“Trail Work is a Bottomless Pit” – Why Volunteering is More Important than Ever
By Michael McDaniel I CDTC Technical Field Specialist
“Trail work is a bottomless pit.” It was a joke first introduced to me years ago during a training, in which fellow crew leaders were offering each other advice. It was a way to say, “Do what you can and give this work your all, but in the end, a trail builder can dig and shape and reroute and log out for the rest of their days without truly keeping up.”
During that season, I began to realize the scale of things: the sheer amount of existing trails versus the comparatively small but mighty labor force tasked with maintaining them. I was amazed and sometimes overwhelmed by how much dedication went into each step, each turn, and each seemingly minuscule detail of every trail I walked and worked on.
Michael and Clear Creek County partners carry a timber for turnpike reconstruction.
A trail really exists as a living, breathing thing, and like any relationship, it requires attention, care, and consistency. My favorite way to relate to this work is summed up by the idea that love for something truly amounts to one’s attention to it. Maintaining and constructing trails amounts to undivided attention and offering of one’s time. There remains no real substitute.
On each trail I’m working, I return to every problem, every detail, considering, and reassessing – a little more off the backslope here; no, a larger rock there, etc.. Clearing a drain may take thirty minutes. There may be thirty drains in a section, not to mention overgrown brush, fallen trees, and sloughed tread. If you’ve ever volunteered or worked with a trail crew, you can probably relate to this feeling.
A discrepancy presents itself in the mountain of work required of so few hands. So whether or not you’ve volunteered on a trail maintenance project before, I encourage you to do so now. Volunteer efforts cannot entirely replace the current disruption of professionals in the trail building industry; however, volunteerism has now become more important than ever.
Many agencies are relying on organized volunteer efforts this year to help maintain their trails. My hope is that everyone from the public, to whom these lands truly belong, will give attention to the trails they love: by learning about trail work through an educational course, volunteering their time on a project, or calling their representatives to protect trails and federal trail builders.
Volunteers make crush in Yellowstone National Park.
Trail work is a bottomless pit and I will dig with joyful enthusiasm. I will return to the first half of the expression: do what you can and give this work your all. With attention as my most powerful tool, I will remain undaunted by the work ahead. We are stronger when we are united, and I look forward to linking arms with folks this summer in the effort of protecting our amazing natural resources along the Continental Divide Trail and beyond.
If you are interested in learning more or volunteering on a CDT trail crew project, click here!
