On July 12th, I met eight ITA volunteers at the Hum Lake/Duck Lake trailhead east of McCall, on the Payette National Forest. On our 2025 project schedule, this looked like just another one-day trail project, working a popular route to a beautiful high mountain lake. We include this project on our schedule each year, but this year it was particularly special because not only was this ITA’s first ever trail project; this year is also ITA’s 15th birthday!

Let’s begin at the beginning, with the “ITA OG’s”: Sally Ferguson, Jenni Blake, Jeff Halligan, John McCarthy, Brad Smith, Brad Brooks, Zac Crist and Joey Ruehrwein. This group decided, 15 years ago, that Idaho’s trails needed help. Spartan budgets for federal agency recreation programs meant not enough paid trail personnel to keep up with thousands of miles of trail maintenance; the demand for access to Idaho’s incredible and wild public lands was growing, and the ITA OG’s wanted to help. This group took the literal first steps, on the Hum Lake Trail, to begin a 2,229 mile journey (to date!) of helping keep Idaho’s hiking trails open for all. A huge thank you to these dedicated individuals for their passion and vision.

Over the years since 2010, ITA crews have gathered at the Hum Lake trail in early July of each year for a day of work and fun, carrying in the tradition of clearing this trail. Some years, we “make the lake”, clearing logs and brush the entire four miles. One year, we helped the Forest Service rebuild a footbridge.

This year, our crew of nine encountered avalanche debris and thick brush near the lake. We didn’t get the whole trail cleared, but we made a dent and along the way we worked as a team, shared life stories, spotted several species of songbirds, and ingeniously used a McLeod tool as a camera tripod for our group photo.

Post project, our group shared cold fizzy water, ITA birthday cake, and incredible Indian food prepared by volunteer Rajiv and his wife. Another phenomenon of trail projects: you meet people for the first time at 8am and by 4pm, they are breaking out their best food to share with the group. Our volunteers are the best!

In my four plus years with Idaho Trails Association, there are days I feel almost silly about how much I love connecting with volunteers, hard work in the backcountry, and about our shared public lands. I mean, there are people out there in the world literally saving lives, fighting bad guys, and feeding the hungry. I’m out there with a crosscut saw and a backpack, moving logs and rocks.

But then I think about Big Problems that keeps me up at night: political division, angst fed by the news cycle, public health. And I think about trail projects. About a dozen strangers surrounded by beauty and big skies, working toward a common goal, connecting with each other, feeling small and insignificant yet also like they fit in the world out here, with other humans who, for the time being, are teammates and friends. And I think how 15 years ago the ITA OGs started not just volunteer trail work but a way to connect people to the natural world and each other. And how those connections, bit by bit, may just help fix some of the Big Problems.

Huge thanks to all of you who have picked up a saw, Pulaski, or your checkbook in support of trails over the past decade and a half, and a giant high five, fist bump, beer mug raise to the ITA OGs. Happy birthday, ITA!