LAST CALL: Continental Divide
Regnery, Alfred S.
LAST CALL Alfred S. Regnery Continental Divide ~-T IS 3,100 MILES FROM the Canadian border to Mexico. Imagine the benefits of a multi-purpose road (of sorts) right through the heart of the...
...As Ronald Reagan put it, the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man...
...That's because the road in question is the Continental Divide Trail...
...It isn't finished yet, and builders are looking for additional volunteers to help complete the job...
...It starts on the Canadian border in Glacier National Park, in northern Montana, loops through Idaho, diagonally crosses Wyoming and goes south through Colorado and New Mexico to the Mexican border...
...The internationalists say it is just what is needed to help unify North America...
...The commercial people think, well, it isn't a bad idea, and might provide at least one way of transporting stuff all the way from Mexico to Canada, and anyway, roads linking two countries, across another, must be good for commerce...
...At 12 miles a day, with a day offnow and then to rest your feet, a through-hike would take the better part of a year, and what a year it would be...
...I t won't carry Chinese products from Mexico into the Heartland...
...In August, near Durango, Colorado, I visited the trail with a group of public officials, conservationists, forest rangers, and trail enthusiasts...
...It won't evade union-run ports...
...both are fine horsemen, used to the outdoors, and hearty as can be...
...It is always reassuring to see a senator away from Washington be a real man on a horse instead of some prissy-looking fellow windsurfing...
...W E ASSEMBLED NEXT TO A RUSHING stream in a field just outside of Silverton, an old mining town nestled between 14,000-foot peaks...
...Thirty-one hundred miles of the most spectacular country in North America, right through five of the reddest states, and right on the Continental Divide, with water running down to the Pacific on the west side, and to the Atlantic on the east...
...The East Coast has its Appalachian Trail, stretching from Maine to Georgia...
...Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the former Colorado senator who switched parties--Democrat to Republican-and Wayne Allard, current Colorado senator and always a Republican, were there...
...It's billed as the most significant trail system in the world, and a trail that binds Americans to the history and promise of the West...
...Imagine the benefits of a multi-purpose road (of sorts) right through the heart of the U.S., from one border to the other...
...As the population moves west, the West deserves a through-trail of its own...
...It is being built as I write...
...The trip was organized to promote the project, to show it off, and to gain some support from a diverse group...
...It got mine...
...Alfred S. Regnery, publisher of The American Spectator, is writing a book on the conservative movement...
...Even Mexican coyotes won't be much interested in smuggling illegals along this road...
...The right wingers haven't focused on it yet, but as far as I can tell, none of them, not even Tom Tancredo, thinks it's a bad idea...
...It won't actually carry much of anything, other than a few backpacks and saddlebags...
...This isn't the NAFTA Superhighway...
...It is multi-purpose, too-you can walk, or you can ride a horse...
...What a thrill to ride with 30 or so others high into the backcountry, splashing through creeks and up a craggy, rocky trail, one minute in the sun, the next in a downpour followed by hail...
...The trail crosses through 20 wilderness areas, dozens of diverse ecosystems, three national parks, and 25 separate national forests...
...Uninterrupted, straight through, even if not the most direct route...
...It's being built with private money, so even Congress won't get yelled at for trying to buy more votes...
...Now it has one...
...I f I did not have to run this magazine, maybe that's what I'd do...
...The cost...
...I have hiked chunks of it, 82 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2006 but as fine as it is, the Appalachians are not the Rockies...
...But surprise...
...But soon the sun was out again, lighting up fields of wildflowers and shining off snow-capped peaks...
...It will be finished in 2008, and already 7,500 volunteers have helped to build it...
...The horses seemed to know that they would take us through some of the most magnificent land in the Rockies and couldn't wait to get started...
...The environmentalists are concerned it might scar up the land a bit and bring a few more people to uninhabited territory, but at least they're not trying to stop it...
Vol. 39 • October 2006 • No. 8
