[at-l] Creation of the AT--- (Saunterer)

[RoksnRoots@aol.com (RoksnRoots@aol.com)]

In a message dated 1/12/02 7:53:53 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
saunterer@jimbullard.org writes:


> Strangely enough the trail is becoming more wild.  The 
> trail has been and continues to be relocated to wild areas in preference to 
> populated ones.
> 

     *** Only technically. If you take a God's eye view at the Trail's 
environs from 1937 to now you would see a vast difference in near-Trail 
encroachment. If a path routes further into the corridor to access a wilder 
part, that is minor compared to the greater negative influences of overall 
impact by nearby area development. This is the difference between those who 
simply see the path as its presently complete corridor and those who see it 
in broader terms. Even if it walked down country roads in the past, I imagine 
today's Trail is much less rural feeling than it was... 



>  Avery rightly saw that it 
> needed to be continuous to capture the public imagination and survive. Wild 
> could (and has) come later.
> 
    
     ***  Pages could be written on this. All I'll mention is that Avery was 
overjoyed at the prospect of the Blue Ridge Parkway paralleling the Trail. 
Wonder if he'd still see it that way today?
    The "wild coming later" we are seeing today is best represented by 
Saddleback, windmills, and the condos being built on the corridor's edge...




>  if Earl had hiked a series of discontinuous wild trails in one 
> season would it have captured the public imagination sufficiently to insure 
> its survival?
> 

   ***  Intriguing thought. This is really two questions. The first is 
whether MacKaye's wilderness think tanks would have taken root or have been 
broken up into summer home lots? The second is if the areas within which 
these wilderness enclaves were made were rural enough to have connector 
sections installed once the deep wilderness' were established? Today 
wilderness' are becoming scarce. Maybe MacKaye saw that back then... 



>  I believe his 
> insistence that the AT-L should be a forum for discussion of the esoteric 
> aspects of McKay's environmental philosophy is misplaced. That kind of 
> sophistry is fine in academe but letters written to legislators based on a 
> deeper understanding of McKay's environmental philosophy won't cut any ice 
> with legislators who have to satisfy their constituents or with bureaucrats 
> who are bound by their organizational goals and restrictions.  Nor, despite 
> the fact that I'm a pretty philosophical sort of guy, does it inspire me 
> much when I'm out being a maintainer.
> 

   *** Just another reason to scoot MacKaye's fragile enterprise out the door 
wherever it appears. If you read MacKaye, he had hoped it would be in each AT 
user's heart. What he got were people who wanted to put him back on a dusty 
bookshelf so they could feel less guilty.
    If you see the huge parks strung up the AT's length, that were 
coincidentally established at the same time as the Trail, you would realize 
that somebody in some position of governmental power was impressed at the 
time. Again, if you read MacKaye, the Project was specifically designed to 
counter bureaucratic apathy. The idea was that those constituents would never 
be satisfied anyway -so the AT was meant as a pre-emptive measure to prevent 
them from harming a natural resource. By leaving pure nature alone on the AT, 
nature would then return a benefit to civilization by establishing a sense of 
its need for man's survival. Teaching man a sense of limits by avoiding 
damaging progress and making mistakes that would come back at us. I can't 
stop thinking about it when I'm maintaining...
     With global warming and continued sprawl, they'll have less ice to cut 
anyway... 


>  This is where Avery and RnR differ.  Avery hammered 
> at practicality, at getting it done for the masses.  He didn't glaze over 
> their eyes with long winded philosophical debate.


   *** Poor Benton sitting there like an endearing bump in Trail history 
while its future users don't even realize the benefits he strove for for the 
human race. He was too much of an intellectual gentleman to press his ideas 
in that day. Trail builder Avery was too far out in front and snapped some of 
the tethers MacKaye needed to complete his plan. I suspect MacKaye got 
coopted when officials realized what his full plan entailed. From there the 
physical path became the focus...


> 
> 
>   It implies that 
> they disapproved of Avery's success in achieving the organizations goals 
> and took deliberate action to insure that subsequent presidents would not 
> be able to be as successful. 
> 
> 
     ***   Well Saunterer, they must have had some reason to do it! Maybe 
they felt Avery neglected MacKaye's needs? We don't know. Maybe it was just 
one of those unfortunate political acts that occur amongst an organization 
for internal personal reasons (we've never seen that). 
     I hate to say it, but I've seen AT achievers be victimized by misplaced 
political correctness before. There are times when democracy fails. One of 
them is the assumption that the majority consensus will equal the good done 
buy an exceptional individual. When this turns out to be untrue they seldom 
admit the mistake. True Trail believers cringe when they see such things 
because erring on the side of limiting effectiveness seems to be a persistent 
Trail goblin through Trail history.


  




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