{"id":12280,"date":"2025-02-11T00:14:41","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T05:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mappyhour.org\/blog\/?p=12280"},"modified":"2025-02-11T12:00:28","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T17:00:28","slug":"dear-mappy-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mappyhour.org\/blog\/2025\/02\/dear-mappy-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Mappy Community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dear Mappy Hour Community,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything has a season. A beautiful cycle of birth, growth and, ultimately, an end. It is through this lens I share the bittersweet news that Mappy Hour is shutting down this year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We started hosting events in March of 2014 in New York City. Our goal at the very beginning was simply to create a space for people who loved nature and outdoor recreation to come together. In a city where loud, expensive happy hours were culturally dominant, it felt refreshing to be surrounded by other people willing to get up early on a Saturday and go through the sometimes tedious process of shleping out to a hiking trail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our first event was silly and surprising, the New York Times<\/em> mentioned us, someone brought outdoor-themed temporary tattoos, and a man who mapped every single tree in Central Park rolled in with one of the most incredible maps <\/a>I\u2019ve personally ever seen. We even kicked off our name tag station at this event – encouraging folks to share an \u2018ask\u2019 and a \u2018tell\u201d – based on the belief that everyone has something valuable to share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And they did! From this very first event, it was evident that our community, together, had an incredible amount of energy, excitement and knowledge to share, whether from a surf festival in Queens to an epic backpacking adventure in Yosemite (and everything in between).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mappy Hour, ultimately, became a container for this community. People from other cities started to step up and establish chapters, local leaders volunteered to share a story or teach a workshop and all of you kept showing up, month after month, year after year. Soon my role morphed from organizing events to making sure an incredible team of leaders across the country had the resources they needed to create experiences that spoke to each city\u2019s local needs. These leaders (listed below!) not only crafted and nurtured the local experience but joined leadership calls monthly to provide feedback and guidance for the organization as a whole, helping it evolve and grow every single year. Even during COVID, when we couldn\u2019t physically be together, thousands of you logged in to say hello, to continue to connect in a time of deep isolation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In cities across the United States, our members (all of you lovely people!) brought an incredible amount of energy, curiosity and willingness to share to Mappy Hour. We have had a huge amount of first timers at Mappy Hours and at every event there were folks with experience and expertise willing to share with their peers. Yes, we had speakers and programming to support this – but the piece that I\u2019m most proud of is the members that joined this community and dove in to help make the outdoors more accessible to their neighbors and new friends. It has been an incredible gift to be surrounded by such enthusiastic and generous people on a monthly basis for the last ten years. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We\u2019ve also made inroads on a larger scale in our cities. While changing culture is a monumental challenge, Mappy Hour has been at the center of outdoor community in all of our hubs. Since 2014, we\u2019ve seen more and more amazing organizations launch and grow to support urban dwellers getting outside. This is one of the reasons I find the end to the Mappy Hour story hopeful. There are now many other groups and organizations that can provide a home for all of us. Though not exactly Mappy Hour – each has their own recipe for delectable outdoor community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel so lucky to have enjoyed so many incredible years of this organization and am excited to share a few stats and some of my favorite testimonials. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the Numbers:<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n