Wilderness View Module: A Great New Distance Learning Tool

Have you ever traveled far beyond the end of the road? . . . Can you imagine a place where the only sounds are rushing winds and raging waters? . . . Do you long to reach for the farthest horizon? . . . Could you carry everything you needed for a week on your back, and yet want for nothing? . . . Can you learn from the past and look with hope to the future? . . . Are you willing to test yourself and perhaps become a different person? . . . Then step into wilderness, a special place. The roots of wilderness run deep in the ground and in our hearts. Come, begin your adventure and discover the wilderness within you.

These words, accompanied by images of wilderness areas and original music, invite everyone to explore wilderness by using the Wilderness Views Module. An interactive multimedia computer program, Wilderness Views is based in the Views of the National Parks website. It was released in late 2004 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. Similar to the history of the Wilderness Act, Wilderness Views evolved as an interdisciplinary, interagency effort to preserve public lands through education for present and future generations.

WildLink has established a permanent link to this site on our Activity Zone page.

Click here to explore the Wilderness Views Module.

Introducing the WildLink Quarterly Newsletter

Here at WildLink every season is full of many events and opportunities, and we're always looking for better and better ways to share this information with our teachers and alumni. Our latest effort in this direction is our new quarterly newsletter, Voices From The Wilderness.

We're excited to offer you the opportunity to view our new WildLink newsletter, which will tell you not only what we've been up to this winter, but also what we're planning for the coming year! As the year goes on, we'll keep an archive of all of our old newsletters, so that you can reference WildLink history with a click of your mouse.

Click here to view the Winter 2004/2005 edition of Voices From The Wilderness.

WildLink Expedition IV: A Spectacular Springtime Adventure!

Students from Parlier and Franklin High Schools joined forces for an action packed expedition with beautiful spring conditions. Students passed their backcountry time in ever-popular Hites Cove, putting their minds to both long-established a new research projects.

After enjoying the abundant waterfall views in Yosemite Valley on Monday, the group headed out to Hites Cove for a full backcountry week. Spring flowers were peaking along the hike to our basecamp, where we would spend the next three nights and four days laughing, learning and relaxing in the wilderness. The week's activities included a challenge hike, Grinnell-style journaling activities, impact monitoring and macroinvertebrate studies, and the daily pleasures and challenges of living in the outdoors.

The group worked on the long-established Hites Cove photomonitoring project, as well as taking the first steps toward developing two new projects for the area. One is an human impact monitoring project to study the effect of human visitation to Hites Cove. The other is an on-line phenology journal that utilizes Grinnell-style journaling approach to monitor changes in Hites Cove both seasonally and over time.

Click here to learn more about the human impact monitoring project at Hites Cove.

Click here to view the WildLink Hites Cove Phenology Journal.