In 2005, Joe “Cotton Joe” Norman set out from Springer Mountain, Ga., to hike the Appalachian Trail (AT), which runs from Georgia to Maine. Thousands of hikers have walked all or parts of the historic trail — one such trip was memorialized by Bill Bryson in A Walk in the Woods — and Norman had every intention of following in their footsteps, ending his hike at Maine’s Mount Katahdin, the AT’s northern finish line.
But along the way, Norman met another hiker who gave him some interesting news: Norman’s hike didn’t have to end in Maine. Instead, if he had the time, the money and the stamina, he could keep heading north, following a newer trail that starts near Mount Katahdin and winds into the Canadian Maritime Provinces, ultimately ending at the sea.
Norman — who earned his trail name “Cotton Joe” for wearing cotton T-shirts, not the best idea for backpacking — decided to go for it. After finishing the full 3,200 kilometers of the AT, he descended once again from Mount Katahdin and went looking for the nearby head of the younger trail, called the International Appalachian Trail/Sentier International des Appalaches (IAT/SIA). Seven months after starting out from Georgia, he finally ended his hike at Cape Gaspé, Quebec.
The IAT is the brainchild of Dick Anderson, a fisheries biologist and former commissioner of Maine’s Department of Conservation, who dreamed it up as he was driving along a Maine interstate in 1994. “It just came to me,” Anderson says. It was, in its way, a philosophical idea, he says: The Appalachian Mountains don’t end abruptly in Maine — they go on into Canada. Shouldn’t there be a trail that does the same?
Geologically speaking, it makes sense to continue a trail along the Appalachians, says Sandra Barr, a geologist at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. “I think the wide diversity of the geology here is unsurpassed. You would never have time to get bored, because it changes very rapidly.”
Stretching from Alabama to Newfoundland, the Appalachians have a long and complex history. Several phases of tectonic collisions formed first the northern part of the Appalachians, beginning about 450 million years ago, and later the southern part, beginning about 350 million years ago. The region also includes many exotic terranes, remnants of crust from other landmasses farther south that moved northward and became tacked back onto the North American continent during this busy period. Eventually, 180 million years ago, the northern Atlantic began to split apart, separating Africa from North America and scattering parts of the mountain chain across the Maritime Provinces.
Because of this complicated history, the geology along the route that hikers traverse changes rapidly. For example, all of New Brunswick, the eastern parts of Quebec and most of Nova Scotia are “exotic,” offering a diverse array of geology, Barr says. In Newfoundland, the IAT crosses a famous area where pieces of mantle rock called ophiolites are exposed at the surface.
With support from Maine’s incumbent candidate for governor at the time, Joe Brennan, the proposal to form the IAT quickly made the news across Canada, Anderson says. Throughout the 1990s, trails were cut through the Appalachian Mountains in Maine, New Brunswick and Quebec. In 2003, Newfoundland joined the IAT, opening its first section of trail in 2006 (although thru-hiker Norman wasn’t yet aware of that). From Katahdin, Maine, the trail heads north to eventually follow the U.S.-Canadian border until it heads across into New Brunswick. From there, it goes to Mount Carleton, the highest point in New Brunswick, and then into the Chic-Choc Mountains of Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula. To get to the Newfoundland section, hikers must take a ferry across the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Many seasoned thru-hikers, including Norman, see the IAT as another chance to hike through beautiful backcountry. “I count them as one single trail,” Norman says. “It’s one mountain chain.”
That view is only partly shared by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC), which has been responsible for protecting the AT from development for the last 80 years. The ATC is supportive of the younger trail, but stresses that the two trails are distinct. “When they first got started, there was some concern over the name, and where things would connect,” says Brian King, a spokesman for the ATC. Rather than linking up at Mount Katahdin, for example, hikers who want to find the head of the IAT must go east around Katahdin’s location in Baxter State Park. “But the board talked about it and decided, well, it’s more hiking opportunities. That’s a good thing," he says.
Much of the IAT connects pre-existing trails and old logging roads, meaning that parts of the IAT are less remote and open to bikers and people traveling between towns, Norman says. As the trail progresses, however, new sections are continuously being cut into more remote areas. The IAT also doesn’t yet have some of the conveniences of the more established trail, with fewer lean-tos to shelter from the rain, although cabins are being built.
Still, hikers appear interested. “We’ve had 96 people who have hiked from Katahdin to Cape Gaspé,” while 13 more continued on to the trail’s current terminus at the historic Viking settlement L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Anderson says. In 2007, a Nova Scotia chapter joined the IAT, completing a section of trail in October that connects to the Newfoundland trail.
In 2006, Norman returned to the IAT to hike the Newfoundland portion he hadn’t known about the year before. He took three weeks off to help cut new sections of trail, and returned to help cut more trail in the summer of 2007.
With chapters in Maine, New Brunswick, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia, the IAT has had a connecting effect, Anderson says. Interest in extending the trail has even come from overseas, where the opening of the Atlantic Ocean carried remnants of the Appalachians to Spain, Portugal and northwestern Africa, and also to eastern Greenland, western Norway, and Scotland and Ireland — lands that, IAT planners note, further both Newfoundland's geological and cultural connections to Viking lands.
“Thinking beyond borders was our theme,” Anderson says. “Maine is the only state bordered by only one other state; the rest of our boundary, on three sides, is Canada. People in Newfoundland share the same mountains with people in Alabama, so we’re using the mountains as a way to connect people together.”
Q and A with Sidney Perkowitz, author of Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World
Research physicist Sidney Perkowitz of Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., has been seeking artistic ways to convey the wonders of science to non-scientists for nearly two decades. Author of four popular science books, two plays, a performance-dance piece and a new screenplay (about cloning), Perkowitz’s latest book, Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World, is an affectionate survey of more than 100 science/science fiction films that considers what they did right, what they did wrong and what they did really wrong.
Perkowitz says he has had a lifelong appreciation of science fiction, and his interest in ultimately becoming a scientist was at least partly due to the influence of movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still and Destination Moon. In the first half of the book, organized into sections on alien invaders, planetary forces and classic scientific hubris gone wrong, Hollywood Science summarizes the movies’ plots and then analyzes them for scientific inaccuracies. The book’s third, and most compelling, section deals with the impact of these movies on society, such as how Hollywood portrays scientists. Perkowitz also discusses which movies manage to tell a rollicking good story while still accurately conveying the spirit of scientific discovery and research (if not necessarily every detail), as well as which utterly fail.
Perkowitz spoke with Geotimes reporter Carolyn Gramling about how Hollywood continues to have a significant impact on the sometimes rocky, sometimes reverent relationship between science and society.
CG: Why did you decide to write this book now?
CG: You start by talking about science fiction, which offers a more “extreme” picture of science but also brings back a sense of marvel about it. Has interest in science fiction changed?
CG: One of the issues you examined was how scientists are actually portrayed in these movies.
CG: If there were an Academy Award for “Best Portrayal of a Scientist,” whom would you give it to?
CG: You talk about the balance that some movies try to strike between scientific accuracy and telling a good story. How can a movie do that successfully?
CG: In fact, you gave The Day After Tomorrow a “Special Award” for highlighting important issues even at the expense of strict accuracy.
CG: And you save some special contempt for The Core.
CG: You’re a film enthusiast as well as a physicist, and your love for these movies, even the cheesy ones, comes through clearly. What lessons can Hollywood take from your book? Or scientists?
In January, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Institute of Medicine released Science, Evolution, and Creationism, the third edition of a booklet designed to help the public better understand evolution. The new edition clarifies the differences between science and creationism, while simultaneously emphasizing that evolution and religion are not incompatible.
Science, Evolution, and Creationism is a readable primer on the subject of evolution. Written by a panel of 13 scientists and two high school science teachers, the 88-page booklet is divided into three main sections: a chapter that explains what evolution is and defines science; a chapter that provides concrete evidence in support of evolution; and a chapter that outlines why creationism is not science and, therefore, does not belong in the science classroom. The booklet also makes the argument that understanding evolution is vital to the future of the United States. Using examples of how evolution plays a role in understanding health and treating disease and how it improves agriculture and industry, the booklet highlights evolution’s practical importance to society.
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence, religion is often — unnecessarily — a barrier to people accepting evolution, says Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, Calif. “A lot of people labor under the misapprehension that evolution is anti-religious.” The booklet’s authors try to dispel this misconception by quoting notable scientists who say they have no trouble maintaining their faith (and accepting evolution) and a bevy of religious leaders, including the late Pope John Paul II, who accept evolution. “Religion and science can — and do — coexist,” said co-author Gilbert Omenn, a professor of medicine, genetics and public health at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, at a press conference on Jan. 4. “It’s unfortunate that some parties try to generate conflict where there need not be any.”
This conflict was the impetus behind the original edition of the booklet, which was published in 1984 in response to several state laws requiring that creationism be taught alongside evolution. But the new edition is aimed at anyone curious about evolution — a wider audience than the policymakers, lawyers and teachers who made use of the previous editions.
“This new volume is an attempt to bring the description of the science of evolution even more up-to-date and to better explain what we know about evolution in ways the public can readily understand,” NAS President Ralph Cicerone said at the press conference. The booklet is available to download for free from the NAS Web site (nationalacademies.org/evolution) or by mail for $12.95.
Although unlikely to persuade diehard fundamentalists, the booklet may help convince “the mushy middle,” the approximately 50 percent of Americans who are unsure about evolution, Branch says. The greatest value of the booklet, however, may simply be that it was published by NAS, says NCSE President Kevin Padian, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California at Berkeley. “It’s important for science agencies, especially those affiliated with the government, to take a strong stand on evolution,” he says. “The authority of the National Academy of Sciences is nothing to sneeze at,” Branch adds.
NAS hopes the booklet does more than just educate the public. “This publication is a tool, but it’s only a very small start in getting scientific societies and scientists mobilized in thinking about how science is taught,” said co-author Bruce Alberts, former NAS president and the new editor-in-chief of Science, at the press conference.
Advising school boards on curriculum and writing and improving textbooks are important ways in which scientists can get involved in education, Padian says, although he notes that not all scientists have the time or inclination to get involved in the controversy of teaching evolution. But among those who do, earth scientists have an especially important role to play, he says. “We don’t need to throw more fruit fly genetics at [creationists]; it doesn’t go anywhere,” Padian says. Instead, he says, carefully outlining the major changes in the fossil record gives people visible proof that evolution has occurred.