The Real Appalachian Trail BC* Epilogue

 

Chapter 11 

Epilogue

faced with a dream

I looked at myself

I wondered how

or even why

it soon became me

and I it

I lived it all

and it was reality

today was already

yesterday

when it had passed

it had hardly begun

--- Don Hunger, 1975

Would I hike it again?  

When asked that after my trip, I replied without hesitation, NO!  Sure, there were some spectacular times, and I met some great people, but it was too soon to forget about the insects, screaming nettles, hunger pains, sore feet, back and knees, and perhaps realistically the financial cost.

And I had more adventures to tackle.  My higher education plans had been put on hold, so I started January out of synched with my classmates.  But it also meant though I started working full time after a winter graduation, getting a jump start on miscellaneous jobs before getting a “career” with the Boy Scouts of America at a time when scouting meant something.

But the time between 1975 and today has other stories to share, and most have nothing to do with the AT.

Earlier in this manuscript I wrote “It might seem that for most AT hikers, they are only concerned about MacKaye’s first two proposals, or are they?”  For the true story of the AT, we must credit the wisdom of MacKaye and others for a realistic story.  Sure, there is the Trail and hundreds of Lean-tos along the 2,200 mile path.  But as I have attempted to show there are also some cooperative agreements.  And we also see the resurgence of farm camps and the promotion of sustainable land management strategies in the corridor despite the incomplete nature of the Appalachian Greenway (1974).  There continues to be work on each of the four elements, especially since the latter two need the help of MacKaye’s regional planning philosophy.  We can then expect the AT Communities to contribute not to the hiking population but also the town’s resident population, in order to make these places people where want to live and work.  Adjacent to the semi-wilderness trail, we find hostels, shuttle services, restaurants, spas and other non-trail amenities that have become part of the present day experience; most of which had no role in the mid Seventies.

Is there an end to hiking the Appalachian Trail?  Sure, there are those who climb Katahdin and then move on with their lives.  Others, like me, finish the trail at some mid-point, in my case Jacobs Ladder (US Route 20) in Massachusetts.  That road, some thirty miles east, became my first mailing address after graduating from SIU-C.  Talk about Coincidence!

And still others tackle the AT again or some other long distance trail while they have the momentum, time, energy and/or money to do so.

For me, I returned to college and after some ups and downs finally graduated in December 1978 (or was it January 1979) with a BS degree in Geography and Environmental Planning and really not sure what to do next.  I did get a job that I held down for four years as a Camp Ranger for the Boy Scouts of America.  It was fun but after some hard tasks, like digging up a broken frozen water line in the winter, I realized it was not a career.  

During that time with the BSA, I began to travel some more, tried my luck at dating, and on New Years Eve, while doing a solo for Outward Bound on the south slope of Mt. Moosilauke (NH), I made the decision to return to school to work on a Masters.  I only needed a year since I had been going to night school for a couple of years.  I really liked school this time, so I applied to six new grad schools for a Ph.D.  I got accepted at 3, and 2 offered funding.  I first thought of water resources, but Prof. Scott at Towson State University advised me to go into recreation, my real passion.  Wise advice!

So I attended the Association of American Geographers Conference (now American Association of Geographers) at Washington DC and met my future mentors from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.  After another graduation, my parents took me to Baltimore’s Little Italy for dinner.  I worked one last summer for the Boy Scouts as the Program Director for Cresap’s Trail in Western Maryland at the Lilli-Aaron Straus Wilderness Area, now a state park in Maryland protected for all to enjoy.

Up to this point each chapter represents a couple of weeks of trail hiking.  This one on the other hand will reflect nearly 50 years.

During my time at SIU, I had the great opportunity for outdoor recreation in Illinois and Missouri.  With winter mountaineering skills under my belt from Outward Bound, I summited several peaks in the winter Whites.  Closer to school, we paddled the Ozark National Scenic Riverways and explored the many caves.  I studied the Desolation Wilderness in California on an extended trip with one of my SIU Mentors and today, some 40 years later, have reconnected with Dr. Ken Chilman.  Ken was instrumental in getting me exposed to academic conferences. First at the Southeastern Recreation Research Symposium (SERR) and later linking me with the crew who organized the Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium (NERR) in the north.  And I had a summer research assistantship with the National Park Service in an effort to quantify recreation quality.  

I also met Lee Ann and we moved to Western Mass and US Route 20 again.  Initially local conferences like Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium (now NERRA), and The New England St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society kept me academically connected with leisure, tourism and recreation enthusiasts.  I also began to do international travel, often tied to presenting research at conferences like ISSRM (Belize, Vancouver, Vienna, Italy) and others (Martinique, Tortola, Switzerland, Iceland, UK).  These trips were a blast and very inspiring.

Early in the nineties, I answered an ATC call for volunteers to undertake the task of corridor monitoring on miles of newly acquired corridor (trailway) lands where volunteers would discover encroachments, illegal motor vehicles and other problems that damaged the AT “greenway” experience.  I was also recruited to begin cultural resource monitoring for some of the historic structures found along the AT.  These experiences got me back on the trail, often bushwhacking in the woods enticing the explorer in me.  Always a teacher, I prepared a volunteer manual for others and challenged my students to enter the woods.

And then Covid hit the world.

After being forced to teach online for a year, I decided to call it quits and retire at age 65.  Once it became safe to travel, we headed back to Carbondale to settle again in Southern Illinois with the Shawnee National Forest in our backyard.

My story traced the history of a 100 year Appalachian Trail.  Beginning with a dream of MacKaye and concluding with this book.  Sandwiched in between was my 2,000 mile hike.

This story had plenty of bumps and dips, since at no time in history had anything like this been proposed and executed.  The story is unique and full of surprises.  There are good times and bads. Successes and failures.  And like any revolutionary idea, it has taken time to mature.

Have we met MacKaye’s goals? Probably not, but then again 2020 is quite different from 1920.  Is the backpacker preparing for the hike today, anything like those in my era, let alone Earl Schaffer’s time?  Heck no.  

I kinda’ hoped that MacKaye had updated his thesis prior to his death in 1975 shortly after my 2,000 mile hike.  But that is unrealistic.  Afterall, I was the post-Earth Day crush on the trail.  And today we have the current social media crowd anticipating their adventure.  There is simply no way MacKaye could have completely anticipated the evolution of his dream.

And here I type my thoughts by re-reading my trip diary, the AT guides, books and tales of hikers from the same period and viewing my limited collection of scanned 35 mm slides.  It is through these visual and written narratives, that I have been able to recapture the on-site, or on trail phase of the AT hike.

Today, I am enjoying the Recollection Phase of the Recreation Experience, and boy oh boy, is it fun.  I have tried to share the fun with the reader, but I also needed to describe the not-so-fun times.  It is the 50 year period, from the first introduction to the Trail to today, that I have emerged from the ultimate liminal experience resulting into what I am today.  This is a post-experience phase, in which the recreationists recall many important moments of the whole experience. I hope I can share this experience with you, my friends and relatives.

Thank you.

Suggested Readings

Bristow, R. S. and I, Jenkins. (eds.) (2022). Spatial and Temporal Tourism Considerations in Liminal Landscapes. Routledge.

Bristow, R. S., J. Judkins, and J. Schottanes. (2022). Appalachian Trail Communities: a 100 year model of regional planning. Chapter 2 in Slocum, S. L., Wiltshier, P., & Read IV, J. B. (Eds.). Transformations in Protected Area Management and Gateway Communities: Alternative Approaches to Tourism and Community Engagement (pp. 10-23). CABI.

Clawson, M., and J.L. Knetsch. (1966). Economics of Outdoor Recreation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

Jenkins, I and R. Bristow. (2024). Sensory Tourism: Senses and SenseScapes Encompassing Tourism Destinations. CABI.

Satterthwaite, A. (1974).  An Appalachian Greenway: Purposes, Prospects and Program.  Prepared for the Appalachian Trail Conference.

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