AT Again the "Gold Standard"

The St. Petersburg (FL) Times of 16 January 2007 published a piece by their outdoors editor, Terry Tomalin, about that state's 1,500 mile 'State Kayak Trail' to be completed there in 2008. The title and subtitle read "A Trail Unlike Anything Else; Organizers with the the Department of Protection call it 'the saltwater version of the Appalachian Trail'."

Okay, I'm a little confused. Is it unlike anything else? Or is it enough like the AT to call it the saltwater version thereof?

Maybe it doesn't matter. Two points remain: 1) the AT is the standard the other guys use to measure their trails; and 2) no matter how rainy it is up on the AT, there will still be more water on this Kayak Trail.

Published on the same date, an op-ed piece in the American Spectator by William Tucker (which is really about Pres. Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq) begins with the line "Last summer I hiked 125 miles from New York City to New Paltz on the Long Path, New York's equivalent of the Appalachian Trail."

Closer to the truth would be "...equivalent of Vermont's Long Trail," but let's not quibble.

(Actually, let's go ahead and quibble. What would be "New York's equivalent" of the AT? Would it be the Long Path when/if it reaches the Canadian border? Or would the trail have to run from New York City way out west to Buffalo?)

My point is only to highlight the use of the AT as the gold standard.