Every morning during Upper Valley High School Trail Corps season, 11 teenagers and several Upper Valley Trails Alliance staff members congregate in the parking lot of our Norwich office.

We crack jokes as we unlock the tool shed and shuffle in and out, organizing equipment for the day’s work. Before we pack into the old, boat-like rental vans to set out to our trail work destination, I call the group of students into a ring.

In the dewy morning sunlight, I read a short passage of literature or poetry. Sometimes it’s simply a one-line proverb, other times a lengthier, abstract poem. It could also be excerpts from classic literature, such as Henry David Thoreau’s musings from Walden.

This is my customary Monday morning invitation, courtesy of Thoreau: “If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again — if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man (or woman) — then you are ready for a walk.”

It can be somewhat awkward: a circle of sleepy faces watching as I read them poetry before trail work. They smile and nod when I finish reading, occasionally bolting for the van before the last words of the passage are spoken.

Whether these words remain in the thoughts of students throughout the day or simply dissipate as soon as the radio is turned up during the van rides, I’m not sure. Nonetheless, I offer these short reflections because I believe that experiences in nature craft much of what we term “humanities” — art, music, literature, philosophy and language. We owe our humanity to nature, and repay our debt to it when we turn to the woods and mountains with compassionate hands.

Trail work, for me, epitomizes the intersection of humanity and nature. The challenge in trail building is to create a space that remains natural, yet to do so with our very human hands, techniques and tools. Our work on the trails — often removing invasive species and building water bars for drainage — is not merely environmental. Nor is it a purely human one, despite our insistence on carving the most walkable routes.

The paradox of building a trail is that you are building a space for humans within a space that has resisted human progress. The woods are the way they are because society has been kept out, for one reason or another. Yet in many of these preserved natural areas, we as a population have managed to enter into nature’s boudoir, maintaining our human desire to explore its most intimate places, all the while respecting her integrity.

UVTA’s slogan — promoting trails, connecting communities — balances these two principles: preservation and people, nature and society, existing harmoniously.

This is where we stray from Thoreau’s call to the woods. Perhaps we seek the woods for reasons other than solitude and an escape from humanity. We in the Trail Corps are always ready for a walk, but not in order to leave behind father or mother or brother or sister and never see them again. We walk in the woods in order that father and mother and brother and sister might feel more invited to join us there, and we leave our human trace there for them to follow.

Building trails doesn’t elevate humanity, nor does it erase nature. It simply allows us and others to access our small “place in the family of things,” as poet Mary Oliver terms it.

So I read them passages every morning before Trail Corps, because as much as I hope that human wisdom and virtue influence our experience out in the woods, I also hope our experience in nature can shape the humans we become. As humans we build these trails with certain limitations, but with respect and caring, that is enough.

Victoria Pipas is leader of this summer’s Upper Valley High School Trail Corps, part of UVTA’s Outdoor Odyssey program. Visit www.uvtrails.org for more info.