This article was originally published by Cornell Alumni Magazine. To view the original article, click here.

LIVE From Mongolia by Patricia Sexton ’97 (Beaufort). After nearly a decade as a Wall Street banker, Sexton had gotten caught up in the money, the lifestyle, and the need to stay for just one more bonus. But she decided to stop simply dreaming of becoming a foreign correspondent, quit her job, and landed an internship at Mongolia’s state-owned TV and radio station. Soon she was anchoring the English news, traveling to the remote steppe, and meeting others in pursuit of their dreams: a German brewmaster, a French horse tracker, and Mongolia’s top hip-hop artist.

This article was originally published on 77Square.com. Click here to read the original article.

By Stephanie Bedford, October 31, 2013

When you can put “Adventurer” on your business card without bragging or exaggeration, you are doing something right. Jennifer Pharr Davis, record-holding long-distance hiker, author and new mom, is one of the few people around who can call herself by that title with utter impunity, having been named an 2011 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic Magazine, a publication that knows a little something about adventuring. Among the records Davis holds, perhaps the most impressive is the Overall Appalachian Trail Record. That’s not the women’s record, it’s the record. She through-hiked the trail from start to finish — 2,181 miles — in 46 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes, a trek that takes the highly-above-average outdoorsy Joe (or Josephine) months to complete.

You might think a person of Pharr Davis’ level of hard-core hiking accomplishment would be intimidating — maybe not the first person you’d think of to encourage a novice who’s thinking about going out for a walk in the Arboretum for an hour or so. You’d be wrong. I had the pleasure of interviewing her over the phone recently during a rare stretch of at-home time for the peripatetic Pharr Davis, to talk about her latest book, “Called Again: A Story of Love and Triumph.” The book documents her record-setting 2011 hike, accomplished with the unflagging support of her husband, Brew, and a network of old and new friends.

“I was just thinking how weird it is that I’m working from home today,” Pharr Davis told me right off the bat. “I haven’t done this in two months.” She and her husband and their new daughter had just returned from Utah and were hitting the road again in less than a week, touring the U.S. by car in support of “Called Again.” As you might suspect, they would be getting some hiking in as well. “We decided to make it our goal to hike in all 50 states,” she says. “We have a 9-month-old baby, so this is a really wonderful way to experience the trail as a family.”

For Pharr Davis, work means running the Blue Ridge Hiking Company, which she founded in 2005 and operates from her home in North Carolina. Its mission: “Making the wilderness accessible and enjoyable through written and spoken word, instruction and guiding.” Her books are no small part of this. It’s impossible to read her hiking memoirs — “Called Again” or “Becoming Odyssa,” which chronicles her first through-hike of the Appalachian Trail at age 21 — without succumbing to the urge to light out on one’s own (considerably less ambitious) wilderness trek.

Perhaps the reason Pharr Davis is so adept at getting novice hikers out the door is that she was one herself when she first hiked the Appalachian Trail. “I think ‘casual hiker’ would have probably been a generous term,” she says. “I think because I was an athlete and I loved to be outdoors, I thought that my transition to the trail would be natural. I was overconfident and pretty ignorant about how hard it would really be, and it kicked me in the butt. It was very humbling, in a good way.”

Her successful record attempt in 2011 was prompted by the knowledge that she planned to start a family soon. “One of the reasons I wanted to try for the record was that I knew having kids would change everything,” Pharr Davis says.

Taking her young daughter out hiking has been a fringe benefit of touring the country to talk about “Called Again.” “The nice thing is, because of the baby, we’re not limited to just long-distance trails — we can go to state parks,” she says, laughing.

Pharr Davis’s husband, Brew, is by her side throughout her adventures. Formerly a teacher (his summer vacation enabled him to support his wife’s 2011 trail record), he now works  with his wife. “Called Again” is as much about a moment in the couple’s partnership as it is an adventure story. “When I set the record, my husband was pretty much perfect,” Pharr Davis says. “He’s not perfect all the time — like any couple, we fight and argue and have our moments — but I couldn’t have set the record without him.”

While comparisons to Cheryl Strayed’s runaway bestseller “Wild” seem unavoidable, Pharr Davis feels that there’s plenty of room on the shelves for books about hiking — the more, the merrier. “It raises awareness of women in the outdoors,” she says. “I’m all about that. And ‘Wild’ is an awesome PR piece for the Pacific Crest Trail.” Pharr Davis’ books do the same thing not just for the Appalachian Trail, but for hiking anywhere, whether it’s an ambitious long-distance trip or just a short walk.

“Don’t let fear of doing something wrong keep you indoors,” Pharr Davis says. “I encourage people to start inside their comfort zone. If that means starting with day hikes, or going out with groups or a dog instead of going out alone, I think it’s important while you’re learning what to do, to make sure it’s a positive experience.”

Read more: http://host.madison.com/entertainment/arts_and_theatre/stephanie-bedford-hiker-s-an-inspiration-to-women-experiencing-wilderness/article_a04abe38-1d77-5297-98f8-b4593ac6621f.html#ixzz2jKZ5xZNE

This article was originally published on Mountain Express. Click here to read the original article.

By Brandy Carl on 10/29/2013 07:03 PM

Brevard College will host a presentation by long-distance hiker Jennifer Pharr Davis at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 7 in the College’s Porter Center for Performing Arts.

In 2011, Davis became the first woman to claim the overall thru-hike record on the Appalachian Trail by finishing the 2,181-mile journey in 46 days, 11 hours, and 20 minutes.

During her talk, Davis will share stories from her hiking adventures and her book, Becoming Odyssa: Adventures on the Appalachian Trail.

The presentation, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by one of the College’s Brevard Common Experience (BCE) 111 classes. The class, which is comprised of first year students, has spent this semester exploring the history, development and use of trails as well as reading Davis’ account of her first thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail.

Her adventure memoir, “Becoming Odyssa,” follows every step she takes as she transitions from an over-confident college graduate to a student of the trail, braving situations she never imagined before her thru-hike. When tragedy strikes, Davis learns that she can depend on other people to help her in times of need.

Davis, who currently holds endurance records on three trails, has hiked more than 11,000 miles on six continents. She has received numerous awards recognizing her as a world class athlete, including National GeographicAdventurer of the Year, Ultra-Running Magazine’s Top Female Performer and Blue Ridge Outdoors Person of the Year. She has also appeared in the Sunday edition of the New York Times; and on national television and radio shows such as CNN Headline News, the CBS Early Show, and NPR’s Talk of the Nation.

Following her presentation, Davis will be available to sign her most recent memoir, Called Again: A Story of Love and Triumph. Called Again details her 2011 record-breaking hike of the Appalachian Trail and the relationships she forms with her support team that guides her to success.

This article was written by William B. Bradshaw and was originally published on the Huffington Post website. Click here to find the article on their website.

People often ask me why I wrote a grammar book. During most of my professional career, I worked with not-for-profit institutions in various parts of the country. Regardless of where I was located — no matter the state or the setting — I found that the people I encountered all had something in common. From the highest authority to the youngest student, from the hotshot financier to the working-class parent, I found that they all had one thing in common: they tended to make the same grammatical errors.

When I retired from a formal position that required my going to the office each day, I began a systematic study of the typical grammatical errors people make. I read newspapers, those from
small towns that are known primarily to regional readers and some of the biggies with national and international audiences; I read professional journals from religious, educational, and philanthropic publishers; I listened to radio newscasters and watched the TV news from the major, cable, and satellite networks; I watched movies — old ones and new ones; I patiently listened to and watched commercials on radio and TV; I paid attention to highway billboards; I listened to the speeches of politicians and read their newsletters; I even resorted to watching soap operas. Again and again, I found the same grammatical errors. These findings led me to write The Big Ten of Grammar: Identifying and Fixing the Ten Most Frequent Grammatical Errors.

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