Snaking along the East Coast, the 2,174.6-mile Appalachian Trail is the longest marked footpath in the United States. Ben Welbourn ’11 has seen every inch of it.
“Basically when I graduated from high school, I took five months to hike from Maine to Georgia. I started on June 16th and ended Nov. 13th ‚Ä” just in time for Thanksgiving,” said Welbourn.
He will be giving a presentation about his five-month Appalachian trail experience this Tuesday at the Wooster branch of the Wayne County Public Library.
“I had heard about [Ben’s] hike on the Appalachian Trail,” said Adult Services Librarian John Longacre, who met Welbourn through the Worthy Questions program at Wooster. “He showed me the PowerPoint presentation he’d done at his home library and I thought, ‚ÄòIt looks great. Would you want to come do a program at our library?’ And he said sure.”
Though the library does community programs frequently, partnering with students from the College is something new for Longacre.
“We do programs aimed at the community at large quite often ‚Ä” a number of them a month. Sometimes they’re targeted at a certain age group, like teens or children ‚Ķ but this one, that I asked Ben to do, is for the community at large,” said Longacre. “We just thought we’d take advantage of the resources we have with the College being right here in town. We want the College students to feel fully a part of the community that we try to reach out to.”
Welbourn’s presentation will take the form of a lecture supplemented by a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, but he hopes to make it interactive as well.
“From what I hear about what the turnout is going to be, I should be able to have people asks questions as I go, and I’ll just kind of tell stories about what I went through but also just about the general culture of the trail,” said Welbourn. “It’s a trail that has its own culture pretty much. There’s different vocabulary that people on the trail use and it’s just a pretty tightly knit community, and while people are independent on it, everyone’s aware of everyone else.”
The presentation will be held at the Wooster branch of the Wayne County Public Library this Tuesday, Sept. 30 at 7 p.m. Refreshments will be provided at the event.
“I’m hoping for a broad array of people,” said Longacre. “It’ll be great to have a number of students come down, but I’m also hoping that people in the community who have been dreaming of hiking on the Appalachian Trail, or just like to hike in the Wooster community [will come] ‚Ä” anybody who has any interest at all in hiking who might find Ben’s story interesting.”
Snaking along the East Coast, the 2,174.6-mile Appalachian Trail is the longest marked footpath in the United States. Ben Welbourn ’11 has seen every inch of it.
“Basically when I graduated from high school, I took five months to hike from Maine to Georgia. I started on June 16th and ended Nov. 13th ‚Ä” just in time for Thanksgiving,” said Welbourn.
He will be giving a presentation about his five-month Appalachian trail experience this Tuesday at the Wooster branch of the Wayne County Public Library.
“I had heard about [Ben’s] hike on the Appalachian Trail,” said Adult Services Librarian John Longacre, who met Welbourn through the Worthy Questions program at Wooster. “He showed me the PowerPoint presentation he’d done at his home library and I thought, ‚ÄòIt looks great. Would you want to come do a program at our library?’ And he said sure.”
Though the library does community programs frequently, partnering with students from the College is something new for Longacre.
“We do programs aimed at the community at large quite often ‚Ä” a number of them a month. Sometimes they’re targeted at a certain age group, like teens or children ‚Ķ but this one, that I asked Ben to do, is for the community at large,” said Longacre. “We just thought we’d take advantage of the resources we have with the College being right here in town. We want the College students to feel fully a part of the community that we try to reach out to.”
Welbourn’s presentation will take the form of a lecture supplemented by a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, but he hopes to make it interactive as well.
“From what I hear about what the turnout is going to be, I should be able to have people asks questions as I go, and I’ll just kind of tell stories about what I went through but also just about the general culture of the trail,” said Welbourn. “It’s a trail that has its own culture pretty much. There’s different vocabulary that people on the trail use and it’s just a pretty tightly knit community, and while people are independent on it, everyone’s aware of everyone else.”
The presentation will be held at the Wooster branch of the Wayne County Public Library this Tuesday, Sept. 30 at 7 p.m. Refreshments will be provided at the event.
“I’m hoping for a broad array of people,” said Longacre. “It’ll be great to have a number of students come down, but I’m also hoping that people in the community who have been dreaming of hiking on the Appalachian Trail, or just like to hike in the Wooster community [will come] ‚Ä” anybody who has any interest at all in hiking who might find Ben’s story interesting.”