You Can Still Get Out - Orienteering

Thank you New England Orienteering Club for helping me get outside and enjoy nature in the midst of the stressful times of COVID-19.  In fact, outside is one of the best places to be, as it turns out:

Running and walking outside are some of the safest activities people can do right now, “assuming they follow the actual social distancing guidelines,” Dr. Aaron E. Glatt, chairman of the department of medicine and hospital epidemiologist at Mount Sinai South Nassau tells CNBC Make It.

While there still aren't that many people out, I am undeterred.  With the NEOC's BYOM (Bring Your Own Map) format, which utilizes a QR Code reader application on my phone, one can enjoy the challenging experience of Orienteering without the worries of conforming to a strict schedule of start times.  In fact, NEOC held multiple BYOM events this spring at Nobscot Reservation in Sudbury and Hale/Powissett Reservation in Westwood.  

Orienteering is done in the wood where it is easy to keep safely physically distant from people.

Small orienteering controls are hung without the usual card punch or electronic readers, but rather a plastic-bagged paper displaying the control id and a QR Code.

At Nobscot's April 4-12 event, was able to do the Yellow course one week with Betsy and attempted the Orange course the following week as well
(click on the link above and search for "Fiedler" to see my results).

The following week, I headed down to Hale Reservation.  I did an Orange course and the locations on the map were shown as just symbols (without text).  I finally figured out what the symbol for this control was - "pit".  Boy! -- was that one hard to find.

That event ran from April 18-26, so I did an Orange one week and Yellow the next.  My results are here, but you have to search for "Steve" because I spelled my last name wrong.

The lake on this reservation is beautiful and has a couple beaches as well.

This is New England for you.  There's still snow in the woods in late April.

Finally, I returned to Nobscot for the course set up by the Juniors on May 9-24.  One weekend I did a Brown course, another weekend I did the Orange course, and on the third weekend, we took the grandkids to do a Yellow course.  Dominic navigated most of the way.  You'll only see 2 entries for "Fiedler" in the results, as I messed up in my registration of the Yellow course.  Our results can be found of you search for the name "No".  If you view the split times, you will see we took a nice long break between control 8 and 9 to eat our lunch.

Hope you have as much fun getting out as we do.

In front on Nobscot's parade ground, we're ready to go