Is "Wildness the preservation of the world"?

     One of the early tenets of Thoreau,  and then Muir,  and then the Sierra Club was that "Wildness is the preservation of the world".   There is some special experience that comes from being in Nature that is essential to human nature and survival.
     Today's NYT features a discussion on base jumping from Yosemite and other National Parks.  The discussion reflects the growing emphasis on extreme sports.   Once the province of the motorcycle daredevils and tightrope walkers,  it has spread to a wider community of enthusiasts.   All these activities seem understandable as personal challenges either for courage or skill,   but are they part of the “wilderness experience”?    Once there was no “wilderness”:  people lived in nature’s world and survived as best they could.  Gradually human culture developed methods of surviving more easily in the world around them,  and a distinction developed between the “world of man” and “Nature”.   Periodic floods,  tornadoes,  hurricanes,  etc remind us that this distinction is temporary and artificial,  but it is a useful fiction that helps people feel less anxious about their day to day survival. 
    Once people stop living daily in the world of predators,  exposure to extreme climate,  and the hunger of an inconsistent food supply,  a yearning for the challenges of that life seems to return.  For some this is simply a walk in a local park or on the beach.   For others it may involve camping outdoors,  or a backpacking trip into a “wilderness” area.   These challenges all have in common the desire to test one’s ability to live in the wild for a limited period of time.   NOLS and other adventure programs have all developed programs modeled on the Native American “vision quest” to give participants controlled experiences of this challenge.  This has become a profitable way of giving people this challenge.  For some,  there seems to be a natural duality between living a protected urban life and going outside of this safe space periodically to enjoy the experience of Nature more directly. 
    What does this have to do with outdoor thrill seeking?  Another group of people want to use an outdoor experience to prove something about themselves.   The obvious examples are the explorers who went to arctic and antarctic to be the first to lay claim to being at these places.  The records of their trips show no indication of a peaceful engagement with a harsh natural environment and everything about organizing an adventure to prove that the person can achieve some daunting accomplishment.  Often they were not the "first" to reach this location,  but the first "Europeans" to report about it.   Nature is only the challenge in this version of the story,  not a meaningful experience in its own right.  This distinction  is very clear in mountaineering.   Some people arrange complex trips into the mountains,  with extended training etc,  because they want to have the experience of being in these dramatic landscapes.  The trips are not rushed and achieving the summit is only part of the goal.   For others,  climbing mountains is simply a check box on the bucket list of personal aggrandizement:  “I skydived”,  “I bungee jumped”,  “I climbed this or that peak in one day”,  etc.  This is the “wham, bam, thank you mam”  version of experiencing Nature.  The trip preparation is usually brief and focused on personal endurance,  not the environment,  and tour leaders organize and coordinate the complex details needed to guide the inexperienced climber to a (hopefully) successful outcome.  Alpine skiers and snowboarders have also developed this pattern.  From the days of the selective joy of skiing down isolated slopes in distant mountains,  and staying over in modest quaint lodges,  skiing has grown to a world wide billion dollar real estate business in which the skiing is degraded by the crowds and automation of lifts, so that the wild and natural part of the experience is effectively eliminated.  Assuring snow conditions with “snow making” equipment is the ultimate denial of the natural experience!   Faced with the reality of how they have deteriorated the environment by their activities,  skiers rich enough now use helicopters to take them to more isolated places,  gradually extending the exploitation of the natural world for their own personal thrills.  I am not attacking skiing as an activity and I enjoyed it very much at one time in my life.   But skiing is the most clear example of how people start out enjoying some outdoor activity in a relatively natural place and transform it into a commercial activity that obliterates the natural element.  Skiers complain about the crowds and lift lines,  and poor conditions due to weather and never stop to realize that it is they who have compromised the experience for themselves!
    The National Park Service sits squarely in the center of this dilemma.  The parks create a boundary around and protect areas of natural beauty and important national historical importance.  The parks are the residual of what was, quite recently,  a wild expansive natural environment in which humans struggled daily to survive.  They are maintained by our taxes,  and we as the landholders are entitled to visit them.   Yet at the same time,  if enough of us visit and stay,  the places will be transformed and no longer provide the experience of that natural world!   This is most clear in the South Rim of the Grand Canyon where millions of visitors ride up for the day,  look out,  create parking problems and crowding and then go off leaving their trash etc behind.  The contrast to the less accessible North Rim is instructive,  because the two sides of the Canyon feel so utterly different,  one almost a theme park in places,  while the other retains most of its natural beauty.   The park service must find a way to restrict the use of these special places which maximizes their access to the public,  while minimizing the impact on these treasures.   This is not an easy task!  
    Two obvious principles come to mind:
1) The parks should accommodate the maximum number of visitors possible while arranging the visits to minimize the impact on the natural features of the parks.   This involves structuring lodging,  roads, trail access,  and key vantage points so they are not overwhelmed.  The differences between the north and south rims provide examples of both!
2) The parks should not encourage or permit any activities that exploit the parks for personal aggrandizement.  Base jumping off the cliffs seems an obvious example.   But more subtle are questions about rock climbing.  There is a long history of rock climbing the sheer walls of Yosemite.  Learning to climb the cliffs to appreciate the experience of these challenging walls IS a valid experience that Yosemite provides to those who will invest the time.  But it also creates a culture of personal aggrandizement of some climbers.   This has led to “free climbing”,  i.e. climbing ascents without protective gear.   Such ascents go beyond ordinary challenges of rock climbing, to prove the expertise of the individual climbers.   Why is this a function of the park?  Shouldn’t all users of the parks concentrate on experiencing and appreciating their beauty?  Shouldn't every visitor have the opportunity to enjoy the available natural challenges of the place?  Is proving how much risk you can take with your skill and athleticism is NOT about exploring the park,  but about exploring yourself,  and this can be achieved at less precious sites in other parts of the country.  Similarly for base jumping,  for acrobatic skiing,  etc.  There should be places for people who want to test their special skills and athleticism,  but not in the National Parks.