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Climb Longs Peak, Colorado

Despite its forbidding East face and a summit of strewn boulders, Rocky Mountain National Park’s highest peak is climbed by hundreds in the summer months. Spend at least one night at 7,000 to 8,000 feet to adjust to the elevation and then begin this 15-mile round-trip (10 to 15 hours) hike in the wee morning hours. Starting at the East Longs Peak trailhead (9400 feet and a 90-minute drive from Denver), the first six miles is a moderate ascent through a forest of sub-alpine fir, Engelmann spruce, and what the Germans call krummholz (crooked timber). At aptly named Boulder Field (12,760 feet), the path steepens as you begin the Keyhole Route to the top. Here, the above-treeline ledges resemble a cliffside stairway, albeit without handrail. The final “Homestretch” is a scramble atop rocks as the Continental Divide and all the glorious splendor of the Rockies spread out on a carpet of green before you. Try to get off the 14,225-foot summit by noon, when summer thunderstorms often begin its daily light show on the exposed rock. Colorado Mountain School offers guided hikes up the mountain.  
 

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Kitesurfing Aruba’s Boca Grandi Beach

Spend a week on Aruba’s Palm or Eagle Beaches, like I just did with my family, and you get used to the steady breeze and the swaying palms. But this is nothing compared to what you witness on the eastern shores of the island, where winds are far more severe and the waves crash ashore, spewing foam into the air. That doesn’t deter the best kitesurfers in the world from descending on Boca Grandi Beach on the southeastern tip of the island. While cruising around Aruba, we stopped at Boca Grandi and were mesmerized by kitesurfers zipping across the bay at incredibly fast speeds, catching air for a good five seconds, and turning their boards around with the slightest of ease, while the choppy sea swirled around them. This is not a place I would learn the sport, but if you already feel comfortable kitesurfing, I would certainly make my way down to Aruba for its consistent wind. Judging from the smiles plastered on these kitesurfers’ faces, they loved every minute of it. 

 
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In Every Season, Memories of Martha’s Vineyard, by Phyllis Méras

 

By the time I met Phyllis Méras over a decade ago, she already had an illustrious career as travel editor at the New York Times and Providence Journal. That’s not to say that she was retired by any means of the imagination. Over dinner, she would tell me about her travels to Europe or Africa, and her publishing efforts. Her latest book pays homage to her home of Martha’s Vineyard and it is perhaps her most personal work. She talks about how her great-grandfather, a French professor, came to the island in 1890s to teach at the Martha’s Vineyard Summer Institute. As managing editor at the Vineyard Gazette for six years starting in 1967, Méras met many of the island’s most famous residents, including Walter Cronkite, Beverly Sills, James Cagney, and Thomas Hart Benton. Yet, this book, exquisitely illustrated by her late husband, landscape painter Thomas Cocroft, and architect Robert Schwartz, details her walks in Menemsha to find ripe blackberries, paddling the often-overlooked ponds, and watching skunk cabbage rise in early spring. Take time to smell the roses with her in Edgartown and you’ll walk away with a finer appreciation of the island. 

 
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Go Play!

On May 27th, the Boston Globe will debut the redesign of its new travel section. I’ve been asked to write a weekly column called “Go Play!” where I’ll take a detailed look at one hike, one bike ride, one mountain climb, one beach stroll, one sea kayaking jaunt, or one river paddle. It’s often what I write about in this blog, so thank you for being my soundboard and helping me hone the concept! Next week, I’ll be blogging live from San Antonio. I usually don’t like to write live from location, because any work takes away from your enjoyment of the locale. That’s why tweeting works so beautifully. On a trip, I’d much rather spend 30 seconds on a tweet than 30 minutes on a blog. But I’ll give it a go and see what happens. Enjoy the weekend, and yes, go play!

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Aman New York to Open in 2020

Fans of the ultra-sybaritic Aman brand will be happy to know about its latest undertaking, the refurbishment of the iconic Crown Building overlooking Central Park in Manhattan. Set to debut in 2020, the property will feature 83 guest rooms and 20 residences in the circa-1921 Beaux-Arts building, once the original home of the Museum of Modern Art. This will be Aman’s third hotel in the US and only the second in a major city, after Tokyo. Located on 5th Avenue and 57th Street, Aman New York will feature an Aman Spa that will span 22,000 square feet on the 7th, 8th, and 9th floors and include an 80-foot indoor swimming pool surrounded by daybeds. The wraparound Garden Terrace, located on the 10th floor, will offer guests a panoramic view of Central Park, a restaurant, and a cigar bar. The hotel also plans to open a piano bar in the Sky Lobby, Wine Library for tastings and events, and a subterranean Jazz Club. 

 
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Marsh, Billings, Rockefeller—Quite the Trio

“Every middle-aged man who revisits his birthplace after a few years of absence looks upon another landscape than that which formed the theater of his youthful toils and pleasures,” said George Perkins Marsh in 1847 in a speech at the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Vermont. Growing up in Woodstock, Vermont, Marsh had seen three-quarters of Vermont’s forest cover destroyed for potash, lumber, crops, and pasture.  17 years later, Marsh would delve further into these egregious practices in his epic book on the American environment, Man and Nature. Reflecting on what he had seen, Marsh wrote about a concept of sound husbandry where men could mend nature.

A generation younger, Frederick Billings was deeply touched by Marsh’s writings and, in 1869, purchased Marsh’s childhood home in order to make the estate a model of progressive farming and forestry. Beginning in the 1870s, Billings designed a forest with numerous tree plantations and constructed a 20-mile network of carriage roads to showcase his work. On the lowlands, Billings developed a state-of-the-art dairy. In 1982, Billings granddaughter, Mary French Rockefeller and her husband, the conservationist Laurance Rockefeller, established the farmland as the Billings Farm & Museum. In June 1998, the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Mansion and the surrounding forest became the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park.

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller is the first unit of the National Park System to focus on the theme of conservation history and stewardship, the main concern of Marsh and Billings. With their emphasis on the careful cooperation of man and nature, they had the utmost desire to pass land on, undiminished, even enhanced, to the next generation and generations to come. The Park Service will continue a program of forest management on the site, offering workshops on how to use the forest most efficiently.

Tour the exhibits in the Carriage Barn, then hit the carriage path trails like my family did this past weekend through Billings’ dream 550-acre forest. 11 of Billings’ original plantings remain including groves of Norwegian spruce and Scottish Pine from the 1880s, mixed in with the an indigenous Vermont forest of white pine, red pine, and maples. The longest carriage path trail circles around The Pogue, a shimmering body of water backed by the foliage of Mt. Tom.
 

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Raft the Snake River and Receive a $200 Discount

ROW Adventures, recently crowned the world’s #1 Tour Operator by Travel & Leisure magazine, just announced that they are offering a $200 discount to adults and $300 discount to kids 16 and under on their 5 and 6-day jaunts on the Snake River in 2013. So on a 5-day trip, you would now pay $1430 for adult, $1185 per child, including all food, beer, wine, and soda, guides, rafts, and full-service camping. Space is very limited, first come, first serve, and they must receive your deposit by Monday March 4th. What do you get in return? The chance to cruise through Hells Canyon on Class III and IV rapids on a rip-roaring ride through the deepest river gorge in North America. This is not the Colorado River, where you freeze your butt off in the water. Temps on the Snake average a perfect 70 degrees in summer. If interested, contact ActiveTravels at 617-614-9877. 
 

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