A Footpath in the Wilderness: the Early Days of PATC
this book provides an intimate portrait of the founders and early members of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club-their passion, their vision, their personalities, and their accomplishments. These stories about the Club's early days are like time capsules put away 75 years ago. Most were written by the founding members and published in the PATC Bulletin in the decades of the 1930s and 1940s.
Archivist Carol Niedzialek has dug deep into the club's records to find articles, letters, journals, and essays to document the thoughts and actions of these pioneers as they campaigned for land, blazed trails, built shelters, and in the words of one, "...learned everything the hard way."
A Footpath in the Wilderness gives a broad picture of how PATC started, flourished, and created a legacy of volunteerism that continues to this day. In the words of the "father" of the Appalachian Trail, Benton MacKaye, it is the "first chapter in a long story."
Illustrated with 20 historic photographs.