The following letter has been adapted from one sent out by Peter Shoenfeld in January. It was sent to all those who had led hikes previously. It is published here in the hope that it might attract some new hike leaders.
Friends--
We are scheduling events for the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy Outings Program for 2002 and need your help. We want you to consider leading an outing, and we want your ideas. Please let us hear from you. We are particularly interested in getting events scheduled for the remaining winter months and the spring.
This year we are calling the program "West Virginia Mountain Odyssey" (Last year it was Mountain Odyssey 2001)
We are again offering a program of day hikes, nature walks, backpacks, float trips, bike trips, volunteer days, etc. in the Monongahela National Forest and other wild areas of West Virginia.
This year we are attempting to make the program just a bit more focused than it was last year. We intend to include a number of events with a special or unique character. We also hope to provide more in the way of volunteer opportunities, and to bring people to other outstanding West Virginia natural areas in addition to the Monongahela National Forest. Finally, we plan to give more attention to publicity. Last year we neglected this in the latter part of the year and ended up canceling some events because we'd failed to arouse sufficient interest.
As events are scheduled, I will update and circulate the schedule. This should help us in getting outings scheduled for different days rather than the same day.
We have an outings committee-- Jack Slocumb, Ruth Blackwell Rogers, Trudy Phillips, Bob Marshall, Dave Saville and myself. We have information on the program on our website (
www.wvhighlands.org), including material intended mainly for outings leaders.We'll appreciate quick responses since we need to build a goodly part of the schedule for 2002 in the weeks ahead. Just contact me or one of the other committee members however you wish.
Thanks for your help,
Peter