Trail Builders

By Linda Picone

Once he got on a bicycle, David Minge was hooked. It's not that he was into racing, or that he had all the fanciest bicycles and equipment. He just loved the feel of getting himself from place to place on his own two wheels. "As long as I can remember, I've enjoyed bicycling," he says.

By Brett Feldman

Millions of people across the globe have drawn inspiration from world-renowned educator and polar explorer Ann Bancroft. The Minnesota native's accomplishments shatter stereotypes of age, gender and size. In fact, at 53 years old and just under 5'4" tall, Bancroft has proven that the most certain path to success is the one that comes from an inner desire to follow the heart.

By Linda Picone

It was birds that first got Dudley Edmondson interested in the outdoors in a big way. As kind of an unusual urban high school senior living north of Columbus, OH, he got interested in birdwatching. As he got older, he started traveling around the United States to see birds in other environments, especially the migratory shore birds in the Chesapeake Bay area.

By Linda Picone

Jim Massee is an upbeat kind of guy, but even he was surprised at what the Minnesota Legislature did for the Minnesota River State Trail this year: "It's just crazy; we were blown away," he says. "When they were trying to whittle things down, we were at $690,000 and we thought, ‘OK, that's good, but it's not really going to do what we need.' When we got $1.5 million, we thought, ‘Now we've really got to start working.'"