Couple days later trying to kill you read a consistent thing is the kids. You could trust the kid this and that was about it read you could not trust anybody else who would tell you anything of any value. Youre talking about families and farmers. This was an agricultural area and basically between the tigris and the reverse so the Water System is unbelievable. In the way that they have channeled it to grow their stuff. They would just try to raise their family and mind their own business. And insurgents or whatever you what color, and we need you to go to america the first chance you get it if dont were going to kill your family. Watch more oral histories from veterans and others anytime at cspan. Org history. Good evening and good welcome. Please well, Tour Series to support the appalachian trail. I hope you join us this evening and we are joined by our friend and just a quick webinar overview. Theres a chat mode, and you may want to keep a Chat Window open during the event. And only will be looking at it throughout the event. You can use here at the bottom of the screen here about ask questions at any time. And i will answer them at the conclusion of the conversation and as a reminder, anywhere in the united states, and southeast michigan. [inaudible]. And the Book Purchase and consider a 5dollar donation to sustain our virtual programming while it lasts. Hopefully it will turn into a in person event. A to some make donations to our store and otherwise we think you for your attendance this evening. If this afternoon and this morning on the seeming depending on where and when in the world you may be joining us and now the moderator. Of course the environment. [inaudible]. He worked in public Media Journalism the State Government and urban regional planning. And chamberlain teaches partly english and michigan and entered chief making sure. [inaudible]. And michigan quarterly review in 2017, he was a scholar. Please join me in welcoming him. Thank you john, it is going to be here and highfill. And i can see you through the interwoven congratulations on this marvelous book and i was so excited to read it and you can see all of my notes here on it as i have been reading through it. As a particularly wonderful experience to see it on the desk here because i the great pleasure of reading excerpts from chapter of that years ago when we were both at the institute of the humanities in the university of michigan. Marvelous program, one that brought together whole wonderful cohort of people. So is marvelous to see the book being covered is so congratulations. Thank you, and he is marvelous and it is fun and is weird and it is odd. Im a firsttime author. In the transition from the book being a project the progress to being a product to be marketed and talked about is a very new but very fun and very exciting. Yes that is brilliant so lets go back to the beginning. We will end up at the end but i was turned think back to our earlier to remember what exactly it was that drew you into the story. He said near the end of the book that it was as much the identity of the appalachian trail as appalachian trail so drew you to some of the research but was a more about the genesis that moved you from curiosity which is one state of being to investigation which is another. A couple of things. So there are sort of two points of entry for may, number one, growing up in the eastern u. S. , you just know they are out there. You drive down the turnpike and theres a Pedestrian Bridge this is appalachian trail over it so its gotten out there and you know that is nature that winding its way through the very developed and build up the eastern part of the country. A good high school said, someday we should fight this of maine together with never did. So always a place of interest to me. I thought about maybe hiking the whole thing one day. It now appears bill never do that. I met Somebody Work for the publisher and sent it sounds like just about every guy that every dated. The thought, it might be me one day. But much more recently when i became a Grad Student in urban digital planning, i read this seminal thinker in the field of urban planning. Who in 1920s and 1930s had put out all of these interesting ideas about the shape of metropolitan america and how it could fit into the natural systems around it and i learned that the same person it was doing all of this urban thinking was the one who had invented the at. That just seemed like something worth digging into a bit more. Those were the first two starting points. Will that leads me to build off that a bit more both in terms of the built environments which you teach here at the university of michigan. But also the idea of nature as a construct. It seems to be in you just refer to it a minute ago with your comments, seems to be one of the things youre most dial into. You call the book of biography rather than history. Its right there in the comer. But in fact, there is another storyline seems to be about that. Is that fair to say. I really think about nature and was a relationship and how do we think about. Good example, the appalachian Trail Examinee and premises a combination of the built in the natural and the interesting sleep between the two intentions between those kinds of parts of the building the natural and we acknowledge and embrace in places like the at and parts we pretend are not there, that is endlessly fascinating to me so teach a course around that. And ive for students have heard a lot more about the appalachian trail than the cure to but the 18 to me was a perfect place to tease out this to me very human process of crafting a version of nature around ourselves actually building our hopes and needs and aspirations and escapism into the environment and crafting the environment around that read we want to talk about nature as that which is separate from us and that is quite something cool to escape to the jamaican it is capable place, weve actually got to make it work for us and a bunch of different ways. Weve got to constructed that process is what i was trying to get out in the book. Yeah, we begin this biography in the late 19th century, 1860s and we have moved mostly through up to the present of the final chapter mostly in 60s and 70s and maybe its arises environmental movement. There was Nelson And Stephen jfk writing about the way it was our understanding of the natural world was almost like an antidote to contemporary life. If we many books writing about nature deficit disorder. Spent a little bit more than a century, hispanic century and a half, remove from the terrors of the worldliness. Do not go near it, it will kill you, theres not a lot out there to her without it, it will kill us. That is a pretty big disruption with a lot of interesting steps. So the reason the book is organized as profiles of individuals at different points in time, and sometimes try to capture what were people at that period of time seeking formed nature therefore building into the trail. But dont pick up on those two bookends event, before the nature was a retreat in a place to escape to, not only was dangerous, it was perceived as more to be compromised. The place where we were civilized and safe and okay i say we, i mean, European Culture and european americans. It was in town it was the church and it wasnt just physically dangerous but morally dangerous to go outside of those bounds. Only as we get more safer and more comfortable in the late 18 hundreds in the industrial economy, that people secretly outburst for adventure. We seek a lot of other things of the time. That the book deals with. The very end, and the Rice Book about hiking the appalachian trail, is the nature of irony. Hes poking fun at himself and nature in a way that you could not have gotten away with. It would not been appropriate even 20 or 30 years prior where it was this very serious topic. So lots of versions of nature have emerged over the years. And without writing a textbook or dry academic book, i was trying to sort of have an easier expression foresees different things over the course of the book. If you think about the stages that we are moving through phil, Alyssa States that you found most interesting in the book. Our found herself drawn to as we shift, dont go to nature because this goes back to somebody is running a whole book about hiking the appalachian trail. And of course of the asterix and doesnt do a lot of it. By the way, far more than i have. But thats a good question printed evan almost ashamed to admit that the part i enjoyed most was the chapter about financial service in the 80s 90s your rocket ties and trail eggs as part of my background in State Government and even the Phd Research i did was on the institutions but i found it really interesting that the trail in many respects is a very narrow national park. It took Bureaucracy And Procedure law and eminent Domain And Planning processes to create this thing and protected. You certainly dont think i dont think anybody except for a very few oddballs like myself was to think about when youre out there in the truck. Like what was the Funding Source and there is that aspect to it. This is wonderfully naturalistic environment as much as i talk about how belted is now nestled in it used to be that vibe when youre walking on it. But as natural as it is, we only found it because of institutions and bureaucracies ten people working in the public sector doing good work in a fairly anonymous way in day after day. I was a part i was most attracted to pretty. Of course its a biography of the appalachian trail but also these very wonderful individuals and you go out of your way to think wisely so to say that this is by no means a full history of who was involved. As a particular type of history setting aside some of the conflicts of the section those days predominantly white and male. Maybe middle class. Youre very and rightly so to think about the limited bandwidth but i do think that one of the things that i admired about what, the chapters have these wonderful arcs about these individuals lives whether it is after 30 years of marriage, present had the heck with it all just a duffel over her shoulder and wrapped her umbrella a cane and does indeed hike the whole thing. I just want him a or whether the bureaucrat of the daddy was trying to finagle so peace doesnt end up in and eminent domain claims court the u. S. Courts have to settle out. All these little narratives. Did you see them putting together the way the ats outdoes is kind of a coalition or how can get it because its a massive amount of Material Anything about the histories of research. I talked about this in the seminar, and many of these wonderful different options. Why did you do this, is a more of a and no, not sure you were fully solved how to tie the pieces together and what the relationship was among them. I wanted to provide many chapter biographies because it was in these individuals leading their own lives and coming up on the trail, that the trail got built and wanted to show different versions of that over time and you can really understand the human investments and it the creation of it if you can understand these folks as individuals. In all of their uniqueness is that any of us have read so is better able to get at the kind of stuff that i wanted to get out by telling the story the trail in directly through these individuals. The chapters were written completely separately from one another for the most part in different years. And then suddenly the deadline was there to turn in the book. I think theres a version of this book where it fits together in a better way. The thing about biography versus history is when trying to do for the reader or at least destroy wanted to investigate is, what is this place. Why are we attracted to it. Went to steal want to story. It felt more like a biography like what you do with an individual the times these people lived in and their history and how to get some sense of who they work. Having a good biographies to get a sense of a more universal human beings as well and you can see yourself in another Persons Story and so that was a kind of stuff i wanted to do it improves to the district that happened with the trial in this year this happened in the trail. I think the book reads marvelously and seamlessly with your readers go from chapter to chapter eloquently and i found myself reading one chapter and then going right into the next chapter and this is like the trail, you dont know necessarily your crossing the State Line unless theres a sign saying that you are now leaving george and entering into the next date. I think it worked well in fact when i and one of the earliest chapters, nature was no list, it was a story. The President Line and i thought those great when kind of came back to the end of the book after finishing it. And felt a bit like should be in epigraph to the book itself because i think if it were purely history, would feel more like a list in the doesnt feel at all like a list, feels like a biography. And also as a life as a subject to bring his lawyer admired the Book Wonder if you can talk about that idea, it seems to be also like a shift in the thinking. Was one of these fellows who was thinking about the sort of natural world the scientific one meeting religious or you can fill in the like there but that idea of shifting from nature on the list into a story, can you talk about the concept and how that as one of the very first shapers of what would later become vat. A t. It was emerging in europe in the mid 18 hundreds. Alexander is certainly the most famous. And a student. There really is the beginning of what i and others would call ecological idea read this notion in the science any sort of a technical understanding of the natural world it is an appreciation for larger things and larger concepts and i dont think it again and i know something about the appalachian trail, im not an academic Environmentalist Story and supposed to know a lot more. But is okay winstead is that dio was a christian and trying to be a minister and Villas Notion of natural world around by observing things mostly nature, we see a reality in a higher plane. Some technical it does not reveal itself in a list anymore. He fed up with the storyline along with it. And between this technological and scientific understanding of things which at first complicates and is a troubling contradiction of the stories that we like to tell and then wait a volvo some new Storytelling Mechanism a new way of thinking about things that accommodates that and then goes back and forth like that. What i think that whether you approach nature as a list, an ecologist, noted relationships between Species Somebody like to go out and walk around. Theres always these two things present their there is that. Isnt that neat and sort of a physical tangible level. In their there is this higher order, what does this all mean man. And in 19th Century Version of that and the language has changed. The participants in the conversation has changed. But i do think that basic internal dialogue is still going on. They has been for a long time. It reminds me a little bit about the idea of the lily. In his idea that lily is a beautiful flower but is more beautiful to botanist and even more beautiful to somebody of studies and more beautiful to somebody is specializes in eight lily and there is no way to approach a full understanding of anything but her understanding of beauty is the kind of increasingly closest to the knowledge of the thing. So i think that you can look at that quantifying element in a product in a way, and acquiring summits or mileage or birds on lists or a way of thinking about it from a way of sort of quantifying it a more qualitative way. This is a anoxic moron right quantifying qualifications right, as as the son of an ecologist, my parents are travelers around the world looking for the rare bird that flies in in a way in which the knowledge of that can also create a kind of a beautiful awareness. So i was struck by the polarity of what is driving it, is a truly Acquisition Or Something else going on. I do think there is the risk of substituting an Acquisition Will Mindset for privileging it as the only one that counts when you talk about summits cemented or miles accomplished. I am sensitive to and i think the ecological world and the Hiking World is becoming more sensitive to this problem of if youve got to have knowledge to have full appreciation, wealth youre having all sorts of people go away from that experience but to me the perfect example of the person who thinks and that sort of list making the way was avery who in the 1930s really got the trail built. He was intensely interested in the mountains. But he wrote hardly anything about how beautiful nature was now much he enjoyed walking around it. Published any account of the four routes and peaks and he wanted everything get to recorded in just the right manner. So clearly that strain of natural thinking if you will is a big part of it. Most definitely not the only part i would argue and without trying to be dismissive. Torture parents and the avid birders of the world. That is a component, and its important component but i think there is more to it. It. Was avery who famously got tip of the national geographic to wanted to come read a story but he refused and it was his version of the story. He couldnt believe they didnt want to publish his article which is basically an Encyclopedia Entry about the trail when they said, well is a different way to approach and or, they just kept writing letters back and he kept saying no this is the article that you want. They never did. Is 15 years after the fact. And then it changed the course in certain ways of the a t. It made the trail, it was a sign that the trail was now a substantial part of the american landscape and the national geographic afraid if you and i are of an age that did you have a subscription to national geographic, minded. And it was piling up in the bookshelf and that was in the 1970s, back in the 30s and 40s, was a huge publication so when the a. T. Made national geographic at some level it was a real think, a real place in the world at that point. And in part because the way they frame the article was noting that the previous Year Somebody had hiked the entire length of the trail in one go, Earl Schaefer and that caught the attention of a woman in who read the article and then she was 87 yearold grandmother who hiked the trail with the Duffel Bag over her Shoulder And Canvas anchors. This one hunky really began. Yes and cheaper pretty much, he definitely put the concept on the map. It was not a terribly popular thing to do sort of a decade after that but in the 60s, when a new wave of nature came around, through hiking became popular and then the fact that Earl Schaefer had been the first on earth and he became much more prominent than. At the time in 1948, the organizers who had built the a. T. Had really interested in it and they thought hiking with stennett and the trail was not built for that but it is very important to shaver of how he tried and did get his life back together after World War ii. And so yeah, that is among these seminal events in the history for sure. I would like to go back to the turn of the 20th century which i found more fascinating parts of the book. It feels like we are reaching a tipping point, culturally, technologically and geographically. And there was a quote that stood out to me in the chapter two from william goodall, then president of Kentuckys College and in 1899, a longer journey from northern ohio to kentucky and from america to europe. And brings us into the 18th century. Im curious about this moment and because this is also at the same time when this is a wonderful statistic that i found and i admire the book, the Boy Scout handbook the second in the book sales in this country only to the bible. Years previous maxi of the sort of dawn of the 20th century that is happening and you got parts of the country that are entering the 20th century and according to crossbars that are still in the 18th century rated some curious about some of the conflicts that are also happening regionally because this is a project that engages with not just Geography But Georgia at the 20th century is a very different place from main the turn of the 20th century in urban areas are very different places from rural areas. None curious about how that part of the story was taking place in terms of its conflicts in terms of some of the inner place taken place because this is a really important moment in the concept of this larger project coming to fruition. I think that perhaps the shortest way to put it is that emerging urban and suburban middleclass of the early 19 hundreds needed for itself a rustic and nostalgic nature. And it decided that it was going to find and or create that thing for itself in the appellation highways. So i profiled this writer who was a big City Librarian leading a middleclass like any goes to the mountains of North Carolina and sort of creates this persona is a backwoods writer becomes very famous doing it. Leads the effort to get the national park established. Well to establish national park, you had to the socalled mother people living in making a livelihood out of the Mountain Path at that time. So we think of national parks as protecting nature by protecting nature national park has always involved eviction. Obviously, native populations long before the european americans the mountain people the late 19th century, so there is in the creation of national parks at the time the creation of the a. T. , one way to tell the story is that people discovering nature in a wonderful way and it also was people of a certain class with a certain set of powers and privilege. The Billing Landscape for themselves by denying it to others. So, as part of the story. But it seems like even in the chapter which you are talking about here, where he had traveled to Germany And Kind of brought back this idea of a different time. It was a little bit later right. His subsequent chapter. And the idea that now not only what are we going to nature for commas or for recreation, spiritual renewal, for health but also for these ideas of culture in a sense like yet as you point out, one has to be substituted for the other. And in place for another and that is part of the story as well. A. Yes, but James Taylor in vermont, i think discovered in germany. He couldnt nail it down but once this idea of nature as an individualistic escape for certain people but a place where our entire communities can build a deeper connection into nature and that will bring us together and give us productive things to do an academically rewarding and socially rewarding etc. So again whether you are talking about the economics of somebody trying to get away to retreat in the woods, where the social elements, those things all based together into why and how we created the spaces. This book happens to be about the a. T. But it couldve easily been about some of the other places that we did and im speaking to an english instructor, which we did back in the 20th century and i think continues to do. So lets go off the hook for just a second, literally i am areas even working on this book for years in the Hiking Trail yourself. Doing deep dives on the research and reading other peoples biographies, shoving stories or stories that got to let be left out, they had to and im curious to you and a directors cut version, if there was one chapter or one speaker or one story that you ended up deciding that this does not quite seem and and it wouldve been a bonus. Are there ones out there. Once you had to leave behind. Or would you feel gone further if you had more time. It. I can think of a couple of things but to be honest, this was more like writing paper for college and i realized. So there are not like sheets of paper laying around the house that didnt make it in. One thing that i was having to be able to do that i didnt get to do. There you go, lets do it from that angle. Imagined that Bill Bryson would allow me to hope its okay to share this. I had thought in a way to write that Chapter Wouldve been to get access to his notebooks from his hike. And i thought that i could tell behind the Scenes Story of his time on the trail. I think that he was incredibly gracious about giving me time and the Candidate Interview about his career in the writing of the book and he had no interest of his own in the days of publicizing this book are long behind him hes basically retired but he took the time. How is everything to do what i did have this imagine scenario one is going to fly over to england it and he would pull his notebook out of a box of it spent two days taking notes on that. There were some one version of the book, and that is several sidebars that would dump more easily do things in those did not come to pass but most of everything that i cooked up actually is in their predict. Lets talk a little bit about what did you think most surprising thing that you came across in the thing that made you think i never wouldve thought that was a part of the story. Coming from or to it from where i did, i knew about the person who put the idea out there. And i really didnt know about avery the person who i think the only term for it is compulsively the same built. And avery was driven in compulsive and he was married and i think that he could think that he didnt live in the age of the internet because he managed to dictate and mail so many letters of such great length full of such hostility to whoever he was writing to that is just not a Mindset Or Personality that we would ordinarily associate with or retreat into nature. Urban planning and i met a lot of people and they know the name of Robert Moses who almost singlehandedly rebuilt new York City in the 20th century in a famous book about the title of the Power And Myron avery was this Robert Moses like Power Broker over the appalachian trail. And i still find it and theres lots of reasons to believe that if he had not been there and had not been that way, we would not have a a. T. Nowadays and if not gotten to the point that it did, before World War ii, released all the upper, not sure that we wouldve been able to build it, the parts of work remaining from scratch after the war. Only because they had already been there once and because he was so driven under having it got built was before the war, he drove the process of getting it rebuilt after the war. That Character Wouldnt have been there, i dont think we wouldve had the trail. But getting to know him was surprising. Yeah, we talk about the a. T. Getting built. The Build Quality and to build the thing, i was very struck by this quote in the book where youre right, turns out that the pastor of nature required a lot of effort beating back nature just to keep it intact. I think that something that we rarely think about. Not just things like hurricanes and natural things coming through in small things like trees falling across the trail. But just the idea of how one after what has acquired the land others through imminent donation or whether the Park Service or when the bureaucratic government agency. It was struck by the tension between the collaborative elements of local clubs maintained at different sections in the larger oversight taking place and who is funding this and who is funding that. But i rarely stop to think about who was actually going out and clearing the trail and making sure the blazes were trailed. Is hundreds of volunteers organized into dozens of clubs and then they all fall under the umbrella but is now called the appalachian trail service agency. But it says to get out of work. And theres a small professional staff at the atc, but the folks out there, clearing away over growth and trees that have fallen down and doing the best to build the trail in a way that would cause less erosion like building steps or putting down groundcover. All of that are fully volunteered on the weekends and going together on these club outings to out and keep the thing running. So the Trails History in the present Day Life as a public and private partnership so youve got the federal government primarily at the Park Service but also the u. S. Forest service overseeing all of the land at that the trail runs through and then they have a Partnership Agreement to actually manage the trail which in Turn Compilation of all of these individual clubs down to individual members who say, this Twomile Stretch is mine going to go out there every march and make sure it is passable. In network and that pyramid of it makes try to go and took a long time to pull together nothing is really admirable part of the thing. Sometimes, there are all sorts of partisans affiliated with the outdoor world and a lot of folks out there who are very partial to having a Crest Trail on the west coast as a more natural more remote more demanding trail. And it that may well be true. I wont get into that debate but the thing about the pct, the ruins of us entirely through federally managed land. And it does not have this history and the life of this Publicprivate Partnership involving hundreds of people waited to the same extent as the a. T. So you think that is a key part of the a. T. s history and i have to say for all of the hundreds of people on this call from california, i know there are volunteers on the pct but im saying that i think in that part of the ats life, is really what produced it in the first place so it has been a part of it ever sense. And in the second half of the book, and my background growing up who was given up the almanac as a birthday present, my 13th birthday, but there are a lot of strong conversations about what stewardship looks like, is the stewardship of pure wilderness, or stewardship that sets aside access to and how do we bring young people and to the natural world so they grow up interested in taking care of and preserving and thinking about wild places and sometimes that means bringing a road in to allow access to a place other times it needs keeping a road out pretty i was struck in the later part of the story that the way in which the different progressive movements of our country and the different environmental movements occasionally bump heads read when we have advocates for Wind Power for example you are looking to increase natural energy and bumping up against people who want to have a wilderness that is not even in sightlines, built world. And the trail itself is. And how one wrestles with those questions is a chapter that is not been written yet because its in the future like what will the a. T. In our relationship to it as a nation look like as a culture. Twenty years from now 30 years now, 20 years from now. Yes i brought up that specific piece this past semester and for a controversy the wind turbines built on a mountain in maine. And the community said you cant put this on our trail with this view of the Wind Power generation. They civil we care about the environment we need to care more about clean energy than about the scenic viewpoint. Mike student said was that really some did this really caught on was you know what, we can see what people were saying when they said they dont want to see winter fines from the trail because one is natural and the other is energy producing. But they said, to us, the natural world in that world we find ourselves in nowadays, the clean energy from the wind turbines go handinhand with the appreciation of nature and walking on the trail. And some are saying that after enjoying the trail, i can know i can enjoy it more knowing they settle a place for me to escape and see the woods in the trees, but to also see a different Writer Future of clean energy. So i checked in the past couple of years, my students in the way that they think about and they talk about the building of environments, shifting so much from even a few years ago and light years from the kind of distinctions in the black and white either or than think and i grew up with. So its a very different Worldview And Perspective emerging out of young folks and more inclusive of different people and kinds of places in different ways of thinking about the relationship between the built world the natural world and you know i think you get a lot out of that in some ways, we have certainly, adam leopold, we need to recognize pretty and is daunting and a whole bunch of other things. What is interesting, its an interesting viewpoint and i keep thinking about it. Remind me little bit about that i teach a class on literature of the rest probably talk about in which the way the smokestacks in the industrial smokestack was not one moment a sign of progress in a sign of prosperity to sign of the future read and now if anyone chose it picture of a Smoking Smokestack in ad campaign, but Nothing Progress in future your thinking pollution. Once i know these are not exactly, maybe from the opposite point of view with the way that the simple shift as we think about them culture historically. I think the more recent shift is that if you took the smokestack and not smoke coming out of it then people are thinking about that as maybe a postindustrial habitat of some kind are assigned for urban Egg Operation that will grow food the more the Energy Way so the idea that sort of the industrial over here and the green and agricultural over there, those lines are starting to blur as well. All of these old symbols and shorthand for what the world looks like. They dont represent the same things anymore i dont think or at least that is shifting quickly. In the book does marvelous, think showing the way in which what we carry and to the natural world from our own and often times civilized world. Those are your fourth there, when we carry within what do we project onto waited with obesity from it and we hope to gain by going into the wild. Thank going into the wild. What do we seek when we go there. Want to check in with john and i can talk all night but we only have about ten minutes left to see if there are questions coming together and to encourage folks to questions. Where are we at. We do have questions. We do have enough questions to take us to the top of the hour. And if you have questions, go ahead and submit them and i will try to squeeze them in. Gary writes, do you think the a. T. Can ever be extended and grow physically or even a fourthly and would you write a biography of it. [laughter] i get it. The lecture kill, even in new york. There is something called the international appalachian trail which takes the geological reality of the mountains and it knows that it they dont just stop in maine, they go all the way up into the atlantic in canada and all of the way over to the atlas mountains or counterpart over in africa so theres been this effort to create this new follow on trail and not a project of the appalachian Trail Conservancy or the trail as a unit of the national Park Service, theyve got plenty on the plates there. So many initial versions of the a. T. And others, do you include not just this isolated trail of the mountains the central that comes down into communities or natural areas on the sides of the mountains but eventually connecting into big cities. And what i think that we could do more of, one place that i know of is right now you can get on the Canal Tow Path for the canal but in washington dc, a protected towpath that runs through the district of columbia where our first fairy were intersects with the appalachian trail i love this idea not the first one. National Trail System imagined this mckay did that you can create more sinlessness by creating these branches become off of it. So think there are opportunities to expand his put the atv as vat, spending a lot of time on now is protecting adjacent lands. They work in partnership with local conservatives and state and local governments and can we protect this larger piece of property to protect the Trail Environment both for scenic reasons and ecological reasons and thats where most of these expansions now is going on as i understand it. In the next question in less question is related and animalrights, do you think the age of keeping together these long trails is over or do you think that the demand for remote trails like pat and the act will lead to government continuing to develop new ones. I think that the current social political environment makes projects like this a lot harder to do. So there are ongoing efforts in all sorts of places to piece together trails here in Ann Arbor we have the border to border trail is been coming together in fits and pieces over many many years now but this sort of the idea when the federal government to responsibilities for the Ablation Trail the 1970s, was a notion of government serving public good that just had a greater degree of Buyin And Acceptance that unfortunately i think that we have today. So individuals small scale efforts that a lot of times things can happen the Community Scale that dont regardless of the party affiliations of people within the community and because is not a community thing, a lot more can get done but you get up to these higher levels of needing to move hundreds of miles in two different communities where you have a somewhat robust public bureaucracy involved, i think the prospects were that are not great in the near term. Thank you. Maybe one more question if you want to take the last question jeremy. Maybe a question you didnt get to. The question that i would ask at the end of the interview is what is the question i shouldve asked. Gee, i dont want to Bore Everybody with flattery but you askedat