In 2014, volunteers from a local non-profit asked me to provide "marketing" advice for an idea they loosely called: "explore healthy alternatives in your own backyard" or something. Its intent was to promote our community's paved walking/running/biking trail system, along and near the city's Mississippi Riverfront.

The plan was to get local health and fitness resources to engage the community at a one-day outdoor festival. For me, first up was a catchier name and a logo to aid in the promotion. We settled on The Healthy Living Festival and visual collateral featuring a little cartoon explorer named Mark Trail (Mark Twain once lived and worked here as a young man and I thought it had a nice ring).

Part of my marketing strategy was to get someone dressed as Mark Trail.to visit primary and middle schools. No one volunteered, so I bought the hat and voila, he was me. I knew if I could get kids excited, their parents would come as well. I even wrote new lyrics to an old song (last page) and dragged my guitar into school assemblies the week before to promote the event. 

SIDE NOTE: Two years earlier, when I was contemplating moving here, it was these very trails and the other obvious amenities provided by the City, County and an extremely altruistic donor-class that sold my wife and I on making the move. And, just one year earlier, after a heart attack, I had become personally and intimately acquainted with the trail system during my cardiac rehab. In that way, the story is about my own journey back to health.