Trailblazer

Anne Springs Close, a lifelong walker, champions the enjoyment of the outdoors. credit: photograph by Brian Gomsak

In the woods near Fort Mill, South Carolina, among the shortleaf pines, hickories, and dogwoods near the Catawba River, stands a century-old white oak. Here, nearly eighty years ago, Miss Tony, a German nanny, began walking with a three-year-old sandy-haired girl named Anne. Each morning, year-round, they walked to what they called the “mile tree.” It was not a regimented exercise—they would hang around to watch the rabbits and squirrels and pick flowers.

“The point was,” says Anne Springs Close, “Miss Tony had us walking in the woods every day to that tree. I was basically taught that it was a sin to remain indoors on a nice day when you could be outdoors walking, swimming, or riding a horse. And it’s a lesson that’s stayed with me my entire life.”

The tradition of walking to that “mile tree” planted in Close a seed that through the decades has inspired and informed one of the greatest one-woman land conservation movements in the South—and most recently, a 420-mile walking and hiking trail connecting the Atlantic coast with the Appalachian Mountains across the width of South Carolina.

The Palmetto Trail, a project of the Palmetto Conservation Foundation, of which Close was founding director, begins at the Intracoastal Waterway in Awendaw, north of Charleston, travels through the Midlands section of South Carolina, and ends at Oconee State Park, near the North Carolina–Georgia border. The trail straddles more than a half dozen rivers and traverses coastal marshes and lily pad swamps. But the most scenic part may be the recently completed section through the heart of the 29,000-acre Poinsett Reservoir area, complete with waterfalls and bald granite overlooks.

“I wanted a trail here that could bring people together—young, old, rich, and poor,” says Close, who chaired the trail’s organizing committee. “This trail is not just for hard-core, weeklong backpackers. This is also for families who can no longer walk out their front door and go into the woods. They can get away here for a Saturday afternoon.”

Begun in 1995, the trail was expected to be completed in 2000, but it’s encountered several lawsuits, hostile landowners, and seemingly uncrossable bodies of water. In one instance it took an act of Congress to run the trail across an abandoned railroad trestle over the Wateree River.

So far about 290 miles of trail have been completed at a cost of about $5 million in private and corporate gifts, tax money, and grants—and Close has hiked them all. “They tell me it will be finished in time for me to walk it entirely. We’ll see,” she jokes.

Her anticipation comes as no surprise: At eighty-two, Close, daughter of textile magnate Elliott White Springs, walks, swims, and rides almost every day, with hikes this year in the Italian Dolomites, Botswana, and the Cascades, and a bike-touring trip in Iceland. That doesn’t include her annual late-fall trek up Mount LeConte in the Smoky Mountains, which she’s done since the early 1960s. She’s also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro several times and has hiked in Patagonia, the Alps, Tibet, Bhutan, Chile, and Argentina.

And at the stables near her Fort Mill home, a quarter mile from where she was born, Close teaches horseback riding to children and runs a program for horse riders with disabilities.

The creation of the trail has required the invaluable work of many people, but Palmetto Conservation Foundation director Ken Driggers says it’s Close who presses him hardest to complete it.

“Anne is the constant and moving force behind the trail, and has been from the beginning,” says Driggers. “When we started it, none of us had any idea of the difficulties we’d encounter, but Anne just hangs in there. She’s one of those bosses who demand progress and that’s how we’re getting it built.”

During her lifetime of commitment to conservation and enjoyment of the environment, Close has been known for getting results. She provided the seed money for the Palmetto Conservation Foundation, a nonprofit that creates major land trusts and helps communities manage growth. Through the PCF and other avenues (she chairs the Springs Close Foundation, which has dedicated more than $92 million to improving the quality of life in local communities through recreation and the environment), Close has been instrumental in preserving open land and protecting historic properties.

Now the spirit of her work has spread to her family (she has thirty-two grandchildren and great-grandchildren). In 1994 her children donated 2,300 acres to create the Anne Springs Close Greenway, a property three times the size of New York City’s Central Park that links to the Palmetto Trail and features more than thirty-two miles of hiking and horse-riding trails, several fishing ponds, and the legendary “mile tree.” At the time the greenway was created, real estate officials conservatively estimated its value at $23 million.

Although Close has won a half dozen conservation awards and has served as a trustee of the Wilderness Society, as a director of the American Farm Trust, and on the board of the National Recreation Foundation, she eschews the spotlight, leading the life of a quiet steward. I’ve had a couple of outings with her—a three-day, forty-two-mile winter backpacking trip on the Palmetto Trail and a two-day horse-packing trip at Mount Rogers in Virginia—and the most at ease I’ve seen her is when she leads people backpacking in the woods. In town she can appear to be a shy and gracious grandmother, but on the trail in her muddy boots and backpack she’s as tough as a billy goat.

Asked why she works so ardently to preserve land and build hiking trails for the public, Close laughs. “Because we have to,” she says. “Children and adults just don’t have the same access to the woods that older Americans once had. All I’ve done is help protect a little piece of South Carolina. It’s a big world out there but the woods are getting smaller every day.”