Hiking Trails Widened For Growing Population

Melvin “Two Horse” Toole tries out some of the wider hiking trails set to open this spring

(Denver) The U.S. Department of Posterior has announced plans to widen existing hiking trails by next summer. The move is in compliance with current statistics as to alarming obesity in this country.

With over 40% of the population classified as obese and another 30% deemed overweight, the forest service says it is only responding to the needs of the majority. The agency has decided that if fat people want to hike they should be given the opportunity.

Common sense might indicate that if people took a weekly hike they might loose weight.

“We are not about to be bogged down by logic,” said a USFS official. “We don’t need people getting stuck on narrow trails or destroying the natural landscape. Wider trails don’t hurt the thinner mountaineer.”

The trails will be expanded to about the size of a sport utility vehicle and groomed so as to play down vertical relief.

“We realize that some of our constituents are larger than your average SUV but we can’t tear up the entire forest,” said one source who requested anonymity. One problem is that federal agencies are uncomfortable using the F word, preferring to describe this portly clientele as corpulent, beefy or well-upholstered.”

Fortunately, according to local sources people who live in the Rockies are in better physical shape than their fellow citizens in, say, the Midwest where the potbelly rules.

“It’s a lot like the millions of unused handicapped spaces and the federally imposed alcohol levels for motorists,” said the source. “The feds respond to whatever special interest screams the loudest.”

In developing countries, where people spend their days trying to get enough to eat, hiking trails are ample at present. Nutritionists, however, fear a drastic change in that status as fast food concerns begin popping up in African and Latin American capitals. Trails in many of these locales are often groomed and maintained by government military vehicles chasing guerrillas through the jungle. In other nations, where fat is a virtue, the wealthy wander well manicured gardens or spacious avenues, insulated from the peasantry.

Many of these pleasant redoubts were constructed with foreign aid funds earmarked for the great unwashed.

“The first order of business is to study general usage of the trails by the group in question then start removing snow,” said the USFS spokesman, “but right now it’s time for lunch.”    – Suzie Compost