[ft-l] Re: What makes a good trail?

[calebe@fdn.com (Cal Ewing)]

I like my trails the way I like my governments...the leaster the better. In
fact, if I don't have a good chance of getting lost or possibly even injured
I might as well go to Starbucks where I can at least get some decent coffee.
The best trails are game trails. One must go slow and careful, just as
nature intended, staying oriented by sound and smell and the other five
senses, including common. Horses, I agree, are a menace to walking and
should be discouraged whereever possible. Cows are best dealt with by
walking around, being thankful to God that you're not one of them. Blazes
are wonderful if kept to an absolute maximum of one per mile. Any more
blazes than that are obtrusive and unnecessarily disfiguring to the local
flora. Especially those huge 4X12 hatchet-job-blazes that manage to turn
whole trees into traffic signals.  Why not remove the tree altogether and
put in its place a pole with a strobelight and a telephone and its own GPS
placard? The effect on the location is about the same and it would last a
lot longer. Over-blazing is insulting, too. Who of us needs to be reminded
more than twice or three times in a single day that we are idiots and have
no business in the outdoors? Not me, that's for sure,  especially when I'm
lost. Campsites are over-rated...they attract people and everybody knows how
hard it is to get rid of habituated people. A better solution is mandatory
LNT and stealth-camping except in a few select sacrifice areas that are
already paved over. If your campsite is discovered you would be issued a
citation and asked to leave. To many dammed people out there anyway.  Hide
the hell out of it I say, when building trails.
Keep it away from McDonalds, street lights, permanent dwellings and barking
dogs. Make it single-track, but just barely, a highway for humans but at a
price. Otherwise, someone will drive a truck through it (or an airboat) and
it'll become just like, well, Starbucks.

Caleb