[at-l] The future of hiking

[Bob C." <ellen@clinic.net (Bob C.)]

"...I  truly  feel  that  the AT will one day be much like the trails in Europe,
which I have seen, will have hostels placed a days walk apart for hikers to stay
in.  In  most  places you can not tent or stay any where but a hostel. " reports
Tom Mantooth.

Sadly,  I  suspect  he  is right, but I'll continue to resist to the bitter end.
It's  to  delay  -- and possibly prevent his prediction -- that I work to create
protected lands and oppose the steady march towards more civilized trails.

This  is  especially  critical  in a state like Maine which has so little public
land.  Maine  has  less than a million acres that is publicly owned -- less than
five  percent of our state's land mass. In the west the percentage is as high as
90  percent  and  more.  I  don't  have the figures at hand, but most of the big
states  of  the  east  have  several times the percentage of public acreage that
Maine does.

Critics  from  state's  like  New  Hampshire,  Vermont, Massachusetts, New York,
Pennsylvania,  Virginia,  North  Carolina  and Georgia who think we in Maine are
"greedy"  for  wanting to increase our percentage of protected lands, should ask
themselves  which of their large national and state parks and forests they would
willingly give up in order to achieve the status Maine finds itself in.

I  spent  the  day touring islands that had been preserved recently with some of
the  leading  land preservation leaders in Maine. We talked of the few successes
we  have  managed to achieve and lamented the immense difficulties that face our
efforts.  We  started our tour in my town in part because my town has managed to
preserve a greater percentage of our land mass than most.

I  was pleased that no one seemed to think it had been a waste of time and money
despite  our  admittedly  fuzzy  planning,  or  more accurately, a total lack of
planning. Our technique is pretty simple. If we see an opportunity we try in our
muddling ways to seize that opportunity.

It's not ideal, just the best I can do.

Weary