SCA alumnus and hip-hop/blues crooner G. Love describes his 1990 SCA experience at Yellowstone as “magical” in the November issue of Best Life magazine. [full text quoted below] The article asks 40 “of the world’s greatest adventurers” to share the secrets of their most significant travel experiences.
Other personal tales come from oceanographer Phillippe Cousteau, Jr., filmmaker Werner Herzog, and author Bill Bryson. The feature isn’t yet posted on the magazine’s website, but here’s G. Love’s story.
Let us know your most memorable travel experience or comment on G. Love’s journey.
…from Best Live Magazine
Get in Rhythm with Nature
G. Love, front man for the band G-Love & Special Sauce, has toured all over the world.
I grew up in cities where the only jobs for teenagers were in kitchens, cooking or washing dishes. But when I was 17, I got a job through the Student Conservation Association to build and repair trails in Yellowstone National Park. It was a magical summer. There were six of us, all total strangers, and we hiked 14 miles into the Montana back country and camped in bear country for a month. It was hard labor: hauling logs, building bridges, and constructing “check steps.” The woods provided a lot of time to think and write and filled my heart with love and inspiration. I had my guitar there too, Sitting around the campfire and playing for people, practicing my songwriting — even though it was a small and captive audience — that’s really where I came of age musically. One day I scrambled to the top of Electric Peak with two of the others. I felt like I could see the entire park. I found an elk horn bleached white by the sun. “Should we take it?” someone asked. Twenty years later, whenever I take my 7-year old into the woods for a camping trip, I wonder if that horn will still be there waiting for us when we make it to the top.
TIP: To summit 10,969-foot Electric Peak, plan for a three-to seven-day summer trip. Enter through the park’s northern entrance at Gardiner and make Sportsman’s Lake your base camp.
HOW: Student Conservation Association offer conservation internships.