Every year I try to spend a day with a guide in another part of the country. Because the Forest Service meeting was within driving distance of Knoxville TN I booked a day with Clay Aalders of Smoky Mountain Gillies a fellow Orvis endorsed guide to float one of his local rivers.
I spent the last week traveling to Louisville KY for a meeting of the US Forest Service Region 9 Recreation Resource Advisory Committee. We are the citizen board that recommends changes to fee structures in the various National Forests in the northeast (from Maine to Wisconsin and South to Kentucky. I am the representative of non motorized guides on the committee.
Saturday evening at the 38th annual Maine Professional Guides Associations Annual Banquet I was surprised with the Associations Outstanding Service Award. I was and am humbled to be recognized by a room full of folks that I respect and admire. The collective woods skill and storytelling ability in a room with a couple hundred working guides in it is nothing to take lightly and I do not.
