Imagining the MST

It’s a couple weeks past the day that the calendar proclaims as the official start of spring, but my fingers are stiff and cold as I exit the car at a Blue Ridge Parkway pull-off at milepost 404.5, overlooking Mills River in North Carolina, stray flakes lazing through the frigid air.

I pull on a knit hat, zip a coat over my double-layered torso, and reflect that wearing thermal leggings under my hiking pants was definitely the right move. Then I hoist my daypack, adjust the straps and follow my companions down an unassuming dirt path that dips into the woods from the left side of the overlook, winding its way east just out of view of the famed scenic drive.

This path is the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, whose 1,175-mile length wanders from Clingmans Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Jockey’s Ridge State Park on the coast. The MST’s existence is the reason for the hike—my companions, all members of the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, are in town for a gathering celebrating the 45th anniversary of the trail idea. In 1977, a walking trail stretching from North Carolina’s mountains to its coast was a laughable concept, but today, it’s reality. Though 455 miles of the trail still uses roadsides rather than dedicated footpaths, North Carolina now has a continuous walking path from the mountains to the sea.

In a month or so, flowers and newly birthed leaves will splash color through the forest, and eager undergrowth will paint over the woodland floor now plastered with dead brown leaves. Today, though, the trees are still bare, an assertive cold front staving off spring’s arrival. Wearing those leggings under my hiking pants, three layers on top, and a knit hat, I’m comfortable as long as we keep moving. Snowflakes shaped like tiny snowballs drift through the air, melting in disappointment as they meet ground that’s just barely too warm to hold them.

But despite the chill, portents of spring abound—for those willing to slow down enough to see them. Patches of showy white bloodroot flowers burst through thick layers of decay. Orange columns of bear corn rise alongside last year’s crumbling remains. Close to the ground, the pink-white blooms of trailing arbutus poke out between leathery, evergreen leaves.

Observation, combined with imagination, make it possible to see what this place—one small link in the trail—will look like once the comforting nirvana of summer arrives. The MST itself is the result of that same kind of vision—vision that sees beyond what is to glimpse what could be. It exists because 45 years ago, one person had enough faith in his vision to name it publicly, and countless others had enough desire for its manifestation to devote their lives to making it reality.

Now 89, Howard Lee was in his early 40s when he made the famed speech at Lake Junaluska, a community 30 minutes west of Asheville, that called the MST into being.

“I see myself as someone who does not see things as they are and simply ask, ‘Why?’” Howard told a roomful of MST supporters during an evening gathering after the hike. “I’ve always dreamed of things that have never been and asked, ‘Why not?’”

In 1977, Lee was serving as the state’s secretary of environment and natural resources, the first Black man in the South to hold a state cabinet seat. A person in that position may have had incentive to toe the line and avoid upsetting the applecart more than he already had by rising above racist ideas about his place in the world. But Lee, at the behest of a couple of staff members, surprised the entire outdoors community with his MST proposal. He even surprised the governor—which is not something cabinet secretaries are supposed to do. Governor Jim Hunt promptly called Lee in for a meeting that Lee described as “not very pleasant,” and while their friendship recovered, Hunt made it clear that no state money would be coming to fund Lee’s big idea.

That conversation set the tone for a culture that continues to this day—throughout its history, the MST has been a shoestring operation fueled by volunteers, donations and the goodwill of land management agencies and private landowners. An unprecedented $5 million in the 2021 state budget changed that dynamic, and now the MST leadership is planning for a future that brings Lee’s vision from 1977 into even clearer focus.

The same legislature that approved the funding also named 2023 “Year of the Trail,” foreshadowing a season of trail-related hype unlike anything Lee would have imagined as he took the podium in 1977.  As I walk MST—and with it, the line between winter and spring in the Blue Ridge Mountains—I reflect on that imagination, and on my gratitude that it allowed him to see as far in the future as it did.