How I Got Involved
My journey with the Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy nominally began in the spring of 2008. Fresh off my first half-marathon finish, a friend told me that the Rachel Carson Trail Challenge would be a good next step, and that my training for a road half marathon would serve me well as sufficient preparation to take on the then-34-mile Challenge. (Note: that suggestion was incorrect.)
Fast forward a couple months, to June 21, 2008. I had maintained my “fitness” with some additional running, a bit of hiking, and a couple laps up a steep hill in my neighborhood for good measure (and to break in my brand-new trail shoes). I felt ready and was eager for the predawn start at Harrison Hills Park, confident that the hike would be challenging but manageable. In retrospect, I now realize that the start that morning, along with the first 30 or so miles that day, were just a prelude to a journey that continues to this day.
My real journey with the Challenge, the Trail itself and the Conservancy more broadly began in earnest on a fallen log in a clearing along Crouse Run. That’s where I first cried uncle and laid down, broken, with all but one other companion having dropped out. And that’s where I started saying things that I thought people only said in movies, in places far more extreme than a valley behind what is now a pizza parlor. Things like “just tell them where you left me…” and “I’m just going to lay here a bit longer…” and other—less appropriate—observations about the event. The next few hours as I dragged myself to the finish were…difficult. And the next few days did not see much improvement.
But once the fatigue and nausea subsided, lessons became clear. Lessons about the humility that is required to endure a long day on your feet, the food and water required to fuel such days, and the training—the significant training—that is required to prepare your body and mind for the Challenge. For several years after my first Challenge, I continued to be drawn to the event and the suffering it brought with it. I experimented with different distances, trained harder, and even ran the Trail here and there. During those years, my relationship with the Rachel Carson Trail was mostly a solitary pursuit—competing with myself and trying to better my own results.
Then, having tried most of the options available (both directions, whole and half Challenges alike), I felt drawn to something else—not just the Challenge, but the Rachel Carson Trail itself. A trail that seemed to be hidden in plain sight. I became fascinated with how it exists in places where many people go about their daily lives—yet they know nothing about what those yellow rectangles mean. I was inspired by the regular folks who show up—year after year—to spend one of the longest days of the year making and handing out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to sweaty, exhausted strangers. Or the people who spend the other three seasons cutting trees and building steps in the middle of the woods, sometimes miles from any road. To put it bluntly, I began to love the trail and the people who loved it back—because I was one of them.
And that love is what drew me to serve. To join the volunteers, managers, and the board members who make this whole thing work and who keep the culture of this trail alive.
As so many journeys do, my own journey with the Rachel Carson Trail eventually led me back to that clearing this past summer as a Board member on a forest bathing hike (which I strongly encourage people to try). We were instructed to pick a spot to reflect and pay attention. I chose a spot staring straight at my log, which, believe it or not, is still there. Of course, it is a bit more decomposed than it was that summer afternoon in 2008 (I know the feeling). But like that log, I’m still around. Although my role has changed, I’m still hiking, still trying to spend as much time as possible in these beautiful Western Pennsylvania hills, and—perhaps most important—I’m still trying to learn lessons from the land and this Trail we all love so much.