I grew up in large cities where I always walked: to school, to the playground, to the corner store. If it was too far to walk, I took buses and subways. But as an inner-city child, I was lucky enough to be sent to summer “Y” camps — first day camps and then overnight camps where I first hiked and later backpacked.

My husband, Lenny, also grew up in a large city but without the advantage of summer camps. When we settled down in New Jersey with real jobs, we read a small article in the local newspaper about a hiking club. They invited readers to try out a group hike.

“Adults go hiking for fun? Without kids?” We were stunned. But the next Sunday, we showed up and met hikers older than our parents who greeted us with enthusiasm. We had not brought enough warm clothing. We carried too much food and were short on water. These old folks took the hills much faster than us — but we were hooked.

Soon, we adopted a piece of the Appalachian Trail on the New Jersey/New York border. Four times a year, we skipped our weekly hike to clip plants encroaching on the trail, pick up garbage and remove errant branches. On long weekends and vacations, we pursued hiking challenges and hiked the A.T. in sections, finishing in 1998. In the process, we discovered the mountains of Western North Carolina.

In 2001, we left our New Jersey employers and moved to Asheville. I set out to learn about these mountains. What had been an avocation in New Jersey while punching a clock became my vocation when I moved here. The Carolina Mountain Club, which we had already joined and hiked with during earlier house-hunting trips, was an important part of my education.

As CMC’s 100th birthday approached, I knew that its success and longevity was something I wanted to document. The story of CMC is the story of its people: the hikers, trail maintainers, hike schedulers, treasurers, newsletter editors and website designers. To uncover that story, I milked the special collections of Buncombe County and the University of North Carolina Asheville, searched for the old A.T. route in the Smokies, found the private land that we used to walk on, and compared the MST on the road to the current one in the woods. This project was fun, challenging, intriguing and a heck of a lot of work. Unlike most books I’ve written, this one had a real deadline: July 16, 2023, CMC’s 100th anniversary.

Born from a chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club formed in 1920, CMC’s story starts with its launch as an independent club in 1923, making it the oldest hiking club in the Southeast. At the beginning, the club offered one hike each week; now we have at least four to six hikes of various levels a week, year-round.

CMC built much of the A.T. in the South in the 1920s and 1930s. Myron Avery, chairman of the Appalachian Trail Conference Board in the 1930s, came down several times to inspect our section of the A.T., and CMC wanted to make a good impression. In the 1980s, the club started building the Mountains-to-Sea Trail through the Southern Blue Ridge. We are still protecting over 400 miles of trail with trail crews and section maintainers.

The club survived downturns in membership, a shutdown during World War II, the untimely deaths of famous leaders such as George Masa, Art Loeb and Arch Nichols, and another closure during the Coronavirus Pandemic in 2020. In the 1930s, CMC had a membership of about 60; now we’re way over 1,000.

CMC has done much more than organize hikes and build trails. We protected Max Patch from development in the 1980s, spoke out against building the North Shore Road through the most pristine part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the 2000s, and are currently partnering with the U.S. Forest Service to implement the new Pisgah-Nantahala Forest Management Plan.

The history of CMC is the history of hiking and land protection in Western North Carolina.

(Danny Bernstein is a hiking guide and author who resides in Asheville. Her newest book, “Carolina Mountain Club: One Hundred Years,” is available at local bookstores and online.)