Each chapter of the North Country Trail Association is encouraged to award one member with a Chapter Honor Award. 2009 was the first time NCTH participated and our awardee, announced at the NCTA Annual Conference in Valley City, ND, and presented at the NCTH General Membership meeting on September 15, was Marge Forslin.
Marge Forslin arrived in Marquette upon retirement in 2003. She and her husband John read an announcement in The Mining Journal of a general membership meeting of the North Country Trail Hikers Chapter and decided to attend. At that meeting there were few participants so, Marge, always the inquisitive one, asked questions about the organization, the trail and what might be needed in terms of volunteer support. Low and behold, there was a need for Marge’s expertise in GIS (graphic information systems).
Marge immediately became involved, going out with Gene Elzinga, Seth Johnson, and Neil Rinne on exploration trips in an attempt to locate a much needed connection to the west of Marquette. Marge’s experience with GIS, and having a GPS unit, aided tremendously in that regard.
In January 2007, Marge was instrumental in the chapter GPSing all 120 plus miles that we maintain. As the chief GPS operator, she hiked most of the miles and then developed maps for each segment that we have made available on our website as downloadable images so hikers can easily find and follow the trail. She developed the topographical maps from the GPS files and included access roads to each segment, parking locations, points of interest as well as the trail itself.
Marge also became active as a member of the trail crew, helping trail adopters to care for their segment, lopping, sawing, blazing, etc. If she is available Marge is one of the first to volunteer for trail crew activities. In addition, Marge and John have adopted a 2.5-mile segment of trail between Little Presque Point and Echo Lake Road that they maintain to perfection.
More recently, Marge has served as our chapter vice-president since 2007. We had no president so she essentially served as our president although our Board of Directors are active supporters in all activities, thereby making it a less daunting task.
Marge jumps into any need that the chapter has, recently helping develop and design our new chapter brochure, attending trail building workshops, a Volunteer Adventure, a Triad meeting, an archaeological workshop, sawyer training, the 09 NCTA Annual Conference and a planning meeting for the 2010 Annual Conference. She has helped promote the trail by participation in outreach, i.e. booth at NMU’s Fall Fest, National Trail’s Day hikes, presentation at UPEC (Upper Peninsula Environmental Coalition) Celebrate UP!, etc.
She has been the primary planner for the Softies Hike (our semi-annual hike across the UP) since 2005. She participated in, and completed, hiking the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Hikers Challenge last summer to hike all 95 miles of trail within the boundaries of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. She has willingly offered the use of her and John’s minivan for transportation to both the Softies Hikes and the Pictured Rocks Challenge Hikes.
Her GIS experience again came in handy when she overlaid our trail on plat maps; thereby assisting the landowner’s committee to identify landowners on whose property the trail traverses.
It is hard to imagine where our chapter would currently be without Marge as a leader, always willing to step in and help in any way that she can. She inspires the rest of us to stretch and do more as well.
For all this and more, we congratulate Marge on being our first Chapter Honor Awardee.
