The Glory of Trailbuilding

Anyone else having a great time trail-building?

And I don’t mean for some big fancy resort.

I’m talking about exploring local vacant lands and cutting in your own nifty trails.

Of course this is only as involved as one guy with pruners can do, but what

great fun and exercise…and it creates a longterm resource from nothing.

Get the lay of the land, figure out the best route, and march along tossing

brush, fallen branches and old rotted logs out of the way. Prune small limbs,

brush, prickers, saplings as you go. Very rare need for a handsaw for

heavy fallen trees/limbs. It’s amazing how easy you can lay out trails

with hardly any cutting at all. Cut at or below ground level. 3-4′ wide.

I can make the most beautiful variety of trails and loops this way, quickly,

then all they need is to be kept open each year.

Now all of this is unofficial and some folks might yell about the need

for expert committee approval (and the need to insert such trail-building

into the career machinations of planners and budgeteers, which of course

tends to distort and delay trails endlessly) and some might worry about

environmental concerns, but common sense prevails. Cut only weed-type

growth of the commonest types. If anyone cares, discovers, or objects

for any rational reason, when closed such a trail grows over in a year.

Around here, though, in car-land suburbia we have effectively ZERO

human-presence-related burden on the land (besides all the Development).

Just a handful of people ever go outside anywhere other than a few

tiny ped-parks or concentrated public hunting acres. There isn’t much

ORV’ing anymore, so vacant unassigned land is totally unused. So the

more trails the better. —I can still go by trails on undeveloped land

all the way to town, 5 miles, with hectic suburbia paralleling my route

within a mile on either side, and not see a soul all the way. I’m sure no

one around here would even believe that this could be done. I’ve never

seen another soul out there in the 30 years I’ve been rumpushing around,

building and using these old trails. (But time looks to run out within 5 years.)