[at-l] Policing the trail...

[jestbill at yahoo.com (william fitzpatrick)]

--- RoksnRoots@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 5/20/2005 7:01:55 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
> jestbill@yahoo.com writes:
> *
> *
> *
> Not exactly relevant.  "Guidelines" and "guiding premises" can be changed
> with
> the stroke of a pen.  All it would take is for a bunch of couch potatoes to
> decide they want to "hike the AT" but don't want to deal with any dirt.
> The only thing stopping them is that they (usually) don't want to pay for
> public "improvements" of any kind unless they have something to do with auto 
> traffic.
> *
> *
> *
> 
> 
>            I don't think so. You would need to approach ATC and the NPS with 
> a reason for changing the AT's guidelines. The general AT public's lack of 
> familiarity with them and their origins probably leads to these kind of false
> 
> assumptions. If a group tried to re-write the guidelines, trailbed
> suggestions, 
> and corridor standards they wouldn't get very far. The AT is preserved by the
> 
> general lack of interest shown towards getting involved with its upkeep. It's
> 
> also bottlenecked by its volunteer institutional structure. It would be hard
> to 
> go out and make major changes to the Trail with such a sparse volunteer 
> framework. The last significant improvement done to the AT was during its
> CCC-era 
> installation. The last type of damaging activity of which you speak was the 
> installation of the Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway right over the top
> of 
> the Trail. If you ask me this wasn't done by any special lobby seeking to
> make 
> things easier, it was done by corrupt politicians seeking to blast the idea
> of 
> a Barbarian Utopia out from underneath Benton MacKaye. It worked, he quit the
> 
> Project in reaction to the insult. Benton was proven right by the fact that 
> the ridges those highways now cross are more valuable as preserved nature
> than 
> just another public thoroughfare. There were plenty of other places where 
> ridgetop scenic drives could have been built over further west in the
> Appalachians. 
> 
>             The easiest way to change those guidelines is to minimize their 
> seriousness or intention in AT intercourse. That has always been more of an 
> internal action, in my experience, than external. The AT is a Space Shuttle 
> transport tractor being run with a VW engine. That isn't unintentional...
> 
> 
Ah, we agree in so many ways but are looking at it from different angles.

It's difficult to change rules and guidlines--that's a type of the expense I
was talking about. But we are a mass society: we are able to do extraordinary
things virtually overnight if a fad dictates that we do it.  Do not
underestimate the power of the American Whim which can sweep away all before
it.  The Patriot Act should be evidence enough for that.

I don't know the history of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  I do know that at that
time it was thought that the ability to drive to remote places was considered a
good thing.  New York City built some of its highways with the promise that
drivers would get the advantage of viewing the scenery.(!)  Likely there were
diverse interests involved in building the road. To explain it as a deep
conspiracy to thwart a philosophical movement is to give those people way too
much credit.

The CCC was a government project to provide jobs to desperately poor,
potentially dangerous (if they couldn't eat) young men.  It's a case where the
expense I was talking about to build trail was less than the consequence of not
doing anything.  

They also built roads and bridges.  My father-in-law planted Kudzu--to combat
erosion. Far seeing? I think not.

The Space Shuttle does, in fact have a VW engine relatively speaking and I
agree, none of this is unintentional.

JestBill  Ga--->Me '03


		
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