Run for Our Lands: One Week on the Appalachian Trail

Words and photos by RPL Ambassador Oscar Ponteri 

It’s mile 18 of day five, and I’m sopping wet. The branches of the birch and maple trees douse me from above, ferns fronds slop jewels of water over my legs, and—as much as I try to skip across rocks and roots—the muddy puddles have their way with me. The forest is steeping me in the kind of summer storm that brings its world into motion and draws out the season’s greenest greens. And, despite the discomfort of soaked socks, I can’t help but get carried away by the complexity of the world around me: Each leaf on each tree, actively breathing, drinking, grasping to the drops as they fall—a community of life in which I make up just one microscopic part. 

This was my last full day on the Vermont Long Trail, America’s oldest footpath and the most rugged, challenging trail-experience I have ever had. The journey that brought me out to the far northeastern corner of our country began this winter. Sitting in my dorm room reading headlines about potential public lands sell-offs, I decided this was not the summer to sit in an office. As a trail runner who was raised on family trips to National Parks and Forests, I wanted to get out there, visiting our country’s natural treasures and doing my part to advocate for their preservation. Moreover, I had always dreamed of hiking and running sections of our nation’s longest trails (the Appalachian, Continental Divide, and Pacific Crest Trails) and was excited about the idea of using each path as a vehicle to explore public lands and their ecological, historical, cultural, and spiritual importance. After lots of planning and appealing to my school for funding, ‘Run for Our Lands,’ an adventure across our nation’s public lands on America’s three long trails, was born. My first stop: the Appalachian Trail, specifically the Vermont section which overlaps with the Long Trail and Green Mountain National Forest. 

From the Journal, Day Five: Tuesday, June 17, 2025

This forest is a hoarder

Of every shade of green,

Of rocks and roots and little things,

Look twice and you will see.

I decided that I wanted to take a shot at Vermont’s Long Trail because of its prominence in America’s thru-hiking and outdoor recreation scene, dating all the way back to its conception over 100 years ago. In 1910, Vermont native and avid mountain climber James P. Taylor arranged a founding meeting of the Green Mountain Club (GMC), with a goal “to make the Vermont mountains play a larger part in the life of the people,” a statement which the current, 9500-member GMC still uses as part of their mission today. To connect Vermonters with their mountains, Taylor and the GMC would spend the next two decades trail-blazing and connecting pre-existing trails to create a path reaching from the bottom of the state to the Canadian border. Inspired by the GMC’s success, the Appalachian Trail was blazed less than a decade after the Long Trail’s 1931 completion, sharing 100 miles through Vermont—the section that I embarked on.  

The growth of recreational long trails was only made possible though by the early 20th-century conservation movement. Entering the 1900s, the nation was facing an environmental crisis as unchecked logging and industry was depleting natural resources; in Vermont, for example, by 1880, only a third of the state’s original forests remained. In response to the crisis (and despite differing views on preservation versus sustainable usage), John Muir, the founder of Sierra Club, and Gifford Pinchot, America’s first practicing forester, both became key figures in the push for federal land management reform. When President Roosevelt created the U.S. Forest Service in 1905, Pinchot became its first chief, tripling forest reserves and establishing sustainable timber practices. His efforts helped pave the way for the National Park Service and the 1911 Weeks Act, which gave the federal government power to acquire private land for public forests. 

Two decades later, in 1932, President Hoover used the Weeks Act to designate Green Mountain National Forest. Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, New Deal workers reforested the land (just 1,842 acres at that point) and built recreation-friendly infrastructure. Thanks to dedicated funding and advocacy, the national forest has now grown to 385,000 acres. I spent all seven of my days—131 miles—walking north through parts of this forest and would’ve still needed several more days to traverse its full span.

As is the case with all public lands, the Green Mountains’ history and stories began long before their national forest designation. Despite myths and mis-conceptions which assume that indigenous communities only settled in the ‘pastoral’ lowlands of Vermont and the northeast, oral histories in combination with recent archaeological studies have found significant evidence of native populations inhabiting high-elevation zones of the Green Mountains. Today, Vermont recognizes that the Green Mountain National Forest and much of the land across the state was once inhabited by the forcefully displaced Abenaki peoples who still maintain an active community in the northeast and look over their ancestral lands. 

From the Journal, Day Two: Saturday, June 14, 2025

A gentle rush on the horizon:

The river’s promise.

Take me there,

And I will listen. 

I entered Green Mountain Forest midway through day one, and was immediately greeted with a steep, scramble-like ascent into the Glastenbury National Wilderness. I knew from YouTube videos and friends that the terrain was going to be challenging, but I wasn’t prepared for the rugged reality of the east coast mountains. While from above, these mountains look like gentle slopes of soft green canopies, underneath the canopy  the trail slices straight up and down deceptively rugged mountains, not avoiding but utilizing boulders and downed trees as footholds for hikers to pull themselves up and down on. A National Wilderness information sign I saw on my journey even forewarns hikers, saying, “Wilderness is left to forces of nature. Therefore, the areas are not managed for visitor comfort or convenience … a spirit of challenge, discovery, and self-reliance await.” What I had imagined as an efficient flow of movement through the forest soon became a matter of careful, intentional, and sometimes painstaking footwork. 

Despite my love for the flowy switchbacks and clear-cut paths that I have become accustomed to as a west coast runner, there was something special about the unfettered nature of the Appalachian Trail. I felt like I was moving through the forest in its most authentic form: No performance, no luxury—if I was going to get cover ground, I would need to feel the land, each rock, each root, the dirt, the mud, the leaves hanging over the trail. It was immersive. It was true to the environment around me, in all its scattered chaos. By day two, I had found some sort of rhythm (what I called ‘the Green Mountain march’), which I can only describe as a method of improvisation, working with the tools and obstacles of the trail to try and propel any sort of idiosyncratic forward movement. In some moments, I felt like a ‘trail-cat’ gliding from rock to root with grace; in others, like a new-born giraffe, stumbling over my poles and fully submerging my feet in pools of mud and ice-cold brooks. Every step—hard fought for and well-earned—became part of a larger learning experience in patience and adaptation to the landscape.

From the Journal, Day Four: Monday, June 16, 2025

Yellow birch sugar maple

Wet socks through the stream

Hemlocks hold the light

Of a day not yet passed

So I keep on walking.

While both the Long and Appalachian Trails are notoriously rough, their preservation still demands a labor of love and trail maintenance, done largely by a small army of volunteers. On my second morning, I took a pit stop to filter some water at one of the Long Trail’s many shelters—basic wooden structures which provide an alternative to pitching a tent. It was a lucky detour as the shelter was occupied by a group of Long Trail veterans: Trail maintenance volunteers from Green Mountain Club. Exhibiting a wide range of ages, the rag-tag group of four had slept over at the shelter together and were just preparing to head out for a day of trail upkeep. One of the volunteers, Sven, told me, “The green mountains are a resource that’s fragile, they’re a resource for wildlife, and they’re a resource for people to come out here and enjoy.”

The Forest Service, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation, and the Green Mountain Club have a unique partnership as joint stewards of the Green Mountain National Forest and Long Trail. According to the GMC website, professional trail crews, volunteers, and partner organizations working with the GMC conduct “technical, highly skilled trail work projects and maintain the 70 backcountry overnight sites and facilities.” Trail work is done year-round and helps keep the trail clear season-after-season. The volunteers who I met on the trail affirmed the fact that their work may even help supplement federal funding and staffing cuts which would usually lead to deteriorating trail quality. Still, funding cuts to the Green Mountain’s Forest Service are sure to impact the outdoor experience. One seasoned east coast hiker I met (trail-name: Sheppard) told me that he thought there was an unusual amount of newly downed trees impacting trail conditions. 

While the GMC’s active volunteer base helps maintain trail quality in spite of federal cuts to the forest, the Long Trail is in no way protected from the threat of federal land sell-offs. Over its 100 years of existence, the GMC has re-routed the Long Trail a number of times to ensure that the path crosses public rather than private lands, insulating it against potentially hostile ownership changes. Now though, with the threat of sell-offs, a whole new issue arises: The public lands which were once thought to be a secure place for the Long Trail are all of the sudden fragile and in need of strong advocacy to maintain their protected status. 

As I write this, President Trump has just announced that he will be ending the ‘roadless rule,’ which protects national forests like those of the Green Mountains from logging and invasive infrastructure. The roadless rule was enacted by President Clinton to prohibit all logging, roadbuilding, and coal, gas, oil, and other mineral leasing in sections of national forest that were not explicitly designated wilderness, thus providing de-facto protections for 58.5 million acres of land. In response to the repeal, Alex Craven, Sierra Club’s forest campaign manager said in a statement, “Stripping our national forests of roadless rule protections will put close to 60 million acres of wildlands across the country on the chopping block. That means polluting our clean air and drinking water sources to pad the bottom lines of timber and mining companies – all while pursuing the same kind of mismanagement that increases wildfire severity.” In the Green Mountain National Forest, 80,000 acres are protected by the roadless rule—just under a fourth of the forest’s total acreage. While the administration’s decision elicits a litany of ecological and recreational concerns, it does not leave recreationalists powerless. There are many avenues to advocate for the ongoing protection of public lands, including calling your congresspeople to push back on federal decisions that threaten public lands, and contacting your local politicians to encourage them to find alternative ways to protect exposed lands. For example, Colorado’s 4.2 million acres of roadless wilderness are exempt from the decision thanks to a separate agreement between the state and the forest service negotiated in 2012. What Sven and his group showed me through the immense power of their example is that the longevity of public lands is dependent on everyone—from hard-core trail maintenance volunteers to fun-seeking outdoor enthusiasts—doing their part to advocate for the protection of our nation’s natural treasures. 

From the Journal, Day Five: Tuesday, June 17th, 2025

Ubiquitous waves of rain,

Drumming against the tin roof:

A summer psalm, nature’s refrain.

One hundred and fifteen miles in and the trail was kicking my ass. I had just said goodbye to the Appalachian as it split east from the Long Trail and continued my path north towards Vermont’s 4000-footers. My body was exhausted and giving me real problems, namely, a swollen left ankle which was consuming my body and slowing the downhills to a snail’s pace. The swelling was so out-of-control that when I had unwrapped it a few days prior, even an old-timer snarled at its sight and offered me one of his VA pills (thank you to ‘26 Kilo,’ his trail name). I woke up on the morning of day six in a small shelter whose tin roof was reverberating every drop of what sounded like a vigorous morning downpour. I threw back a couple Tylenols with my morning granola and hoped for some relief. The trail had other plans.

It was a characteristically grey day with a slight mist in the air, not quite as bad as expected, but still damp enough to feel through my jacket. I descended along the trail to Brandon Gap, where an eerily empty road ran across a low-point in the mountains. I crossed to the other side and tapped into my Green Mountain march for a rocky ascent towards the aptly named “Mount Horrid.” One thing I had learned to expect from Vermont was a lack of views; summits were often just as heavily forested as their slopes and in the thick clouds there wasn’t much to see as I fought my way to the top. The next eight miles consisted of a demanding mix of straight up and straight down as I followed the trail from peak to peak along a minor ridgeline. With a smattering of obstacles, I spent the morning bear-crawling under downed trees, hopping through mud, and sliding down rocks on my butt. In one comedic moment, I watched with sheer amazement (and slight envy) as a trail-runner—the first person I’d seen in about 30 hours—bounced weightlessly past me. I, on the other hand, felt heavier than ever, carrying my immobile ankle down each hill through increasing pain. Finally on one of the final descents of the range, I stumbled, planting my left foot awkwardly on a root and yelped with pain. Each tiny step became an immense struggle, and I had a vague feeling that the woods were closing in on me. I knew I couldn’t go on much longer. 

It was in this moment of despair that, out of nowhere, I emerged into a strange, beautiful clearing—a ski hill, as it turned out. I looked out over the slope towards a collage of rolling hills, blanketed with those soft, innocent canopies that I had seen in online photos. It was the most idyllic view I had seen, and it came at my emotional low point. I plopped down on a conveniently placed bench, stared off into the endless sea of green, and cried. 

From the Journal, Day Seven: Thursday, June 19, 2025

The moose tracks leading into the lake—

The speckled alder engulfing an old road—

The neon orange newt turned brown by death—

There are many paths but only one way.

There is a hard-to-describe magic buried deep in the deciduous tapestry of the Appalachian-Long Trail and Green Mountain National Forest. It is captured in that moment when the trail is throwing everything at you—a summer storm, miles of water-logged bushwacking, four downed trees in a row, whatever it may be—but, for a brief second, you pick your head up and find yourself amidst a truly awe-inspiring and vividly alive landscape. Certainly there is nowhere better to dance among the mud and fight for every step than here?

Sitting on that bench, tearfully watching mountain peaks play hide and seek with the clouds, I got a true taste of that rugged Green Mountain magic. I think of myself as a very strong endurance athlete, ready for whatever awaits, and yet, those mountains humbled me. What a privilege it is to be surprised by nature, I thought, to be pushed to your limits, to be reminded of your smallness, to be instilled with the humility of a thousand trees and a dozen peaks in one of the most beautiful, untamed places on earth. Ever since I was a little child climbing rocks and wading through alpine lakes, public lands have provided space for me to grow and learn, and, to no surprise, they continue to school me 15 years later. This lesson was one of tough love, east-coast style. After a little while, I picked myself up off the bench, limped a bittersweet mile down to the highway crossing, and hitched a ride into town.

I awoke the next morning with the plan of spending one last day on the trail, not walking but giving away some of my leftover food and a few other treats to fellow thru-hikers. I ransacked a local country store, buying a rainbow assortment of powerades and a half a dozen donuts before hitching a ride back up to the trailhead. It was my way of saying thank you to Vermont and the trail. I set up shop at the road crossing and spent the day chatting with passing hikers about their most harrowing or miraculous moments in the mountains. Listening to the stories, it became clear that the trail was teaching everyone their own lessons; no one had made it this far without learning something about themselves or the world around them. As the day waned, I could feel my Green Mountain swan song winding down. I packed up the few powerades I had left and took to my station on the side of the road, thumb out. It was there that the dark sky decided to unload on me one last time. I couldn’t have planned a better goodbye. 

Featured photo (top) by Oscar Ponteri features a summer misting in Vermont’s Green Mountains.