Ahhh, Memorial Day weekend. The unofficial start to summer and your first 3 day weekend of the fishing season. Trailer the boat, get ready to fire up the grill and head to the lake.
It’s easy to replace the real meaning of Memorial Day with the kickoff to summer. You’ve been working all week, you’re ready to fish, you’ve had kids activities, etc…
You should enjoy the weekend and get outside, but remember why we have Memorial Day in the first place.
“A day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces”.
During the weekend, take a few minutes and observe the holiday to give tribute to those that sacrificed all. This website has a number of links with ideas of how you can observe.
There are also a number of organizations out there now that incorporate the outdoors with our veterans.
Wounded Warriors Guide Service is one.
Simply Outdoor Experiences also recently hosted “Heroes on the Water”, a fishing event with veterans on Lake Traverse at Wing n Fin Resort. You can see pictures and read more about that here.
I interviewed Woody Sanky about Simply Outdoor Experiences for the radio show a few weeks ago. That interview can be listened to here (scroll down to “WEEK 33”)
They have another event coming up on July 10th called “Veterans on Mille Lacs”. Find more information here.
Military personnel or veterans who wish to hunt or fish in Minnesota are eligible for special licensing, all those details are here.
Pheasants Forever is also working on securing funds for a tribute to local vets with the “Minnesota Veterans Wildlife Area project”. From the PF website:
The purpose of this project is to honor Minnesota’s veterans and military, and permanently secure a public wildlife area in honor of their service. This project is patterned after Pheasants Forever’s “Build a Wildlife Area” campaign, which has completed 21 projects in three states, providing more than 5,000 acres for public use and outdoor recreation.
Read the entire press release here.
There are a number of ways that you can honor our fallen soldiers and current veterans (and active personnel), the most important part is that you DO something. We’re partial to tying in the outdoors, but of course any type of tribute would be appreciated. If you know of another organization that is honoring veterans in the outdoors, please let us know and we’ll add it to this page.