The End of the Trail

trails. What I love about the trail is that it's an honest judge. The trail does not care about the color of my skin or how much my pack weighs. And my hope is that our trail community continues to evolve, and that we align ourselves with the unbiased yet honest appraisal that the trail affords to each of us. I am hopeful that we will get there.

today, we're looking forward. What will the ATs future look like? How will the trail evolve? What will be the greatest challenges for the trail that we all love. When members of the various Appalachian Trail clubs assembled for their annual meeting and Gatlinburg, Tennessee in the summer of 1937, Appalachian Trail conference Chairman Myron Avery had stirring news. After 12 years of hard work, the Appalachian Trail was now a continuous footpath

from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia. At 2050 miles, it was at that moment, the longest continuous purpose built hiking trail in the world. Many leaders of large and difficult projects like the Appalachian Trail might be tempted to sit back, look at what they and their friends had accomplished and bask in the glow of their achievement. Myron

Avery was not that guy. Avery knew that if the Appalachian Trail was going to have a future, it needed to be protected from industrial and recreational property development. But it also needed to be made more accessible to the average hiker. Only if those two goals were achieved with the AT have a future. That weekend, the ATC and the trail clubs took the first step toward protecting the trail corridor by signing what became known as the Trailway agreement with the US

Forest Service. Under the terms of this agreement, the Forest Service agreed to provide the trail with a protected corridor in all the National Forests through which it passed. But that wasn't enough. Avery knew that the trail club members who had built the trail needed a renewed purpose. And so in his report to the assembled volunteers, he said,

accommodations along its route. In the ideal, this should be a dual system shelters for those who wish to camp wherever possible, listed available public accommodations for those who prefer to expend their energy other than in carrying equipment."

didn't save the AT from encroachment though. Following the Second World War, commercial and recreational development up and down the trail began to press up against the trails route and In some cases, the ATC had to take the trail back out of the mountains and onto roads, either to comply with canceled easements from landowners or to avoid logging. These pressures on the trail corridor meant something had to change. And so in the 1960s leaders in the ATC and the trail clubs began to

push for federalisation. And in 1968, that goal was realized when the Appalachian Trail became a National Scenic Trail and a part of the national park system. Making the AT into a national park coincided with a growing boom in backpacking across the country. Beginning in the early 1970s, the number of people hiking and backpacking in the AT grew dramatically. And as the number of hikers grew, trail club volunteers began to see

more and more problems along the trail. Increasing amounts of litter damage to the shelters especially graffiti, large numbers of weekend partiers at some of the shelters that were close to roads, and just a general lack of respect for the trail and the work required to keep it open and beautiful.

In his book On the Trail, The History of American Hiking, historian Silas Chamberlin argues that it was around this time that hikers on the AT began to shift from being trailed producers, those who helped build and maintain the trail to trail consumers. Those who use to trail but did not contribute to its continued survival. He further argues the trail consumers were not as invested in the AT as a place to cherish.

Instead, they saw it as a federal recreational resource placed there for their use, and, in some cases, abuse. I'm a shelter maintainer myself, and I certainly see some of that abuse on the trail every year. Fortunately, it still seems like a very small number of hikers who leave trash along the trail, or who mark up the shelters with their Sharpies. But the problems are real. And it's up to the 1000s of people who volunteer on

the AT each year to deal with those problems. When we asked our listeners to tell us their hopes for the future of the AT concerns about the number of people volunteering to care for the trail came up more than once. Here's Lee Howard, a lifetime member of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club.

have more time to spend on the trail volunteering. But if the AT is going to survive as the unique public private partnership that it is the generation of hikers who are using the trail the most these days, those under 40 need to find ways to be part of that vision. Whether it is helping out one day or one weekend a year or taking a more active role. The AT needs you. One of the things volunteers like Lee and Cosmo do a lot of

is picking up trash left behind by other hikers. And as the number of hikers on the trail increases, so does the amount of that trash. In fact, since the 2020 COVID pandemic, the amount of trash volunteers we're seeing on the trail has really grown. So much so that some in the hiking community have advocated some pretty radical changes to the Appalachian Trail in hopes

of securing its future. Among the changes, you can see being discussed online and in essays about the trail, or permitting system similar to what hikers find in a number of the trails in the west. Some have begun to advocate for the even more radical steps of scraping off the trail shelters as a way of discouraging hikers from coming to the trail. Given the nature of the Appalachian Trail with its thousands of access points,

a permitting system couldn't possibly work. But even if it could, putting such a system in place would fly in the face of Benton McKay's original vision for the trail as a place where urban dwellers can go for a few hours, or a few days of fresh air and sunshine. But the growing amount of trash on the trail is a real problem that volunteers have to deal with. And that degrades the hiking experience for others. I'll admit, then, in the early 2020s, I was getting kind of grumpy

about all that trash. Until I spoke with Brice Esplin. From the Subaru Leave No Trace Foundation. Brice has a different and I think very important perspective on what's happened on the trail since 2020.

we possibly can. So introducing these people to nature in a welcoming way, and making sure they have that right information is going to be the best way for us to do it.

Already here on the East Coast, we're seeing more violent weather that climatologist say is the result of global climate change. And that weather is wrecking havoc on the trail, more blow downs, more erosion, more landslides, and so on. And of course, climate change is having a significant impact on the ecosystems to trail passes through. The growing number of dead trees along the trail is the most visible sign of this impact. But if you look closely, you'll see lots of evidence of

how the mountains are suffering. Of course, I'm not the only at hiker worried about climate change. concerns about the impact of climate change on the trail came up in the calls from listeners we received as well.

have a negative short term impact on our lives. But if the natural world is going to rebound from what has already happened, we have to make those hard choices. The fact that more and more people are going to the Appalachian Trail each year would I think have made Ben Mackay very happy. And I know it would have made Myron Avery and

the early trail builders happy. They were actually quite concerned that they would build a 2000 mile long trail and almost no one would hike on it. If you've spent any time on the AT recently, you know that's no longer a concern. In the trails First 60 or 70 years, almost all of those hikers were white and middle class. That's also less and less

the case every year. But as the trail communities demographics change, as more and more people from different cities, towns and countries come to the AT, to experience it in all its natural glory, ensuring that the trail is a welcoming place for all can be a challenge sometimes.

Virginia. And over the past year, I met hikers from a Korean American church group, a Croatian engineer who had come to the US for two years for his job. A through hiker from the UK, the lesbian couple on their honeymoon, and on and on. Every one of those folks experienced the Appalachian Trail in their own way, and each contributed something unique to the trail community. From where I sit, this increasing diversity in the hiking community is one of the best things to happen on the

trail and decades. And it's one of the things that makes me the most hopeful for the trails future. Much of this change has been organic, and at least some of it is the result of intentional efforts by the ATC and the trail clubs to open up the trail to an ever widening circle of hikers.

division, and prone to conflict. To quote the great environmental writer Barry Lopez, I think it's worth remembering that "In the wilderness, we find our truest selves. It is there that we are stripped of all pretense and ego, and faced with our own vulnerability and insignificance." The more time we spend in the wilderness facing our own vulnerability, the more we will give ourselves the opportunity to seek solutions, solutions for ourselves, solutions for others,

and solutions for the planet. If the Appalachian Trail can do that for us, and we can do that for the AT then the trail and the trail community will have found a new purpose for the AT's second century. I wrote the script for this final episode of The Green tunnel with some very mixed emotions. It's been such a wonderful ride from our first meetings in late 2020. When we batted around the idea of a podcast on the history of the Appalachian trail to the launch of the show in the fall of 2021.

Over the past three years, we've all learned so much about the trail, about the trail community, and about our wonderful listeners. Ending something you've cared so much about as hard as we began to think about wrapping up our show. We asked a number of folks we've interviewed where their favorite place on the trail is. As you would expect, we got a lot of different answers. Sometimes favorite places on the

Appalachian Trail are obvious choices. McAfee Knob, the summit of Katahdin, Sunfish Pond in New Jersey, Damascus Virginia during Trail Days, or the camp store in Pine Grove Furnace State Park with its half gallons of ice cream. But more often, the favorite places hikers told us about are much less obvious and much more personal. Maybe it was the first place they ever spent the night on the AT. Or it was where they realized that they had the fortitude to overcome a difficult physical or emotional

challenge. It might have been the first place they saw a bear or where they met a future life partner. Or it could have been a spot where a sunrise over the mountain filled them with joy. It might have been the place where the peace of the forests finally broke through. My own favorite spot is one almost no one would ever choose because it has meaning only to me. I've been hiking on the

trail since 1971. But the stretch of the AT that holds my happiest memories is one I walked through just eight years ago. I was on a seven day section hike in central Virginia. And it was hot. So hot that I was waking up at 4am so I could get the bulk of my walking in before mid afternoon. When

the temperatures were soaring into the unbearable range. I'd stopped for an early lunch, more like brunch at the Cornelius Creek Shelter, and had the climb of Apple Orchard Mountain ahead of me before I got to the Thunder Hill Shelter where I was planning to spend the night. Despite the fact that it was only 10 or 10:30, it was already 90 degrees. And I was not looking forward to that five and a half miles up and over the peak. We've all been there sitting somewhere cool and

pleasant with a difficult hike ahead. It can take a lot of self talk to get the backpack on and get moving again. But we do about a half a mile north of Cornelius Creek, I suddenly found myself in a deep green section of the green tunnel. Huge ferns crowded into the trail. And mixed into those ferns were bright orange Turk's Cap Lilies, nodding in the faint breeze blowing down from the top of the mountain. The sudden, unexpected beauty of that 100 yards or so of the AT took my

breath away. And I just had to stop and let it settle into me. It was one of those moments we have on the trail to stick with us forever and keep bringing us back to the green tunnel, year after year. That short otherwise nondescript stretch of trail in Virginia is my favorite spot. But I don't want to end the show on that note. Instead, I'm going to leave the last word to Dave Field. If you've been listening to our show since we began three

years ago, you've heard Dave several times. Among his many, many important contributions to the Appalachian Trail, Dave was a trail maintainer for almost six decades in Maine. And of all the people we've spoken to over the last three years, I can't think of anyone who has done more for the AT than Dave Field. So it's only fitting that he should have the last word. I asked Dave what his favorite stretch of the trail was and here's what he said.

you. Thank you also to all the people here at George Mason University who read primary sources for us in various episodes. Original music for our show is performed by Scott Miller of Swope, Virginia and Andrew Small and Ashley Watkins of Floyd, Virginia. For this final episode, we also want to thank Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany for making it possible for us to use the recording space while I'm in

Germany on a Fulbright Fellowship. We've been able to bring you this show through the generosity of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and many individual donors like you. Finally, we want to thank you, our listeners. you've downloaded our episodes almost 200,000 times. And every time I say that number, I get goosebumps. Thanks for listening. Thanks for donating. Thanks for spreading the word about our show. And thanks for helping us keep the Appalachian Trail an open and

welcoming space for everyone. I hope I'll see you out on the AT one day soon. Until then, hike well.