Trails

I’ve done a lot of hiking in my life. As a kid I’d be lured by the promise of treats on the mountaintop. Then I’d go grudgingly during my teenage years as a way to mollify my parents. And now as an adult I’m always eagerly looking for any possible way to get outside.

Throughout these hikes I’ve gone through a wide array of biomes. Yet no matter whether you’re walking through towering sequoias, shrubby alpine moors, or sere desserts you are still following in the footsteps of those before you. The people who decided that this is a sight worth seeing, a trip worth the journey.

I am always so thankful to those groups. Breaking a trail is arduous, backbreaking work. Maintaining it can be even harder. It requires constant vigilance to ensure that the trail is always passable. Yet also requires restraint to only clear what is needed to let hikers experience the full effect of the land.

It’s also thankless work. Trails are the means to an end, but in their ideal form feel so natural that they blend into the landscape and experience. For myself, I certainly don’t notice the trail unless it is poor or obstructed. On the instances that I do it always feels jarring and unwelcome.

It can be so easy to dismiss the work of the people before us. Whether it be parents or mentors or predecessors in a job. But the work that they have done in smoothing a path can’t be overstated. We are all of us standing on the shoulders of giants, who are in turn standing on more giants. And we should take the opportunity to recognize this whenever we cna.