Even though that guy from South Carolina did not find his way to the Appalachian Trail (and why is he still governor?), the events of last week pushed the famous trekking site into the national spotlight. Unfortunately, the connection is rather sordid, not just because the “Trail-as-excuse” is associated with this man’s unfaithfulness, but also because of the man himself – a hypocritical twit. It demeans that piece of land to have Sanford associated with it. The real Appalachian Trail, and the people behind its development, constitute one of the great stories in American history and progressive reform, so I thought it’d be nice to give some props to the real Trail, not Sanford’s lie.
I’m no historian of the Appalachian Trail (AT) but I know a little about it and its creation. My connection is more personal: I used to live on the Trail; it snaked its way through my small town, and we’d regularly use it for day hikes (I’ve not done the whole thing). As I sat on my stoop mornings with coffee, I’d often encounter trekkers along the AT who were doing most or all of it. That led me to read up a little about the famous path outside my front door, but mostly what I perused were outdoor publications about the Trail's route, hiking equipment - that sort of thing.
It wasn’t until later in college, after I had moved West far from the AT, that I learned about the people and purpose behind the Appalachian Trail. The guiding force from conception to development was Benton MacKaye (1879-1975), a forester who is equally famous for being one of the founding members of the Wilderness Society, along with Bob Marshall and Aldo Leopold. If you think MacKaye created the Appalachian Trail so the REI crowd has a place to try out their latest $300 hiking boots, Google or Wiki MacKaye and you’ll see there was a much more social, even political, motivation driving his Big Idea.
Born into a wealthy and creative family, MacKaye attended Harvard and in his early work as a forester was already framing conservation as a tool for social improvement – not just a profession to save trees. Like other activists during the Progressive Era, MacKaye was concerned about class issues, social alienation, industrialism, materialism, and of course the loss of nature to grimy cities, sprawling development, and resource depletion – lumbering, mining, grazing, factory farming. Sadly, his activist wife committed suicide in 1921, and that seemed to spur MacKaye even more into the sphere of large social causes. His plan for the AT, which followed shortly after his wife’s death, was one result.
Working with others like noted regional planner Lewis Mumford, MacKaye imagined the AT as a web that would connect and build healthy places along its nearly 2,200-mile route – a means to share and celebrate local cultures, a tool to design integrated communities, a way for people to experience a sustainable rural lifestyle. It was, MacKaye proposed, “a project in regional planning.”
Following in the steps of his hero Henry David Thoreau and his belief in the “tonic of nature,” MacKaye said the “object of the Appalachian Trail is to develop indigenous America.” Let's throw off the industrialism, commercialism, intolerance, and mob mentality that is destroying communities and undermining society, and rediscover the American character in a healthy relationship to the land. His language in the 1921 plan and later publications is filled with words like “democracy,” “culture,” “community,” “society,” “values,” and “spirit.” He is clearly not just designing a dirt path. As one scholar of the period writes, “MacKaye’s vision for the Appalachian Trail also may be seen to reach down into the farthest depths of the American political experience” (Ben Minteer, The Landscape of Reform).
MacKaye would go on to a long career as an author, activist, and practitioner in planning and conservation – one of the most important but often neglected voices – and his AT would be completed in 1937. Crossing through 14 states, the AT became the first National Scenic Trail in 1968. Benton MacKaye’s vision of a string of rural utopias along its path never materialized, but what’s there is pretty nice – a permanent testament to the power of the landscape to invoke, as MacKaye described it, “the spiritual reform in our society.”
Thank you Mark Sanford for not defiling the Appalachian Trail. As a great experiment in social improvement, it stands for everything you do not.