The Long Brown Path
In the early 1920s Torrey developed a weekly outdoor column for the Post, called the Long Brown Path which was named for a line in Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road. Major William A. Welch, General Manager of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, was interested in creating hiking trails in Bear Mountain-Harriman State Parks, but was lacking funds. Welch suggested that Torrey use his influential column to help organize New York metropolitan area hiking clubs into a volunteer trail-building confederation; this led to the creation of the Palisades Interstate Park Trail Conference, a precursor of the NY/NJTC.
Torrey not only wrote the columns, he organized and coordinated the resulting volunteers and did plenty of route-scouting and trail building himself.
The column was very popular: along with news of the clubs and their trails, it included a listing of hikes, as many as 20 or 30 weekly. He also used the column as a "bully pulpit", railing against litter, championing environmental causes, giving notice of upcoming conservation bills in New York and New Jersey, and organizing letter-writing campaigns in support of reforestation measures and proposals for the creation of new parks.
Read more about this topic: Raymond H. Torrey
Famous quotes containing the words long and/or brown:
“Those Marriages generally abound most with Love and Constancy, that are preceded by a long Courtship.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“The river’s tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)