Forrest Pulley took his turn to speak, rising and giving his affiliation as the Allegheny Sparta Trails Association. He announced that his county had no trails of its own, but “We want to change that. We need your help.”
It was a sentiment echoed numerous times by participants in the opening session of the first Great Trails State Conference last week in Winston-Salem: We need trails.
Saturday is National Trails Day, that time every year (the first Saturday in June), when we celebrate trails, by hiking them, biking them, paddling them, creating and maintaining them.
This year, the American Hiking Society, the official clearinghouse for National Trails Day events, lists 508 NTD events. Thirteen events are scheduled in North Carolina, 14 in Virginia. Keep in mind this is not a complete listing: Virginia State Parks alone is holding more than 100 events Saturday, North Carolina State Parks has 10. North Carolina’s Great Trails State Coalition events page lists a dozen.
