Seth Einterz '11 - After some many days of dreary orientation and preliminary research, I hit the road in search of fame, love, wealth, and the great Rail-Trail gurus. While I still seek the first three, I found the gurus.

Richard Stroup is the executive director (a technical term for wise guru) of Friends of Boone County Trails, a community organization that has been a strong supporter of the incoming Farm Heritage Trail. Still stuttering out of its planning, the Farm Heritage Trail will eventually span the distance from Lebanon to Lafayette, and act as a corridor of agro-tourism.

Demonstration farms, restaurants, and other amenities along the trail will be a conduit from urban Indianapolis to the rural soul of Indiana. Mr. Stroup discussed the coexisting challenges and opportunities that one encounters when building trails. As he explained the process: “We know there’s another roadblock somewhere; we’re just driving a hundred miles per hour to get to the next one.”

Ron Carter is the executive director of the Greenways Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that facilitates the construction of trails throughout the state of Indiana. I met with Mr. Carter in the Carmel Town Hall, just outside the busy Monon Trail. Mr. Carter gave me a wonderful interview that covered a large breadth of subjects. Especially, Mr. Carter used his home Carmel as an example of the economic benefits of trails in Indiana: “Our railroads carried commerce. We took them out of service and they became linear junk yards. Now that they are back in service, they carry commerce again.”

If I have learned anything about the value of trails in these first couple of days, I have learned that the effort to build trails creates an even larger opportunity to come together as a Hoosier community. Just as these two men set aside an hour of their day to speak with me, so these trails offer Indiana a conduit not only of transportation, but of social networking and relationships. In presenting the community of Indiana, there’s nothing better to showcase than how we interact with each other.