A few months after completing my first feature film, The Aggressives, a friend and amateur outdoorsman invited me hiking in New Hampshire. After five years of exploring the bowels of the inner city submerged in a little known lesbian urban subculture, I was eager for some tree time far from the throbbing boroughs.
A few days later, in my sneakers, I joined my Patagonia outfitted buddy at the base of Mount Washington, elevation 6,288 feet. Our sylvan stroll quickly gave way to a steep incline. It started to snow. By the time we took a break for lunch I could no longer feel my fingers. We passed the tree line and the temperature dropped drastically. The wind whipped snow into blinding billows around me. My friend urged me onward insisting we summit. Soon I found myself sprawled on an icy sheet, pulling myself along on jutting rocks as I tried not to look below. “You probably should have crampons!” my friend shouted through the wind. I saw my life flash before me, and I wondered what crampons were.
Six hours later, on the drive back from the hike, exhausted and steaming off sweat, My friend continued “We really weren’t prepared properly. People die up there like that. I thought we might need a Trail Angel to save us”. It was the first time I had heard the term Trail Angel. Images of winged liaisons for the divine comforted my mind. But my friend explained Trail Angels were really just simple folks helping hikers. In a posttraumatic sort of haze, I realized I had my next subject for a film and a perfect excuse to get out of NYC. Jokingly my friend agreed to produce.
Four years later we bring you Trail Angels. You don’t have to know what crampons are to enjoy this film. Even if you have never set foot on the Appalachian Trail you’ll be inspired by those who choose to set aside six months of their lives to hike all 2175 miles of it. But even more uplifting are those unsung heroes, the Trail Angels themselves, who organize their lives around helping these “thru hikers”. Witness the transformative and cyclical effect of hikers who reconnect with nature through the trail and angels who reconnect with society through the hikers-- forming an unexpected linear community based on the ethics of reciprocity that stretches up the East Coast through the backwoods of small town America. But living by the Golden Rule is no walk in the woods. Trail Angels is just as much a portrait of the blues as our subjects display their wounds and sacrifice during the cold months when the stream of hikers trickles to a halt. Now our beloved Trail Angels await snapshots from Katahdhin, the summit of the AT, where Hikers stand with outstretched arms and faces beaming joy. Probably they will never see these faces again, but the memory of a good deed transcends and in this triumph, both Trail Angel and Thru Hiker are united.
Daniel Peddle, Director
