PODCAST · arts

Practicing Trail Magic with outdoor leadership mentor David Huff

by James Navé

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host, James Navé, and today my guest is Asheville’s David Huff—one of the twelve TEDxAsheville speakers taking the stage at the Diana Wortham Theatre on March 20, 2026.David is a business consultant and environmentalist, an outdoor explorer, and a mythopoetic thinker who believes the antidote to cynicism isn’t another opinion—it’s action. We talk about Hurricane Helene and what Asheville learned in the aftermath: the shock, the loss, the long weeks without basic resources, and the way people showed up for one another anyway.At the heart of David’s TEDx talk is a trail-born idea he calls “trail magic”—the simple, practical, human act of giving and receiving help with no strings attached. He traces how that ethic lives on the Appalachian Trail, in volunteer trail crews like the 102-year-old Carolina Mountain Club, and in everyday community life where loneliness, technology, and isolation pull us apart.This conversation is about choice, belongin