Scouting trails can be a lot of work, but it is necessary

While most of the time spent in the Hash House Harriers is just silly times hanging around and socializing, at some point in time with your tenure with the group it will be expected of you to actually take part in the organization of the trails and the overall coordination of the runs that we do. Since nobody in the Hash actually gets paid a salary to do anything we need our members to periodically chip in to keep the wheels moving on this bad boy.

If someone has some sort of work or child-care restriction we will allow them to float along and not help out but even then, if a member is regularly participating in events, it is kind of presumed that they MUST have enough free time to do stuff and therefore it is seen as abuse if they don't help out with the behind the scenes stuff that must take place in order for the Hash to succeed.

So after you have gotten your Hash name, been on a couple dozen runs with us with some level of regularity, and gotten to understand how the process works, it will be expected of you to be the "Hare" on a trail every now and then. We would never throw someone to the wolves right from the get go so in all likelihood we will pair you up with someone who has a bunch of experience and have you "co-Hare" with them in order to have them show you the ropes.

Once you have set a trail it isn't that difficult to do it again in the future and it is also a lot easier to do these days than it was 10 years ago since everyone has GPS on their phone and distance trackers that will let you know how long your trail is. Years ago doing this required a separate GPS machine of sorts and some detailed knowledge of the trail that you were on already - which isn't really all that reasonable since many of our runs take place in parts of Chiang Mai that nobody has ever been to before.

Sometimes this results in people being in areas that are wide open spaces and more often than not, it can result in you accidentally trespassing on other people's property. Thankfully, we live in a part of Thailand where the locals don't really seem to mind and if they see a couple of foreigners on their property wandering about they will mostly just leave you to it. It's not like we are prime targets for suspected livestock theft or anything.

In the rare instance that a property owner has taken issue with us being on their land it has never gotten violent. The worst thing that can happen is that they don't speak English and the Hares don't speak Thai. This is why we always give the Hares a couple of phone numbers for Thai-speaking members of our group so if there is an issue you just call up and the person on the phone explains what is going on. If the land owner still wants you out of there after it is politely explained what we are doing out there, it's simple: you just leave.

This has happened only a handful of times in the past 12 years so it's not like it is something people need to be afraid of.

One of the really interesting things about "scouting" for a new trail is that there is a good chance that you might end up discovering some "virgin territory" and this is always something that the members love to see. Some of the best runs I have been on were done by people that had very little experience in making a trail and I think this is because they were trying to knock one out of the park when they are first getting started as Hares.

When you are finished, and for most people it takes several afternoons - one earlier in the week, and one the day before the run to ensure that the powder markings are still intact, you should be intimately familiar with an area that you can now call your own even though the land itself belongs to either the state or to other private owners.

Once that is all done you will have the novel opportunity to stand in front of everyone and give them the pre-run briefing where nobody really listens to you as you explain the rules of the trail to a bunch of people that likely know these rules better than you do.

You are never really considered a full-fledged member of a particular Hash chapter until you design at least one trail for the others and I think this is fair. Sure it takes a couple of days but you do it with another member and you should look at it as a necessary part of the process in order for this very fun organization to continue operating.

Eventually you will be asked to do this if you are coming to events regularly and it isn't punishment, it is just a necessary part of the process because if we don't make the trails it's not like someone is going to do it for us.

Get out there! Get involved! Get your ON ON on!