On Feb. 7-9, 2003, TREE’s (Teaching and Reaching Environmental Education) President Samantha Fish and Vice President Atif Abbas attended Outdoor Educators’ Winter Weekend. The event was held at Ashokan Field Campus in Olivebridge, N.Y., a few miles outside of Kingston.

The Field Campus is part of Campus Auxiliary Services at the State University of New York at New Paltz. This was the eleventh annual Winter Weekend, and the second time that TREE has attended the event.

Winter Weekend is an opportunity for outdoor and environmental educators to share their knowledge with others who share the same interests. While the majority of the attendees are educators, the workshop is open to anyone who is interested.

Winter Weekend evokes the feeling of being on a retreat, as both lodging and food are provided. The full weekend package was $95, and included the opportunity to be involved in several workshops given throughout the day where attendees were able to choose from a wide range of activities.

This year’s workshop titles included activities such as wood carving, winter ecology, skating, tubing, snow shoeing, tracking, winter nature walk, stargazing, a night hike, and teaching children about the environment with picture books.

TREE’s goals for people who attend the workshops are to have fun, learn new things, and meet new people.

With so many workshops to choose from, Fish chose to attend the Winter Ecology, Tracking, Native American Musical Instruments and Initiatives with Environmental Twist workshops.

“They were really great,” said Fish. “I had a lot of fun, met some of the nicest people and learned a whole bunch of new things.”

TREE has also attended Gifts of Earth, a weekend workshop dedicated to native crafts and primitive technologies.

TREE’s also sponsored a Valentine’s Day Weekend Hot Chocolate Hike on Feb. 16. TREE met with students by the mailboxes and hiked the lower trail at Sleeping Giant. While enjoying hot chocolate, people had time to appreciate the view.

An upcoming TREE event is the Spring Clean-up, which will be on March 23 at 11 a.m. TREE will go to a local park to pick up garbage, and then enjoy a pizza and soda while they discuss environmental issues and topics of interest.

TREE is an active club with many opportunities to interact with each other and to meet many new people outside the club as well. The club is always planning activities, and while caring for our environment they manage to have a lot of fun in the process.

For more information, e-mail TREE president, [email protected].