Get Outside...

If you’re in need of an excuse and/or a reason to take a long weekend, today is a great day to punch out and get lost in the great outdoors until next Tuesday.

Today is National High Five Day*, so be sure to high five your boss when you stroll out the door. Then on Sunday you can cut the cake and commemorate the 181st birthday of conservationist John Muir, co-founder and first president of the Sierra Club. Among his many, many accolades and achievements, Muir’s most significant action to help the outdoors was by embarking on what is arguably the most significant camping trip in conservation history when he took President Teddy Roosevelt on a three-night adventure in the Yosemite Valley and convinced him to add the valley and Mariposa Grove to Yosemite National Park, which was created a decade earlier thanks to the relentless efforts of Muir and Robert Underwood Johnson.

Keep that party going until Monday and it’s Earth Day. This is the 49th celebration of Earth Day and with the 50th anniversary on the horizon for 2020, Earth Day has never felt more significant in the wake of the looming climate change crisis.

Along with taking action with the steps outlined by Earth Day to help reduce your impact on the environment, one very easy thing we can all do to help ensure our lands can be enjoyed by future users, is to be more responsible when it comes to documenting and geotagging your adventures on social media. Thanks to Instagram, outdoor spots have never been more popular and people “doing it for the ‘gram” have caused a literal poppy-trampling stampede at the site of this year’s Super Bloom. If we all play by the rules, maybe we can be the example that influences the influencers.

*A SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THE HIGH FIVE

Did you know the high five was invented about five miles (as the crow flies) from swrve HQ?

The fateful day was October 2, 1977. The Los Angeles Dodgers were hosting the Houston Astros in the final game of the regular season. Dodgers outfielder Dusty Baker hit a home run in his final at-bat to join his teammates Ron Cey, Steve Garvey, and Reggie Smith as the first quartet of teammates in baseball history to have 30 or more home runs in the same season.

As Dusty returned to the Dodger Dugout, his rookie teammate Glenn Burke held his hand in the air and Dusty instinctually slapped it, thus completing the first documented high five in history.