So those who debate the merits of a Knat over a GigaPower to save an ounce, or argue wind shirt brands to save a few grams, and explore the feasibility of a 12 ounce pack; it seems too few of them have a problem throwing a 1 pound communication brick into their pack. But this isn’t the issue.
I could care less what someone throws into their pack, I’m not going to walk with them anyway.
But who speaks for wilderness?
Who advocates for wilderness?
Folks who cannot stand the silence, the natural sounds, or solitude of wilderness cannot advocate if they need an iPod to camouflage the music of wild places.
People who demand maintained trails to visit wilderness cannot advocate.
Hikers who cannot figure out where to go hike without help to locate a route cannot advocate.
Individuals who think quotas are better than no roads to wilderness cannot advocate.
Societies who substitute SPOTs and their ilk for wilderness skills cannot advocate.
Persons who will not hold themselves accountable for keeping themselves safe in wilderness, expecting SAR to rescue them with the touch of a button cannot advocate. Without technology to save our collective butts, the lack of technology might change our perception.
A populace and government who think WiFi in our national parks is a good idea cannot advocate.
The danger to wilderness is to tame it with technology. The danger to wilderness is our willingness to change our perception of its value to the human spirit, the need for advanced technology to help us enjoy or be safe in wilderness.
I tried to articulate it here.
And I lamented The Death of Renaissance Man. The self-sufficient man.
I am just an average person. I don’t write well. I am not a great communicator. The novelist Wallace Stegner did summarize it well.
“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. Without any remaining wilderness we are committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life, the Brave New World of a completely man-controlled environment. We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in 10 years set foot in it. It is good for us when we are young, because of the incomparable sanity it can bring briefly, as vacation and rest, into our insane lives. It is important to us when we are old simply because it is there — important, that is, simply as idea.”
This isn’t about designating Wilderness; it is about a “man-controlled environment.” It’s about technology making it acceptable to diminish the value of wilderness.
I apologize for the long post. Unfortunately I am passionate about wild places. Too much technology takes the “wild” of wilderness. It diminishes the inherent value of wilderness. It changes our perception, our world-view.
I think I’ll grab my pack to go for a wilderness walk. I’ll check back in next week to see how things go here on this thread.
