july 2016 southwest 59
F3_Trail Building_BP.indd 59
6/9/16 11:00 AM
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALEX GREEN
/ BY BROOKE JARVIS
On seeing the invisible infrastructure that defines our national parks.
here was a time in my life when I felt strong emotion toward a 5-foot-long forged steel bar with a bevel on one end. It weighed 18 pounds and I had recently lugged it, along with a lot of other notquite-so-outrageously-heavy tools, a number of miles up the side of a mountain. I groaned and cursed. I wondered, repeatedly and out loud, what sort of use a huge, heavy metal stick was on a mountainside. And then I grew to love it. A rock bar, as the tool is known to people who build trails, is a magical force multiplier. (It’s just a lever, really, but we all know what Archimedes
A Walk in the Park T
* Olympic National Park