Directory:Dale Stubbart

My first memory is of being called in to lunch by my mother. I woke up and climbed down out of the top of the apple tree and came in to lunch. I was four at the time. I knew that tree well and felt secure in its branches. My next memories are of bobbing in the Atlantic ocean with my older sister. We would bob up and down in the waves - going down until our feet hit the sand, then pushing up, till our heads once again cleared the water and the waves, then back down. Shortly after that, I have memories of being at the beach and swimming in a bay in Massachusetts. Those were very pleasant memories. I also fondly remember trips out west as a child. We would camp, which was fun other than the scarcity of restrooms. One night I made my younger sisters a teeter-totter out of two logs. In the morning, when there was more light, we found out the logs had been previously charred in a fire. The clothes they were wearing while playing on the teeter-totter were never quite the same, having turned black from the soot. We camped a lot at one particular camp in southern Ohio. I would explore and explore and got to know the campground really well. On one occasion I discovered three trees in close proximity to each other. One had 4 trunks, one 8, and the third 12 - I marvelled at the synchronicity since 4+8=12. On another occasion, I found two ponds (lakes to me). A few months later, when I went to show them to people, they were gone, having dried up during a draught - they really weren't very big ponds, but nobody else knew about them. During graduate school in eastern Missouri, some friends and I would go spelunking in one particular cave. On one occasion, the geologist of the group mentioned that there might be another part of the cave, but we would have to go under water to get there. It was only 58 degrees in that cave and we were already soaked, so none of us was particularly interested in going first. I volunteered. As it was, we didn't have to go totally underwater. Instead we had to lie down, pull ourselves along with our hands digging into the sand, and turn our heads to the side and up to breathe. 15-20 feet later, I popped out into a new part of the cave - knew to us and the rest of humanity - animals already knew about it. I like to go hiking and on walks, especially along the beach. I've turned that love of walking along the beach into Yellow Bear Journeys eco-tours. I've also founded Ecotours Northwest Dale Stubbart