Breaking Trail: an Author Talk by Anita Stalter

"Breaking Trail" is the life story of E.L. "Tap" Tapley, America's pioneering wilderness educator.

Born in Amesbury, Massachusetts in 1924, of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, Tap was a striking man with high cheekbones, blue eyes and strong hands. The son of the town baker, Tap called the wilderness his "Cathedral of Learning," towing a canoe behind his bike to fish for trout and trapping muskrat to purchase his first violin.

Born to ski, Lowell Thomas, a well-known radio broadcaster, witnessed eighteen-year-old Tapley schuss the headwall of Tuckerman's Ravine, a 2000 ft. vertical drop on Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. Lowell wrote a recommendation to the Sun Valley, Idaho ski patrol director. Letter and skis in hand, Tap hitchhiked across the country to join elite world skiers.

During WWII, Tapley served in the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale in Colorado. He was a ski and mountaineering instructor to troops until he was chosen to serve in the Aleutian Islands as the youngest of 11, to teach at the North Pacific Combat School. After the war, Tap opened ski resorts, blasted avalanches, broke horses, and ran a dog sled team until 1962, when he was handpicked to bring Outward Bound (OB) to America. In 1965, he became the co-founder of The National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in Lander, Wyoming. From there he built a sailboat, learned Spanish, and sailed down the Vermillion Sea to start OB and NOLS in Mexico on the Baja Peninsula.

The details of this adventure biography are stories of an extraordinary man of few words and his ninety years of teaching quietly by example. Tap lived his final years in New Mexico with his wife Anita Stalter, and their horses Cisco and Sundance. In 2001, they were honored as Santa Fe Living Treasures. 

About the Author:

Raised in the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania, Anita Stalter is a horticultural therapist and passionate outdoors woman. The sixth in a family of seven children, her father was a cardiologist of German and Sioux descent, and her mother was Lebanese.

Anita loves the earth, leading to a career in marine and horticulture studies. For eleven years, she was the head of horticulture for the Historic Santa Fe Foundation managing El Zaguan and their six other properties. Stalter won the Historic Preservation Award for her ingenuity in saving the foundation's 175 year-old trees during extreme drought.

Celebrated as a Santa Fe Living Treasure in 2001, along with her late husband E.L. "Tap" Tapley of 34 years, Anita assisted her village in wildfire emergency planning, and with the National Parks Service, guided archaeologists to a lost section of the Old Santa Fe Trail. She is a skilled fly fisher and excellent cook. She summers in New Mexico and winters in Old Mexico. She plays harmonica and piano, is best friend to her cat Tigera, and welcomes each day with a curious mind.