A Hero For Trails

Trails need a hero.

Everybody else seems to have them. In this country every conceivable activity from pro football to cooking to bass fishing to motor cross has at least one star, someone to carry the flag for the cause.

OK, so trails are not an activity. True, but we provide the venues for many healthy activities from biking to horseback riding so why can’t we have a hero? And if we do who should it be?

I nominate Mark Trail. Some may remember Mark as one of our first environmental heroes back in the Fifties when he and his “girlfriend” Cheri (I think it was) thwarted the schemes of evil men who sought to exploit the environment for their own nefarious purposes, often in a violent and criminal way. Mark and Cheri were often assisted by two well-scrubbed teenagers (I’ve forgotten their names) with whom the young radio audience could identify.

It was thrilling to lie on the floor in your house about 4:30 in the afternoon and listen as the announcer intoned: “One man’s name resounds from snow-capped mountains down across the sun-baked plain……….Maaaarrrrk Traaaaaiiiiiilllllll. He was in the newspapers too so we knew exactly what he looked like, a chiseled and rugged outdoorsman, and Cheri, a pert and enthusiastic brunette. He (they) were clean-cut all-Americans and always fought the good fight.

Now I realize that Mark had nothing to do with non-motorized trails because there were very few of them is his radio lifetime, but I’m saying that if he were alive today he would love our trails and fight to establish more of them. His name certainly suggests as much.

How about: “One man’s name resounds along the trail from the swamps into the deep forest…………Maaaaaarrrrrk Traaaaaiiiiiillllll. You’re my hero Mark.