The Long Trail by Philip D'anieri

When James  P. Taylor arrived in Vermont as a mid-career schoolteacher in 1908, he heard about the state’s long , slow decline, the farms and the mill towns of colonial America growing obsolete in the Industrial Age. To many long-time locals, the decline seemed inevitable; nature had placed an irreducible burden on the state in the form of the Green Mountains. The mountain chain ran right down the center of the state, taking up land that could otherwise be profitably cultivated, and dividing the state’s people in two.

Taylor formed a different view of the situation, and with an overpowering sincerity, he shared it with anyone who would listen. An avid hiker and skier, Taylor saw in the Green Mountains opportunities rather than limitations, an almost limitless source of economic and civic renewal. The key to it all was a trail, running over the mountains from Massachusetts to Canada, tying the mountains together into a single natural feature, open for exploration. Side trails would branch off either side, connecting the towns below to nature on high. Local clubs would each maintain their sections. Shelters would provide warm and safe accommodations to visitors in all seasons. Outdoor recreation would connect the people to the landscape, and attract nature-seeking visitors from the outside world. The mountains that had been the bane of the nineteenth century would become a priceless to the twentieth. . . .

Vermont had collectively turned its back on its mountains, Taylor determined, an unacceptable state of affairs. Just where this knowledge came from, he never explicitly said, but it was apparently Germany’s Black Forest, which he may have visited on sabbatical. Taylor only ever spoke elliptically about his past, but friends and family remembered his traveling to Germany as a young man, and he used that country’s Black Forest Association as a model for his Vermont efforts right from the start.

In the Germany of the late 1800s  and early 1900s, the sense of Heimat – roughly translated as ‘homeland’- dominated the cultural conversation. It was and idea that took physical form in the countryside at its most simple, access to nature was meant to provide a reminder of people’s sense of belonging, a stable identity in a rapidly changing world.

The  unification of Germany, in 1871- had created a new state on paper, but with little [common ]history or mythology tying itself together. At the same time – and in this regard Germany was hardly unique- old agrarian ways were being upended by the steamroller of industrial capitalism. The logic of the faraway, faceless market was erasing the  contours of community life. As people struggled to understand their place in this new and different world, Heimat –roughly translated as ‘homeland’ - merged as a response. Based largely on the work of a writer named Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, Heimat put forward the German landscape, especially its forests, as the source of a unique and reassuring national identity. In the Heimat woods, Riehl said, there was an irreducible German essence, a wellspring of the nation’s special virtues.

For a large number of turn-of-the-century Germans, in the middle class especially, Heimat became a kind of civic religion. Local beautification societies came together across the country, dedicated to forging closer connections between the community and the surrounding landscape. In the cities and the towns, they built new parks and planted trees, outside of town,. They cut trails through the woods and erected mountain top observation towers. By opening up the forest for people to enjoy, Germans felt they were doing something fundamentally patriotic, providing access to their nation’s natural identity. And in providing a venue for outsiders to experience and celebrate Heimat they were also cultivating a welcome tourist trade, By the early 1900s  Germans were embracing enjoyment of the outdoors a a virtuous circle of naturalism, nationalism, and commerce.

James Taylor’s introduction to this world apparently came on a trail, now known as the Westweg, that stretched more than 150 miles from town to town through the Black Forest of southwestern Germany. Then known as the Hoheweg ( ‘High Trail’), the path came together in pieces over the latter years of the 1800s, as small clubs in individual villages each cleared and maintained a nearby section, then joined sections together into a single long-distance trail. Heimat proved to be a scalable idea, stoking pride in individual communities for their nearby woods, drawing them together under the banner of the Black Forest as a whole, and encompassing the whole thing in a nation-spanning German identity.

This belief in the cultural authenticating power of place –as a people, were as unique and steadfast as the natural landscape around us –was popping up in various places across the Western world, the Black Forest Association was hardly alone in the kind of work it was doing. But Europe,   further along the path of industrialization than North America, was also further along in developing the social and physical infrastructure of nature as a counterweight to all that industry. And so when Taylor arrived in Vermont in 1908, he had in some sense seen the future, and he would be its tireless representative in his new home.

[The end of  James P. Taylor is kind of a tragic story:]

As rewarding as Taylor’s work may have been to him, it was not especially well paid, and as the lifelong  (possibly gay) bachelor entered old age, he had no nest egg or children to depend on. In the spring of 1945, the seventy-three year- old Taylor' friends and associates pulled together a testimonial dinner and fundraiser in his honor. Small checks poured in from around the state, along with heartfelt appreciations for the work he hasd done. But Taylor never stopped campaigning; his last fight was leading the charge for his adopted hometown of Burlington to build a modern sewage treatment plant and clean up the mess it was dumping into Lake Champlain.  He had to put his work on hold, however, when he broke his hip in a fall and was hospitalized for an extended period.

Out of the Hospital and living again in his hotel room, the always forward-looking Taylor came face to face with an uncomfortable reality. He was alone and old, and his life’s work was behind him. One September morning in 1949, he rode a cab out of Burlington to Grand Isle, a rural island in Lake Champlain just across a newly built bridge from the Burlington area. He was dropped at a shoreline inn for tourists that he had visited many times before. To the inn’s employees Taylor seemed agitated and out of sots. He spent some time strolling up and down the road, then after lunch in the restaurant, he headed out in a rented rowboat and drifted on the lake. The inn owner’s son boated out to make sue everything was okay, and Taylor said that it was. A short time later, Taylors rowboat was seen floating on the water, with his cane lying in it. A massive search ensued, without success. Five days later, James P Taylor’s body floated to the surface, his death presumed to be a suicide by drowning.

The Appalachian Trail; A Biography by Philip D'anieri; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021 Chapter 3