunting, legacy, net500cg, ofieldstream, outdoors, preservation
Buzznet : age, conservation, family, fishining, heritage, heritagekeeper, hunting, legacy, net500cg, ofieldstream, outdoors, preservation
Riya : age, conservation, family, fishining, heritage, heritagekeeper, hunting, legacy, net500cg, ofieldstream, outdoors, preservation
43 Things : age, conservation, family, fishining, heritage, heritagekeeper, hunting, legacy, net500cg, ofieldstream, outdoors, preservation

Comments Off