KEEPERS of the TRAILS
Last Revised: March 08, 2007

This article first appeared in the Sunday, June 29, 1997 edition of the Kingsport Times-News. Reprinted with permission.

Nothing takes the place of two good, firm soles for a hiker who wants to walk the miles of trails that traverse our mountains. And nothing could replace the dozens of souls who make sure those trails aren't reclaimed by the wilderness.

Take Frank Oglesby. The Kingsport man liked hiking enough to found one of the first area clubs devoted to the activity 51 years ago, and he was realistic enough to know that if there wasn't some personal sacrifice involved by him and like-minded people, the Tennessee Eastman Hiking Club might not have a place to hike.

"We really didn't start the hiking club knowing we were going to get into all this work," Oglesby said with a laugh. "I was on a work trip earlier this spring on Holston Mountain, and I turned to someone and said, 'If I'd known it was going to be this much work, I might not have started this club."'

Users of the Appalachian Trail can be glad Oglesby was joking. The Eastman Hiking Club is marking its 50th year of volunteering labor for trail maintenance, and a few other clubs like the Old-Timers Hiking Club of Johnson City and the Konnarock Crew in Southwest Virginia -- give of their time likewise.

Most of the area's hiking trails are on government-owned land now, but the prospect of maintaining them is just too daunting for most rangers and naturalists. From their fledgling work day in April of 1946 when the club oversaw a little more than six miles of the Appalachian Trail, the Eastman Hikers have since bitten off several mouthfuls. The club is now responsible for 126 miles, stretching from Spivey Gap south of Erwin to Damascus, Va.

Overseeing a stretch of hiking trail can mean everything from merely trimming weeds along the edges to sawing down toppled trees to completely rerouting a trail. In the Old-Timers five-year existence, C.B. Willis has done it all. The club takes some of the load off the Eastman Hikers by claiming 12 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Beauty Spot to Unaka. The Old-Timers, so-named because all but two members are in their 60s and 70s, also groom Buffalo Mountain's trails.

"We'll have work days maybe 20 to 25 times a year, and we'll average a turnout of 12 each time," said Willis, who founded the Old-Timers. "We might work on the Appalachian Trail an average of 15 days a year, but it all depends on what the needs are. When (Hurricane) Opal came through here and left 50 or 60 trees on the trail in a blowdown, it was about a month solid we were up there.

"We like to hike and get out in the woods, and it was a duty and responsibility we just felt like we had to take. ...We report to the Eastman Hiking Club, and I don't think they worry about our section because they know we're going to take care of it."

When a hiker hits the trail and focuses in on the surroundings, or simply putting one foot in front of the other, it's easy to take for granted what is essentially a tiny dirt road through the wilderness. While some of those trails were blazed hundreds of years ago, others are as new as a sapling.

Any trail worker worth a decent pair of boots knows his way around a Pulaski, even if that worker has seen the town by that name in Tennessee and Virginia.

"I like what Ray Hunt - he's a member of the club - had to say about the Pulaski," said Ed Oliver, a longtime member of the Eastman Hikers. "It takes three people to use it. One to use it and two to rest."

The Pulaski is the shaper of the trails. A digging tool that looks like a mattock on one side and an ax on the other, the Pulaski can turn a forest floor covered with undergrowth into a walkway suitable for hiking. That tool has been an essential one in recent years as the Appalachian Trail Conference has moved much of the A.T. onto forest service land, where a considerable amount was once on private land. About 95 percent of the Appalachian Trail is now on public land.

"We've averaged constructing between a mile and a mile-and-a-half of trail each year," Oliver said. "That may not seem like much, but what we're doing is mainly putting in sidehill trails, a good trail that will last. It takes a group of eight to 10 people somewhere around week to construct 1,500 feet of trail."

In that 125-mile stretch are a number of overnight shelters, and the volunteers are largely responsible for maintaining those, too. Oliver said about 20 to 25 of the club's 800 members are hardcore workers, and on many big jobs, the Konnarock Crew can usually be counted on. Around 200 volunteer at least one day a year, Oliver said.

"We'll have special project maintanence, like the shelters, where there's a project that the regular maintenance team can't handle," Oliver said. "We built a bridge at Laurel Creek and we carried all the materials in for a bridge about three-quarters of a mile."

Because of the immediacy involved, a blowdown is one of the most taxing projects. The club can't afford to let several thick maple trees remain sprawled across the trail when wind, ice or snow knocks them down.

When Hunt hears of heavy winds at home his mind drifts to the trails. He's been in the Tennessee Eastman Hiking Club since 1950.

"Most of the times we get individual blowdowns, but sometimes we'll have trees that are 2 feet in diameter," Hunt said. "What you do is cut a hole so you can walk through, and it's hard to do. We've learned to take two saws, so when the first one gets stuck, you can get it out with the second."

Invariably, trail workers encounter hikers as they make their way past a maintenance site. Frank Williams, a veteran of the Eastman Hiking Club, said most are grateful. Some hikers, though, want conditions left as primitive as possible.

."There's some difference of opinion out there," Williams said, "about how much work we should do and how much we shouldn't. Some people say,'Don't maintain it as immaculate as you do.' But you've got to keep the trailway open and you've got to get the blowdowns out, so people don't have to crawl around them."

Oglesby shares those sentiments: "There wouldn't be a trail without the volunteers," he said.

And volunteers, Oliver said, aren't always easy to come by, even when prospects are avid hikers. And it's understandable because of the time commitment. Club member Joe DeLoach said the volunteers have committed as much as 7,000 volunteers hours in one year.

"Most people who walk a trail don't ever think about how it got there," Oliver said. "We've been asked by people how much we get paid for this. When we tell them, 'Nothing,' a lot of them say, 'Wow.' I think one guy was ready to sign up until he found out what we made."

For most people, hiking the Appalachian Trail, any trail, is a luxury.

So those who live within a stone's throw don't always understand the motivation of someone who is burning eight hours of a day to pamper a trail.

"I think it's just neat to get out in the wilderness a little bit" Williams said, "and see something other than city streets.

"We were working out on the A.T., and a man, I don't know who he was, but I guess he lived there asked me what we were doing. When I told him, he said, 'Well, I don't see the need for it.'

"Then I thought about it, and I guess if I lived there, I wouldn't see a need for it, either."

Hunt has hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, one piece at a time from Maine to Georgia, so he can appreciate the enormity of its beauty.

For him, though, tracing the trail with his feet is not enough. He wants to feel it with his hands.

"I like to hike, but I also like to do something worthwhile," Hunt said. "Just pleasure hiking - except for throughhiking - doesn't interest me. I like to do more than just walk."

AmeriCorps members help on A.T.

Most Harvard graduates can expect to land a good job soon after they graduate. Alumnus Freddy Dumlao has spent much of the last year painting school buildings, digging in the dirt, chopping down trees and living in a tent.

He couldn't be happier.

"The work has really been satisfying -- it brings people from all over the country together for a new experience," Dumlao said. "I just wanted to do something non-academic. College kind of burned me out."

So Dumlao turned to AmeriCorps, the federal program that recruits 18- to 24year-olds to work on public service projects across the country. Dumlao, a New York City native, is one of eight AmeriCorps members in the midst of a six-week job focusing on the hiking trails on and around Roan Mountain.

The AmeriCorps crew, working in conjunction with other area hiking clubs, have been rerouting an eroded section of the Appalachian Trail since early June. The group will do as much work as possible on a two-mile stretch of the trail, then break camp on July 14 and start counting down the days until their tour ends in August.

Throughout the six weeks, Dumlao and his comrades -- who are from as far west as Seattle and as far north as North Dakota -- are living in tents pitched in Elk Park, N.C. That means cooking on camp stoves and no TV in the bedroom.

"It's a little sacrifice, but it's not too bad, actually," Dumlao said. "This is 10 months long, and we get to learn so much about who we are, living in such close proximity with eight to 11 other crew members."

Dumlao has learned much about the Southeast the last nine months after previously knowing little. His crew has rotated out to work sites in Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

"I don't know which site was the most difficult because of the manual labor involved," Dumlao said, "but I would have to say painting a high school in Washington, D.C., was probably the most challenging. One, we were used to outdoor jobs, and painting is monotonous. And two, it's hard to see the problems with the public school system there."

AmeriCorps was created in 1993 as a sort of domestic Peace Corps, with the same low pay offset by the enriching experiences. Dumlao makes about $75 per week, plus room and board. The real hook is the educational grant, which is $4,725 for a full 10-month tour.

An AmeriCorps member has the option of re-upping for a second year, and Dumlao is thinking it over. If he signs on again, he probably wouldn't mind returning to the South.

"It was sort of a shock, really," Dumlao said. "In a lot of today's movies it's all about racism in the South, like 'A Time to Kill,' but everybody we've met's been very friendly. It was a very pleasant surprise. Things are a lot slower down here, too."