Clifton T. Beck205 Park Ave. Mount Airy MD 21771-5433 I am 45 years old and have been married to my wife Penni since 1996. We have six cats; CJ, Kaibab, Kibbey, Cheyava, Ayashi, and Gizmo. Penni and I have renovated the house in which my father was born, making us the third generation to occupy it since 1918. We both love gardening; Penni with her flowers and me the vegetables. While the occasional deer or fox sharing our bounty is fun to watch, we do grow weary of the groundhogs - they live up to the HOG part of their name. I graduated from Gettysburg College located in the Civil War town and have been a budget analyst/officer for an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. I have been a member of Mount Airy’s Parks and Recreation Commission for over 10 years, and am serving my second term as chair. I just concluded a 6 year stint on the Carroll County Recreation and Parks Advisory Board, serving a year each as vice chair and chair. In both positions I have tried to be an advocate for trail systems and pedestrian access. I also have spent over a year assisting with Maryland’s Patapsco River State Park Trail Management Plan. I am a life member of the Grand Canyon Association and hope to eventually put some life into my association with them. I did some hiking as a young scout, and a lot of camping in the family farm’s “Little Woods”. Back in 1990 I took off on a vacation that included hiking a number of parks that I had never visited; Great Smokies, Grand Canyon, Canyonlands, Yellowstone, Glacier, and Wind Cave (crawling, not hiking, is more descriptive for this one). Although I only had difficulty in Grand Canyon (my first bout with hyponatremia), this is the only one of the above that I have returned. And I have returned every year since. I have tried many of the canyon trails, and have begun exploring off-trail. I like to spend long periods in the canyon to enjoy the peace, not to travel long distances. Grand Canyon has proved to be the perfect location to combine many of my interests beyond hiking: history, railroads, geology, photography, and Native American prehistory. |
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