Mounting Tensions: Materializing Strategies and Tactics on National Park “Social Trails”

Abstract

This essay builds from Samantha Senda-Cook's 2013 article, “Materializing Tensions,” to explore the material rhetorics of the so-called “social trails” of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. These improvised, foot-worn pathways, diverging from and running alongside official Park Service trails, materialize a tension between what Michel de Certeau termed “strategies” and “tactics,” revealing how both are always at play in park and preserve trailspace and how the movements of the individual trail walker actualize and perpetuate a common concept of place. The study demonstrates and advocates close rhetorical attention to material aspects of the biophysical environment and the way that physical traces of many individuals over time can influence the subsequent actions and interpretations of others. The final discussion argues that as further tensions in trailspace rhetorics are identified rhetorical analysis must not fail to account for them.