Issue link: http://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25178
In March 2000, Ryan Townsley left a job he loved at a public relations firm to pursue a lifelong dream of thru hiking the Appalachian Trail. Two thousand miles and six months later, he found himself grimy, tired and triumphant on the summit of Mt Katahdin in Maine. Asked to give advice to people considering a long trek, he answers, "Some people think that you need lots of time and money to have an outdoor experience like this. Nonsense. You need your feet, a pair of shoes that don:t give you bl isters and room to roam." In his review of North American hiking trai ls (From Sea to Shining Sea, page 46) he offers a reminder that the paths that connect th is continent from sea to sea and border to border are among the most majestic, diverse and accessible in the world. Matt Rotando hiked the Appalachian Trail (Zen and the Art of Walking, page 28) in 1996 to "clear my head of peo- ple and come back a person. " A Brooklynite, Matt recently received a Fulbright Scholarship and moved to Sri Lanka to meditate, study Buddhism and work on a book of meditation-inspired poems entitled The Comeback's Exoskeleton. Matt has also taught poetry at Brooklyn College, worked as a cook for NBC during the Barcelona Olympics and braved the streets of San Francisco as a bike messenger. Photographer Chris Rogers was intrigued when blue asked him to shoot surf travel in this issue's Humanwear (Sayulita's Spring Swells, page 54). " I've shot a lot of surfing," says Chris, " but it's always been professionals in pristine Hawaii. Mexico, on the other hand, has an edge." Chris and his crew found local surfers to photograph and through them, the spirit of Sayulita shone through. Chris divides his time between New York City and Charleston, South Carolina. His edi- torial work has most recently appeared in Unlimited, E-Companyand Skiing. Surfer/writer/chef Bobby Robertson left his native Los Angeles and a job in biochemistry to pursue his passion for surf travel. He wound up in Sayulita, Mexico, which is where blue found him (Sayulita's Spring Swells, page 54) cooking in a local restaurant and surfing daily. "The drive to search for new waves and liberation from everyday normalcy is such an integral part of the surfing lifestyle and that is what led me to dwell in the sleepy fishing village of Sayulita," Bobby says when asked what drew him to the Pacific Coast of Mexico. "As a surfer and a traveler I feel as if I have a new type of passport, one without the crest and eagle so many people attribute with the ugly American. I have a passport that symbolizes respect for the land and ocean, for other surfers and people of the communities I pass through. Most impor- tant is the camaraderie that exists on a level that surpasses any language barrier. "