L.M. Browning Interviews Don Hudson of the International Appalachian Trail

Each year Hiraeth Press donates 1% of its annual profits to an eco-​​charity. Our 2011 we lent our sup­port to the Sierra Club. This year, in honor of Border Crossings: Walking the Haiku Path on the International Appalachian Trail by Ian Marshall, we have chosen the International Appalachian Trail as the 2012 recip­ient.

Most of you are familiar with the Appalachian Trail or the “AT” as it is known, which runs from Springer Mountain, Georgia north through four­teen states to Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park, Maine; roughly 2,180 miles in all. The lesser-​​known sister trail to the AT is the International Appalachian Trail/​ Sentier International des Appalaches or (IAT/​SIA). The IAT picks up at Mount Katahdin and extends north­ward winding its way to Crow Head in Newfoundland; adding an addi­tional 1800 miles of hiking trails as it fol­lows the remainder of the Appalachian Mountains in North American.

Many believe that the Appalachian Mountains end in Maine where the AT ends, when in fact the range stretches through North America and across the Atlantic Ocean. As the IAT com­mu­nity explains: “The Appalachian Mountains were formed more than 250 Million years ago during the Paleozoic Era, when the Earth’s plates col­lided to form the super­con­ti­nent Pangea. They strad­dled the cen­tral part of that con­ti­nent in what is today eastern North America, eastern Greenland, Western Europe, and north­west Africa. When today’s con­ti­nents sep­a­rated to form the Atlantic Ocean, rem­nants of the Appalachians ended up in the eastern United States, eastern Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, the British Isles, Brittany, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and Algeria.”

On Earth Day 1994 Governor Joe Brennan announced his inten­tion to estab­lish what is now the IAT. It began as an idea to create a trail that would link the highest peaks in Maine, New Brunswick and Quebec. The project has since grown beyond what those ini­tially involved could have ever hoped for. Since 1995 the trail has been extended north twice. Originally the end of the trail was at Mont Jacques Cartier in Quebec but a new trail was made pushing east, bringing the end to the Gaspé Peninsula at Cap Gaspé. Then, in 2002, the trail was expanded again upon a request from a Newfoundland del­e­ga­tion, up through the Appalachians of Newfoundland to Belle Isle. At present, the trail is nearly 1800 miles long.

Listing Donald’s achieve­ments is no small thing. He first devel­oped an interest in plants and ecology in the early 1970s while leading expe­di­tions for the Chewonki Foundation in Maine and Quebec.  He grad­u­ated from Dartmouth College in 1972 with a degree in French and Environmental Studies.  He earned a Master’s degree from the University of Vermont and a Ph.D. from Indiana University. Don became the Head Naturalist at Chewonki in 1982, was appointed President in 1991, retiring in July 2010.

Don is a founding member of the International Appalachian Trail, the Friends of Baxter State Park and the Maine Green Campus Consortium. He is cur­rently Chair of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway Advisory Council.  He received the Green Heart award from the Quimby Family Foundation in 2009. Then in 2010 he was bestowed an Environmental Merit Lifetime Achievement award from the US EPA, the Distinguished Service Award from the University of Maine at Machias, the Espy Conservation Award from the Maine Land Trust Network and an Outdoor Hero Award from LL Bean.

Former Maine Commissioner of the Department of Conservation, Dick Anderson con­ceived the idea in October 1993 and asked Chloe Chunn, Dick Davies and me to help.  Dick and I had trav­eled to the Chic Choc Mountains on the Gaspé in 1988 and had talked there about the common origin of the land­scape and eco­log­ical com­mu­ni­ties.  I sus­pect that trip might have helped the idea of the trail to gel in Dick’s mind.  A few months later, on Earth Day, April 22, 1994, Governor Joe Brennan announced the plan.

Hudson: I met Dick in 1988 when he invited me to accom­pany a group of wildlife biol­o­gist on that trip to the Chic Choc Mountains on the Gaspé.  Dick was man­aging a caribou rein­tro­duc­tion project in Maine, and the group was inter­ested to visit a place where caribou are still a part of the wildlife com­mu­nity.  Dick thought that my expe­ri­ence with Arctic/​alpine plant com­mu­ni­ties – the source of much of the food that the Chic Choc caribou eat – might be a help to the group.  We stayed in touch through the years until Dick described the idea of the IAT to me one Saturday morning in October 1993 at the Main Street Deli in Bath, Maine.  We’ve been working very closely together ever since.

Hudson: A long dis­tance trail is always a work-​​in-​​progress, and the biggest hurdle to its estab­lish­ment is to secure the sup­port and coop­er­a­tion of the many landowners over whose land the trail must pass.  Next, espe­cially in the case of this inter­na­tional project, is to help estab­lish well func­tioning groups to help put the trail on the ground and to main­tain it through time.  Lastly, a long dis­tance trail is nothing if people don’t walk on it!  Public aware­ness, accep­tance, and enthu­siasm for the project make up the for­mula for its even­tual suc­cess.

Hudson: Yes!  When we wrote Joe’s short speech announcing the trail, we described it as an “exten­sion” of the Appalachian Trail.  Well, that was a mis­take!  The AT is a national trea­sure that has brass plaques marking the two ends.  Recently retired Appalachian Trail Conservancy Executive Director David Startzell spoke with Dick a day after our announce­ment and sug­gested that we describe the project as a “con­necting” trail to the AT.  With that change, we over­came the lion’s share of objec­tions.  It’s fair to say that some influ­en­tial state trail and park man­agers took more than a decade to warm up to the idea of the IAT.  It’s very hard now to find someone who is not at least intrigued by the IAT.

Hudson: Dick Anderson and I trav­eled recently to West Virginia to help cel­e­brate Dave Startzell’s retire­ment at a spe­cial party orga­nized by the staff and board of the ATC.  We met the new Executive Director Mark Wenger and made ten­ta­tive plans to show him stretches of the IAT in Quebec this coming summer.  Dave and his wife will also be joining us in Reykjavik, Iceland in June at the first annual meeting of the IAT that will include our European chap­ters.  I’d say we have a very pos­i­tive and pro­duc­tive rela­tion­ship with the ATC.

Hudson: Not really!  The Appalachian moun­tains in Canada sup­port less forest and more tundra-​​like veg­e­ta­tion than their southern coun­ter­parts, so they look more rugged and chal­lenging from a dis­tance.  However, when you put your feet on the ground, you are walking on very sim­ilar ter­rain made of the same sorts of rock that you can find throughout the entire range.  It is true that there are stretches of very new trail in some parts, and so it will have a dif­ferent feel than a trail that is decades older.  Nevertheless, the walking is com­pa­rable.

Hudson: Yes! Over 100 people have walked the orig­inal IAT in Quebec, New Brunswick and Maine, and the entire length of the AT.  Since we added Newfoundland to the trail in North America in 2003, a couple of dozen have walked from Katahdin in Maine to Crow Head in Newfoundland and along the entire length of the AT.  There have also been a small handful of long dis­tance hikers who have walked from Key West to Crow Head along a route that includes both the AT and the IAT, which they call the Eastern Continental Trail.

Hudson: I have been to the top of sev­eral of the highest peaks in the Chic Choc Mountains of the Gaspé and the Long Range Mountains of Newfoundland.  I’ve walked along the border between Maine and New Brunswick (no other trail in the world fol­lows an inter­na­tional border!), through bogs and along dra­matic shore­lines.  You can watch whales from the IAT at Cap Gaspé.  However, some of the most mem­o­rable expe­ri­ences have been the times that we worked on restoring a fire warden’s cabin at the top of Deasey Mountain or cleared out a derelict beaver dam that had caused flooding of the trail.

Hudson: It goes without saying that the whale watching oppor­tu­ni­ties from the tip of the Gaspé or the northern penin­sula of Newfoundland might be the most extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ences along the trail.  Where else can you see such things from a hiking trail?  There are large num­bers of moose and caribou to see throughout Newfoundland, and a small herd of caribou also occurs in the moun­tains of the Gaspé.  In addi­tion to moose in Maine, hikers may catch a glimpse of a black bear, though these ani­mals are a bit more wary than moose.  Birdwatchers will be treated to a wide variety of hawks and owls, as well as to the full suite of boreal forest species – from Boreal Chickadees and Three-​​toed Woodpeckers to col­orful wood war­blers like the Canada Warbler.  Harlequin Ducks, Atlantic Puffins, Northern Gannets, Common Murres, and dozens of other coastal and pelagic birds can be seen along stretches of the trail on the Gaspé, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.  Finally, if you hike along stretches of the IAT that follow the Tobique, Upsalquitch or Restigouche Rivers in New Brunswick during the spring or fall, you are likely to see Atlantic Salmon – some leaping right out of the water as they make their way upstream through rapids and over small falls.

Hudson: The IAT main­tains a web­site with pages for each of the almost 20 chap­ters.  Many of the chap­ters are very new and trail routes are just being iden­ti­fied.  Interested hikers can find detailed maps and guides for the older chap­ters in North America.  Contact infor­ma­tion is promi­nently dis­played on the web­site, and we are accus­tomed to responding to indi­vidual inquiries when nec­es­sary to help a long dis­tance hiker figure out how to get on and off the trail.

Hudson: We knew about the common geo­logic his­tory of the moun­tains on either side of the Atlantic when we made our announce­ment in 1994, and we used that story to help explain the vision of con­necting the three highest moun­tains in Maine, New Brunswick and Quebec (we call it Phase 1 now).  We used the same ratio­nale in 2003 to push the trail on into Newfoundland through Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island (Phase 2).  Yet, none of use imag­ined that we’d be cel­e­brating the end of the trail at Crow Head, Newfoundland, let alone that this would be the end of the trail in North America, with thou­sands of miles yet to go in Europe... and, North Africa.

Hudson: The Canadian chap­ters of the IAT have all received some level of finan­cial sup­port to create the trail, including a couple of mil­lion dol­lars in Quebec to build over 200 miles of new trail and dozens of shel­ters and rustic moun­tain chalets along the entire 400 mile length of their trail.  We received a small state grant in Maine to build a 2-​​mile stretch of new trail.  However, our needs have been fewer as we have been able to take advan­tage of existing trails to knit together the length of the IAT in Maine.

Hudson: Thirty-​​five per­cent of the AT fol­lowed roads in 1937 when the trail was first declared “com­plete”.  They have been working ever since to get the trail into the woods and off the roads.  Likewise, we’ve got stretches of the IAT along roads in each of the 6 chap­ters of the IAT in North America, and we are working away at moving the trail into the woods wher­ever pos­sible.  I can think of a couple of small moun­tains north­east of Baxter State Park over which we would love to route the trail.  However, we antic­i­pate that it will take many more years to win the approval of landowners.  We hang on to the goals and chip away over time!  Most people rec­og­nize that these long dis­tance trails are instru­ments of eco­nomic devel­op­ment for the rural com­mu­ni­ties through which they pass.  That was Benton MacKaye’s vision when he first pro­posed the AT in 1921, and it’s the vision of those crafting the trail in places as far flung as Patton, Maine and Glen Coe, Scotland, or Tide Head, New Brunswick and Guadalupe, Spain.  These long dis­tance trails help rural com­mu­ni­ties cel­e­brate their strong con­nec­tion to nature, and we all yearn for those chances to touch the Earth.

Hudson: Yes! Absolutely!  First and fore­most, hikers make trails.  A few people like Dick Anderson have the big vision of linking people and places of common geo­log­ical and bio­log­ical origin.  The rest of us can make it happen by joining a chapter and picking up a small handsaw or a pair of clip­pers to help keep the path clear.  However, the real trail builders are the hun­dreds and thou­sands of walkers who make the path well worn by taking the time to enjoy a walk of a few hours, days, or – who knows? – a few months.  That’s just what Ian Marshall has done!

Hudson: We’ve got a lot of work to do in the coming months and years to help chap­ters stand up throughout the entire length of the growing trail.  In some places like Scandinavia, there is a great deal of expe­ri­ence and energy for cre­ating and man­aging a trail.  Scotland has recently announced its route from the north­east to the south­west coasts, along the Cape Wrath Trail, the West Highland Way and the Firth o Clyde Rotary Trail.  Each of our new chap­ters is hard at work to build a working trail man­age­ment group, develop its route, and nego­tiate just where its trail will meet up with that of its neigh­bors at the border.  The biggest goal, I believe, is to have a near con­tin­uous line on a map before the end of the decade throughout the full length of the trail.  No doubt we have a lot of work!  The idea is just now being explored in Morocco and Portugal, for example.  However, everyone is making progress, and I look for­ward very much to seeing the maps and hearing the plans when we gather in Reykjavik, Iceland in June.

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For more infor­ma­tion on the IAT go to: www​.iat​-sia​.com

Pick up Border Crossings: Walking the Haiku Path on the International Appalachian Trail by Ian Marshall on February 24^th and read Ian’s per­sonal accounts of hiking the IAT. To pre­view the intro­duc­tion of Border Crossings click here»