Although I had been a hiker and recreational outdoorsman for more than 50 years, I did not truly step into the world of trails until a year ago.
After 40 years as a professional educator, it was only last November when I was lucky enough to start working for the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. I quickly learned that I did not know nearly as much about trails and outdoor recreation as I somewhat arrogantly assumed.
I have learned that the trails world is a wonderful and complex web of nonprofit organizations, businesses, government entities and personalities. While we sometimes use the word system to describe trails belonging to our state, region or town, this implies an order and interconnectedness that rarely exists.
Rather than a unified, organized system, I have come to understand our regional and statewide groupings of trails more as patchworks. One small local network of trails I recently mapped crosses through the property of four different landowners and has no central trail manager or maintainer.
Others cross the lands of town forests, state parks, federal lands, private lands or conserved lands. Few are permanently conserved, and we are all dependent on the generosity and good will of our landowners — along with the hard work of our trail groups and volunteers — for access to trails, nature and the physical and economic health of our communities that this access provides.
The sometimes complex and disorganized nature of this arrangement is somewhat perplexing and concerning, especially considering our love for our natural landscape and our economic dependence on this infrastructure. Together, Vermont and New Hampshire generate more than $12.3 billion in outdoor recreation-related consumer spending, according to the Outdoor Industry Association, with 134,000 people were employed in recreation jobs.
To put this in perspective, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, about 100,000 citizens worked in manufacturing jobs in both states. These numbers are even more striking considering the general agreement that we want and need our young people to stay, and they want and need jobs and access to outdoor recreation.
With all of this in mind, virtually everyone within the world of trails understands the importance of our infrastructure and the need to bring more order, unity and resources to our efforts. The UVTA was created to form a regional alliance of member organizations and individuals to build, care for and advocate for Upper Valley trails.
I am honored to have recently become chairman of the Vermont Trails and Greenways Council, formed many years ago with the specific purpose of bringing together nonprofit trail groups across Vermont to help guide the state on trail and outdoor recreation issues. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott has also just received recommendations from the Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative, created upon his executive order with the goal of bringing together an even broader mix of stakeholders, including nonprofits, businesses and government.
Like the UVTA, virtually all nonprofit member trail organizations of VTGC and VOREC depend on their own member groups and an army of volunteers.
These are challenging, time consuming and worthwhile initiatives helping to counterbalance the local — and often passionately independent — nature of our patchwork world of trails. Local town and specific trail-use loyalty and passion are necessary for the creation and care of a trail, but these strengths sometimes lead us to focus on protecting just our own turf.
Thankfully, with the help of these regional and statewide trail initiatives, and some visionary and dedicated colleagues, I now understand that greater unity is critical to building and maintaining a true and lasting network of trails, within and beyond town and state borders.
Randy Richardson is development director at the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. He can be reached at randy.richardson@uvtrails.org or 802-649- 9075.