Our Stories

It’s a Launch!

We Build Trail in Low Places–North Country Trail Association Celebrates our Volunteers! from North Country Trail on Vimeo.

With a parody of the song "Friends in Low Places" (properly licensed!) this music video celebrates the volunteers who build, maintain and tell the story of America's longest national scenic trail. Stretching 4600 miles from the middle of North Dakota to the Vermont border of New York (and hopefully soon into Vermont to connect with the AT), the North Country Trail illustrates the diversity and tells the collective story of America's northern heartlands–our "Red Plaid Nation." Go to www.northcountrytrail.org for more information, and to support this effort!

Today NCTA is launching our first music video!   “We Build Trail in Low Places” (bit.ly/lowplaces) parodies the old Garth Brooks hit, “Friends in Low Places,” and celebrates the efforts of volunteers along the entire 4600 miles of the North Country National Scenic Trail. Our hope is that it will be widely shared and go viral in our community and elsewhere, sharing with the world something about who we are, what we love to do and why folks should want to be part of our community and family!

So, how come a music video? It’s no secret that the North Country Trail’s story is not well-told. We often joke about it being the “best kept secret,” but you know, it’s really not that funny. Our volunteers toil in obscurity and while most of us are happy just to be part of building the trail, its a worthy effort deserving of more recognition. Plus, there just aren’t enough of us. Its also no secret that we’re older and need to bring in more younger folks to take up the leadership mantle. We need a new and better way to share our story. A music video depicting a multi-aged group of folks having fun together sends a strong message about access, invitation and inclusion. If viewers can see themselves in the picture and want to stand next to and have fun alongside us, there’s a chance of bringing them on-board, recruiting them into the community.  And, through today’s social networking, if we can get LOTS of viewers we’ll be generating more awareness about the trail, who we are and what we do.

Will it work? A lot depends on you—our NCTA family, our trails community—and how enthusiastically the video gets shared. The more views and shares we get, the more likely the message gets communicated. We’ll measure the outputs—the numbers of views and shares, but the real outcomes have to do with more members, and more folks participating in NCTA activities. But again, we really need your help in sharing the video as widely as possible.

So how did we pay for it? We knew NCTA’s budget had other priorities, but the idea of doing a music video seemed like a good one, so we used a crowd-funding platform, Kickstarter, to generate the funds. With Kickstarter you pitch your idea to the public and ask for backers to step up and help fund it. The cool thing is, you set a target, and you only get funded if the target’s fully met. Basically people vote with their wallets, and fortunately they (you!) liked us! 154 backers pledged 25% MORE than our target, so we were able to do the project without taxing NCTA’s already stretched finances. Here’s more about Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brucematthews/lets-celebrate-our-north-country-trail-volunteers.

We recorded the song, and then we recruited volunteers and shot the video scenes all in one June day in the Lowell, MI area. We’re pretty juiced about the results! We hope you will be too.  Above all send this link, bit.ly/lowplaces , far and wide, to everyone you know, and encourage them to watch the video and talk about it with their friends. Help us make it go viral!

Consider making a donation to support the North Country Trail Association – Click here.