hat does the Appalachian Trail mean to the East, to the country, and to the world in the next century of its existence? The experience of the first 100 years sets us up to move toward a new vision — a truly regional ethic of conservation, economic health, stewardship of the natural world, and fellowship among the broad and diverse array of humanity surrounding the Appalachian Mountains.

Benton MacKaye’s 1921 vision was a public declaration of a grand idea, an important leap of faith at that moment in history, and, most importantly, a call to action. The country was emerging from many challenges, including its involvement for the first time in a major foreign war, as well as rapid urbanization and expansion of the nation’s cities in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. And, much as it is today, society was challenged by income inequality, a global pandemic in 1918, racial conflict, and a large influx of immigrants altering the ethnic and cultural landscape of the country. At the same time, the population in rural America was in decline as more sought work in cities, a trend that continues today. MacKaye, a keen student of the social impact of urbanization, looked ahead to a time when the expansion and encroachment of the built environment upon the existing natural landscape would push us all further and further from a life-sustaining connection to nature, and, in doing so, threaten the very existence of the forests and fields that so defined the wild lands in the East he experienced as a child.

rmchair trail advocate. Avant-garde conservationist. Conservation’s inseminator. Craggy New Englander. Cultural democrat. Eccentric. Ecologist. Failure. Head in the clouds. Humanist. Incidental naturalist. Incorrigible optimist. Journalist. Mayflower descendant. Naturalist. Nestor of the Appalachian Trail. Nineteenth-Century Romantic. Political radical. Prophet. Regional planner. Sage of Shirley Center. Single-taxer. Socialist. Unemployed. Utopian Socialist. Visionary. Wilderness advocate. Woodsman. “Forester, philosopher, and dreamer.”

That last description of Benton MacKaye came from Myron H. Avery and became the accepted “definition” in Appalachian Trail folklore and history for the next half-century or more, writings that set Avery apart as the “doer.”

Most of those descriptions are true but individually incomplete. Some are unfair, even false. Scores of doctoral dissertations containing such descriptions — and a number of books drawn from them — have attempted to define or pigeonhole MacKaye. Most of those papers have never made it into the Appalachian Trail Conservancy archives, much less into the long-held internal portraits of the progenitor of the A.T.

ashington went down like a tent. Everything dropped. That was the real beginning of normalcy right there.” Benton MacKaye, years later, recalled the mood and the events in the nation’s capital after the November 1918 armistice that ended World War I. By then, Washington, D.C., had been MacKaye’s home and headquarters since 1911, as he worked energetically and productively for two new federal agencies, the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of Labor.

During those postwar years, the course of MacKaye’s life and career veered sharply and erratically. This period, from late 1918 through 1921, proved truly pivotal for his personal life and public legacy.

His personal circumstances mirrored the tumultuous political, economic, and cultural events then roiling the nation: the Spanish influenza pandemic beginning in 1918; bitter struggles between labor and industry; racial riots, some of which led to mass killings, lynchings, and the destruction of Black neighborhoods; a roller-coaster economy, punctuated by periods of high unemployment, inflation, and housing shortages; the climax of the long crusade for women’s suffrage; a 1917 revolution in Russia and the rise of a new communist Soviet regime; and, in response, an American “Red Scare” in 1919-1920.

hapter twelve of Benton MacKaye’s 1928 book, The New Exploration, is entitled, “Controlling the Metropolitan Invasion.” He viewed uncontrolled expansion of development from urban centers along motorways — analogous to a flow of water from an improperly controlled reservoir — as a threat to the countryside. He envisioned a series of “open areas” along the Appalachian mountain range as a “dam across the metropolitan flood.” Motorways could still pass through, but the preserved open areas would thwart development along those routes. He felt that the developing Appalachian Trail (A.T. or Trail) “marked the main open way across the metropolitan deluge issuing from the ports of the Atlantic seaboard.” It would “form the base…for controlling the metropolitan invasion.”

isionary leaders have a rare and remarkable talent: the ability to “bring people together around a common goal and provide …a focal point for developing strategies to achieve a better future,” as organizational consultants Ron Ashkenas and Brook Manville put it.

Benton MacKaye, in his October 1921 article imagining the Appalachian Trail, was able to articulate the “simple, bold, inspirational vision” Ashkenas and Manville advocate — a giant, precedent-setting plan that has motivated a strong and enduring community to achieve a common goal for what is now a century.

t is a burnished-gold morning in late September, and fall has begun to arrive in Shenandoah National Park. Orange and yellow leaves pepper the green foliage, catching the light like sequins. Although it still feels warm in the sun, a light, cool breeze brings the first hint of the autumnal weather to come. The year is rounding a corner, moving into a new season. Soon, thousands of migrating broad-winged hawks and other raptors will be seen overhead as they make their way south for the winter. Tall grasses in the meadows will turn rust-colored, and leaves will fall gently to the earth.

lways in the back of my mind when thinking about protecting 50 percent of Earth’s land by 2050 is Benton MacKaye — someone whose thoughts roamed far and wide as he looked around and who then reshaped the world. He had just graduated from college when, in the summer of 1900, he and a friend bushwhacked their way up Stratton Mountain, the highest peak in southern Vermont. (The story can be found in Larry Anderson’s biography, Benton MacKaye.) There were no trails to follow, and, at the summit, they shinnied up tall, swaying trees to get a better view. For MacKaye, this was an aha! moment whose echoes can still be heard.