It Takes a Region

Dan Rogan | Katahdin Region Coordinator

Hello, friends! My name is Dan Rogan and I’m excited to be a part of the Outdoor Sport Institute team. I’m originally from Dubuque, Iowa, but I’ve found my way to Maine’s Katahdin Region. As an avid outdoorsman, experienced paddler and hiker, and budding mountain biker, I’m excited to now call this area home. I’m especially grateful for the opportunity to become part of OSI’s efforts in education and collaboration in this region.

Growing up in Iowa, on the edge of the Midwest’s beautiful “Driftless Area,” there were plenty of places to get outside and explore. As a youngster, I joined Boy Scouts and found my desire to play outside. It didn’t take long to decide that I wanted a career in the outdoors. I began guiding a couple years after high school, leading youth trail building crews and backpacking treks in New Mexico, cold weather expeditions and dog sledding trips in northern Minnesota, and canoe expeditions in the summer.

Along with my passion for the outdoors, I also found that I was looking for community wherever I went. In the summer of 2022 a close friend and I paddled the Yukon 1000, “the longest paddle race in the world.” Even there, in the “Wilderness City” of Whitehorse, we found and thrived on community. For this reason, the OSI mission “to make human-powered outdoor sport accessible, sustainable, and meaningful for everyone” truly resonated with me, because my life of outdoor sport has been about creating connections.

Now I want people of all ages to see the activities I love, like canoeing, and the sports I’m learning and loving as I go, like whitewater paddling and mountain biking, as a means to get outside and find a path in life they can be proud of. I want the Katahdin Region to be a place where people can recreate and have access to the opportunities that make it possible. I hope to see a community of people that not only take it upon themselves to learn these outdoor skills, but also share them with others.

My position with OSI as a regional coordinator allows me to be a part of the truly collaborative effort of numerous partner organizations. I get to support and strengthen initiatives that provide the people of the Katahdin Region access to gear, encourage community pride by getting them involved with trails that they build and use themselves, create programs for locals and visitors alike to enjoy, and foster skills that people can learn and pass along to others.

The efforts in the Region are already bearing fruit. There are more trails to hike, bike, and ski and there are more on the way. Gear is readily accessible through the Katahdin Gear Library (KGL) and more people are taking advantage of it. The KGL is growing and expanding its reach across the region. More sustainable outdoor programming is building through collaborative efforts between multiple organizations and individuals. People in the area are just willing to step up and help make things happen.

In my first year with OSI, I’ve had the honor and pleasure of working alongside some incredible people who care a whole lot about what’s going on around here. I feel lucky that I get the opportunity to live and work in a community I care about– where building access to resources, connection, and outdoor recreation are shared goals. Seeing what a collective effort can accomplish has blown me away. A lot of people say that they want to make the outdoors more accessible --and my job through OSI has given me the opportunity to turn words into actions. It’s been an opportunity to learn that “it takes a village” is more than just a saying. A more apt way of saying it around here, however,  may be “it takes a region.”