When Teresa Martinez was a mountain-bike racer, she suffered a recurring anxiety dream. Days before any competition, Martinez would envision herself woefully unprepared, five minutes before the start. First, her shoes would go missing, then her bike, then her water bottle, then her gloves. With her gear finally gathered, she still had to find the starting line. “And then, you wake up in a cold sweat,” she told me recently. “And think, ‘Oh my god, that was crazy.’”
Martinez doesn’t need to sleep to feel that way these days. Now the executive director of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition, the nonprofit that supports and sustains the 3,100-mile trail across the country’s rocky spine, Martinez has spent the last four months navigating the administrative roller-coaster of edicts and executive orders from the Trump Administration and its Department of Government Efficiency that have gutted public land agencies.
She has seen staff cut at partner agencies, wondered if the CDTC would be reimbursed for money it had already spent with prior government approval, and fretted about changing plans to balance the books for this fiscal year. It’s neither a dream nor a nightmare, just reality. “It’s like the racecourse is being built while we’re riding it,” Martinez said. “It’s like you’re waiting for the next shoe to drop as we continue down the path, not knowing if we’re going to get there.”
Throughout the spring, I’ve had similar conversations with the leaders at four other iconic American trails—the Appalachian, Colorado, Ice Age, and Pacific Crest—about how federal uncertainty has hamstrung them. The nonprofit groups that manage these trails all depend, to varying degrees, on federal funds and symbiotic relationships with federal organizations such as the United States Forest Service and National Park Service.
Their concerns, of course, varied: The Pacific Crest Trail Association had just cut six expert trail workers and more than a year’s worth of trail maintenance to be done by youth crews when I spoke to leaders there. The Colorado Trail Foundation worried about water spigots and pit toilets at trailheads. The Ice Age Trail Alliance paused registration for its trail-building season.
But they all agreed on one partial remedy: Ordinary people donating their money or volunteering their time could not only help plug some gaps created by federal instability but also bolster the spirits of those still left to do hard work with less resources. Too, it’s a way for those frustrated by the administration’s decisions or indecision to feel a little less helpless.
“We’re in an unprecedented time, the middle of this dust storm, so we’re not exactly sure where our needs are going to fall. But I have no doubt that they’re going to grow,” said Sandi Marra, the ever-candid head of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. “We’re going to need skilled volunteers. We’re going to need people in numbers that we haven’t needed in the past, because we’re not going to be able to rely on the federal support we’ve had in the past.”
At the Colorado Trail Foundation, for instance, executive director Paul Talley was looking for a few people who could wield a chainsaw. Cutting trees on trail is subject to a series of byzantine regulations and certifications. If a downed tree can’t be handled with a handsaw and requires either a crosscut saw or a chainsaw, volunteers have to be trained and approved by forest service personnel. But since the Federal government began slashing jobs at the Forest Service, many people with the power to vet amateur sawyers have been let go or accepted buyouts. So Talley is working his connections in Colorado and networking with other organizations to find folks who have already been certified that simply might not know about the Colorado Trail’s needs.
“We’re making a call list: ‘Hey, can we call you?’ We need help with this big tree,’” Talley told me. “We’re also developing a process where trainers can come to our facilities to get people certified. If we’re just relying on the Forest Service at this point, it’s a multi-year wait.”
All volunteers, of course, don’t need to be highly specialized. Megan Wargo, who leads the Pacific Crest Trail Association, listed a half-dozen ways folks who couldn’t wield a chainsaw might help. Each year, the trail must be “brushed,” essentially meaning someone walks it to clear it of any overgrowth. Others lead mules to remote trail work sites, literally taking the loads off the backs of other volunteers. Some still command the kitchen, cooking for trail crews on sites, while others can help with administrative tasks and educational outreach from the association’s Sacramento office. Still, there is a catch.
“New volunteers and existing volunteers putting in more hours can make a big difference, but they can’t close the whole gap of not having federal funding,” Wargo said, noting that the PCTA’s federal funding of just less than $700,000 has remained flat for a dozen years even as material and labor costs have risen. “The PCTA can help provide training to get those folks on the ground. But if we don’t have staff to do that, it’s hard to increase those volunteer hours.”
And so, of course, it all comes down to money. Most trail organizations told me they’d found ways to mitigate their dependence on federal funding. The Colorado Trail, for instance, has built a sizable emergency fund through 20 years of compounding interest on a surplus. The Appalachian Trail intentionally diversified its revenue streams after recognizing that their federal partners were chronically understaffed, anyway, even before the genesis of DOGE. The Ice Age Trail reinstated its trail-building season not only after most of its funding finally started to trickle in but also when private donors stepped up to help because they cared about the work. The Ice Age, after all, hopes to finish 15 new miles of trail this year.
As questions loom about if and when money will arrive, such contributions mean that work that’s already been planned and authorized can proceed for now, that the effort of building and maintaining the country’s hiking trails doesn’t end with any specific administration. “As we have funding uncertainties, private money can either step in and cover some of the costs that aren’t being covered by federal grants right now or provide us with stability when we’re asking for federal reimbursements that have been paused,” Wargo, at the PCTA, said. “That gives us flexibility to be able to continue our operations.”
But times, of course, aren’t only tight for trail organizations. Some estimates, including those cited by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, say 60 percent of Americans now live paycheck-to-paycheck; new tariffs will compound that problem, because, as The New York Times recently noted, “[they] will touch almost every aspect of American life.” While hiking across the United States multiple times, I’ve seen at least a half-dozen trail crews consisting only of white-haired retirees. I don’t think that’s because older Americans have some special relationship with civil service and volunteerism. They, instead, have more disposable time and resources than most Americans cannot afford. Trails need help—money, time, energy—that many working Americans do not have the ability to spare.
But Martinez reminded me that there are ways to assist that don’t cost much at all. You can call American officials, both elected and appointed, and tell them that supporting trails matter to you. You can drop caches of water off at trailheads where there’s no working spigot. (Remember to pick up the refuse.) You can deliver a box of donuts to an agency’s office, whether it’s the headquarters of a trail coalition or park rangers, and tell them you support the work they do for public lands. See a forest service crew at a bar? Buy ’em a beer and say thanks. That’s all, Martinez said, volunteerism.
“Whether it’s picking up trash at a trailhead or leaving water or setting up a feed station for volunteers, if it’s something somebody wanted to do, we could say yes and support that,” she said. “It’s an act of kindness, and right now, we need to be reminded of how kind we can be.”
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