GETTING "BACK TO NATURE"

I have  been on an "intellectual journey" which I cannot recommend.  I am blogging it here, in case anyone is interested.

When we moved to California, one of the attractions was the proximity of many  beautiful natural landscapes.  I had visited  before and seen a few sights,  which,  along with Sierra Club photo books, only whetted my appetite.  After settling in, we visited many of the places,  enjoyed the views, and I was stimulated to understand more about what I was seeing.

This led to an effort to become an amateur "naturalist".  I read about the geology examples of dramatic local scenery.  I read about, and went to observe, the Fault, and its cousins,  as well as feeling their grunts from time to time.

I tried to get familiar with, and identify, the odd local plants I had never seen in the East,  (some of which were not native, after all),  animals that chose to show themselves, on land and water, and a profusion of birds,   especially shore birds.  There are few places in the US or world,  where you can drive less than two hours to the ocean, the desert, and mountains 8-12000 feet.  For a neophyte naturalist it is truly overwhelming,  but fun.

 Soon I was learning that trees are not "things" but complex communities in which the members communicate and interact.  And there are even unitary communities, like the aspens' "Pando".

And I read books by naturalists like Childs, who gave a dramatic description of going through the local desert, and the effects of water and its absence.  He also wrote about the native people who inhabited and survived in these locations long before John Muir and other Europeans were extolling their beauty.  (Once in Bryce looking at the formations,  another tourist, struck with the beauty, said "I wonder who was the first person to discover this place." To which I answered, "It wasn't a white person.")

You cannot be overwhelmed by the beauty for long before you notice that there are a lot of other people at many of these lovely places.  And you notice that some of the areas around the parks are relatively natural forests, or desert lands,  but  human development is encroaching  everywhere. 

So, of course,  I began to think about how humans are altering the climate,  creating extinctions,  causing the dolphins to come onshore to die---the whole anthropocene mess-- surveyed by Kolbert.  Her book is sensationalist which fits with its mission of advocacy,  but it is also disconnected and seems to lack a core.

This led me to a "real biologist's view" Dunn's NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FUTURE.  (In case you are wondering, I have not written this blog to encourage anyone to read these books.)  Dunn surveys many examples of natural and urban organisms who are "evolving" in dramatic ways,  often only observable in complex studies.  There are "islands" of rats in urban parks,  and the collapse of bee colonies,  and many other examples (not all of them depressing).

When I step back to look at my journey,  I realize that the natural beauty of these places in our world has not gone away,  but my vision of them has changed.  My mind imagines the intricate interdependence of species  and environment (even when I can't see them, or understand the processes).  How easy it is to alter and disrupt the relationships, with the good intention of growing more food,  or eradicating malaria, or some other human  outcome. 

I see the beauty but I also see and feel the ways in which that world and my world are not connected.  And I wonder what to do about it,  and doubt that it is simply about protesting, or driving an electric vehicle.  

If we end up in Mad Max's world,  it will eventually be taken over by insects and microbes.  

But Bryce will still be there with its beautiful formations.

Economic development that destroys natural beauty

     The September 19th, 2016 New Yorker magazine has a profile on Yvon Chouinard,  the rock climber, adventurer,  developer of new climbing hardware,  and founder of the clothing company  Patagonia.  The profile captures the conflict between the adventurer and the businessman,  and reveals a fundamental split in the agenda of the outdoor community.  In keeping with Chouinard's personal values,  the company has championed high risk outdoor wilderness adventures,  primarily through the photographs in its catalog,  while maintaining a strong support for environmental protection.  The company has several initiatives to make its products more environmentally friendly and produces them with less environmental impact.  (Less than other outdoor clothing manufacturers?) He is personally famous for his climbing exploits and other adventures.  And the profile reveals his desire to be an environmentalist in the strongest terms.   Along with a few other colleagues of his generation (now 77) his career embodies the dream of people who pursue their favorite activities and are financially rewarded at the same time --- like Hobie Alter developing his beach boats,  and the Meistrell brothers who founded Body Glove wet suits.
     Chouinard is not happy though.  The natural world that he loved to explore and challenge is becoming crowded and overdeveloped.  Ski areas to him are "golf courses" of social and real estate development.  And climbing has become so popular  that major climbs require scheduling by serious climbers.   Surfing along the California coast is so crowded that on good days there is competition for waves that sometimes gets ugly.  What happened?  Success.  The adventures  of Chouinard and others were so appealing that more and more people were attracted to them,  and bought outdoor clothing,  and ropes,  chock and expansion bolts,  surf boards,  etc.  Outdoor adventure has become a major business.  REI of Seattle,  once a clubby supplier to hard core outdoorsy people is now a large marketer of the "outdoor lifestyle" with clothing,  lessons,  trips,  and everything you might need to enjoy your adventure.   Going outdoors is no longer for an odd group of folks who want to escape the more developed part of the world.  Major climbs like Mt. Whitney and Mt. Everest must be scheduled to deal with the high demand.  To be sure these are still daunting climbs requiring training and conditioning.   But more and more reports indicate that some of the climbers are marginally prepared and in mortal danger if the situation turns against them.  Deaths have occurred.  There are still wilderness areas in several parts of the Americas,  and the Himalayas.  But the most desirable of these areas get very busy at the peak times of the year and it is hard to say that you are "alone in the wilderness" at those times.
     Chouinard the businessman has succeeded in defining a lifestyle and a premium clothing brand that draws others to fantasize and sometimes populate the outdoors, so he is chipping away at the wilderness he is fond of, and wishes to protect.  It makes no sense to focus on him personally: there is now an extensive industry of equipment, clothing, travel planning,  and training all designed to make money off people wanting to be outdoors, in relatively wild and unspoiled places.  A similar challenge faces the National Park Service every year when it must deal with the seasonal demand for access and utilization of its most popular parks,  effectively degrading their "natural" and "wild" qualities into crowded tourist experiences.  Even the Sierra Club sponsors guided wilderness trips on the justification that getting people to experience the wilderness will make them stronger advocates for it.  There is a long history everywhere in the world of people discovering beautiful natural places and wanting to live around them. Housing developments are built by people wealthy enough to afford multiple homes,  and the sites become real estate projects.  Yvon's life story is just one poignant example of the incompatibility between the desire for natural experiences and the desire to have some economic benefit from the access.
     The solution is elusive.  It is possible to restrict the access to wilderness locations and require controlled reservations to enter them.  This already occurs in some popular National Parks.  And this effectively nullifies that sense of spontaneous wandering into wild places!  There are still beautiful unrestricted natural areas in the US and other parts of the world,  but the threats of development,  including high end tourist development are current challenges  along with natural resource development of logging,  mining,  and drilling.   How many ski mountains, once wild places with a few lifts and some rambling shacks, have been transformed into condo cities which flood to overflowing in good snow seasons and otherwise languish.  Avid skiers seem to rarely notice that the part of the mountain that is "wild and natural" has poles going up it to carry lift lines,  and the base is covered with lodges and resorts that are anything but "wild and natural".   Everyone is entitled to enjoy the gifts of nature in their own way,  but some ways effectively nullify the benefit for others.
     The only solution is changing the public's attitude toward using the natural world.  Give up using it to prove what a great climber you are.  Give up using it as a party space away from home with all the pleasures of home.  Give up making it easy and accessible to large numbers of folks.  Encourage visitors to concentrate only on seeing and understanding the natural features and beauty and not any way of exploiting or "using" it.  And this includes emphasizing natural means of navigation around the sites and limited access by motorized vehicles.   In short,  give up trying to make money off of the natural beauty in any aggressive way,  and fund access to preserve and protect the natural beauty that people initial claim to care about.  One can compare the North and South rim of the Grand Canyon to see how two different ways of developing the same site result in dramatically different experiences.  None of this is new.  Edward Abbey had the same rants in Desert Solitaire half a century ago.  And he did not slow the changes,  and neither will this. 

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.