Building New Trails with Bridger the Border Collie
Dillon Osleger is an Earth Scientist, storyteller and athlete drawn to stories anchored to the confluence of the outdoor industry and community’s relationship with natural and rapidly changing environments. He and Bridger call the mountains around Truckee and Ojai, California home.
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Bridger, like any good dog living a life in mountain towns, finds no greater joy than being outside on a trail.
While our morning coffee jaunt into the forest or weekend mountain bike ride might take place on two miles of linear distance on a map, Bridger often undertakes double my mileage thanks to his liberal use of side trails, wildlife game trails, or just simply running ahead and returning when I am too slow. He doesn’t question why the trail is there, where it came from, and often even where it goes, Bridger simply enjoys being outside with a path to trace.
However, Bridger is often the reason a trail exists for countless other users across California. A 3-year-old Border Collie and my best friend, Bridger lives his life as a trail dog, sharing in my professional responsibilities every step of the way. He’s my longest standing and most critical employee, working for treats and an ever increasing array of colorful Gnawt-A-Rocks™.
I make my living by designing, restoring, building, and maintaining trails across the Western United States for land managers that include nonprofit land trusts, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, municipalities, county parks, State Parks and more. The ethos and work behind this vocation revolves largely around finding a balance between access to nature and recreation without undue harm to the environment.
My work at this intersection begins with research of archival maps that showcase the historical legacy of trails or in ecologic surveys that reflect the delicacy of a landscape. It often ends with brushing back years of overgrowth covering long lost trails, digging out trail tread contouring mountains, setting stone walls to uphold walkways, and planting native species in order to make it appear to the next hiker that I was never making a disturbance there at all.
In between that beginning and end, I spend a lot of time out in the forests and desert chaparral scrublands, traversing landscapes in search of old trails identified on maps from centuries earlier, negotiating burn scars where wildfire erased all trace of trails there days prior, or on lands untrammeled in search of the easiest and least impactful way to set users into a sense of place.
It’s here that Bridger pays his way through natural intuition.
Sporting a bright orange Front Range® Harness to make him easier to spot within the underbrush, Bridger finds every slight trail left behind by animals, traces of human past, or natural undulation in topography. Behind him, I simply follow, trusting his perception of path, which more often than not results in a better trail alignment than I could ever hope to find from my point of perspective alone.
I have never seen him cut a switchback nor leave a hint of a trail un-investigated. I like to think this tendency is born from his genetic history — one of dogs bred to work, to track stray animals across vast open landscapes. Through his natural methods, Bridger has uncovered game trails in Ventura, California that helped set aside conservation acreage to preserve bobcat habitat, he has found old homestead remains just off of historic trails, preserving places amidst the historic register, and has traversed countless hillsides between wild rye, pine trees, and chaparral, sniffing out deer paths and century old logging road, many miles of which have turned into official and well trafficked trail within both land conservancies and public lands.
Bridger has worked this way for years, teaching me to see the world from his own perspective, which has altered my own worldview for the better. Not caring for treats in the field, Bridger asks for little more than a nod and a “good boy” from me, preferring to wait until home to enjoy his reward of playing with his Gnawt-A-Rock™ from a perch on his bed.
It is because of him that I’ve hiked, mountain biked and built or restored more unique miles of trail than I ever otherwise would have. Many say you should do what you love for a living, but on most mornings I realize my good fortune is doing what I love with Bridger and I’d like to think he feels much the same. Although the tens of thousands of individuals who hike, bike, run, or walk with their dogs along the trails in the Los Padres and Tahoe mountains will likely never realize that much of their access is in part thanks to the pure stoke of a 50-pound Border Collie, I do, and that’s the best gratitude I can ever get.
