Our Mission:
Our mission is simply to leave where we go better than we found it. While our impetus is adventure, that is the fundamental requirement for this journey. This expedition provides us with an opportunity to enrich our own lives, the lives of people living along the river, and those of the young men and women we'll be sharing with along the way. APECA has taken this idea and worked to see it blossom in the Amazon.
Just as we would likely never have begun this expedition in the first place without a nudge from our own personal desires, APECA recognizes that the key players in conserving the Amazonian rainforest will be those local and indigenous peoples most closely tied to it. Unlike many other environmental organizations, APECA does not engage directly in the safeguarding of this valuable forest; its aim, instead, is to educate and empower the communities along the river to preserve and protect these forests for themselves.
Profiles:
Rusty Holck
I have had the privilege of experiencing the diverse outdoors since I was a little kid. Colorado, where I was born and raised, has been a great place for me to enjoy the outdoor lifestyle. Over the years I have developed a deep appreciation of its amazing qualities. My exposure began with backpacking, which I did on many occasions with my family, visiting places like Yellowstone and the Weminuche Wilderness. Since my early days on the trail, I have taken up numerous other activities outside, including rafting, mountain climbing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, canoeing, and hiking. I've been a crewman on a Youth Corps building trails and working with sawyer crews. Currently, I'm working as a cook and finishing my senior year of high school through online coursework in order to graduate early. I plan to finish in January and turn my focus solely to preparation for our descent of the Amazon.
For me, being outside is a way to be a part of the raw world. It has become something that I need. No cell phones, no computers, no television, only nature. The perfect opportunity came my way when Logan asked me what I thought about paddling down the whole Amazon. The need for the untamed and unprocessed has led me to seek further adventures, but I wasn't sure. I had to focus on school, saving money, and my future. I couldn't imagine abandoning my entire life. It took me awhile to realize that canoeing down the Amazon is life, but once I did, I knew that I had to become a part of the expedition.
Logan Bingham
I'm a sophomore in at CU Boulder majoring in Religious Studies and the Humanities, although I'm strongly considering transferring to another school or at least altering the Humanities major. I have worked in Mississippi as a crew member on construction projects; in Colorado as a dishwasher, cook, and snowboard instructor, as well as on a crew doing trail work; on Oahu, Hawai'i, as a kayak guide; and in New Mexico, where I was the guy who scans your pass when you go to the gym.
I have been drawn to the outdoors from a young age. In the periods where I did not feel particularly drawn, I was occasionally dragged by my parents, who started my sister and I hiking almost as soon as we could walk, and strapped skis to our feet shortly thereafter. As we grew older, hiking turned into backpacking; flatwater kayaking shifted towards whitewater rafting; alpine skiing branched into snowboarding and telemark; and day hikes up Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks led to yearly midnight summits. The summer before my junior year of high school, I spent a month sea kayaking in Southeast Alaska on a NOLS course. Two summers later, I received my Wilderness EMT and National Registry EMT-B certifications from the Wilderness Medicine Institute.
I would like to emphasize that the above must be viewed as a paragraph-long chronicle of a long and quiet love affair with the outdoors rather than as a catalog of qualifications for our present endeavor. I have some medical training, some paddling time, and a basic backcountry skills set. Apart from that rather petite resume, the most important thing that qualifies me to go down the Amazon River is my determination to do so.
The idea of making this descent wasn't mine, but that of my roommate, Joseph. We worked together on an expedition, and the more I learned, the more excited I became. For a variety of reasons, however, I chose to drop out early on.
This did not sit well with me. I lay in bed for hours, agonizing over the decision as I tried to fall asleep. I found myself on the wrong side of a simple division: that which exists between the guy who goes somewhere, and the guy who, for whatever reason, does not. I had always been the former; this was the first time I found myself in the role of the latter in any real way. I had good reasons for backing out, but so does everybody. In the end, it didn't matter why I didn't go--only that I didn't.
I began to wake up sweating at night. I was forced to accept that the concerns that had prevented my going were not insurmountable. The river was still there. I decided to go, but I would go my own way, on my own expedition. As you know, we are now hard at work getting it off the ground.
My mission in this undertaking is a simple two-parter. First: I want to embark on a long journey, to see regions, both cultural and ecological, with which I am completely unfamiliar; to use my hands to slowly pull myself, mile after mile, down a river which is long and wide and wild, as rivers are; and, by these things, to learn and to grow. Second: I want to do this in such a way as to benefit the lands and the people who will be our hosts. I am in a position to gain a great deal from them in terms of knowledge, beautiful sights, and formative experiences. I hope that my team and I can make some small contribution in return, as a gesture of gratitude in recognition of the fact that our adventure will take place in someone else's home; that which seems foreign and remote to us is, to the people living on the river, distinctly familiar. This second goal is, in large part, what led us to APECA.
