Team RailRiders
Brendan Brown

 

Biography:

I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA where I spent a good deal of my childhood in the many parks and natural areas inside the city limits, including the rivers where I kayaked from an early age on boats that my family would build.  In the summers we'd also paddle and sail in Massachusetts, Maine, and Maryland.  I never saw a mountain until I went to high school in Concord, New Hampshire.  Sitting atop Mt. Adams my first week of school solidified a love that I'd developed in the many days playing in the creeks near my home in the city.  I spent much of the next 4 years canoeing the region's many lakes, practicing bushcraft, and leading hiking and backpacking trips in the Whites and Vermont.  Now as a senior at Cornell University, my interests and locale have me paddling the wealth of whitewater available when the rivers swell, climbing the same waterfalls when the temperatures drop, windsurfing when the wind howls, and mountain biking when the weather doesn't cooperate for anything else.   When I've gotten a chance to skip town in the summers, I headed to the Pacific Northwest, Uganda, and Gabon working to integrate natural resource management with food production in a way that improves both as well as the lives of those who depend on them.  Integrating is what I love so much about the outdoors.  I feel at home in the natural world because this is from where the essential sustenance and recreation that binds all of life and humanity stems.  

What's Next:

A summer full of Mountain Biking and Kayaking!