How a route enters the world

Trailmark 04 · 18 March 2024

Jeffrey
McMurtrie

Algonquin since he was eight, and a map made by pressing a button.

Trailmark audio

Episode 04 · 1:10:00

Jeffrey McMurtrie was eight the first time his father took him into Algonquin. His brother was six. The trip was a week, and every year after that his father added days to it. Jeffrey says he did not want to go. It was hot, there were bugs, none of his friends were there, and he would rather have been at home.

He maps it now. He paddles the route and presses a button on a Garmin at the turns, and the whole apparatus is that plus a charged battery. I asked whether the recording ruins the trip, because in my experience it does. You put the drone up and then you have to go back for the drone. You set the camera and then you walk back to the camera. He said the trips are the same as they were, and I think the reason is that a button takes a second and a camera takes an afternoon.

Nothing he makes is new ground. The routes were paddled long before he drew them and they will be paddled after. What he sells is the sheet of paper that tells you which bay you are in.

Trailmark 32 · 13 May 2024

Jack
Cornish

A suburban childhood, fifteen hundred miles, and falling for the network instead of the view.

Trailmark audio

Episode 32 · 1:29:00

Full episode at Trailmark

Jack Cornish grew up in suburban southeast London and still lives there. No canoe, no father with a route. He came to walking late.

Then he walked about fifteen hundred miles across Britain, and what he came back interested in was not the places. It was the path network. He calls it the extraordinary that is in the ordinary, which is his line and better than mine. A job came up at the Ramblers working on lost historic paths, he took it, and six years on he runs paths for them.

His paths are already there and have been for centuries. What goes missing is the right to walk them, and it goes missing quietly, because a path nobody uses stops appearing on the record and then stops being a path. The ground does not move. The permission does.

Trailmark 42 · 25 March 2024

Hap & Andrea
Wilson

Walking the ground, eagle nests, erratic boulders, and who is liable when a bridge fails.

Trailmark audio

Episode 42 · 1:08:00

Full episode at Trailmark

Hap and Andrea Wilson build trail out of Muskoka and Temagami, and they told me they do not rely on GPS and maps. They walk the property before anything is cut. Jeffrey sells the map. They are describing why they will not use it.

The walk is a survey. They look for sensitive plant life and for eagle nests, so the route can go around both. They also look for the reason anyone would walk it, which is usually a single object, an erratic boulder or a place where the ground does something. There are only a handful of sustainable trail builders in the country.

Then the part I had not thought about. A trail is a liability. Build a bridge or a boardwalk into it and the risk rises with the structure, and if it is not maintained the landowner is the one who answers. Jeffrey's route costs him a battery. Jack's costs a legal argument. Theirs costs somebody a Saturday, every year, forever.