Happy trails
Take a 210-mile hike with trail-blazer Joe Bevirt

 
By JIL SCHULT

Build it and they will come!

Nearly a half-century ago, when Joe Bevirt took on a scout troop as its adviser, he began looking for some cheaper weekend activities. Canoeing was becoming expensive. So he asked the boys where the hiking trails were. They told him they hiked on the side of the roads or in the woods.

“It dumbfounded me that this great recreation state had no place to hike.” Bevirt said. “I got out an old map to show the boys where the Indian trails once were.”
And there began, in 1958, his first steps toward assembling the 210-mile Midland-to-Mackinac Hiking Trail.

Over the next five weekends, the group hiked and camped from Midland to Mackinac. They were part of the first bridge walk that Labor Day Weekend, which at that time was a heel-to-toe race.

He’ll roll out the maps again at the 2004 Kirtland’s Warbler Festival. In their presentation, “Ancient Indian Pathways to Modern Hiking Trails,” Joe and Willi Bevirt will take their audience along that path with them the 210-mile, ancient Indian, Midland-to-Mackinaw trade route and describe how they helped develop it into a modem day Hiking Trail. They’ll point out what tribes lived where and how our modern road system came to be.

Build it and they will come (and destroy it)!

Despite the hard work by the Bevirts and scouts, the trail didn’t last long. By the early 1960s, portions of it were destroyed by logging vehicles. It worsened in ‘70s. The ’80s brought out the ATV’s and dirt bikes. And eventually the trail was ruined.

In 1993 at a governor’s reception, a retiring DNR department head asked Bevirt what happened to his hiking trail. Bevirt explained that since the trail was never protected, it was ruined. All the right people overheard the conversation and Bevirt was asked what it would take to fix it.

Bevirt said he would have to retire from his position as a chemist at Dow Chemical in Midland, but needed strong reassurance that the trail would not be ruined again.
Rebuild it and they will protect it!

After meeting with eight different DNR supervisors and a couple of supervisors from U.S. Forest Service, all of whom had their own ideas of how it should be built, Bevirt concluded that 60 percent of the trail needed to be relocated for various reasons.


Joe and Willi spent 44 working days in the summer of 1998 building the trail where the original Mackinac trail had been when it was a route used by the Indians.

Using maps that showed Indian burial grounds, forts and trails, Bevirt attempted to build the trail as close to the original as possible. Portions of the trail, however, were unidentifiable. But the couple was undeterred.

“It has been our passion for the past four years,” said Willi. “It has been a team effort.

We are in our early 70’s and I don’t want him in the in the woods alone. Particularly in the swampy areas, we would signal each other with whistles.”

The days are long when you are in the woods, but the couple found rebuilding the trail to be highly inspirational.

“I carried the Bible in my pack,” said Willi. “I read the entire Bible that year.”

Today, their trail is located as closely as possible to where it was originally.

Coincidentally, it can be found about a mile east of Kirtland Community College, host and sponsor of the annual Kirtland’s Warbler Festival.