Who Builds the Trail Beneath Our Feet?

Who Builds the Trans Canada Trail?

“Find your place on the planet, dig in, and take responsibility from there.”

Gary Snyder

Trail Considerations and Trail Conditions

 

After several years of long-distance walking, we have become reasonably good at evaluating trails. We notice things such as whether the surface is gravel, dirt, rock or pavement, or whether the signs are easy to follow, or whether vegetation has begun growing across the pathway, and whether there happens to be a bench in places en route where two tired hikers desperately want one.

 

We notice these things because they affect the experience of walking. A well-maintained trail can make kilometres disappear almost effortlessly, while a washed-out, overgrown or poorly marked section can turn a seemingly short day into a frustrating exercise in navigation. Until reaching Nova Scotia, however, I am not sure how often we had stopped to think about what existed behind those differences.

 

Yet the Trans Canada Trail through this province has already given us plenty of opportunities to notice them. We have followed beautiful former railway corridors where the walking is easy and the surface carefully maintained, only to reach the end of one section and find ourselves back on a road (road connector) for kilometres while waiting for another trail to begin. We have crossed impressive trestle bridges in Newfoundland, walked through welcoming rural communities, followed shaded forest pathways and encountered sections where stretches have yet to be refined, and the route temporarily gives way to bushwhacking or invariably means we need to trek along the roadway.

 

Like most hikers, we tend to experience these changes from the perspective of our own feet, knees, and back. Good trail. Rough trail. Road. Bridge. No bridge. Sign. No sign. It is an understandable way to look at things when you are carrying a backpack across a province or a country, but in Musquodoboit Harbour we were given a glimpse of how incomplete that perspective can be.

 

Meeting the Trail Builders

 

There we met with members of the Musquodoboit Trailways Association before walking part of the trail with them. We had come to give a presentation about our #Hike4Birds journey, but somewhere along the way the roles seemed to reverse, and we became the students. They began explaining what was involved in creating and maintaining the pathway we had been enjoying: planning, organizing, finding money, negotiating permissions, navigating approvals, coordinating work and then continuing to care for the trail after it had finally been built. None of this seemed to be described with any particular sense of self-importance. It was simply what had to be done. More importantly, it was what members of this community did out of a deep interest and desire to improve their region.

 

Yet as we listened, it became increasingly difficult to reconcile the ease with which we had walked onto the trail with the years of effort required to put it there.  Perhaps that is one of the peculiar things about a successful trail. When it works well, most of the work behind it becomes invisible.  A bridge is simply there when you reach a river. Gravel lies smoothly beneath your feet. Brush has been cut away from the edges. Signs appear at intersections. Drainage carries rainwater away rather than allowing it to wash out the pathway. Someone has decided where the route should go, negotiated how it can pass through the landscape, found the resources needed to construct it and then returned again and again to keep it usable. If all of those things have been done well, the hiker may scarcely think about any of them. We certainly haven't always done so. We step onto the pathway and begin walking, perhaps praising the scenery or complaining about the mosquitoes, without wondering very much about who made it possible for us to be there.

 

The Rail Museum in Musquodoboit Harbour had already hinted at some of the effort required before our meeting. The trail runs behind a building filled with reminders of the railway that once occupied the same corridor: uniforms, photographs, railway equipment and old cars sitting outside. It is easy to say that an abandoned railway became a trail, as though one simply faded away and the other naturally appeared in its place. Walking with the people involved in the trail made that transformation seem considerably less automatic. Somewhere between rails and recreation came decisions, plans, meetings, fundraising, labour and people willing to believe that an old transportation corridor could become something useful again.

 

Later, as we continued toward Gaetz Brook, the seemingly invisible process of trail building was suddenly visible in front of us. A new section of trail was still under construction, with machinery grading and levelling the route before gravel could be laid. Workers allowed us through during breaks in the construction, and for once we were not simply walking on the finished product. We were moving through something in the process of becoming a trail. It was a small distinction, but after our conversations that morning it was difficult not to see the pathway differently.

 

It also became clear that building a trail is not simply a matter of clearing some brush and putting down gravel. A pathway has to exist within a community where people may have very different ideas about how the land should be used. Hikers, cyclists, snowmobilers and ATV riders do not always want exactly the same things from a route. Landowners may have concerns. Municipalities and governments have regulations. Money has to come from somewhere, maintenance has to continue, and compromises that seem obvious to one group may seem entirely unreasonable to another. Some of the people we spoke with had spent years working through these questions. In a few cases, what we experience as only a kilometre or two beneath our boots may represent an extraordinary amount of effort – not just in years but also decades of dedication.

 

That realization feels particularly significant after the road connectors we have been walking across Nova Scotia. When a beautiful trail suddenly ends, and we find ourselves back on the shoulder of a road, our immediate reaction is usually disappointment. We wish the trail continued. We wonder why the gap has not been filled. From a hiker's perspective, the missing section can seem almost absurd: surely someone could simply connect these two pieces.

 

After today, that word simply seems rather unfair.

 

We still wish the gaps were connected. Walking busy roads with backpacks is not particularly enjoyable, and there is enormous potential in the trail systems we have encountered throughout both Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. But now those unfinished connections look a little different. Instead of seeing only what is missing, we are beginning to recognize how much work was required to create what is already here.

 

Earlier in our hike, we had met another volunteer who cared for a section of trail and had helped get several impressive bridges installed. He spoke proudly about the pathway he maintained and about how long disturbed sections of landscape can take to recover. Shortly afterwards, when our route returned to the road because other bridges had not yet been replaced, his comments acquired considerably more meaning. One section existed because somebody had managed to make it happen. Another remained unfinished because, for whatever combination of reasons, that work had not yet been completed.

For walkers passing through, those differences are experienced in minutes or hours. For the people trying to build the trail, they may represent a great deal more.  This may be one of the more unexpected things the Trans Canada Trail has been showing us. We set out expecting to learn about Canada's landscapes, birds, communities, cultures and histories. We expected the trail itself to provide the route through those things. What we had not really considered was that the trail has a story too, and much of that story belongs to people whose names will never appear on the maps we carry or guidebooks that are published.

 

Tomorrow we will probably return to doing what hikers do. We will walk on, likely complain when the trail is rough, celebrate when the walking is easy, grumble when another road connector appears and be disproportionately happy when we find a bench at lunch or dinner time. I doubt today's conversations have suddenly transformed us into endlessly appreciative trail users.

 

But I suspect we will notice a little more.

 

The next time we cross a bridge, perhaps we will wonder who fought to have it built. When a trail marker appears exactly where we need it, perhaps we will remember that someone came out here and put it up. When kilometres of smooth gravel stretch ahead through the forest, perhaps we will recognize that the trail beneath our feet did not simply appear because a line exists on a national map.

 

Someone imagined it.  Someone worked for it. And then, long before we arrived with our backpacks, someone built the path that allowed us to keep walking.  For all of that, Thank You!

 

See you on the trail.