A lifetime of blazing the trail

If you ever hiked along a portion of the North Country National Scenic Trail in New York, there is a good chance Mary Coffin cleared the path for you. At 81 years old, Coffin has spent over half her life developing and maintaining trails from the Finger Lakes to Lake Champlain with the Adirondack Mountain Club.

The NCT crosses eight states and is the longest scenic trail in the country, but it would be tough to find someone who knows the trail in as much detail as Coffin. On the couch next to her is a stack of maps ranging from the entire 4,800-mile trail down to the 42-mile Onondaga Branch section that the Onondaga Chapter of the ADK maintains. She knows exactly which sections are undeveloped and who maintains each part of the trail.

No one would blame her if she wanted to take a step back from leading trail-clearing events. Instead, she is leading volunteers on a five-day overnight construction project to complete the trail over Jones Hill in the Hoffman Notch Wilderness Area on Aug. 12.

The project over the 7-mile section is a piece of a bigger goal she wants to see through: completion of the NCT across Adirondack Park. About 170 miles need clearing in the park, according to Coffin, and it takes about a year to fully develop just one mile of a trail, but those figures only energize her.

“You get hooked into it, and you want to see it through as much as you can. And as you get older, the years you can work on it gets a little more limited,” Coffin said. “Most of my life is behind me. I have less of my life ahead of me, and I want to see more get done in my lifetime. So, I do have an energy to push.”

Her extensive to-do list for the trail work includes paperwork from the state and bringing the first aid kit, tools, and food for the five days. But for Coffin, being in the mountains makes the work worth it.

“It’s rewarding. You’re in the Adirondacks, so you’re just liking it,” she said. “There’s an ambiance, there’s an air of feeling good, feeling positive when you’re in the Adirondacks. The fresh air, the trees, the environment. Lots of times we can’t even get cell service. I know it’s a good feeling.”

Since she joined the club in 1980, Coffin has done whatever she can to educate herself on trail development and stepped up as a leader in the club, serving as chairwoman for several years. She attended workshops with the National Park Service and the statewide Adirondack Mountain Club. She currently serves as the Onondaga chapter’s Conservation committee chair and co-chair for the North Country Trail sub-committee.

For those closest to Coffin, her enthusiasm is nothing new.

“I’ll tell you what, I’ve been married to her for over 30 years, and she’s fun to be married to,” said Coffin’s husband Bill, 95.

Bill joined the club in 1974, and then the two met when they went on the same hikes and cleared trails together. After a few months of hiking together, Bill asked Mary out on a date.

“And the rest is history,” Mary said. “We’ve done a lot of trail work together. It’s nice that as husband and wife, we’ve had that similar interest.”

Today, they live in a log cabin-style house in Chittenango. Inside the house, wooden loons and woodpeckers hang from the rafters while saws and axes used in previous trail clearings hang above the fireplace.

Courtesy of Jack Belanger

Mary and Bill Coffin sit with NewsHouse reporter Jack Belanger to talk about the North Country Trail.

The two worked with the club for so long that they are the go-to people for anyone with a question. That includes current club chair Bruce Holloway.

“The Coffins have been the greatest contribution to our club,” Holloway, who has known the couple for 10 years, said. “They have done so much for our trails.”

Mary’s love for the outdoors dates as far back as she can remember. Growing up in the woods of Western New York, Coffin and her siblings would spend all their time by the creek and waterfall near their house. The only thing that brought them home was the sound of the family bell.

“My father mounted a school bell when they closed down a little one-room school, and he mounted that bell in our yard,” she said. “When my mother got nervous, or it was time for us to come in from the woods in the creek, she’d ring that bell, and we knew, and the whole neighborhood knew the girls were being called back to the house.”

She also remembers her first trail workday back in 1980. After clearing debris and moving rocks all day, Coffin knew she’d found her passion.

“At the end of the day, who knows, maybe we’ve been in half a mile or a mile, and at the end, we walked out. We walked out on a trail. It wasn’t there in the morning,” she said. “And to me, that was amazing.”