MARTINSVILLE — Suzanne Mittenthal arrives at Fables & Fairytales in style, donning a bright red, flowery shirt from Fiji and walking with the help of two long hiking sticks in lieu of a cane.
“You stop there on the way to Australia,” she explains about the shirt.
The hiking sticks?
“I’m not too long for this world,” she jokes.
The sticks, though, are fitting for the 84-year-old, who has spent much of her life building and hiking trails across the globe.
One of Mittenthal’s most notable exploits was her role in building the 42-mile Tecumseh Trail that runs from Morgan-Monroe State Forest south of Martinsville down to Panther Creek in Brown County. As a forest employee, Mittenthal directed a band of volunteers from the Hoosier Hikers Council — an organization she helped create — to build the trail, a five-year effort that was completed in 2002.
The Tecumseh Trail — named by Mittenthal after the Shawnee chief — is the northernmost part of the future Knobstone Hiking Trail (KHT), an idea decades in the making.
The KHT was initiated by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in the 1970s, and early trail-building efforts were led by Gerald Pagac, who envisioned a 160-mile trail extending from just north of Louisville, Ky., all the way to just south of Martinsville. When finished, it would become the longest trail in Indiana.
The first section of the Knobstone was completed in 1981. This section — the 45 miles known as “KT” — begins 10 miles north of Louisville and extends through Clark, Scott, Jackson and Washington counties.
The goal of completing Pagac’s original vision for a 160-mile KHT has been pursued in fits and starts since KT’s completion back in the ‘80s.
Much of Mittenthal’s adult-life — when she’s not helping build a trail in Argentina or hiking on glacier ice in Alaska — has been spent organizing people to finish the Knobstone, a goal she now believes she won’t live to see fulfilled.
And so, she’s written a book she hopes will spark interest and inspiration in seeing the KHT finished.
“This is my exhortation to the world — to finish this trail,” Mittenthal said last month at the book signing of her Knobstone Hiking Trail Companion, held at Fables & Fairytales in Martinsville.
The complete trail will be the combination of four different trails, with the remaining work largely involving what’s known as the Pioneer Trail, the central part of the KHT that crosses mainly private property.
“The Complete Guide to Indiana’s 160+ Mile Hiking Trail,” Mittenthal’s book describes the history of the trail and details a number of attractions hikers can see when they walk it.
“This guide was written to enlist public support for (the KHT) as well as the preservation of Indiana’s vestigial backcountry landscape,” Mittenthal writes in the book’s introduction. “And it’s an attempt to get you, the reader and hiker, to help preserve the world around the trail.”
About a dozen people — some friends, others hiking enthusiasts — came to the bookstore to chat with her about the KHT and the many other trails she’s hiked in her life. They asked her questions, she offered advice, and in turn, she asked them questions about their hiking preferences, always able to recommend a trail to them based on what they’ve hiked before.
Mittenthal has, at this point, done a lot of walking on four legs. She has ideas about the paths we should take.
Around the world
The KHT Companion is Mittenthal’s second book; her first was a Baltimore trail guide written more than 50 years ago while she was a sociology student at Johns Hopkins University, where she eventually earned her Ph.D. At Johns Hopkins, amidst a burgeoning environmentalist movement, she helped start a new chapter of the Sierra Club, and she wrote her book to help fund the chapter.
“I was studying sociology,” Mittenthal said. “On the weekends, we’d go out and explore.”
A lot happened between Mittenthal’s trail guides, and she’d talk all day and all night about her many adventures (she attributes this, often, to being Irish).
She regaled the gathered hikers about teaching English in Estonia during the Cold War, and eating pizza on the steps of the Sydney Opera House. Seemingly every question asked about the trails of Indiana would lead to anecdotes from across the world.
Mittenthal moved to Indiana after her husband got a job teaching at Purdue University, and the work she’s done here since will remain long after she’s gone.
The KHT — a dream that may have died if not for her and the other volunteers with the Hoosier Hikers Council — has earned notoriety amongst hikers, with some parts so strenuous that many hike its path in preparation for the larger Appalachian Trail.
Much of Mittenthal’s work — trailbuilding and otherwise — has been in the service of environmental protection. Her KHT Companion calls for the end of logging on Indiana’s public forest land, arguing it would significantly reduce carbon emissions. Mittenthal would instead see Indiana’s forests used to enhance recreational development instead.
“I’m an environmentalist before I’m anything,” Mittenthal said at the book signing.
This attribute is what led her to trail work in the first place. When she moved to Indiana, she was disheartened by the fact that the original KT was both incomplete and in disrepair, and resolved to fix it, an effort that has taken decades.
“I’m not quite the person I was when I built these trails,” she says now after a lifetime spent making improvements to Indiana’s trails.
Mittenthal has survived two bouts of cancer, once at 40, and then again at 78. The hikes she once conquered are now largely challenges for young people.
Two attendees at the book signing were there to buy Mittenthal’s book for their college-aged daughter, a fellow hiking enthusiast who couldn’t be there. Like she did with the other attendees, Mittenthal passed on a trail recommendation for the couple’s daughter, and signed her book for them.
The KHT is Mittenthal’s gift to her fellow Hoosiers, whether they be hikers or not. Her Companion will guide the hikers who come after her, who will at long last be able to hike the completed 160-mile trail.
The Knobstone Hiking Trail Companion is available for purchase at Fables & Fairytales in downtown Martinsville or online where books are sold.
