[near the Rogue River state game area, Kent Co., Michigan]
On this Tuesday afternoon on February 2, there were Nordic ski tracks and boot-prints from perhaps 8 or 10 people since the most recent snowfall 5 days earlier. But on the two miles of the trail north and then going back to the parking area on Red Pine Road, just north of 18 Mile Road, there was no one else here. Most of the time in daylight, and probably all of the time in nighttime, the thousands of miles of North Country Trail (NCT) are undisturbed by people. This video clip illustrates the brief passage of a hiker, followed by abiding quiet for the rest of the time.
In recent years people around the world have recorded the ordinary sounds of forests they visit, https://timberfestival.org.uk/soundsoftheforest-soundmap/ And the practice of "forest bathing" (a complementary form of recreation or therapy to sunbathing), translated from the Japanese term (ShinYoku), also has attracted people into the forests both named and large along with others unnamed and small.
People's experiences of this habitat vary not just by season and the day's weather, but also with their relative depth of knowledge and familiarity with hiking and their personal limits, preferences, and interests. Some go on a segment of a long-distance (national) trail to add a notch to their walking stick. Others go at a quick pace for exercise mainly, but incidentally for the change of setting that it offers to treadmill exercise. A few may be naturalists keen on observing plant or animal life as a refreshing change to engaging in human society. Still others may commune with nature and place value on abiding under the leafy canopy, not in a hurry to get to some predefined destination. Potentially, there are professional "gatherers" of wild mushrooms and other materials, too. So the relationships between people and hiking trails and the surrounding meadows, fields, streams, and forests are diverse. Turning away from the analytical parsing of "types," the empirical situation may well compound more than one type of relationship or motive among those who pass along the way. And the same person may shift their dominant motivation as they grow older or suffer serious or limiting health effects, too. So a composite picture of the people and the forest along this section of the NCT shows people of various ages, experience levels, and combinations of motivation and amount of interest in engaging and knowing the habitat and its many life forms.
In summary, those who show up at the parking area for a day-hike, or ones passing through on a multi-day trek form a subset of the wider population. During the pandemic Trump virus, outdoor pursuits have given coronavirus-chary people an outlet for their energy and attention as an alternative to quarantining or staring at Internet screens. But still there are relatively few people who go beyond a city or county park to walk on the NCT or another long-distance trail. Those who do hike, especially in bad weather (cold, wet, dark) seem to be respectful in their relationship to the habitat. Even if not card-carrying members of a conservation lobby or organization, they do seem to value the land and the life that goes on there largely unconcerned with human events in the world.
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See also this view of one of the creeks that form the river's headwaters, https://archive.org/details/rogueriver2021headwaters
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