Sharing the wild: Cutting a new trail to a lonely destination

Sometimes the work is slow enough that you might as well sit down. Scoot on your butt and pull each blueberry stem in turn, until it curves under the moss, red and damp and rooty, and you can’t pull any farther. Snip the stem off, leaving the sharp stub tucked carefully beneath the earth. Grab the next one. read more

The words in the title, “a lonley destination,” struck me. Also, in the story, this: “a trail is the absence of obstacles. Somebody removed them.” I’ll add: …removed them, and may have carved, chiselled, sawed, pruned, shaped, and reshaped the obstacles into a corridor for passage. The process can be long and frustrating sometimes, scouting potential routes that lead to cliff dead ends, or terrain so rocky, wet, or full of briers you just can’t wish the same fate of “obstacles” on anyone else building, or traveling, after the fate has been sealed with waypoints that we hope will not lead to wavering. How traveled will the route be, how popular, will someone get to feel as alone as I do bushwhacking what may become a potential thread that sews a scar into the pristine contours of leaf litter and rock detritus? Will they find comfort or joy in a simple boulder, a stream, a  side slope of plant life that hugs them?  I always hope the future, the users,  can find solitude, or solace, when they travel whether they need it or not. Though travelers may feel “lonely,” I hope they never feel alone on the trail. Others, human and other, have trod, others have labored, others have toiled to make this bed to tread, and nature envelopes all that pass, bathing in it, alone is not an option.  I hope the scar does not intrude, and everyone can feel nature’s interlude. 

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