By Emily Galbraith, Communications and Development Coordinator
Every year, people across the country unite on the first Saturday of June in celebration of National Trails Day. This holiday is the perfect opportunity to get outdoors, connect with your community, and give back to the trails you love.
Trails connect us to nature and to each other, and National Trails Day is an invitation to experience that connection first hand. Listen to the birdsong, enjoy the fresh air, and take in the beauty of the trees, blooming flowers, and the natural world around you. There’s nothing quite like being present in the outdoors.
FOLAR’s Environmental Stewardship Coordinator, Elise Neuscheler, recently went on an expedition through the cliffside trails of the Himalayas.
“During my time hiking in the Himalayas, the NOLS class walked the trails of many generations of local peoples. The care and dedication to the creation and maintenance of these trails was inspiring. Often, we would point out a steep wall holding up a precarious curve, or gawk at the thousands of hand-placed stones that formed parts of the trail. It struck me how meaningful trails are in those moments; improving human access in natural spaces, allowing us to see areas that would have been next to impossible to reach otherwise. Though much of it is about going from point A to point B, trails allow you to feel the land along the way. Each step is an echo of a step taken in the past, and a place of learning about the life that surrounds us and the planet itself.”
Wherever you are in the world, humans are always making paths. We have walked through forests since the very beginning to reach each other, to find food, and to explore. The roads here in Petersburg today were not laid out on an empty slate. They grew from the footpaths of the indigenous people who lived here first (for more, see A History of Roads in Virginia). For Elise and her fellow hikers, the trails they used in the mountains of Northern India were as original as it gets.
“These winding walkways through difficult terrain are to this day the only means for communities to visit one another – since we were there during wedding season, we often saw folks walking hours to attend their friends’ celebrations in villages across the mountains.” It is essential to our connectedness and well-being – and our human identity – to travel through the outdoors.
You may get a sense of this connectedness as you take a walk on your local stretch of the Appomattox River Trail.. Already a major destination in Greater Richmond and Virginia, the Appomattox River Trail has dozens of sites to visit, and miles of opportunity for connecting with nature and with your community. And there’s more on the way. FOLAR has helped secure full funding for several key stretches of trail that will become reality in coming years, including almost two miles through Petersburg that will connect the Tri-Cities to Richmond via the Fall Line Trail.
We know that the trail has an impact on your quality of life. We will continue working alongside you to increase access to our green spaces, and that the trails and public lands we cherish are preserved for generations to come. They need our help more than ever, and this is the perfect time to give back.
Let’s get outside this National Trails Day care for the Appomattox River Trail, and take advantage of all that it has to offer. If you’re interested in making a lasting impact on FOLAR’s trail-backing and river stewardship, you can make a donation towards our next 25 years. Together, we can make a lasting impact!
