Outdoors

Scorchy Tawes wasn't much of a hard-hitting journalist. Thank God. Western Shore people didn't get to see his work on WBOC-TV unless they crossed the Chesapeake Bay, and that's a pity. Tawes, who started out broadcasting outdoors reports, expanded his role with the blessing of station managers, who knew a good thing when they saw it. He liked to say he covered the Eastern Shore from "Kiptopeake to Kent County, Bridgeville to Blackwater." For 21 years he did a show called Scorchy's Corner, where he let regular people tell their stories - more than 2,000 all told - in their own words at their own speed.

The first thing you notice about wildlife artist Frank Burt Smoot is his gentle, courteous manner and his reticence in speaking of his own achievements.Only when the subject of destroying natural forestland to construct a highway is introduced do you catch a glimpse of the passion that has for more than six decades fired this prominent conservationist's concern for the environment.Thousands of Carroll countians are familiar with Smoot's realistic paintings of fish and wildlife through exhibitions at the Westminster Outdoor Art Show, Piney Run Nature Center and Hashawha Nature Center.

Dads are often our first teachers when it comes to the outdoors. They teach us to cast a line and steer the boat and shoot a tin can. But when their children are girls who are interested in the outdoors, dads also can be overprotective or under-supportive or just plain clueless. Geoffrey Norman is a dad who struggled to find a way to connect with his two daughters. He tried coaching softball and teaching Sunday school and learning to ski, but still felt "empathy impaired." He says he "was an old-fashioned man" who "liked life in the barracks, the saloons, the hunting and fishing camps."

Two decades after he successfully lobbied to turn the old U.S. 50 bridge over the Choptank River into a fishing pier, Bill Burton was honored Wednesday when the state named the popular site after him. At the urging of Gov. Martin O'Malley and the Department of Natural Resources, the Board of Public Works approved the measure Wednesday by a unanimous vote. "It overwhelms me to think that they think enough of me to do that," said Burton, 82. "There's a hell of a lot of pride in that." The Board of Public Works also voted Wednesday to rename the Overlook at Green Ridge State Forest after longtime DNR forester Francis Zumbrun.

First it was elevators. Then smoking was banned on the job and in restaurants. Now the next frontier in smoking prohibition is in sight: the great outdoors.Around the country, nonsmokers are staking out new territory in their quest to restrict smoking and claim fresh air.Take Santa Cruz, Calif., where smokers can no longer take a puff while standing in line to buy movie tickets or wait for a bus.Or Mesa, Ariz., where smoking is prohibited within 25 feet of any public building.Or Sharon, Mass.

Marcus Asante is ready to set sail. When the wind is at his back, he plans to pilot his boat Soukous (named for a jazzy type of African dance music that's similar to a rumba) out of the Inner Harbor and into open waters. Founder of the 40-member Universal Sailing Club of Baltimore, Asante is one of an increasing number of African-Americans taking up sports such as sailing, hiking, biking and scuba diving. Groups such as the Universal Sailing Club are making a big impact, according to Charles K. West, publisher of Black Outdoorsman magazine.

In the past few years, increasing numbers of women have been participating in outdoor sports, with significant growth in areas such as fly fishing, deer and waterfowl hunting, watersports and hiking and camping.Recognizing this change, the Department of Natural Resources will hold its second annual "Becoming an Outdoors Woman" workshop Sept. 13-15 at Catoctin Mountain National Park near Frederick."This workshop offers women an opportunity to learn outdoors skills in an atmosphere of camaraderie and support," said DNR Secretary John R. Griffin.

Jesus knew a thing or two about fishing and hiking. Until now, though, the published telling of his life didn't adapt well to life outdoors. Copies of the New Testament tend to be heavy, their pages fragile and the type small. Several outdoors enthusiasts have created The Outdoor Bible, a New American Standard translation of the New Testament that's waterproof and virtually indestructible. Or, as they call it, "waterproof and packable by design; inspirational in content." The Bible's chapters are broken down into six volumes that each fold up like a map into a 5-inch by 6 1/2 -inch package.

Disclosure No. 1: Outdoors writers are an odd bunch. Doesn't matter if they're a hook-and-bullet traditionalist, a feather-and-fern newcomer or a foot-in-each-camp hybrid. Disclosure No. 2: I love to laugh, and few people make me laugh more than that ole hybrid, Ron Judd (he puts a "C." between Ron and Judd, as if he needs to differentiate himself from some other outdoors writer named Ron Judd). Judd writes about the outdoors for The Seattle Times. In his spare time, he also attends the Olympics - winter and summer - for the paper.

IN A PERFECT WORLD, John Mullen would have been a newspaper outdoors columnist. In a perfect world, he would still be alive today, telling friends and readers how the Tygart River ate him up and spat him out whole. But the world isn't perfect. Or fair. John died last Sunday in a whitewater kayak accident on the West Virginia river. He was 37, kind and full of adventure. He paddled and pedaled and climbed rocks. If it required adrenaline and moxie, he was interested, not just in the sport but in what made its practitioners tick.