Publications

Marie Tanner: Island Hopping

AMC Outdoors, September 2003

By Katharine Wroth

The minute she saw the place, she was hooked. When Marie Tanner, long an active AMC hiker, took the ferry to Fire Island 10 years ago, “hiking pretty much went by the wayside,” she recalls with a laugh. Tanner, who grew up on the island of Antigua and now lives in the Bronx, fell in love with this northern beach and its proximity to the city.

Since that first visit, she has returned every summer to the New York–North Jersey Chapter facility to serve as a hostess, cooking meals for large groups, overseeing coastal cleanups, and entertaining younger visitors. Tanner, who teaches second grade in the Bronx, especially enjoys helping kids from city programs enjoy the natural wonders of the island. “At school, I’m limited to taking them to the museum or the zoo,” she says. “But I try to get across my love of the outdoors. You do hope they grow up to do more than sit inside and watch TV, that they will appreciate the outdoors. Even to understand things like the food in the supermarket doesn’t get there magically.”

Tanner, 37, learned her own appreciation of the outside world by her father’s side in an environment very different from New York, to which she immigrated with her family at age 13. She still pays regular visits to Antigua — which perches in the eastern Caribbean, 17 miles north of the Equator — including a three-week foray this summer. But although she retains her ties to the tropics, she also relishes activities not available there: cross-country skiing, she says, “is the thing that keeps me alive in the winter.”

While leading various AMC trips, including an excursion to the opera last year, this city-dweller enjoys the company of fellow members and the good conversations that arise. “On an AMC outing in New York, you see all kinds of people,” says Tanner, a member of the AMC-wide Diversity Committee. “I like the way the people of AMC think, and that’s the biggest issue in my book.”

—Katharine Wroth is Senior Editor of AMC Outdoors.