It’s official – New Zealand is now home to the one of the world’s longest and most spectacular walking trails.

Spanning from Cape Reinga at the top of the North Island to Bluff at the bottom of the South Island, the newly opened Te Araroa (Long Pathway) walking trail is just over 3000 kilometers long and passes through more than 60 towns, six cities, including Wellington (the capital city), and some of New Zealand’s most historic, scenic, and spiritual locations.

Intrepid hikers have calculated that it would take up to three months to complete the journey from top to bottom. But not everyone has the time or the energy to walk the entire trail. Thankfully, the trail is formed from a patchwork of regional pathways that allow shorter treks that will please both leisure and serious walkers.

Many of New Zealand’s already well-known walkways, such as the central North Island’s Tongariro Crossing (featured in the Lord of the Rings trilogy), are part of the Te Araroa trail.

Geoff Chapple, the man who first envisioned the trail over two decades ago and has remained the main driving force behind its creation, has released a walking guidebook to Te Araroa to coincide with the opening of the trail.

(Image of Tongariro Crossing from flickr shardin1n)

How does a popular wine country town just outside of San Francisco become America’s first “cittaslow” city?

Apparently, as Sonoma discovered, by just being itself.

Being slow is considered a bad thing in many parts of the world, but in Sonoma they embrace their slowness. As a result, they meet all the requirements set out by the Cittaslow International, a network of slow cities around the world.

Obtaining the cittaslow ((Italian for  “slow city”) designation isn’t easy.

To start with, it’s invite only.

And then, just because a city is invited to apply doesn’t mean it is a shoe-in.

Invited cities go through a rigorous application process to prove they embody Cittaslow values. Chief among these is the concept of the slow food movement, sustainable agricultural practices, conservation of and support for traditional artisan products, hospitality programs, historic preservation, and educational programs for all ages.

The next time you are in Sonoma, “sit a down” and relax.

Enjoy the sun.

Enjoy the wine.

Enjoy the town.

In fact, you can do all that with a Segway tour.

There’s no reason to hurry.

After all, you are now in a cittaslow city.

Aside:  The only other two cittaslow cities (Sebastopol and Fairfax)  in the USA are also in California.

By Michael Buckley

Lathered up with sunscreen, five people wave goodbye to the support boat and paddle into the Ulong Island chain on kayaks. They become castaways for a day—in the wake of Captain Henry Wilson

The sea lapping on limestone cliffs has a surreal calmness. This is like paddling into a postcard. The clarity is extraordinary: I can see coral shimmering in the shallows for some distance. And in this clarity, the senses seem somehow sharpened, more alert, more alive. Long-tailed tropic-birds glide past. Brown noddies skim the water for fish. And we hear other strange birds, but do not see them. Jayden, our Palauan guide, knows all the calls. “That was the call of the Fruit Dove,” he says. “Only found in Palau—and the national bird. Jayden has photos of the birds in a waterproof folder. Among them are a dozen endemic to Palau, like the Rusty-capped Kingfisher.

We cruise past some rock flowers, hanging low off the limestone cliffs. The island vegetation is striking because it somehow gains a foothold on the limestone. Jayden points out a tree with a small hard fruit, known as noni: this bitter fruit is used in traditional medicine by the Palauans.

Kayaking gives you access to nooks and crannies that are far too shallow for regular boats to approach. A ‘cranny’ sometimes means a space barely big enough to accommodate a human. We tie up the kayaks to a piece of limestone, then crawl on hands and knees through a tight cavern encrusted with barnacles. At the other side of the cavern is a tidal lagoon: we don masks and snorkel to observe the miniature world within. Palau is a magnet for divers, with barracudas, reef sharks, manta rays, Napoleon wrasses and hawksbill turtles patrolling the waters. You won’t see this kayaking, but instead get to see the lagoon hatcheries for these species, where they hide out from predators until they are big enough to fend for themselves.

Paddling along the coast is punctuated by stops to explore caves or snorkel shallow waters. Time becomes elastic: we have somehow drifted into the afternoon hours. We beach the kayaks for a late lunch. I wolf down sandwiches: you can build a healthy appetite when kayaking.

Marooned Among the Natives

At this beach, we have reached the rough spot where the good ship Antelope was smashed to smithereens. There’s a brass plaque on a plinth near the beach commemorating the events of 1783. Not the original plaque—that’s long gone—but a plaque set in place in 1985. The saga from 1783 has directed this kayak trip, which I requested after reading about the Antelope from the 1783 account of what happened. Not the original hefty folio volume that must weigh several kilos, but a modern retelling of the story in a slim paperback that I picked up at Koror museum.

In 1788, an illustrated book titled An Account of the Natives of the Pelew Islands became a bestseller in England. Based on the journals of Captain Henry Wilson of the British East India Company, the book recounts the adventures of sailors shipwrecked at Ulong and their interaction with Palauans. The Antelope hit a reef in a storm. The marooned crew camped on the beach at Ulong and set about building a small schooner, enlisting the help and protection of Koror Palauan natives in this endeavor. After three months, the schooner was completed—and the crew sailed back to Macau.

More than two hundred years later, Palau’s main draw lies in its reefs and its remoteness, for very different reasons. Adventurers come here with the intention of getting marooned in a different way: getting lost in the beauty of Palau, far from the crowds. Palau is still a bestseller in the castaway sweepstakes, but via a different medium. The islands have been featured in a number of survivor reality series, shot on location.

We’re the only ones on this expanse of white sand at Ulong. The island is uninhabited, but in the days when Captain Wilson crash-landed, Palauans lived here, up in the hills. Why not near the beach? Jayden explains why as we hike high into the tropical rainforest. He picks up shards of pottery from an old settlement. The inhabitants lived up in the heights to better defend themselves from attackers. High chief Ibedul, the crafty leader of Koror Palauans, struck a deal with the marooned British in 1783. In return for helping them build a new vessel, he wanted to use their firepower to vanquish his enemies on a nearby island. Captain Wilson obliged, supplying ten men with muskets. The gunners took aim from canoes to bring down enemy fighters—who were mystified how their men could drop dead without any weapons in sight, and promptly turned tail and fled.

Continue to Page 2 of Kayaking Palau

Across the years he’s been carrying his music around the world, one of the things you could count on at a Pete Seeger concert was that he’d get people singing along, whether he was playing in his home turf of New York state or in Australia or Africa or Japan, whether he was playing a famous concert hall or a small gathering or teaching kids in a classroom. That is still true,, and it is likely to happen again as Seeger joins his oldest grandson, Tao Seeger, on stage at the Clearwater FestivalvClearwater Festival at Croton Point Park in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, on June 18th and 19th.

One of Pete Seeger’s ideas has long been that to get people to make changes, you first have to inspire them to care. Some forty years ago, he decided to use that focus and the power of music to benefit the Hudson River, a place which holds much beauty along its course and much pollution in its waters. As Seeger sings in one of his songs “She’s getting cleaner now.” That is thanks in part to his efforts, and those of people he has inspired.

Seeger had an idea to build a boat, a sloop like those which plied the Hudson’s water in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and use it as a base for educating people — children especially, adults as well — about ecology and nature and the need to clean up the river and treat it responsibly for future generations. In 1966, he began giving concerts in towns along the river to raise money to build such a sloop, and in 1969, the sloop Clearwater was launched. The sloop, and the non profit Clearwater Foundation which runs it, have become respected environmental education centers.

The Clearwater Festival, also known as The Great Hudson River Revival, is one of the ways they celebrate and continue that educational role, and also a way they raise money to keep things going. The sloop Clearwater will be at the festival, there will be a working waterfront with tall ships to see, a crafts fair, ecology exhibits and vendors, food on offer as well. At the heart of things, though, will be the river, and the music.

The festival this year is called Clearwater Generations. The closing concert each evening will be called Generations, too, celebrating the mission of passing on care for the land and waters and the passing on of music, as well. Pete Seeger and Tao will take part in the evening concerts, as will Jay Ungar and his daughter Ruthy Ungar Merenda. You may remember Jay’s music, if not his name, from the haunting tune Ashokan Farewell which he composed and which became a centerpiece for the score of Ken Burns’ television series on the Civil War. Peter Yarrow will play along with his daughter Bethany Yarrow, and civil rights activist and Sweet Honey in the Rock member Bernice Johnson Reagon will be there with her daughter Toshi Reagon. Jen Chapin will be there — her dad Harry wrote Cat’s in the Cradle — along with her uncle, Tom Chapin. These family connections will anchor the closing sets each evening, and there will be other artists on the schedule as well. Songwroter Martin Sexton, legendary Hot Tuna founder Jorma Kaukonen, high energy group The Klezmatics the trio Red Horse, whose members are singers and songwriters Lucy Kaplansky, John Gorka , and Eliza Gilkyson, and The Clayfoot Strutters contra dance band are several of the acts set to appear.

Pete Seeger has been spending quite a bit of his time in the classroom these days, teaching school kids about music and the environment, and how to care for both of those and he’s recorded songs with some of those kids on the album Tomorrow’s Children. He does not tour as often as he used to, as he turned 93 earlier this year. But you can be sure he’ll be on stage and at home to celebrate with those who come to the Clearwater Festival and to help nourish his beloved Hudson River.

photograph by Anthony Pepitone

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I’d always thought that the happiest place in California was Disneyland.

Turns out I was wrong.

The happiest place in California (and all the USA) is San Luis Obispo, a small town of 45,000 located halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Least that’s what researcher and writer Dan Buettner believes. In his new book, Thrive, in which he examines where the happiest places on earth are and why these places produce exceptionally happy people, he named San Luis Obispo America’s happiest place.

Why?

Well, according to Buettner, San Luis Obispo’s happiness has, for the most part, come about through decades of good local government policies that have created a thriving healthy and active community.

A town green before being green was popular, San Luis Obispo (or SLO as the locals like to call it) favors the pedestrian and cyclist, with plenty of green space, wide sidewalks, a meandering river, and a town square.

Come to think of it, San Luis Obispo was starting to sound a lot like Disneyland.

That in mind, I just had to go discover San Luis Obispo for myself.

To be honest, by the time I arrived in America’s ‘happiest place’ after an exhausting seven hour drive from Palm Desert, I wasn’t feeling all that happy.

But checking into the Apple Farm Inn soon fixed that. I’m not sure whether it was the Inn’s delightfully cozy country décor or the fact that there was fresh home baked chocolate chip cookies and hot apple cider in the lobby, but within minutes, I was feeling much, much happier.

The next day, I took off on foot to explore downtown San Luis Obispo. Within ten minutes, I’d not only found the town square but thanks to brief conversation with a local I meet on the street, discovered where the best coffee (Black Horse Café) and best breakfast (Big Sky Café) could be found.

But first, I needed to leave my mark on SLO. And I knew just the place – the infamous ‘bubble gum alley’, a 70 foot long alley lined with chewed chewing gum placed in the most decorative and innovative ways. Originally a college prank, it is now SLO’s most talked about landmark.

From there it’s only a short walk across the San Luis Obispo Creek to creek to Mission Plaza. This pedestrian only two block area bordered by the creek on one side and the historic Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa (founded 1772) on the other, is the physical, cultural, and spiritual heart of SLO.

The rest of the morning was spent alternating between window shopping and sitting in cafés watching people go by. Maybe it was my imagination, but they all seemed to be smiling.

(Disclaimer: Writer was hosted by Apple Farm Inn during her stay in San Luis Obispo)