Cool, totally cool......... 8)
OP-ED: LOST IN SPACE
Date: 040725
From: http://www.nytimes.com/
By Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, July 24, 2004
Somewhere in Three Sisters Wilderness, Oregon - As I scribble these
words in my notebook, I'm totally lost.
My two sons and I are backpacking on the Pacific Crest Trail, but the
trail disappeared under three feet of snow several miles ago. So we
set out cross-country, camping last night on a patch of green
surrounded by snow.
At the moment it's dawn at our bivouac, right about timberline, and
my sons are still sleeping, blithely confident that we'll find our way
again. And, truth be told, so long as one has food, shelter and a
compass, it's gloriously liberating to be lost in a snowy wilderness.
That was a couple of weeks ago, and we eventually hiked beyond the
snow and stumbled across a trail again. But I strongly recommend the
practice of getting lost in the wilderness, and our government should
give us more opportunities to do so.
A focus of the American environmental movement has been conservation,
and that's why there is such rage at the Bush administration's efforts
to log, mine or drill patches of wilderness from the Arctic to
Florida. President Bush has done more than any other recent president
to shift our environmental balance away from conservation and toward
development.
Mr. Bush's Healthy Forests initiative, in its harsh early version,
allowed logging companies to pillage federal land. The latest assault
is President Bush's decision to overturn the Clinton administration's
"roadless rule," protecting nearly 60 million acres of national
forests from road building and development.
Presidential fingerprints on a country usually fade quickly, but an
exception is the decision to preserve or develop the wilderness. Teddy
Roosevelt's imprint on 21st-century America is enormous because he
preserved wild spaces for future generations, while Mr. Bush's 22nd-
century legacy may be the permanent scarring of those same spaces.
Yet the environmental movement is wrong to emphasize preservation for
the sake of the wolves and the moose alone. We should preserve
wilderness for our sake - to remind us of our scale on this planet, to
humble us, to soothe us. Nothing so civilizes humans as the wild.
That means that we not only have to preserve wilderness, but we also
must get more people into it. It's great that we have managed to save
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But virtually the only visitors
who get to enjoy it are superwealthy tourists who charter airplanes to
fly into remote airstrips.
So how about a hiking trail from Arctic Village going north to the
Brooks Range, allowing many more people to enjoy the refuge? How about
polar bear ecotourism in Kaktovik? Why not democratize the chance to
hear wolves howl or be menaced by grizzlies?
The greatest opportunity for a conservation legacy, just waiting for
some politician to grab it, is a proposed east-west hiking trail
across America. The 7,700-mile sea-to-sea route, as sketched on maps,
runs from Cape Alava in Washington State to Cape Gaspé in Quebec (see
http://www.c2c-route.org/C2C/about_C2C.htm).
The U.S. already has three great long-distance hiking trails: the
Appalachian Trail in the East, the Continental Divide Trail in the
Rockies and the Pacific Crest Trail on the West Coast. They are
steadily getting more users, and the trend toward ultralite
backpacking is making trail hiking more appealing.
At a time when America is struggling with obesity and fewer Americans
have daily contact with the outdoors, we should not be sealing off the
wilderness but rather increasing access to it for those on foot or
horseback. Canada is building the world's longest hiking trail, a
11,000-mile path called the Trans Canada Trail, and Europe is building
a dazzling collection of distance trails, including the 6,500-mile E4
European Long Distance Path, from Portugal to Cyprus. But the U.S. is
dozing on the couch.
I wish that Mr. Bush's environmental policy wasn't rooted in rapine.
But I also wish that the green movement fought as hard for
interactions between humans and our environment as it did against
blind development. If environmentalists applied a small fraction of
the energy they devoted to fighting snowmobiles in Yellowstone to push
for the coast-to-coast trail, we would now have one.
We should give our descendants every chance to show their children
how puny we humans are in a wilderness, by taking them hiking and
getting them bitten by mosquitoes, hopelessly lost and totally
exhilarated.
* * *
Email: nicholas@nytimes.com
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
OP-ED: LOST IN SPACE
Date: 040725
From: http://www.nytimes.com/
By Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, July 24, 2004
Somewhere in Three Sisters Wilderness, Oregon - As I scribble these
words in my notebook, I'm totally lost.
My two sons and I are backpacking on the Pacific Crest Trail, but the
trail disappeared under three feet of snow several miles ago. So we
set out cross-country, camping last night on a patch of green
surrounded by snow.
At the moment it's dawn at our bivouac, right about timberline, and
my sons are still sleeping, blithely confident that we'll find our way
again. And, truth be told, so long as one has food, shelter and a
compass, it's gloriously liberating to be lost in a snowy wilderness.
That was a couple of weeks ago, and we eventually hiked beyond the
snow and stumbled across a trail again. But I strongly recommend the
practice of getting lost in the wilderness, and our government should
give us more opportunities to do so.
A focus of the American environmental movement has been conservation,
and that's why there is such rage at the Bush administration's efforts
to log, mine or drill patches of wilderness from the Arctic to
Florida. President Bush has done more than any other recent president
to shift our environmental balance away from conservation and toward
development.
Mr. Bush's Healthy Forests initiative, in its harsh early version,
allowed logging companies to pillage federal land. The latest assault
is President Bush's decision to overturn the Clinton administration's
"roadless rule," protecting nearly 60 million acres of national
forests from road building and development.
Presidential fingerprints on a country usually fade quickly, but an
exception is the decision to preserve or develop the wilderness. Teddy
Roosevelt's imprint on 21st-century America is enormous because he
preserved wild spaces for future generations, while Mr. Bush's 22nd-
century legacy may be the permanent scarring of those same spaces.
Yet the environmental movement is wrong to emphasize preservation for
the sake of the wolves and the moose alone. We should preserve
wilderness for our sake - to remind us of our scale on this planet, to
humble us, to soothe us. Nothing so civilizes humans as the wild.
That means that we not only have to preserve wilderness, but we also
must get more people into it. It's great that we have managed to save
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But virtually the only visitors
who get to enjoy it are superwealthy tourists who charter airplanes to
fly into remote airstrips.
So how about a hiking trail from Arctic Village going north to the
Brooks Range, allowing many more people to enjoy the refuge? How about
polar bear ecotourism in Kaktovik? Why not democratize the chance to
hear wolves howl or be menaced by grizzlies?
The greatest opportunity for a conservation legacy, just waiting for
some politician to grab it, is a proposed east-west hiking trail
across America. The 7,700-mile sea-to-sea route, as sketched on maps,
runs from Cape Alava in Washington State to Cape Gaspé in Quebec (see
http://www.c2c-route.org/C2C/about_C2C.htm).
The U.S. already has three great long-distance hiking trails: the
Appalachian Trail in the East, the Continental Divide Trail in the
Rockies and the Pacific Crest Trail on the West Coast. They are
steadily getting more users, and the trend toward ultralite
backpacking is making trail hiking more appealing.
At a time when America is struggling with obesity and fewer Americans
have daily contact with the outdoors, we should not be sealing off the
wilderness but rather increasing access to it for those on foot or
horseback. Canada is building the world's longest hiking trail, a
11,000-mile path called the Trans Canada Trail, and Europe is building
a dazzling collection of distance trails, including the 6,500-mile E4
European Long Distance Path, from Portugal to Cyprus. But the U.S. is
dozing on the couch.
I wish that Mr. Bush's environmental policy wasn't rooted in rapine.
But I also wish that the green movement fought as hard for
interactions between humans and our environment as it did against
blind development. If environmentalists applied a small fraction of
the energy they devoted to fighting snowmobiles in Yellowstone to push
for the coast-to-coast trail, we would now have one.
We should give our descendants every chance to show their children
how puny we humans are in a wilderness, by taking them hiking and
getting them bitten by mosquitoes, hopelessly lost and totally
exhilarated.
* * *
Email: nicholas@nytimes.com
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company