Blue Ridge Country - July/August 2015 - 7

FROM THE EDITOR

The Gift of Courtesy
One byproduct of the increase in the
popularity of getting outside is a testing
of the basic tenets of good citizenship
and stewardship of our trails.
by Kurt Rheinheimer
A column in this space a year ago -
about the discovery of new grafitti
on the Appalachian Trail near
Roanoke - brought more response
than anything that has appeared
in the magazine for many years.
We asked readers to provide ideas
on slogans, a la Leave No Trace, that might help deal
with the problem. Many of those were published in the
September/October 2014 issue, and many more arrived
after that issue went to press. Some readers offered the
view that part of the problem was just more people out
there, and thus more people not necessarily knowledgeable about the collective commitment it takes from all
users to keep the trail as it was before they walked on it.
The movie "Wild," profiling a hike on the Pacific
Crest Trail, and the coming movie "A Walk in the
Woods," (due September 2) - in which Robert Redford
and Nick Nolte play author Bill Bryson and his AT thruhiking buddy Stephen Katz, respectively - has and will
bring what is anticipated to be a huge swell of hikers on
the AT.

wORTH A ClICk

The Appalachian Trail Conference, in response, instituted in early 2015 and for the first time, a voluntary
registration page on its website. The page, in response
to "Wild" as well as to the significant "organic" growth
in the number of thru hikers (59 people completed the
trail between the years 1936 and 1969; about 2,500
walked the full length northbound from Georgia in 2014
alone), asked hikers to stagger their start dates at Springer
Mountain, and thus decrease pressures on the pathway
in general and on the small shelters along the trail.
There are of course other pressures as a result of so
many people along a mostly single-track trail through the
woods. When my wife and I came across three sets of
northbound thru hikers near Roanoke on a recent weekend, one manifestation was apparent. The older, retired
man walking in part to get over the death of his wife three
years ago, was unhesitatingly vocal in his resentment of
the two "trust-fund 20-somethings" not far ahead of him.
The difference in perspectives between generations and
levels of wealth was perhaps not as important as was the
inevitable crushing-together of disparate kinds of people
- people who in years past might never have come across
one another on their 2,100-mile walk.
The third "set" was made up of a lone hiker with no
real map, no concept of what town he would come to
next, no real plan beyond walking on up the trail to see
what came next.
But while those three sets may not have gathered
around the shelter's picnic table to share stories and supper, I do trust they were all dedicated to best practices on
the trail - to packing out their trash, to leaving rocks and
shelters unmarked, staying within the trailbed and not
shortcutting switchbacks and many more.
Those and the many other good habits are the least
those of us lucky enough to be out there can do. 

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Blue Ridge Country - July/August 2015

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