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Category: Project

Description: This project examines how trailbuilding and routemaking influence stewardship practices, identity, and the politics of conservation. By engaging with and actively shaping landscapes, trailbuilding communities come to know landscapes as storied social spaces. This study asks how trails come into being, both physically and as imagined landscapes by their creators, managers, and users. Research is situated ethnographically both virtually and in the Mid-Atlantic and Sierra Nevada regions, where existing long-distance trails (the AT and PCT) and proposed trail management plans shape local conservation and recreation landscapes.