Establishing a Trail to My New Worksite

Such a still morning yesterday, as if the fog had paralyzed all movement. Except for me, groping my way my through a maze of fallen trees and a tangle of invasives that cover the ¾ acre patch of forest I’ve just started to restore. After tripping over the same branches and nearly stepping into the same hole as the last time I worked here, I decided it was time to establish a trail.

In the short term I simply want to improve access to my new work area, but in the long term the path I choose matters, because with repeated use it will become an established trail. I’ll be back and forth here dozens of times before I’m through removing invasives, and my foot traffic alone will wear a trail. With this in mind, I wanted to choose a route that will enable people of all ages to safely visit this area in the future.

I settled on a route that winds through an opening in a thicket of brush, avoids a boggy area, and goes around a nice group of sword ferns. The only plants my path tramples are Ivy vines, and I won’t be clearing them until the wet season.

It took me an hour to clear about 40’ of trail, sawing and lopping through dozens of fallen limbs and branches and filling in part of a Mountain Beaver burrow. I did not clear the path of duff, and the tread is not yet bare ground, but I used limbs to delineate the trail. I could not find a way around one fallen tree about 3’ in diameter, but maybe that’s OK. I imagined a couple of young kids following this trail in the future. I don’t think they’ll mind having to scramble over this log, in fact, knowing kids, it could be one of their favorite parts of the trail.