Flame "Orange" Wars

[Kattt]

Who talked about “restoring wilderness”? I am just pointing out how ludicrous it is that some object to bright colors in nature ( but only from humans…) but have no problem leaving “traces” with trails all over the place.

As far as what wilderness is or isn’t, I have a pretty good understanding of that.

If trails are fine so are orange tents; only people with fantasies about what the natural world  is really about come up with some of this thinking. Humans stacking rocks, oh no how awful. Humans making a fire and sitting around it to warm up, cook and share the experience with other humans, how horrible and backwards. Come on now.

What’s next; do not bring your purple haired teenagers with you?

 

[jscott]

“What’s next; do not bring your purple haired teenagers with you?”

Well….

I’m totally with you on not caring about orange tents and the rest. I wasn’t responding to your earlier post per se but in general to some of the issues that you and others throughout this thread have mentioned.

[Kattt]

I work on the planet of purple and pink hair and do not care for it but that is my issue…

[jscott]

My Alma Mater…has purple hair now. Oh well! I think it’s like bell bottom pants for men…a matter of taste. Bell bottoms should be allowed into the wilderness too.

[Peter8]

Shirts like this should be banned too!

[Kattt]

Colorful tattoos, the horror!

[Bruce Tolley]

Sometimes a natural area is better off without human access. This is as I understand it, a view stated above in the thread. This sentiment is also what I take to be the mission of at least one private conservation group, the Nature Conservancy which buys land and restricts access in perpetuity to conserve and protect the acquired land.  Some of its properties continue to be impacted by humans however for the sake of restoration and environmental mitigation, for example, restoring a wetland.  The Nature Conservancy allows access to its properties by invitation or guided tour on a very select basis.  In effect, the Nature Conservancy is IMO building walled gardens.

Trails are not good for the wilderness. This assertion in my view is a bit more problematic, given that in the USA at least most of what we might call wilderness is in fact public land created and protected by public law, and since the 1970s often acquired by the use of public funds. So the public wilderness lands were not created and protected for the sake of a few very fit cross-country backpackers.  They were also created and protected to include limited non motorized access of all Americans including equestrians, fishermen, children.

The agency managers of these lands (BLM, USFS, US Dept of Interior) have their objectives and missions stated in law as well as subsequent rules and regulations to allow certain kinds of access and to promote environmental protection. There is usually careful study at the local level of the tradeoffs involved between protection and access when building and maintaining trails. For certain sections along the PCT, the USFS working with the Pacific Crest Trail Association often work in cooperation.

Since the early 1970s, the environmental movement represented by such groups as the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society have also supported access and trails if only because you need to educate people to appreciate need for wilderness in order to get voting citizens to support tax dollars and legislation to protect wilderness.

Access and trails enable us to teach the younger generations to love and appreciate nature and wilder places. Over the last 10 years I have taken perhaps two dozen small groups  of 6th and 7th graders backpacking on the 30 mile long Skyline to Sea Trail in the Santa Cruz Mtns. This trail by no means passes through wilderness but it does pass through three or four major ecosystems that represent the California Coastal Range.  My goal when teaching Leave No Trace principles to these kids is to help them unlearn the worst car camping habits such as building trenches around thier tents, scraping their dishes at the source of water, planning messy meals that create a lot of micro trash.

Finally, I own a red tent and I use it in the winter and fall especially for snow camping.

Cheers

 

[Kevin R]

In regards to federally designated Wilderness Areas, five “tangible qualities of wilderness character” have been defined by the managing agencies (NPS):

1. Natural
2.  Untrammeled
3.  Undeveloped
4. Opportunities for solitude or primitive & unconfined recreation
5.  Other features of value

This legislation has resulted in what some may consider to be absurd restrictions: not only can one not drive a car in a wilderness area, they can’t even ride a mountain bike and maintainers can’t use a power drill or chainsaw!! You may notice that signposts and blazes are almost non-existent in wilderness areas too- is a splotch of bright color on a tree really going to ruin one’s experience of “wilderness” that much??  Why do the government and these land managers care about these “trivial” things??

I think most of it comes down to that conservationists and environmentalists realized that, with the rapid development of industrialization and metropolitan areas in the 1900s, there are increasingly few opportunities for us to experience “the outdoors” as our ancestors experienced it for, well, the previous history of the world.  Opportunities for things like “solitude” and “undeveloped” landscapes were becoming rare, and if legislative efforts weren’t made, they would disappear.  Hence, Wilderness Areas, and to generally conserve the character of other natural areas, LNT standards were adopted later on.

I’m curious, for those who don’t mind seeing others’ hi-vis apparel and gear, how do you feel about stereo music in the backcountry?  One affects light waves, the other sound waves.  Both are temporary and carried out by the user.  Both have a limited radius of impact- at most, a stereo will only “impact” those within a mile or two.  And they both let others know you’re around- does someone’s presence really impact another’s experience?

*Not posting to “shame” anyone about their gear- just hoping to discuss and promote a holistic understanding of the LNT ethic and rational behind some of our public lands legislation.

 

 

[Kattt]

“Access and trails enable us to teach the younger generations to love and appreciate nature and wilder places”

I know I must come across as the biggest contrarian and that really isn’t my aim but I do not agree that younger generations need to be taught “to love and appreciate nature”, not exactly anyway. When I spend time with city kids I see them a bit lost out there initially and maybe they have little common sense, but at best I  share some skills and some knowledge. They ARE nature, they are little animals, they enjoy being outside, they want to climb things. They do not need a grown up to teach them to love anything as if it were something external, something to be parsed out by a third party. If anything they need reminding that they are nature and that wild is in them and that they are more in tune with it than they might know. The whole “ here kids let me show you this beautiful thing and now let me explain why you need to love and appreciate and protect it” isn’t my cup of tea. What kids do when left alone for a bit is quite similar to what other little mammals do. To me the default setting is being in tune with and therefore respecting nature. When you speak to them as if they need to be taught you are creating a distance that isn’t really there.

My own childhood was spent mainly outside and I don’t invite third parties to define what nature is or isn’t to me or what it should be. I try and do the same with the young ones I spend time with outdoors. That does not mean that I let them litter; I call them out but without a long lecture. A few words that make sense in a matter of fact way work better than a long winded  plea, at least for me.

I would expect kids benefit from both ways of thinking. I am trying to do my part.

[jscott]

Music blasting (or even just playing) next to you is inescapable; an orange tent isn’t continually in front of your eyes wherever you turn. Realistically, in the vast majority of cases, an orange tent just isn’t going to occupy your field of vision for very much time.

[Kattt]

And I did not even get into that fraught word “love”. What does it mean anyway….something different for each person. When I hear very young kids repeat that they “love nature” I don’t know what they are saying. It could mean a whole lot or not much at all.

”appreciate” is more meaningful but can still mean different things. I know my daughter early on appreciated actually “seeing” the wind through swaying grasses she she also appreciated how tenuous life is because she was not too shielded from the death of pets or wild animals. I believe she knows that nature is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad. It’s all at the same time.

[Kattt]

Lol I come across as such a rough parent. I am actually not.

[HkNewman]

Some LNT is actually enforced by rangers, such as fire bans, littering, etc.. even putting a stake in the grass at Grand Canyon (giving a buddy of mine a $100~ ticket to pay, iirc), but think garment, pack, shelter, etc.. color is one to let slide (lol).  

Hiking around Mt Jefferson a few days back, a hiker dressed head to toe in fluorescent green-yellow hiked towards me and I didn’t even register it until within a few yards/meters.

Whether wearing such bright colors was a result of being safety conscious (though it’s not rifle season) or being at a sale is up for debate.

[Tom K]

“Humans making a fire and sitting around it to warm up, cook and share the experience with other humans, how horrible and backwards. Come on now.”

Conditions change over time.  Wood fires were my primary means of cooking on backpacking trips for years;  but as more and more people started backpacking in the Sierra, the impact on the environment, particularly at higher elevations became severe enough to cause the USFS and NPS to ban fires above 10,000 feet in most areas.  IMO this was a reasonable decision that I fully support, even though I loved having fires for all the reasons you mention and then some.  In areas where fires do not have a lasting impact, I am fine with them as long as they are done with due regard for safety and, hopefully, with some attention to LNT principles.

[Kattt]

There is a place and a time for fires, no doubt, no argument from me.

 

[Kattt]

“Some LNT is actually enforced by rangers, such as fire bans, littering, etc..”

those rules antecede  LNT by decades, depending where we are talking about . They are enforced in places that have never even heard of LNT. Just because LNT adopted them does not make them theirs. It’s common sense…

 

[Kattt]

The only actual LNT practice is to stay at home. Anything else goes from “Leave as small a trace as possible” on up.

[W I S N E R !]

But LASATAP is not as nice of an acronym.

[Kattt]

Not as nice but not as inaccurate either.

[jscott]

by the way, there used to be lightweight candle holders that allowed candles to act like little lanterns, usually inside of a tent. This was probably a bad idea and anyway headlamps eclipsed them. But those little lanterns, hung from a stick or limb, actually can serve as a focus for a group of people gathered at night for conversation, much like a fire. I prefer this in many instances to a fire (although I love coals just before bed.) I doubt these exist much anymore.

[Kattt]

I have found a couple of those at the flea market Jeffrey.

[jscott]

Jerry wrote: “One thing is trails are a benefit to animals.”

More than once I’ve followed coyote tracks over snow where the trail was entirely obscured for several miles in early spring. I more or less trust them to keep me on trail when it’s not at all obvious to me.

katt, apparently I’ve entered the flea market stage of my life!

[HkNewman]

“Rules .. predating LNT”

Sort of. LNT was a nonprofit standardizing what (US) government agencies were doing separately. Think many of the ‘60s generation went out backpacking in droves resulting in damage or something like that.

https://lnt.org/about/history/

Not much protections before .. many Americans viewed the wilderness as a place to extract resources and probably accorded it as much protection. A since-passed WW2 vet from my old neighborhood wondered why I went backpacking in the wilderness with the old “.. did you lose something up there?”

Remember reading a book by a hiker looking for old ruins and long forgotten garbage pits in the forests of the eastern US (he recommends bold colors btw).

[Kattt]

My grandfather took me out into the alps and taught me more about how to respectfully navigate the mountains than you can ever learn from LNT. He had never heard of it. To claim that fire rules have been adopted from LNT principles may be accurate in some neck of the woods but not at large.

I don’t have any problem with people adopting LNT practices, btw, but it is a buzz word.

Ok I have exhausted my quota of posts for the day.

[Bruce Tolley]

k

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