http://gearjunkie.com/backpacking-participation-is-dying
Another friend of mine – well-educated, well-read, in his late 40s, but de facto homeless, without a car, an inveterate hitchhiker, an itinerant laborer in Colorado and Utah who spends at least 200 days of the year backpacking in the canyonlands – tells me that he too can’t recruit backpacking companions. Instead, he encounters “gearheads” – people who see the outdoors as an arena for deploying the latest technological toys, such as mountain bikes that ride for you, or carabiners that talk, or apps for both. People, that is, who spend a lot of time caressing, naming, oiling, sleeping and playing with inanimate objects, as advertised that they should do in the “Adventure Capital.” Then, post-adventure, they recover in various homes with the masses, such as the double-wide tent by the river, with the cooler full of beer, the gas stove searing meat, or to the Motel 6 or Best Western, with the air conditioner and the TV making conversation, as promised on the billboards outside town.
more at link …
;)
