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“We are all familiar
with the typical history of a trail that has been long established:
the first stage, the virgin area unaffected by man either for
worse or for better; the second, a raw and ugly state, the direct
effect of man’s practical work on construction in the clearing
and building of the way; the third, in which the floor of the
trail itself has improved underfoot by human use both in comfort
and in appearance and nature has healed the wounds and restored
the beauty of the walls; and, finally, the fourth, where the
trail has either suffered in appearance from excessive use or
wrong use, or has, despite the use that has been made of it,
either by grace of favoring natural circumstances or by human
care and maintenance, gone on improving in appearance, ripening
and mellowing with the years till it realizes a perfect blending
of the man-made trail with its natural setting.” The Life of a Path Reading these words this past winter, and despite language painfully stilted to my contemporary ear, I felt an immediate connection. Here, buried in an eighty-plus-year-old address to a now-defunct trails organization, was a remarkably cogent summary of both the life of a trail, and the fundamental tenets of good trail work. Whether we acknowledge it or not, our RMC paths have lives of their own. Most of the time, we don’t recognize it because their spans are longer than our time spent in their company. Judy Hudson’s trails history in this newsletter, however, reminds us how fluid and ever-changing are those permanent-looking lines on the map. We can each think of a favorite path in one of Pray’s stages of the life of a trail, whether the newly-cut Four Soldiers or Underhill Paths, the long-healed and little-eroded Cliffway, or the Randolph Path, where ages old, brilliant trail work has realized Pray’s “perfect blending.” Elsewhere, in between those solid lines on today’s RMC map, are paths that have long since passed from the scene. Reaching, then maintaining, that last stage of “perfect blending of the man-made trail with its natural setting” is the work of our trail workers, both volunteer and paid. Behind them, as they carry out their tasks, is the backing of RMC’s members and friends. The requisite first step in trail maintenance is the protection of the terrain: building rock steps, waterbars, bog bridges and ditching to keep our paths from literally washing away into the Moose or Israel rivers.
Pray and RMC shared another understanding. He observed that “the trail is peculiarly a type of traffic-way for which ‘getting you there’ is often, or should often be, not the primary but only a secondary purpose. Its primary object should often be to give us pleasure, refreshment, heart’s joy and inspiration. In other words, it’s the trip that matters more than the destination. And, perhaps nowhere else in the White Mountains are there such an abundance of paths where it’s the journey, and not the destination, that matters. The 1917 AMC White Mountain Guide description of Cascade Ravine still holds for many of Randolph’s paths today: "...the pleasure paths... still exist in the virgin forest...These paths disclose beautiful cascades and fine outlooks, but a particular description is needless, as the visitor will prefer to explore them himself. The forest, except for the making of the paths, is untouched by the axe." Randolph and James Sturgis Pray shared a connection more concrete than just the ethics of trail work. He became an energetic assistant of Louis Cutter, who was AMC Councilor of Improvements from 1902-1904 -- a time when Cutter was busily advocating and implementing the connection of various White Mountain trail networks. Pray knew what he was talking about. As Chairman of the Harvard School of Landscape Architecture and one of the pioneers of Landscape Architecture, he was a keen observer of trail aesthetics. His own trip ended February 22, 1929, but his observations along the way are as relevant today as they were more than 70 years ago. Thanks to RMC member
David Govatski of Jefferson, for inspiring this article.
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But,
Pray points out the key distinction between serviceable trail
work and masterful trail work, which blends with the natural
setting. None of us heads to the Kelton Trail, Amphibrach or
Bee Line to see a great, stone staircase or recently-axed blowdown.
Great trail work, like any noble employee, does its job in an
understated way. It allows the beauty of the woods to, as Pray
says, “endure under conditions of right use by an increasing
number of men, women and children” (could Pray have had
any inkling how unerringly true those words would ring eight
decades later?). The New England mountain classic Forest and
Crag quotes a “young admirer” of Pray’s named
Benton MacKaye as saying he, “was ‘a pioneer in keeping
improvements out of wilderness’ (italics in original).”
MacKaye’s name might be a familiar one to readers -- he
later went on to become the father of the Appalachian Trail.