Hello all  - as May 1st comes so too montaineering comes around again. I
remember some words from Felice Benuzzi and his book "No Picnic on Mount
Kenya" :-

" all the landscape around reflected our happiness.... to wait for the
fairy of the tale...."

This Benuzzi book was introduced by Rick Ridgeway (1989) and there
Ridgeway said :-

" I wrote my screenplay realising this contrast of the freedom of the
mountains against the oppression of (sic) man was the leitimotif of
Benuzzi's book.  I realised too that perhaps more than any climbing
story, "No Picnic on Mount Kenya" captures that strong under-pinning of
revolt common to most mountaineers. The men and the women I know drawn
to the hills are mavericks...... Benuzzi applauds that right...."  (
page x)

As Labour Day comes again as a May 1st celebration I felt the urge to
try and say a little something.

As the regimes of "adventure programming" become activated ( as they are
globalised to promote their own "selves") and as the "spiders webs"
become international games to play in ORDER to ADAPT to the staus quo
through the ideology of "problem-solving" then Labour Day might be
important. Benuzzi might be read again.

As Seattle re-forms ( and as 80% of the folk there are aquitted through
a law and order that was against the freedom of folk to complain and
find a voice) and as the new European marches reform and re-create in
the real world I ask just where outdoor education and outdoor research
really stands!!!!!? What is the ideology driving this work today?

As, from Finland the "Grandmothers For Peace" move with the "Sierra
Club" of the USA I ask just where are "we"?

All I see happening right now is the so called "interpersonal relations"
promoted as the key to employment. All I see is the lack of an real
informed consent as to the real agents of unemployment. When the
money-for-money markets move in flexi-time and "need" flexi-folk to
sustain the environment then I become suspicious. I have no "need" to
adapt to that situation. No amount of "good" interpersonal relationships
will keep our jobs when the buyer buys at the cheapest rates available.
Such ( sorry for this) is childs play to say. But it seems that
"adventure programming" has not yet reached this stage of childs play.
But there again this AP regime knows how to market itself through its
spiders-webbery. Shame that it all has no real content!!!! But that is
one question that Labour day always raises.

Happy May 1st

steve bowles



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