Build it and They Will Walk

The 2.2 mile rail-to-trail conversion of The Hub City Passage of the Palmetto Trail officially opened in Spartanburg on Saturday. There was a ribbon cutting, outdoor spread of breakfast snacks, and a hundred people or so listened to speeches, walked, rode bikes, and rested in those bright green swings you see at the trail head plaza on Henry Street.

It was a festive occasion. People hydro-loaded on free bottles of water to prepare for the 4.4 miles from start to finish. Im sure somebody was figuring how far they had to go to walk off those little personal Danish treats from the snack table. There were dogs, large and small, tugging at their leashes, ready to leave all the talk behind and get on with ita long walk on a warm morning.

As I stood listening to the dedication of this new strip of active living asphalt, I thought long and hard about what it all means. Spartanburgs seen numerous ribbon cuttings in the past decade—new Wal-Marts, office buildings downtown, renovated city parks, and Renaissance hotels—but it hasnt seen powerful people in walking attire making speeches about a trail.

Well, its a big deal this trail, and it connects Spartanburg, literally and figuratively, to a number of larger worlds and ideas. Were trying hard right now to figure out who we are as a community and the 425-mile Palmetto Trail passing right through town goes a long way toward completing that definition.

In the next few years the course will be completely set for this monumental foot path and Im not sure everyone in Spartanburg realizes yet were now officially central to it. Were a passage on the Palmetto Trail. No other city in the upstate got it but us. Not Greenville, Anderson, or Gaffney. Spartanburg has the trail on the ground, and it goes right through downtown Hub City. Some time in the future the first thru-hiker will leave the coast or the mountains and pass through our fair city on the official Palmetto Trail.

The whole trail wont all be a million dollar asphalt ribbon like opened on Saturday. Many of the passages south and north of us will look like the more traditional wilderness trails hikers are used todirt single-track through remote forest land. Hundreds of miles of these single-track passages are open already or soon will be, including some beautiful miles through South Carolinas mountains in the Jocassee Gorges area.

A through-hiker will sometimes be walking along rural roads, or crossing rivers on old railway bridges, and other times, like the Hub City Passage or the Capital City Passage in Columbia, they will take to sidewalks and pass through dense urban centers.

But most people who use the Hub City Connector will be a long way from through-hiking. They will see it as an out-and-back, a single destination for a daily walk or bike ride, not a passage on a trail hundreds of miles long. Already those who live along the way in Duncan Park and Converse Heights are beginning to see it also as a pleasant way to bike to work, or ride out and buy some forgotten essential. Who knows, maybe in the future businesses will spring up along the trail, like a highway, because its there. If youre inclined to trailside shopping you can already buy hotdogs, hairstyling, coffee, carpet, antiques, plants, and photographic services as well as groceries.

One things for sure: the opening of this trail says we are becoming a more active community and we can see through the difficult political process of building something as complex as a linear park pointed at the center of our downtown.

Am I making too much of this trail? Is it silly to ask if this event could have as much impact on the community as that day in the 1950s when Interstate 85 first pushed its ribbon of asphalt through the upstate? Back then we were on the way to leaving the Hub City behind to become, for a decade or two, the Crossroads of the New South? Now were come back around to Hub City and this trail is one of the strongest spokes in the wheel.

Maybe with the passage of the Palmetto Trail through Spartanburg were about to become the Crossroads of Active Living. I know for sure that were at least a step closer to that goal than we were before this trail opened.

So, on Saturday morning I ate pineapple and admired the hard work and financial commitment of the Mary Black Foundation, many local leaders, and Palmetto Conservation Foundation. I thought about the Hub City Connector as a small piece in a larger vision that is now over half-way completeda trail stretching all the way from the mountains to the sea. I thought of one of my friends riding his bike from Duncan Park down the trail to buy groceries at Ingles.

Saturday mornings ceremony also renewed my commitment that someday soon when the last passage of the trail finally opens Ill propose a Wofford interim that will walk the length of it in one January and students will see our community in a new wayas a way station in a long walk to the sea.