Barbara Sleight loved exploring.

She told a Post-Standard reporter in 2008 that she enjoyed roaming the woods around Central New York when she was young.

And, when her family took road trips, she usually held the maps.

“I always liked to be the navigator,” Sleight said in 1981.

At that time, she was helping to introduce an old sport to Central New York.

In the mid 1970s, she read a magazine article about the Scandinavian activity of orienteering and was intrigued.

“I read this article where people were dashing through swamps and jumping off cliffs,” she said.

Orienteering was created in Sweden as a military training exercise. The first contest was held in 1893 as a competition between Swedish officers. Civilian contests were held four years later. It was brought to the United States

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