As the mother of all hiking trails, the Appalachian Trail enjoys special status among outdoorsy folk. Its 2,175 miles are woven amongst towns and bridges, across highways and out into some of the wildest land left in the eastern United States.
It is truly a bridge between worlds -- the developed and the natural -- and since its creation in 1937 it has become an ingrained American tradition.
If a new plan succeeds, it could become a European tradition, and an African one, too.
Geologically speaking, the AT's current extent from Georgia’s Springer Mountains to Maine’s Mount Katahdin is only half the story.
Over 300 million years ago, colliding continental plates thrust up the Appalachian Mountains in a craggy belt that stretched across what is now North America, Europe, and Africa. As the supercontinent Pangea rifted apart into separate land masses around 200 million years ago, so did the colossal mountain range.
Now hiking enthusiasts are looking to extend the Appalachian trail along its proper geological trajectory across international boundaries through our northern neighbors, jumping across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom and sloping down to Morocco in Africa.
The idea to extend the trail into Canada was initially proposed in 1994 by former Maine Governor Joe Brennan. Shortly after, Americans and Canadians joined forces to create the International Appalachian Trail/Sentier International Appalaches (IAT/SIA).
IAT/SIA planning spurred the development of a trail 1,400 miles long that runs from Mont Jacques Cartier in southern Canada to Belle Isle in Newfoundland.
The desire to follow the geology of the ancient Appalachians is spreading across the ocean to Scotland, France and even Spain, author Simon Winchester wrote in a recent BBC article.
For Winchester, who lives in Massachusetts, the trail is just around the corner. In the article, he writes about how the neighboring trail intersects his world:
“We see it when we drive to our local grocery store, where the trail crosses Route 23. An arrow pointing left says simply, “Georgia” and to the right, “Maine”, and in each direction the tiny pathway snakes off into the woods, in just a moment vanishing among the trees.”
If the hiking visionaries at IAT/SIA can figure out how to extend the trail across the sea, including stops in Greeland and Iceland, the arrow to the right might soon point all the way to Morocco.
Image: Hickory Hardscrabble, Flickr
Tags: Conservation, Geology, Plate Tectonics
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