Jonathan Baxter: Globetrotter
Photo by Victor Manuel Contreras Silva
Trail workers are often nomads, bouncing between seasonal gigs from state to state, park to park. Many folks spend winters chasing trail work in warmer climates, working ski resort gigs in the mountains, or enjoying sunshine and relaxation abroad. Some people find stability in consistency: returning to the same parks every summer, finding the same off-season jobs and abodes. Others embrace the opportunity for transience, exploring different parks frequently and keeping their possessions to a minimum.
Jonathan Baxter once defined the latter type of trail worker. Today, he is a permanent trail worker in Zion National Park. But for many years, he was a traveling trail dog, exploring a new park every season. Jonathan’s enthusiasm for trails and travel led him to several opportunities to do trail work overseas, including in Georgia, Armenia, and Chile. I called him up to chat about his trail experiences in the US, and to learn about some of the organizations that led him abroad.
Joe Gibson: You’ve done trail work all over the country. Tell me a little bit about your journey in trails up until today.
Jonathan Baxter: I started doing trails back in 2009. I took some time off college. I was gonna work and travel, but the recession came and there was no work. I ended up seeing this ad for a conservation corps in Alaska and I applied last minute. I sold a bunch of stuff I owned and was able to join and move to Alaska for the program.
I was going to school for environmental studies and I realized that I like to work with my hands, always have. I realized I didn't need to go to school and rack up a bunch of student loan debt as long as I continued in trails.
After that, I worked for the Student Conservation Association in New Hampshire for ten months, which gave me enough experience to get into the National Park Service. I worked a season at Glacier in 2011. Then Acadia, Sequoia, Zion, Pinnacles, Yellowstone, North Cascades, Joshua Tree, and Kings Canyon.
After Kings Canyon, I wanted to learn more about machine operation so I went to the private contracting world to build mountain bike trails in my hometown in Pennsylvania. I worked on those projects around the northeast and midwest.
Then I went to Devil’s Postpile and Saguaro. I left Saguaro for a month to do trail work as a volunteer in Patagonia, in Chile. Then back to private contracting for a company based in Oregon. With that company I worked all over the west: Utah, Idaho, Oregon. Then I got permanent status in Zion and here I am.
Baxter building a stone staircase in Zion National Park.
Photo by Morgan Cotter
JG: So you’ve worked in a lot of places! How have you been able to make that work?
JB: I don’t own many things. This is the first time in my adult life I've owned furniture. I just moved into an apartment and had to go buy furniture. In my twenties, I always used to tell people the biggest mistake in life you can make is buy furniture, because I always based my life around travel.
Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to see the world and travel as much as possible. I grew up in a pretty insulated, small, redneck town in northwestern Pennsylvania. I didn't really travel much as a kid, and I grew up in a pretty blue collar family.
Trail work gives you a backstage pass to do things that people pay thousands of dollars to come do. And then you get paid for it.
You have to sacrifice a lot of things, but I think it's worth it in the end for all the life lessons and everything that you learn.
Building a mountain bike trail in Springville, UT.
Photo by Zack King
JG: What have you found to be the most challenging aspects of this nomadic, itinerant lifestyle?
JB: For one, always having to learn a new place. I've just lived my life in these six month chapters. I went back home recently, and I realized it is really the only place that feels unique to me anymore. There's that history where people actually know the beginning arc of your story. That’s a drawback of traveling so much. You don't have those same relationships as you would with people that you grew up with.
But at the same time, you get really good at making friends and making friends quickly. You don’t have that self-consciousness. It taught me to be more authentic and less afraid of what people think. Everybody wants the same thing. Everybody wants to be happy.
Baxter holds an elk skull in Yellowstone National Park.
Image courtesy of Jonathan Baxter
JG: One of the places where you’ve traveled and had to make new friends is in the Caucasus Mountains in the countries of Georgia and Armenia. Can you tell me more about working on the Trans Caucasian Trail?
JB: In 2016 I saw an ad on the Professional Trail Builders Association website to go to the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia and start building a long distance hiking trail called the Trans-Caucasian Trail (TCT). I applied and they called me the next day. The project was still in its infancy, and they were still trying to figure out where to put this trail. They offered me the position, and my boss in Zion let me take time off to go. A month after applying, I jumped on a plane and flew to Tbilisi, Georgia.
The first thing we did was buy tools, which was kind of a trip. I didn't know anything about this country. We were going to these weird markets and hardware stores that I didn't know anything about. Even just trying to buy a chainsaw, I couldn't find a brand that I recognized.
Baxter teaches a group of volunteers in Svaneti, Georgia how to build check steps.
Image courtesy of Jonathan Baxter
Then we headed up to the mountains and did a week of planning. Our first group of volunteers came, a mix of locals from the capitol and international volunteers.
We spent two and half months in the town of Mestia, having volunteers cycle in and out. It was a chaotic journey because it was the first time they had ever done this. We were flying by the seat of our pants, trying to figure it out as we went. But it was amazing. The people there were just like some of the most larger-than-life people I've ever met.
One of the reasons they're building the trail is because a lot of these villages are becoming vacant. People are moving to the cities. People used to visit from the Soviet Union to vacation in the mountains, but infrastructure started to crumble after Georgia became independent. Some of these villages only had one or two inhabitants and nothing but crumbling buildings. But some of those people were just larger-than-life.
There are these massive Georgian men that make their own skis and hunt bears. And the hospitality of the people is pretty incredible. They would give you the shirt off their back. You’d be just walking through a village and people would come out and offer you food and and try to convince you to drink with them. They would feed us tons of food, to the point where we had to resist because we knew they didn’t have that much to give us.
I was super lucky to be a part of that. It was definitely hectic and it was definitely a learning experience.
Conversation around the fire in Svaneti, Georgia with Trans-Caucasian Trail volunteers and employees.
Image courtesy of Jonathan Baxter
JG: After Georgia, you traveled to Armenia. Can you tell me about that?
JB: I went to Armenia in the fall of 2016 to work on the Armenian section of the Trans-Caucasian Trail (TCT). I got connected to an Armenian-American contractor named Hans Keifer.
I was in a homestay in a small village for a month. We would wander around and try to figure out where to put a trail, creating GPS tracks and trying to figure out how long it would take to build. We were relying on these old Soviet maps that were inaccurate. Google Earth was the most reliable resource we had.
In Spring 2017, I returned to Armenia to build some trails with Hans and his organization, Trails for Change. We were working in Artsakh, which is a contested region.
The Republic of Artsakh, also called Nagorno-Karabakh, is a breakaway state with a long and complicated political history. Historically and ethnically Armenian and Christian, Artsakh was transferred to muslim-majority Soviet Azerbaijan in 1921. Unity under Soviet rule managed tension until the late 1980s, when the dissolution of the USSR re-ignited conflict in the region. Tensions flared up once again in 2023, when Azerbaijan blocked the Lachin Corridor, a mountain road and the primary connection between Armenia and Artsakh. Political agitation stemming from the blockade of the Lachin Corridor is ongoing as of the writing of this article.
Trail design team with Trails For Change in Vayotz Dzor, Armenia in a Soviet-era truck.
Image courtesy of Jonathan Baxter
JG: What was the vibe from the locals? What did they think of the trail project?
JB: The locals were super stoked on us. Like, everybody was super stoked on us doing this. They would lobby us to put the trail near where they were because they were so excited about it because they knew that it would bring money in.
JG: That’s great to hear the locals are behind the project as well. You’ve also traveled to Patagonia to do trail work. Can you tell me about your experience doing trail work in Chile?
My friend Lizzie called me up one day and said, “Hey, you wanna go do trail work in Patagonia?” She had been contacted by a friend who was looking for people to help build trails near Torres del Paine, Chile with an organization called Conservation VIP.
I was working in Saguaro and I didn’t have enough annual leave. But the superintendent allowed me to take some leave without pay and I was able to leave for three weeks to go out on that project.
We were working on this former ranch adjacent to the Torres del Paine National Park that had become a private reserve. There was an old mule path that became the main access for one of the main tourist attractions in Patagonia. The trail was super trashed, steep, braided all over the place, and really rutted.
The landowners had lots of connections throughout Chile and were able to get us sponsored by Latam Airlines. They paid for our flights and fed us in the employee cafeteria at the lodge. The job wasn’t paid, but it was all paid for—we didn’t have any expenses while we were there.
It was super cool, working with local Chilean volunteers and people who were part of the non-profit. Our main job was teaching trail construction and leading the volunteers.. Explaining sustainable grades, grade reversals, and whatnot.
I was there for three weeks. I was super lucky to be able to do that.
JG: Any tips for finding these kinds of international opportunities in trails for folks interested?
JB: The PTBA website is a good one. American Trails and PTBA are also working together on a project called Trail Skills that posts opportunities abroad on their job board. It’s good to know contractors who sometimes looking for folks to work abroad, or people that have had these opportunities in the past.
I was able to do it because I was always living out of a backpack with so few things and was always looking for opportunities to travel and work. I could just pick up at any point and go to another country, last-minute.
For more information and resources for the organizations and opportunities mentioned in this interview, visit:
Hanging out after a day’s work in Svaneti, Georgia.
Image courtesy of Jonathan Baxter
