The Trail has Been Kind

Letter from Away — April 24, 2021

Like many modern Americans, I now own a device that tells me how much walking I’ve done. I scoffed at these when the first apple watches came out, TMI strapped to our arms.

I said I would not be a prisoner to the step count. Curiosity took over when I discovered the health app installed on my phone, a little heart-shaped icon too cute to ignore. That was two years ago. Now I have goals.

At first, I walked around town seeking as many ways as possible to transit the same exact set of streets I had walked the previous day. After a year or so, and given my desire to avoid a summer-crowded downtown in the plague times, the limits of this plan began to become apparent. The winter option of walking the aisles of a big-box store was fraught with unmasked, close-talking friends, as starved for human contact as I but without the proximity alarms I’ve developed in the past year.

I began to visit cemeteries, admiring the human expression and artistry of monuments while in pursuit of unpaved ground for my tired feet.

My COVID-buddy came to the rescue last fall, inviting me to join him on one of the many land trust and preserve trails that have recently proliferated like wild mushrooms after an autumn rain. So far, I’ve visited more than a dozen of these mostly woodland paradises, each one filled with enough beauty and sweet air to make me forget step counts and remember why I’m alive.

Most of the trails I’ve walked are loops of about a mile (slightly more than 2000 steps) and sometimes I walk around twice or take a side spur. Between intentional walks in beautiful places, circumnavigation of nearby cemeteries, and necessary trips to the grocery store I’m averaging a couple of miles a day.

On the trail and in the grassy verges of cemeteries I adjust for uneven ground, breathe more deeply, and connect with the soft forgiving surface of the earth. My senses more fully engage and the wild world surprises me. Trees creak as they rub against one another, migratory birds startle with song, streams pour themes and cantatas over rocks and along ravines.

At the same time that they allow me to commune more freely with what surrounds the trail, those life-saving cleats are doing an excellent job of tearing up fragile moss and lichen and debarking surface roots. I try to keep my steps to ice patches but our 21st century freeze-thaw cycles have made it difficult to stay off the vulnerable plant matter. And rock hopping in cleats can be as dangerous as walking on ice without them.

The weather patterns have also made for early mud. Since late February the combination of ice and mud, and our desire to stride confidently through it all, have torn up the trails. Churned up soil, deep gooey pits of it, trap our boots and turn to ridges of clay. The next hiker walks around the edges of the mess and makes it wider, threatening more of the habitat we come to the woods to enjoy.

I could pretend I’m part of nature’s plan, churning summer’s soft bed of leaf mold and pine needles into moist rich soil under the not-so-gentle soles of my high tech boots, but it’s really just me deciding that freedom to let my eyes wander is of higher value than a mindful close observance of the earth under my feet.

I can tell myself that dogged focus on roots and rocks calls the eye away from the gentle, whispering beauty of newborn leaves. Or, I can recognize my part in the exchange that comes with this wild communion.

The trail has been good to many of us this past year. Now it’s our turn to say thank you.

Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who has lived in Midcoast Maine since 1988. Letter From Away has appeared online and in print, on and off since 1992, and is published here on a weekly basis.

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