dara marks marino

Ok this is getting ridiculous. There is such a huge power struggle between trail users going on in Flagstaff. I think it has been going on probably since people started using the trails for recreation many decades ago, but it seems really out of hand these days. Two perfect examples:

Over here on the east side of town there are gobs of trails breaking off in every direction. Recently (maybe 2 months ago?) someone had the great idea to improve some of the trails that were little more than beaten paths or game trails and provide nice connections between them. This effectively allows us to not use the Pipeline (which frankly sucks as a trail anyway) and stay back in the woods as well as avoids some really difficult sections of single track making the ride that much more enjoyable. As soon as it was completed, someone came along and covered up the entrance to one of the sections. The next day, someone uncovered it. A week or so later, another section gets oblitered, then un-oblitered. And so on. Then one day Troy is out riding and saw a crew of ACE (American Conservation Experience) destroying some random section of the trail. He was told that it was because it was a “social trail”. WTF is wrong with a social trail? Isn’t that what all trails (except perhaps game trails) are? A place where someone decided, Hey, this would be a great place for me and anyone else to be able to travel along, enjoy our beautiful world, get some exercise, and otherwise embrace this life. The creating-destroying continues almost daily on that trail. I like to think I help the creating/maintaining at least a little bit by clearing off logs when I can, but really I know it is all just silly. So silly that I even saw this one spot of a very established trail, where the trail did a slight split to go around a pile of rocks and foliage, and someone decided that was just unnecessary and put a branch down to block off one of the sides. Frankly I think it was higher impact to move that branch from wherever s/he took it from to place it on to the trail.

The other perfect example is the New Deal Trail. Two of Flagstaff’s loyal mountain bikers took their own time and a large amount of energy to go out there and do a tremendous amount of work to clear off the dozens of downed trees that have accumulated along that trail. Usually that would only be done by an organized “trail maintenance” crew, but these guys did it of their own initiative. Not 1 week later, someone else went out there and MOVED ALL THE TREES BACK! Seriously! They went and deliberately messed up the trail! This accomplishes nothing more than creating additional impact to the forest because now everyone has to find a way around the downed trees, which requires them to go off the trail.

Why do the destroyers care so much? What is it they think they are “conserving” or what damage is it they think has been done by way of a trail in the forest? Should I also stop peeing in the woods, lest someone argue that is high impact too? The crazy thing is this is a power struggle between people who all want the same thing: to be able to enjoy this world we live in. For some reason though it has deteriorated in to making our forest experiences LESS enjoyable. Of all the things that need our time and energy, destroying trails is possibly the worst use of that time and energy. In parenting, this is called a “need for redirection”.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 1:09 pm and is filed under blah blah blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.