Photographer Spotlight: Seth Foltz
Trail crew member and photographer Seth Foltz spent the 2024 season on Mt. Shavano, capturing incredible moments with his camera in between swings of his pick-mattock.
How to Get a Job in Trails
A comprehensive guide of tips and resources for getting your first trails job.
Counting Steps: Riley Dunn Studies Stairs on the Appalachian Trail
Riley Dunn hiked the 2,192-mile Appalachian Trail, and counted every stair in 3,605 staircases along the way.
Smokey’s Lost Brethren: Obscure and Forgotten Mascots of Land Management
A roundup of PSA mascots who never quite made it as big as Smokey Bear.
Dietary Hitches
“For the longest time, I avoided anything to do with the backcountry because of my diet. “
The Trail Worker’s Essential Reading List
Tent time in the backcountry means lots of time for reading, and backcountry trail workers are voracious readers. What books are on their reading lists?
Maddi Bacon: Illustrating Impact
I wanted desperately to do work that would really make an impact in a real and tangible way. And trail work gave that to me. It felt immensely impactful. All of the sudden, I had interesting things to make art about again.
Essay: Imagineering Cultural Landscapes
A trail says, “This is where you want to go, trust me. I will take you there.”
Victoria Vandervort: Between a Crosscut and a Log
“I feel like the outdoors is the only place I can get a hundred percent silence, and I feel like that's when I can actually think. Sometimes I have phrases that just get repeated in my head when I'm banging up a trail six miles trying to find the next log to cut. I think about that phrase and then somehow a piece of art will come to mind.”
David Linares: Work Dogs Work!
“I was inspired to base my works off of the struggles that come physically with working; as well as making the effort to capture those euphoric moments that come with realizing the lands for which you work.”