The Edible trail Project – Connecting hiking trails to wild food and local eating
Text and drawings by Frits Ahlefeldt, Hiking.org
A new kind of hiking trails are starting to appear all over the world, where you not only walk, but also eat your way through the landscapes. Both connecting to the land, the locals, the local restaurants and cultures. Giving back and experiencing local traditions, food cultures and taste of variants and species. That can give the hiker a whole new level of connecting to the trails. The Edible trail project will look at these new hiking trail experiments and link to where more can be learned about hiking on edible trails – and how to create these food trails
The edible trail project is under development ( 2020)

Jumping to conclusions
Strategies when facing a gap

Double lost
When you Neither know where you are going – Or where you want to go

Reversed focus syndrome
The challenge of reversed attention. Both on the trails and on work

Connecting through walking
Walkable cities and communities where people get around on foot are more alive

Between a rock and a hard place
If it is a bear on a mountain or one in the office wearing a full suit and tie, hiking can help us learn how to face them better

Keeping social distance
Hikers are learning new habits when approaching both villages and shelters

Is there a point in walking?
We’re ending up right where we started so what is the point, really?

Walk more, Buy less
Change for the planet

Taking it slow
Snail mail walking inspiration

Talking with trees
Debate in the woods

Staying safe AND sane under pandemic, by walking
In 2020 a new pandemic ( Covid-19 ) is swiping across the globe and there seems to be at least two strategies to face it: Staying safe and in self-isolation, in sterile surroundings – And staying sane by connecting to nature

“Burn the bridges” hiker
Making sure quitting is not an option…

Almost there…
The feeling of not making any progress

Road rage vs healing trails
After a few minutes in heavy traffic many drivers experience road rage. Walking can help us feel very different

Did first hiker walk 11 Mio. years ago?
The fossil remains of a group of small human like apes have been found in Germany, and according to experts their bone-structures look like they might have been walking on two legs like us

Walkability score is the new ocean view
When people are buying or renting houses and apartments walkability is one of the most influencing factors of how attractive a place is considered to be

Family Thru-hike Appalachian trail – Youngest only 6 years old
After six months of hiking the Appalachian trail in 2019, the Marlone family ( USA) finished at Mount Kathadin wearing all smiles

People walking while helping science
Researching how hikers work together with scientists to cover unknown and difficult terrain

Dealing with expectations when hiking
Expectations comes in many forms – some of them are our own, in our backpack – other expectations are from those around us

Gadbury Wood bridge
When designing and building bridges out along the trails it is often better to do simple designs.

Creating livable cities by walking
A city that is both good for people and for the planet is a lot about walking, trees, city ecology and interesting ( and complicated) cityscapes – And very little about cars

Path away from it all or towards a better place
What we focus on seems to me to define us more than we realize, no matter if we walk away from it or towards it.

In a sea of cars
There are more than a billion cars on our planet, and the number of vehicles keep growing even though cars look less and less like the answer to many of the both local and global challenges we face today

The challenge of being the edge
Thoughts on innovation, hiking and being first movers

Hiking between high and low habits
Are they a bit like places… or maybe more like paths?

Hiking along a rising sea
One of the strongest lines of defense against rising sea levels and climate change can be coastal trails on dykes

Learning to live with less
We humans put a great pressure on Earth, if we had to carry all our stuff, our impact on the planet would most likely be much smaller

Appreciating what we have
Often we focus on what we lack, instead of what we have

Life is the ultimate long distance hike
The walk of life is one of the most used metaphors in our language and in making sense of landscapes of understandings

Refuel on hike
Getting enough to drink and eat on a hike is one of the things that is often not considered important for inexperienced hikers
The web-names edibleTrail.org Edibletrail.net and edibletrail.com have been reserved for the project