Trail Mapping with a Cartographer

Joining in on trail building crews provides a fantastic perspective on all the upkeep it takes to keep recreation opportunities clear and accessible.

A standing kiosk map I assisted with at Lawrence Nature Park for the City of Lawrence.

Trails are special in that they have been built for such a long period of human history. By remaining as one of our core transportation languages for people, the process of cutting path with hand tools to connect communities or locations evokes deep feelings of satisfaction. My father taught me by example that a good day of sweat and toil will clean the mind and instill satisfaction. By playing in the dirt, I’ve found passion and inspiration while transferring lines on a map from “proposed” to “existing.”

I have had the opportunity through urban planning to see the impacts of motorways — their advantages, efficiency, as well as their impact on forests and ecosystems. It is a stark contrast to “slow down” and implement transportation for feet, for lighter tires, using trowel, McCloud, and swing-blade. One of my favorite parts of trails is that they can be made by hand, and will “return to nature” (a controversial phrase considering how much of Appalachia and the US has been clear-cut) when they are left unattended for a long time. When I was a child I would go trail running along the deer paths which snaked along the property lines and fences of rural North Carolina. Those being kept maintained purely by diurnal journeys of creatures. Trails branch and become more worn as people and animals use them more — describing pathways of efficiency and interest straight onto the ground.

Trails kiosk map for the Fonta Flora County Park done as part of Destination by Design.

One of my favorite projects asked me to collect GPS shots for their unmapped trails system and translate all the new data into a GIS management plan.

I loved this task. Coordination started off with teaching some of their staff how to download a free GPS tracking app and making plans for how much trail could be collected per day. The storage solution was implemented, communication lines stayed open, and before I knew it I had some 40 miles of trails to comb over. We moved from one stage to the next: adding more detailed points-of-interest; suggesting hike lengths and ranking their difficulty; cross-referencing known development plans; putting the document in front of people in leadership to get their buy-in. The end product would be a series of double-sided, foldable waterproof maps which incorporated the colorways, fonts, imagery and branding of my client’s website.