Trails Everywhere!

Visit RTC's website to explore the planned trail.

Did you catch the recent announcement by the Rails to Trails Conservancy about plans for a cross-country trail system called the Great American Rail Trail? This trail, stretching from sea to shining sea, could one day allow you to walk or bike your way across the country in a grand expedition, much like hiking the Appalachian or Pacific Crest Trail.

Best of all--it passes through Iowa, right in our backyard! The trail will take advantage of portions of existing and yet-to-be-completed sections of the Hoover Nature Trail and the Cedar Valley Nature Trail as well as the famed High Trestle Trail near Des Moines. You could one day ride a personal RAGBRAI across Iowa whenever you'd like, from Muscatine to Council Bluffs.

Although there are gaps in the planned route, the entire trail is more than half complete. Be sure to tell your elected representatives how important trails are to our cities and states, and what an economic boon they can be to small towns and businesses along the route. Lobby for funding to be allocated for infrastructure projects that will improve transportation and leisure activities for everyone!

The Rails to Trails Conservancy also has an excellent site called TrailLink that allows you to explore trails near and far. Be sure to visit the entries for your favorite trails and upload photos or leave a review!

"Walk Slowly, Look Closely"

A teeny grasshopper nymph spotted
last July.

Walk slowly. Look closely.

Much of our life is spent moving briskly from one activity to the next, swaddled in inattention as a series of screens insert themselves between us and the world around us. When MJ Hatfield uttered the
words "walk slow, look close" during her talk at the Day of Insects last month, it resonated as, if not the answer to all the world's ills, at least a small way of coping with the fast-moving, anxiety-plagued civilization we have built for ourselves.

Walking slowly in itself can be a form of meditation. Just walking, not to get anywhere or for exercise. Breathing, looking, feeling, moving. It is a simple communion of our bodies with our environment.

Eurasian Tree Sparrow
("not a House Sparrow")

When you add in looking closely, you engage with the other beings that share our world. You see things you don't see if you are riding a bicycle, running, or even walking quickly and inattentively. So many little brown and black slugs crossing the trail! Moths and grasshopper nymphs popping up in the grass alongside the trail, some so tiny you have to get down on your hands and knees to make out their features. The sparrow that you assumed to be a House Sparrow but wasn't, or that one funny-looking coneflower with the odd florets. The assorted well-camouflaged bugs, from ambush bugs to camouflaged loopers.

Each of these encounters is a new delight, simple and there for the taking. It doesn't cost anything except time, and the benefits to well-being are, for me at least, immeasurable.