by Grace Upham
photos by Grace Upham
My spikes clung to the tightly-packed snow, the trail obvious from layers upon layers of footprints marching up Beech Mountain. Still, I kept my eyes peeled for the reassuring blue blazes that guide Acadia hikers through all types of terrain and conditions. I had enjoyed this trail and many others through various seasons, rain or shine, confident that the path would lead me well. Why do park visitors have the opportunity to follow a blazed trail? My experiences hiking in Acadia and beyond have led me to examine how and why people establish, maintain, and follow trails. While I had utilized them as sites of recreational access, Schoodic Institute, Friends of Acadia, and National Park Service restoration projects reveal how Acadia’s trails play an active ecological role as managers maintain and update them to protect surrounding habitat.
Historical Roots
In 2022, Acadia’s 117 miles of trails were added to the National Register of Historic Places, a reminder that while hikers use trails as portals to “nature”, they are usually distinctly human creations and thus sites of history. In Pathmakers, her Cultural Landscape Report of Acadia’s trails, Margaret Coffin Brown indicated that some Mount Desert Island (MDI) trails can be traced to ancestors of Indigenous Wabanaki people who forged carry trails (portage routes) for canoes or to access interior areas. People began summiting MDI mountains in the mid 1800s, although “for surveyors, artists, and early visitors, following a marked path route was often secondary to reaching a destination,” according to Brown. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Village Improvement Associations introduced a more accessible, documented trail network around MDI, while 1930s New Deal work crews and Civilian Conservation Corps projects reinforced a trail system within park boundaries. Today, trailblazing in Acadia balances patterns of human behavior with historic character and ecological necessity to maintain existing routes or plan new ones, like the East-West connector trail under construction on the Cadillac summit.
Evolving Routes
I experienced the relatively rapid fluctuation of a trail’s history while observing logging impacts along Scotland’s West Highland Way. I was descending through a conifer plantation clear cut when it dawned on me that although the trees were obliterated, their roots remained, criss-crossing the rut of the trail. A reminder that only recently I would have been passing through forest. A few days and 40 miles later, I scrutinized the banks of a new logging road for evidence of the original trail, now replaced by this gentle gravel gradient, which, despite a discrepancy in the map, seemed to be the preferred path for the throngs of hikers. I realized then that trail networks are rarely static, whether through intentional redesign or from haphazard footsteps rerouting or widening paths. Despite Acadia’s extensive and thoughtfully planned system, stray foot-traffic threatens sensitive surroundings. “Social trails” persist where hikers have repeatedly disturbed vegetation to cut corners or to seek a better viewpoint, essentially blazing new routes that implicitly encourage further use.
So how to provide trails that people are inclined to follow, while still protecting the landscape? Becca Stanley, Friends of Acadia’s Recreation Technician Manager, describes her team’s work as “behavioral psychology with a conservation influence.” In other words, she leads the social science that ensures restoration techniques are effective. In practice, this includes “predictive and proactive” methods to inform trail maintenance: observing visitor behavior at peak times and noting, for instance, age demographics and which direction individuals may choose at a fork; using trail cameras to monitor usage of specific areas; and even looking at routes recorded by users of AllTrails (a GPS app people can use to plan and record their hikes). These observed data can pair with surveys and determine whether behavior actually matches expressed preferences. Such methods have informed the aforementioned Cadillac Mountain East-West Connector Trail, which will link the summit’s two parking lots with an accessible trail.
While trail crews do make efforts to obscure or restore vegetation in social trails, Friends of Acadia Summit Steward Manager, Steph Ley, explained that these methods are futile in areas where there is an appealing view or easier route. In these cases, a trail may be left alone or rehabilitated for easier access or safety. With the East-West Connector, the park opted to rehabilitate an existing social route into the West Parking Lot, an example of a trail that would continue to be used regardless of efforts to block it off. Or, if barriers were implemented, nearby areas would be trampled instead.
“We approach summit stewardship as roping people on trail, rather than keeping them off the surroundings,” Soil Hike leader Lauren Knierim, Conservation Volunteer Ambassador with Friends of Acadia, explained. Our group of volunteers was gathered at the Parkman Mountain parking lot, doing some stretching and ice-breakers before collectively carrying 146 pounds of soil 1,000 feet up Sargent Mountain, a novel volunteer opportunity designed to transfer soil to summit restoration plots. While plant species up here only need about 4 centimeters of soil to survive, plants trampled by footfall die and loosen their roots, causing soil to wash or blow away in the harsh mountaintop weather.
As I lunched with Schoodic Institute Science Communication Specialist, Catherine Schmitt, by the Sargent summit marker, she pointed out a hiker trampling foliage to pick blueberries. While careless, our erosion-causing habits are not necessarily malicious. The unforested summits of bedrock and shrubby foliage that gave Mount Desert Island its name can be a unique landscape for hikers to navigate. While rooty paths through trees provide clearer direction, the terrain above the treeline requires more wayfinding. Besides hard-science restoration techniques, success will come from educating hikers and designing trails that encourage positive practices.
Besides tangibly updating trails, human behavior can also be shaped through conversation and connection. Friends of Acadia summit stewards work to impart stewardship values in visitors through direct “trail-side engagement.” Not all visitors recognize that their recreation causes an impact. By sparking conversation on summits or at popular trailheads, summit stewards introduce people to Leave no Trace habits and best practices, such as staying on bedrock and following cairns.
While social trails are one driver of trail system evolution, the National Park Service will also intentionally alter trails in Acadia, primarily to accommodate increased visitation and diverse uses of the park. Despite their historical designation, some trails need to be widened, or have passing places added. Other trails are adjusted to satisfy hiking styles. Acadia Trails Foreman, David Schlag, noted the tricky balance of preserving historic character, while offering trails that hikers of all inclinations will use. Some may prefer a scramble, while others will go off-trail to avoid tricky climbs. The trail crew’s challenge is to design a hike that caters to both preferences, and not everyone will be satisfied. Most long-time Acadia hikers express appreciation for trail updates, but some are upset when their “favorite trail” is altered. Whether supportive of change or not, people recognize that the park’s trails are not only pathways into a special landscape, but meaningful, history-infused sites in their own right.
Beatrice Searle, a Welsh stonemason, acknowledged the spiritual meaning of a trail when she carved footprints into a stone from Orkney and then wheeled it 500 miles along a Norwegian pilgrim path, along the way inviting people to step into the carving. Regardless of how people relate to them, trails facilitate humanity’s role in the environment. When I reflect on my 8-day journey walking Scotland’s West Highland Way, I consider how the route was adapted around the logging industry and its conifer plantations (human-manufactured ecosystems). In Acadia, trails will evolve as we encourage new impressions of trail stewardship, visitors make an impact, and park staff and partners continue designing for a changing Acadia and world. Whether stepping into a stone carving or walking a trail, we should let our feet fall with intention.