After being told that backcountry skiing activities were endangering the local bighorn sheep: “Well, the sheep have had these mountains for 10,000 years. Now it’s our turn.”
This is not the prevalent mode of thinking for outdoor recreationists (at least it is not the conscious thinking of those people), but it does lend to the spirit of the times: A culture that, despite a want to be "in the mountains" or "alone in the wilderness", takes decisive action to compromise the overall experience of the mountains and the wilderness.
This is not the prevalent mode of thinking for outdoor recreationists (at least it is not the conscious thinking of those people), but it does lend to the spirit of the times: A culture that, despite a want to be "in the mountains" or "alone in the wilderness", takes decisive action to compromise the overall experience of the mountains and the wilderness.
When talking with managers of state and federal public lands these pandemic days, two issues popped up: what to do about large amounts of human feces deposited in wild places and how to handle far too many visitors. Both issues have served as a wake-up call to both land managers and environmentalists about the downsides of recreation. (Adventure Journal, "Covid-19 and Recreation")
Rather than going down the eco-fascist route of "humans are evil and are destroying the planet," I want to take into account the reality of the situation: We have a lot more people on this earth, living in spiritually-craved urban centers of concrete and metal, that are seeking to "vacate" to the outdoors out of a wish to be slightly more satisfied with life. COVID-19 or not, there was going to be a middle-class flight from the cities because they are downright depressing in lifestyle and look. State and federal public land managers, who are usually stretched between five different jobs at once, were not tracking when this flight was going to occur; anyone that had a slightly critical eye of the megacity would have seen this coming from a mile away.
We have more people, who are more motivated escape—if just for the weekend—from their home and urban lives than ever before. They will go to the rivers and the mountains and the forests. Even if they follow every rule of Leave No Trace in the park, they are guzzling gas and consuming high plastic foods (the wrappers, that is). There is nothing but waste involved in recreation, because when people feel entitled to drive six hours to see something, they will pull out all the stops in order to accomplish it.
“Critical discussions about recreation are rare because these activities are layered with a thin veneer of innocence." (Justin Farrell, "Billionaire Wilderness")
The problem is not the people, it's the institution of recreation itself. In the early 1900's Stephen Mather of National Parks fame was hellbent on "creating recreation"—paving roads through the wilderness, Mather knew that the only way to make the Parks worth the effort of visiting was by making them fully accessible to automobiles that were just starting to become widely adopted.
Here is how recreation works: Someone adopts a transportation technology suited to overcome the given terrain (ATV, overlander, pickup, boat), which allows them to do the same activities as people without that technology have done for thousands or millions of years: Sit, fish, eat, walk, play, shit. But they can do it even further into the mountains, forest, or rivers.
It gets even worse, when the transportation technology leads the recreationist to adopt smaller technologies to enhance their experience at the destination: The rock climber, the skier, the ATVer, the hunter. These are methods of cultural self-entrenchment: The ski resorts must go on shooting fake snow so people can keep using their expensive gear. Land managers must continue figuring out how to keep climbing going even when the crags are eating away at the land. The roads of the ATVer slowly expand over time. Land managers must artificially inflate game numbers just to keep guns useful.
These technologies turned the privilege of using Nature for one's benefit into an entitlement. Accessibility is the new word to entice people into places they don't really care about—for what benefit? And if you ever close these places off to people, someone will be up in arms because you're harming their recreation.
Any possible solutions?
There are absolutely solutions, because I wouldn't shit on "recreation" just to make people feel bad!
- Make cities less harrowing experiences. For the urban planners out there: The concrete jungle is one of the most alienating experiences for people. Growing four trees on each corner of a town square is atrocious. If there is a square foot of concrete that can be replaced by life, go for it, because that's one square foot less of ugliness a person has to pass by on their commute to work. Cities shouldn't be the thing you have to live in to receive money for survival, it should be a place that people are so excited by that they would want to have a stay-cation. Every once in a while I meet those kind of people, and it is such an alien experience to find someone that is okay with staying as a default.
- Nature has to become a privilege—not an entitlement—so long as population growth is encouraged. How many articles do I have to read about the exponential increase in outdoor tourism and its negative effects on the lands they are visiting? If you won't solve it by fostering a culture that doesn't rely on population growth (our global economic system requires unending population growth, so it's a complex issue to address), then look at the facts and either limit human usage of the outdoors or stop advertising for the outdoors—people already know about it. Let people discover for themselves what to do outside rather than forcing them down the path of "recreation"—entitlement to the habitual waste of Nature.
You do you—but read the room.
I am not a pessimist about this situation, because I believe people have what it takes to develop a culture that recognizes there will be less and less freedom for all to enjoy the outdoors as the population increases and cities become more toxic. There are people that grew up their whole lives entitled to shoving an RV into the middle of the forest to do some fishing. They should continue to do what they have grown up to do, because that's the spirit of a certain type of freedom—but let's use our energy on the next generation, who don't have to be trapped in the cycle.
You have to develop cultural foundations that feel so intuitive and reasonable and cooler that the next generation of people would feel like fools not to jump on. Programs to limit and stop human actions will always be compromised and fail; one has to develop a culture that encourages the best in us, because encouragement will always last longer than its opposite. Just look at our 120 year history of American recreation. Let's hope the next century redefines recreation as one that complements Nature rather than exploits it.