Happy birthday to the organization that has helped all of us protect the places we love for three decades!
Thirty years ago, land management agencies, conservationists, and members of the outdoor industry came together to form a non-profit organization focused on minimizing the impacts of outdoor recreation. Today, Leave No Trace reaches over 15 million Americans with stewardship education every year and operates in over 90 countries.
We are so thankful for Leave No Trace and all of you who are out there practicing the 7 Principles every time you enjoy being out in nature.
Leave No Trace recently invited everyone to celebrate this awesome milestone at their first-ever Leave No Trace global summit. As a platinum sponsor of the event, we were thrilled to help power the next 30 years of this important stewardship movement. We’ve partnered with Leave No Trace since 2008, donating over $550,000 to help fund educational programs, research, and outreach efforts that spread the message of responsible outdoor ethics.
I love and live Leave No Trace, so I felt super lucky to represent KEEN at the summit. I came back an even bigger litter picker-upper, dog poo bag packer-outer, and invasive-weed puller. Here's a quick recap of my experience:
I stepped away from my laptop for a few days to set up a KEEN booth featuring our two Leave No Trace collab boots. A portion of the proceeds from every pair goes back to Leave No Trace. It was great to meet passionate Leave No Tracers from all over the world who stopped by to check out the boots and chat about their favorite KEEN shoes. I got to attend several inspiring sessions, and I shared Max Romey’s Footprints on Katmai film one evening. So many people came up to me to say how moved they were by it. (If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here.)
The summit was held in Boulder, Colorado, which has amazing open-space wilderness right on the edge of the city. What better way to kick off a day of Leave No Trace sessions than a sunrise hike with a park ranger? A bunch of us woke up early to explore the Red Rocks trail one morning and the famous Flatirons at Chautauqua Park another morning.
Hike photos by Ginny Figlar; summit photos by Evan Kruse, Diverse
It is hard to narrow it down to just one. First, it was so moving to see how a non-profit that started with an idea and two employees has grown to be such a force for responsible recreation around the world. There were Leave No Tracers from Ireland, Norway, Japan, and Brazil there! Second, and related to that, it was incredibly inspiring to see how every step and every person has the power to make a difference. And then my third big takeaway was how awesome science is. A graduate student shared her study of the impact of human sound on wildlife, something I hadn’t thought of before. Leave No Trace is about outdoor ethics, but it’s rooted in science. When a person steps off a trail or drops a piece of litter, those impacts are measurable.
I proudly wore my Pyrenees x Leave No Trace collab boots on our sunrise hikes and got lots of compliments. ;) And my KNX knit sneakers were the perfect travel/summit shoes – so comfy and easy to wear and get through TSA and walk to/from public transportation.
The really great thing about Leave No Trace is that everyone can be part of it, wherever you are. Grab a bag and trash grabber, and fill your bucket (literally and figuratively!). It feels so good. Which is why I spent 30 minutes before heading to the airport to pick up trash around the hotel. I did my very small part to leave it better than I found it. Every little bit helps.
