A trail runs through Steve Siegard’s life.

Retired now from a career in community mental health, he is working to extend the Long Path into the village of Altamont. Siegard has helped with maintaining the path for a quarter of a century.

The path begins in Manhattan near the George Washington Bridge and wends its way north, currently ending at High Point on the Helderberg escarpment.

When Siegard was a kid, growing up in a rural area south of Ithaca, he was literally next door to the Finger Lakes Trail.

“My grandparents lived next to us and the trail was next to them,” he said.

When he was 12 years old, his grandfather, Elbert Norman Siegard, took him up New York’s highest peak, Mount Marcy in the Adirondacks.

“He gave me a big bag of M&Ms and I was free to eat them whenever I wanted,” Siegard recalled.

Since then, motivated by more than chocolates, Siegard has climbed all 46 of the over-4,000 foot Adirondack High Peaks not just once but five times — with two of those rounds in the winter. He is currently one peak short of a third winter round.

Siegard has also twice climbed all 33 of the Catskill peaks over 3,500 feet.

So why does he do it?

Siegard says simply, “I enjoy exploring.”

He also says it provided balance in his life as he worked his way through college and pursued a demanding career.

He started at Houghton College, which is along the Finger Lakes Trail, and finished at Syracuse University, with the same trail nearby. He majored in English and writing.

To pay for his education, Siegard did carpentry and remodeling and eventually formed his own construction business, specializing in historic restoration.

Siegard went on to run a crew of people on Medicaid, training them in vocational skills, and earned a master’s degree in social welfare from the University at Albany, leading to his career in mental health.

Siegard retired in 2019 from St. Mary’s Hospital and is now 61. His current weekly schedule includes two or three days of trailwork and another two or three days of hiking with his wife, Leslie, whom he met — how else? — through hiking.

Siegard particularly likes the challenge of rock scrambles, which he describes as “like rock climbing without a rope.”

“I like the challenge,” he said. “It takes you places almost no one ever goes. I like to explore.”

His friends find it ironic that he spends so much effort constructing and maintaining trails but then goes off trail for his own pursuits.

Siegard, who lives in Clarksville, is a member of Historic Altamont, which was founded by Tom Capuano in a fruitless effort to save the historic Doctor Crounse House.

 Part of Historic Altamont’s vision is to keep the largely Victorian village, which was built up around the train station, surrounded by a ring of green rather than having it enveloped in suburban sprawl.

A year ago, the not-for-profit group was awarded $50,000 through Albany County’s disbursal of American Rescue Plan Act awards, money from the federal government meant to help with fallout from the pandemic.

Capuano said then some of the money would be used to hire an engineer to design trails around Altamont that will connect to trails at the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy’s Bozen Kill Preserve and also to the Long Path.

He described where the Long Path ends now as being “in the middle of nowhere.”

Historic Altamont has secured a parcel of land, Capuano said, near the Altamont Free Library, which is housed in the historic train station, and the bulk of the grant money will be spent on building a pavilion that will serve as a terminus for the Long Path, bringing hikers into Altamont with all of its amenities.

Siegard said this week that the plan now is to build an eight-panel kiosk, with a Victorian appearance, in the parcel off of Orsini Park.

Through hikers, Siegard said, will begin at the 157th Street subway station in Manhattan, near the George Washington Bridge, and will end at Orsini Park in Altamont.

“We’re trying to develop Altamont as a trail town — as a center for outdoor activities like hiking and biking and also the arts,” Siegard said. “There are a lot of tradespeople doing interesting work here.”

That work is to be promoted at the kiosk along with Altamont’s Museum in the Streets, which has markers in the village denoting historic places, as well as nearby hiking venues overseen by the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy and other conservancies, Siegard said.

The Enterprise is wholeheartedly behind this plan. Bringing hikers to the village could be a boon to the local economy while at the same time preserving Altamont’s historic nature.

Beyond that, it could spark local interest in hiking, which is good not just for an individual’s mental and physical health but also for engendering an appreciation of the rapidly disappearing natural world.

Hiking is something any one of any age, gender, background, or upbringing can do.

Earlier this year, we wrote about a group of five women, each one older than 60, who hiked the entire Long Path, all 357 miles, one piece at a time. Their incredible journey started with just a pair of the women taking local hikes on the path, which is something most any of us could do.

Along the way, the women learned about botany and biology, geology and geography, and history and varying cultures. They also learned about self-reliance and about helping one another.

“We’re like the Marines — no woman left behind,” said one of them.

“Our strength is we accommodate every person’s needs,” said another.

The Long Path was originally envisioned in the 1920s by Vincent Schaeffer, a chemist and meteorologist who developed cloud-seeding while working at General Electric in Schenectady, to be an unmarked trail that stretched from New York City to the Adirondacks. 

Schaeffer chose the name from words written by Walt Whitman in the opening stanza of his “Song of the Open Road”:
 

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
 

We note that Raymond Torey’s columns in the New York Evening Post, similarly named The Long Brown Path after Whitman’s poem, was instrumental in the creation of both the Long Path and the Appalachian Trail.

Our own newspaper, in the mid-1990s, helped publicize the Long Path as it was blazed through Helderberg farmland.

Now we’re calling on people who own property between High Point in the Helderbergs and Altamont’s Orsini Park to contact Siegard through email at ssiegard@gmail.com to find out more about where the trail might go and if they’d like to have an easement run through their land.

Siegard says the first of three phases, to get from High Point to the village, is set with the Joshua Foundation on Leesome Lane allowing the path to run through its land.

Now he hopes to find Leesome Lane residents who will allow the path through their property to reach the Altamont Road.

People can now walk the trail that has been blazed from Leesome Lane up to Old Stage Road, where 20 years ago Siegard helped build a parking lot at the Long Path’s end point.

“I’d really like to meet or talk with anyone who is interested,” said Siegard. “We’re hoping for a grand opening next November.”

Siegard said the Long Path is the oldest continuous trail in the country, predating the Appalachian Trail by a few years.

“We want people who live on the trail to enjoy it,” Siegard said. “It’s about connecting people to other communities and natural areas.”

In the Long Path’s over 90-year history, only 370 people have completed the trail from end to end, he said. While the Long Path is more frequently hiked closer to New York City and in the Catskills, he said its use in our area is similar to that of the Finger Lakes Trail where he grew up.

“They might see a few people per year,” Siegard said of residents who allow the trail to come through their property.

People who agree have the option of getting an easement that gives them a tax break, he said, keeping that area preserved as a wild area into the future.

“Others still want to build as they choose,” which is also an option, Siegard said.

He stressed, “There is no predetermined route; it’s whatever works out.”

The trail is marked with aqua blazes and many people in communities along the route are unaware the Long Path exists, he said.

Siegard is also looking for volunteers who are interested in helping to build the new portion of the trail or in maintaining the existing trail.

Over 40 volunteers recently helped build the portion that goes from Stage Road at High Point down to Leesome Lane. The tools for the project were provided by the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference.

“There is work anyone can do,” said Siegard

Trail maintainers walk the trail in spring and fall to remove debris and let Siegard know if there are any large obstacles like downed trees.

For building the trail, volunteers take up tasks that fit their physical strengths and skills. Several of the volunteers for the latest rail extension were in their 70s, Siegard said.

“A large group of people found their greatest joy in life was pounding rocks,” he said. The rocks they pounded into palm-sized pieces were used to fill the trail bed.

So, here’s your chance to join with others in creating a trail that will serve both the village and generations of hikers to come.

“By hiking the trail,” Siegard concluded, “you are part of the wilderness, you are part of the forest, and you are preserving this wonderful area into the future.”