EUSTIS —  Seasonal residents Bob and Leah Devine say they are too busy maintaining and managing their work sites to hike the Appalachian Trail. But, the truth is, they’ve vacationed for endless years on the trail, spending summer vacations hiking and working on the trails.

They are not thru-hikers. Rather, they’ve spent most of their hiking hours on the trails of Maine and New Hampshire. They jokingly say that their youngest son, Peter, now 30 and one of four siblings, was basically brought up on the trail.

The couple, in their early 70s, retired from their jobs at Auburn High School in Massachusetts where Bob worked as a librarian and Leah was a media clerk. They now devote much of their time to the AT. They spend winters in Shrewsbury, Mass., and count the days until they can get back to the trail.

Bob maintains boxes of index cards where the Devines have written down what they saw during 30 years of working on and hiking the trail, including who they met, animals they encountered, weather conditions, the hiking conditions, and even what they ate for lunch.

They planned each outing to the nth degree: what to eat, what to put in their packs, how much clothing they would need. They used the cards as guides and as mementos so they could recall their experiences years later.

Leah recalls one time they did not plan well and got caught in a horrific rainstorm. It rained for days. The kids didn’t have any games or toys. It was a challenge keeping them occupied.

Leah said their children — Martin, 48, Cathy, 46, Thomas, 41, and Peter — still help them maintain the trails when they visit.

Bob, who requires regular oxygen support, said the couple has to pace their work now. They’ve given up the trail they adopted in New Hampshire, and now work the 0.8-mile Old Age Trail and a 0.8-mile loop at the Thompson Falls Trail near Wildcat.

They used to maintain the 3-mile section from Cranberry Peak to Coplin Plantation, but they find the hike is now too steep. Instead, they maintain the section at the bottom part of that trail, about a 1-mile stretch, collecting cards and keeping the brush cut for a nice canopy. “Now, when we do trail work, we know when to stop,” Leah said.

“We’ve always lived by that adage to give back and volunteer,” she said, and they’ve found many people over the years who weren’t aware of the time and effort that goes into trail maintenance.

The maintenance isn’t done for the convenience of the hikers, the Devines said. It’s for resource management. The couple cuts brush to manage how much sunlight and rainfall gets to the trail. They build stick barriers to force hikers to traverse on the rocks and not on the soft soil, and create water bars to prevent erosion.

They recall coming upon a young couple at Wildcat Ridge Trail years ago. It was a misty day in a swampy area.

“We had paint buckets, a brush, paint and thinner in a bucket preparing to make the blazes on the trail,” Bob said. The woman came up to him and asked what he was doing, so he told her. “I thought this was done by elves,” he remembers her saying, referring to the consistent trail work.

They recall once being at the fire warden’s hut at Bigelow Cull, a place where caregivers could stay. Peter was 4 or 5 years old. Lightning rods were all over the place and it was hailing incredibly hard.

“I’ve never seen such large hail,” Bob said, and he grabbed a metal saucepan to collect the falling ice. As he was holding the pan, Bob remembers suddenly thinking, “‘Is my insurance paid up?’ as I was standing there with a metal pan in a lightning storm.”

The Devines have been recognized with numerous awards over the years for their commitment to work on the AT, and have attended conferences to learn best trail practices across the country.

But, they say, it’s the work on the trail and the many people they’ve met that is most special to them.