[Music]
so here we are in the middle of the
Caucasus Mountains this incredible
tangled knot of mountains stretching
from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea
and I’ve been spending a lot of time in
these mountains over the past couple of
years working on a project called the
trans Caucasian Trail and the goal is to
build a hiking trail that will stretch
from C to C across these mountains
connecting the national parks of the
region into one single network of
long-distance hiking trails so what I’ve
realized over the past couple of years
is that this idea is a really powerful
idea it’s a big idea it’s really
ambitious but the powerful thing about
it is that it brings people together
behind one single idea a lot of people
want to participate in an ambitious idea
they want to get involved they want to
get their hands dirty and get it pushed
the idea forward to make it a reality
even when you think it’s impossible so
that’s what I want to talk about today
is about building a trail but also about
building a community around the trail
that will really push that idea forward
now first a little bit about these
mountains that we call home I know I
don’t need to educate anyone in this
room about the caucuses but I did want
to mention some astonishing facts this
mountain range is relatively compact
mountain range about a thousand
kilometres from east to west a thousand
kilometers from north to south but in
that small area you have some of the
largest ecological and cultural
diversity in the world it’s actually one
of the most linguists went
linguistically diverse regions of the
world with over a dozen indigenous
languages spoken and it’s the most
ecologically rich area of the world per
kilometer outside of the tropics and the
variety of landscapes is just incredible
I mean imagine being able to spend a
month or two months or three months
hiking across the caucuses from the
glaciers and forests
vanetti to the subtropical rainforest of
Adjara
across to the volcanic plateau in
armenia or the wide open valleys of
Tusheti in eastern Georgia on to the
high step in Azerbaijan it would be
incredible right I know you’re all
convinced the pictures are convincing
enough themselves now I’m sort of an
unlikely advocate for building a trail
across the caucuses I’m not from the
Caucasus unfortunately I’m from the
cornfields of Indiana in the US but I
first came to Georgia in 2005 as a Peace
Corps volunteer and I taught English for
two years in a small village on the
Black Sea coast called jutsu Bonnie and
when I wasn’t busy teaching English I
was out walking in the hills above my
village exploring the mountains and
getting to know Georgia and that’s how I
really got to know Georgia was on foot
walking around meeting people speaking
Georgian drinking wine and I’ve always
loved walking when I was a teenager I
would convince my brothers to drive down
in the summertime to the Smoky Mountains
in Tennessee which were the closest
mountains to where I lived and we would
go backpacking along the Appalachian
Trail there and the Appalachian Trail is
a long trail in the u.s. stretches for
about 3,500 kilometers along the ridge
of the Appalachian Mountains
and when we were walking on that trail I
was just captivated by that idea that
you could keep going for weeks or months
and along that same trail and I really
carried that with me later in life and
after Peace Corps I ended up moving back
to stupidy and working here and
exploring more of the national parks in
the region visiting Azerbaijan and
Armenia visiting the mountain regions of
Spawn Eddie and Tusheti and Racha and
that’s when I really started to think
about maybe it would be possible to
create a long-distance trail here in the
caucuses so I was kicking that idea
around in the back of my head for a
couple of years and in 2015 I decided
you know what I’m gonna try and just
put this idea out there see what happens
so me and my friend Jeff hack who was
another Peace Corps volunteer with me we
decided to spend the summer looking for
trails that cross these mountains and we
you know got our maps and our backpacks
together we headed out into the
mountains we had this big plan that we
were gonna cross the caucuses and we
weren’t starting from scratch
of course because people have been
crossing these mountains for centuries
and there’s ancient trails that go
between villages and trails that have
been created by by trekkers more
recently and there’s this wonderful
community of mappers and explorers in
the caucuses that have done a lot to
develop those trails recently to mark
them and map them but we quickly learned
that there were a lot of gaps and even
where there were trails the trails were
in pretty bad condition it was really
hard to walk them and if you actually
wanted people crossing the Coxes hiking
this long-distance trail they would
really need to be improved so we failed
pretty miserably in our goal of crossing
the caucuses that summer but we we found
a lot of really great resources we found
a lot of really amazing unknown routes
and most importantly we met a lot of
people who were really inspired by the
site by this idea of a trans Caucasian
Trail and really wanted to help us make
it happen even some people who had had
the similar idea themselves like my
colleague Tom Allen in Armenia who had
had a similar idea of creating a
long-distance trail across Armenia and
he is working to develop the trail there
now so we were so inspired by all of
these people who wanted to get involved
that the next summer in 2016 we decided
we’re actually going to try and improve
one of these big sections of trail and
we chose this section of trail in
western smadi west of mestia because a
lot of people are hiking east from
mestia to SchoolI but really nobody was
hiking this trail in western society it
was in really bad condition it was hard
to find nobody really knew about it so
we knew we’d need trail crews to go out
there and help us and
prove this trail and we put out a call
for volunteers we told people we’re
gonna be working in the mountains it’s
gonna be cold it’s gonna be wet it’s
gonna be uncomfortable you’re probably
gonna be miserable but remarkably we had
20 people from a dozen different
countries sign up to come out and
volunteer and work on these trail crews
including people from from Georgia and
we also had a crowdfunding campaign at
the same time to raise money to buy
tools and to hire a trail design expert
who would help us improve this trail and
dozens of people from around the world
and some people here in this room
contributed to that at giving ten fifty
dollars a hundred dollars to help us
make it happen so we gathered insanity
and we got to work and we got to work
building bridges building drains and
check steps and building new trail and
it was really hard work but it was also
a really good time most of the
volunteers had never done work like this
before and they ranged in age from early
20s into their 60s and despite all of
the the hard work and the fact that we
had to carry in our own food we had to
sleep in tents at night everybody had a
really amazing time I think there’s
something really special about spending
time out in the mountains spending time
in nature doing physical labor and
working together without the
distractions of cell phones and the
internet that really brings people
together you know I’ve never seen a
group of people come together as fast as
a trail crew they learned to work
together and communicate and solve
problems despite all of their
differences in age and gender and
nationality and experience so we were
really successful last summer that we
continued the program again this summer
but we expanded it we worked in sweaty
and also in diligent Park in Armenia and
we had over a hundred
20 volunteers from 17 different
countries come here throughout the
summer and including dozens of people
from Georgia and Armenia working on our
trail crews up in the mountains and we
wanted to continue to expand this
volunteer program and get even more
people from the region involved next
summer because I think it’s a really
special thing to have people from across
the caucuses coming together and working
on something that benefits the region
together now of course we built bonds as
a trail crew but we also one of the
really special things about this project
has been building connections with the
communities that the trail passes
through itself and a good example of
that is the community of collaging in
span ID and my friend Valeri who who
lives there who I met two years ago when
I was scouting trails and spa netting
and I was trying to find the trail to
catch cold ah she I I was going from
Soleri small village down into a river
valley and there was this raging river
that was fed by the early summer
snowmelt and I couldn’t figure out a way
to cross it I couldn’t find the bridge
and it started raining and I was
wandering through the stinging nettles
and it was really kind of miserable so I
decided you know what I’m turning around
I’m going back to the to the village I
came from and when I got back to the
village I called up Jeff and I told him
I couldn’t find a way and he was
supposed to meet me in the next village
and he said he’d met this guy Valeri who
says said he could come and and help me
find the bridge so they gave me some
directions and I wandered back down
towards the river for about 40 minutes
and then suddenly this guy emerges from
the mist and he takes me by the hand and
shows me the bridge and takes me up the
trail to his village and when we get
there
his wife is there and his grandchildren
and they bring me inside they let me dry
out dry all with my clothes and warm up
and they made a huge meal and as we were
sitting there sharing this meal we
learned that Valeri and his wife Mauro
are the last people to
in the village Kakashi the village has
been there for centuries they actually
have an 800 year old church in their
backyard
and when Valeri was born there in the
50s there were about a dozen families he
said still living in the village but
over the years young people moved to the
cities the older people in the village
died off and a lot of families left in
the 80s after some really hard winters
and spaghetti and now it’s just Valeri
and Mauro and as we were sitting there
sharing this meal with them I just
thought it was such a privilege to be
there and to experience this hospitality
and to get to know this village which is
kind of on its last legs and I wanted to
do whatever I could to share that
experience with other people and so this
summer we actually we brought volunteers
back to Quito Kobashi we worked on a
section of trail that had been washed
out by landslides and Valeri helped us
replace the bridge that he had showed me
two years ago because it had also been
damaged in a flood and we camped near
the village Valeri brought us milk in
the evening and at the end of the week
we all shared a meal together and it was
an incredible experience to to have the
volunteers there and it was really
special for Valeri and Mauro too because
they could see the possibility of some
life returning to their village and
Valeri said he thought that if we had
more people visiting more tourists it
might be a reason that other families
would return to the village at least for
the summer and so it was when we were
working with Valeri this summer that I
really started to think as the trip of
the trail itself as a community you know
the trail you might walk it alone but
it’s really a record of all the people
who have come before you and it’s there
for all the people who are gonna come
after you it’s all the people who work
together to help improve it it’s all the
people you hike with but also all the
people that you meet along the way and
when you have that in mind it really
makes the trail into something much more
than a strip of dirt and a series of
bridges and signs and blazes it’s really
a way for people to
connect with the mountains communities
to connect with each other and for
people from around the region and around
the world to connect with each other and
so I think we usually think of mountains
as barriers as boundaries and they are
they’re what’s created all of this
incredible diversity in the caucuses but
they’re also bridges they’re what ties
it all together and the mountains here
are what everybody in the region has in
common and they’re a great place –
they’re big enough to make you feel
small and a great place to really work
together on something larger than
ourselves thank you
you
so here we are in the middle of the
Caucasus Mountains this incredible
tangled knot of mountains stretching
from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea
and I’ve been spending a lot of time in
these mountains over the past couple of
years working on a project called the
trans Caucasian Trail and the goal is to
build a hiking trail that will stretch
from C to C across these mountains
connecting the national parks of the
region into one single network of
long-distance hiking trails so what I’ve
realized over the past couple of years
is that this idea is a really powerful
idea it’s a big idea it’s really
ambitious but the powerful thing about
it is that it brings people together
behind one single idea a lot of people
want to participate in an ambitious idea
they want to get involved they want to
get their hands dirty and get it pushed
the idea forward to make it a reality
even when you think it’s impossible so
that’s what I want to talk about today
is about building a trail but also about
building a community around the trail
that will really push that idea forward
now first a little bit about these
mountains that we call home I know I
don’t need to educate anyone in this
room about the caucuses but I did want
to mention some astonishing facts this
mountain range is relatively compact
mountain range about a thousand
kilometres from east to west a thousand
kilometers from north to south but in
that small area you have some of the
largest ecological and cultural
diversity in the world it’s actually one
of the most linguists went
linguistically diverse regions of the
world with over a dozen indigenous
languages spoken and it’s the most
ecologically rich area of the world per
kilometer outside of the tropics and the
variety of landscapes is just incredible
I mean imagine being able to spend a
month or two months or three months
hiking across the caucuses from the
glaciers and forests
vanetti to the subtropical rainforest of
Adjara
across to the volcanic plateau in
armenia or the wide open valleys of
Tusheti in eastern Georgia on to the
high step in Azerbaijan it would be
incredible right I know you’re all
convinced the pictures are convincing
enough themselves now I’m sort of an
unlikely advocate for building a trail
across the caucuses I’m not from the
Caucasus unfortunately I’m from the
cornfields of Indiana in the US but I
first came to Georgia in 2005 as a Peace
Corps volunteer and I taught English for
two years in a small village on the
Black Sea coast called jutsu Bonnie and
when I wasn’t busy teaching English I
was out walking in the hills above my
village exploring the mountains and
getting to know Georgia and that’s how I
really got to know Georgia was on foot
walking around meeting people speaking
Georgian drinking wine and I’ve always
loved walking when I was a teenager I
would convince my brothers to drive down
in the summertime to the Smoky Mountains
in Tennessee which were the closest
mountains to where I lived and we would
go backpacking along the Appalachian
Trail there and the Appalachian Trail is
a long trail in the u.s. stretches for
about 3,500 kilometers along the ridge
of the Appalachian Mountains
and when we were walking on that trail I
was just captivated by that idea that
you could keep going for weeks or months
and along that same trail and I really
carried that with me later in life and
after Peace Corps I ended up moving back
to stupidy and working here and
exploring more of the national parks in
the region visiting Azerbaijan and
Armenia visiting the mountain regions of
Spawn Eddie and Tusheti and Racha and
that’s when I really started to think
about maybe it would be possible to
create a long-distance trail here in the
caucuses so I was kicking that idea
around in the back of my head for a
couple of years and in 2015 I decided
you know what I’m gonna try and just
put this idea out there see what happens
so me and my friend Jeff hack who was
another Peace Corps volunteer with me we
decided to spend the summer looking for
trails that cross these mountains and we
you know got our maps and our backpacks
together we headed out into the
mountains we had this big plan that we
were gonna cross the caucuses and we
weren’t starting from scratch
of course because people have been
crossing these mountains for centuries
and there’s ancient trails that go
between villages and trails that have
been created by by trekkers more
recently and there’s this wonderful
community of mappers and explorers in
the caucuses that have done a lot to
develop those trails recently to mark
them and map them but we quickly learned
that there were a lot of gaps and even
where there were trails the trails were
in pretty bad condition it was really
hard to walk them and if you actually
wanted people crossing the Coxes hiking
this long-distance trail they would
really need to be improved so we failed
pretty miserably in our goal of crossing
the caucuses that summer but we we found
a lot of really great resources we found
a lot of really amazing unknown routes
and most importantly we met a lot of
people who were really inspired by the
site by this idea of a trans Caucasian
Trail and really wanted to help us make
it happen even some people who had had
the similar idea themselves like my
colleague Tom Allen in Armenia who had
had a similar idea of creating a
long-distance trail across Armenia and
he is working to develop the trail there
now so we were so inspired by all of
these people who wanted to get involved
that the next summer in 2016 we decided
we’re actually going to try and improve
one of these big sections of trail and
we chose this section of trail in
western smadi west of mestia because a
lot of people are hiking east from
mestia to SchoolI but really nobody was
hiking this trail in western society it
was in really bad condition it was hard
to find nobody really knew about it so
we knew we’d need trail crews to go out
there and help us and
prove this trail and we put out a call
for volunteers we told people we’re
gonna be working in the mountains it’s
gonna be cold it’s gonna be wet it’s
gonna be uncomfortable you’re probably
gonna be miserable but remarkably we had
20 people from a dozen different
countries sign up to come out and
volunteer and work on these trail crews
including people from from Georgia and
we also had a crowdfunding campaign at
the same time to raise money to buy
tools and to hire a trail design expert
who would help us improve this trail and
dozens of people from around the world
and some people here in this room
contributed to that at giving ten fifty
dollars a hundred dollars to help us
make it happen so we gathered insanity
and we got to work and we got to work
building bridges building drains and
check steps and building new trail and
it was really hard work but it was also
a really good time most of the
volunteers had never done work like this
before and they ranged in age from early
20s into their 60s and despite all of
the the hard work and the fact that we
had to carry in our own food we had to
sleep in tents at night everybody had a
really amazing time I think there’s
something really special about spending
time out in the mountains spending time
in nature doing physical labor and
working together without the
distractions of cell phones and the
internet that really brings people
together you know I’ve never seen a
group of people come together as fast as
a trail crew they learned to work
together and communicate and solve
problems despite all of their
differences in age and gender and
nationality and experience so we were
really successful last summer that we
continued the program again this summer
but we expanded it we worked in sweaty
and also in diligent Park in Armenia and
we had over a hundred
20 volunteers from 17 different
countries come here throughout the
summer and including dozens of people
from Georgia and Armenia working on our
trail crews up in the mountains and we
wanted to continue to expand this
volunteer program and get even more
people from the region involved next
summer because I think it’s a really
special thing to have people from across
the caucuses coming together and working
on something that benefits the region
together now of course we built bonds as
a trail crew but we also one of the
really special things about this project
has been building connections with the
communities that the trail passes
through itself and a good example of
that is the community of collaging in
span ID and my friend Valeri who who
lives there who I met two years ago when
I was scouting trails and spa netting
and I was trying to find the trail to
catch cold ah she I I was going from
Soleri small village down into a river
valley and there was this raging river
that was fed by the early summer
snowmelt and I couldn’t figure out a way
to cross it I couldn’t find the bridge
and it started raining and I was
wandering through the stinging nettles
and it was really kind of miserable so I
decided you know what I’m turning around
I’m going back to the to the village I
came from and when I got back to the
village I called up Jeff and I told him
I couldn’t find a way and he was
supposed to meet me in the next village
and he said he’d met this guy Valeri who
says said he could come and and help me
find the bridge so they gave me some
directions and I wandered back down
towards the river for about 40 minutes
and then suddenly this guy emerges from
the mist and he takes me by the hand and
shows me the bridge and takes me up the
trail to his village and when we get
there
his wife is there and his grandchildren
and they bring me inside they let me dry
out dry all with my clothes and warm up
and they made a huge meal and as we were
sitting there sharing this meal we
learned that Valeri and his wife Mauro
are the last people to
in the village Kakashi the village has
been there for centuries they actually
have an 800 year old church in their
backyard
and when Valeri was born there in the
50s there were about a dozen families he
said still living in the village but
over the years young people moved to the
cities the older people in the village
died off and a lot of families left in
the 80s after some really hard winters
and spaghetti and now it’s just Valeri
and Mauro and as we were sitting there
sharing this meal with them I just
thought it was such a privilege to be
there and to experience this hospitality
and to get to know this village which is
kind of on its last legs and I wanted to
do whatever I could to share that
experience with other people and so this
summer we actually we brought volunteers
back to Quito Kobashi we worked on a
section of trail that had been washed
out by landslides and Valeri helped us
replace the bridge that he had showed me
two years ago because it had also been
damaged in a flood and we camped near
the village Valeri brought us milk in
the evening and at the end of the week
we all shared a meal together and it was
an incredible experience to to have the
volunteers there and it was really
special for Valeri and Mauro too because
they could see the possibility of some
life returning to their village and
Valeri said he thought that if we had
more people visiting more tourists it
might be a reason that other families
would return to the village at least for
the summer and so it was when we were
working with Valeri this summer that I
really started to think as the trip of
the trail itself as a community you know
the trail you might walk it alone but
it’s really a record of all the people
who have come before you and it’s there
for all the people who are gonna come
after you it’s all the people who work
together to help improve it it’s all the
people you hike with but also all the
people that you meet along the way and
when you have that in mind it really
makes the trail into something much more
than a strip of dirt and a series of
bridges and signs and blazes it’s really
a way for people to
connect with the mountains communities
to connect with each other and for
people from around the region and around
the world to connect with each other and
so I think we usually think of mountains
as barriers as boundaries and they are
they’re what’s created all of this
incredible diversity in the caucuses but
they’re also bridges they’re what ties
it all together and the mountains here
are what everybody in the region has in
common and they’re a great place –
they’re big enough to make you feel
small and a great place to really work
together on something larger than
ourselves thank you
you
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