A friend texted me recently agonizing over the fact the canyon up to one of the popular ski areas in Utah was gridlock and it would take them over two hours to go just a few miles. However, she included, “At least we have a parking reservation so won’t be turned back”.
I constantly have to ask myself, why is this acceptable to voluntarily spend our time and money plunging ourselves into a self-inflicted cesspool of frustration? Everyone complains, but still we go. And ski areas aren’t the only places suffering from the haughty weight of overcrowding and overuse. Our public lands and parks are also experiencing the fatigue of “over-enjoyment”.
In 1872, Ulysses Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Act into law and the first National Park was born. Later, Teddy Roosevelt would establish five National Parks and eighteen National Monuments during his tenure as President. Obviously, there was some rudimentary desire as a nation to protect some of our country’s most iconic and wild places.
Those places, once seemingly worthy of adoration and protection are now relentlessly under siege. And while this fact is ostensibly acknowledged by all, the issue deepens. Predicting what was to come, Edward Abbey sarcastically proclaimed in his 1968 book Desert Solitaire, “Progress has come at last to the Arches, after a million years of neglect. Industrial tourism has arrived”.
Although I prefer my secret spots in the backcountry to camp, mountain bike and ski, I have ocassionally camped in more popular public lands campgrounds. The experience is most oftentimes just an extension of the nearby tourist towns…overcrowded, noisy with an ambiance of anger and entitlement. It’s about the same experience I could have “adventuring” in the parking lot of IKEA. Again, how is this acceptable to anyone?
There was a study published in the open access journal PLOS ONE where academics postulated that people’s social identification with a crowd led them to seek out and enjoy more dense locations. What? Does this mean our level of social identity and worth is measured by the density of the places we go? That seems like a horrifically despairing conclusion, but a quick look around and it seemingly has merit.
In the dense social media world, when people (influencers) find their latest Garden of Eden, they often love quoting Henry David Thoreau to add theatre and sensation to their photos. Thoreau was unquestionably someone who saw boundless value in the quiet contemplation of nature, so naturally his words are ideal for the experience. But true to the PLOS ONE study mentioned above, the experience must then be plunged into communal concentration in order to have worth and validity. And from there, the masses follow. This prolific social sharing and resulting commando-like assault of places perhaps isn’t the model of spiritual discovery he himself ascribed to, or would have approved of.
I too have read Thoreau on occasion, though I could hardly consider myself a practicing or conscientious Thoreauvian. However, something I recently read helped me understand a little of what perhaps makes Thoreau, his thoughts and his beloved Walden so appealing.
In David Gessner’s book, All the Wild That Remains, he makes comparisons to Thoreau and the literary works of Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner, both poets, writers and advocates to the preservation of the wild and mystical American West. In his comparisons, he references Joseph Wood Krutch’s belief that Thoreau’s magnetism emanated from the fact that he was “a finder, not a seeker”. Stop and think about that for a second. Gessner then posits that all these men capture our imaginations because they found something, as he states, “that we ourselves, mired in our grown-up lives, will never find”.
I suppose as long as the majority of society accepts this reservation only, overcrowded, frustrating way of life, the questions will keep being asked and the answers will remain elusive. Sadly, this could be the beginning of the end to spontaneous adventures. On a bright note, at least people not familiar with some of our great poets and philosophers will get to read their works via Instagram.
In crowds we seek and in solitude we find.
Climb high. Ski fast. Pedal hard.
Adventures In The Slow Lane 