Pathways to Discovery [antikvár]

7think I first realized that it was possible to walk for pleasureas opposed to walking simply to get somewherewhen I was a boy. The Rock Island Railroad ran through West Chester, the Iowa village where I grew up, and my friends and I explored along its tracks. We hunted rabbits in winter and shady spots in summer. We put our ears against the rails and tried to hear trains coming, and in those days one or two did every day.According to family lore, in December of 1918, when my great-grand-father David Fisher died of a heart attack while working on his farm, a blizzard had closed the county roads. The train made a special stop to pick up his body and the mourners to carry them into town for the funeral. My memories are brighter. I remember learning to recognize orioles and chickadees along the tracks, and I can still feel the crunch of cinders underfoot. A spectacular expanse of brilliant pink shooting stars triggered my sister Kathy's life-long interest in prairie wildflowers.Mostly I recall from my childhood walks the satisfaction of starting off to look for something interesting and of sometimes finding it: a dead snake, an unusual bottle thrown from a train, some nameless plant in bloom.Such simple pleasures are still the primary attraction of walking and the fundamental appeal of trails. And today Americans are hitting the trail for pleasure as never before. Hikers are hiking, bikers biking, riders riding, joggers jogging, and skiers skiing all across the land. In the National Trails System alone, established by Congress in 1968, there are now eight national scenic trails, nine national historic trails, and more than 780 national recreation trails. All together they offer about 35,000 miles of recreational opportunities. Though many are unfinished, slow but steady progress is being made.The National Trails System Act recognized two major scenic trailsthe Appalachian and the Pacific Crestand authorized the study of additional routes for eventual management by the National Park Service or other agencies. The U.S. Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management all administer trails under their own jurisdiction.The national scenic trails, which must be at least ICQ miles long and suitable for walking, are the Potomac Heritage, the Appalachian, the Florida, the Natchez Trace, the Ice Age (entirely within Wisconsin), the North Country, the Continental Divide, and the Pacific Crest.National historic trails include some marked highways on or near the original routes. The present nine are the Iditarod in Alaska, the Overmountain Victory in the southern Appalachians, the Trail of Tears, the Santa Fe, the Oregon, the Mormon Pioneer, the Nez Perce, the Juan Bautista de Anza, and the Lewis and Clark, longest of all at 3,700 miles.National recreation trails include many shorter trails, often in urban or suburban settings, which may be open to some motorized use. They can be found in federal or state parks and forests, local parks and preserves, or on private land, or combinations of any type. San Francisco, for example, looks forward to the completion of 800 miles of greenway in two sprawling loops, a bayside and a ridge-crest route; this system will include the 31-mile East Bay Skyline National Recreation Trail and designated paths in Golden Gate National Recreation Area. These links will thread their way carefully through a highly urbanized but extremely beautiful area.Although some of our trails are new, many have been in use for centuries. Indians, seeking the easiest ways through the forests and mountains of