. . . there is nevertheless a certain respect, a general duty of humanity, that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
WE THINK OF the woods and hills as eternal, and most of the time, from man’s puny perspective, they are. And yet what a change is going on under those trees! Our camping fathers and mothers of pre–World War II would be astonished if they could come along on a modern backpack. And herein lies the solution to the problem posed by the coming of the lug-soled army.
On a recent three-day camping trip in New Hampshire’s Pemigewasset Wilderness, we were struck with how different it all was from when we got started camping years ago. We were with a large group of campers in the “Pemi,” a sizable chunk of rolling forest surrounded by peaks of the White Mountains. There were 14 of us altogether. The seven 2-person tents were the latest sleek, nylon, lightweight models, the brilliant colors ranging all over the rainbow (except purple). Each pair of campers reached into aluminum pack frames and pulled out portable cookstoves fueled with white gas. No one ever suggested we build a crackling campfire. Had anyone started to cut a bough bed for extra comfort, he or she would have been attacked with an ax—except that none of us carried an ax or even a hatchet. Though we camped near the banks of Lincoln Brook one night—nearer than we should have—no one washed in the waters, and when nature called, each person went well back into the woods, away from stream and trail, to answer.
Our group violated some canons of the new ethic. We were too many, to begin with. In just about every section of the country, responsible managers are trying to discourage groups of more than 10. Those brightly colored tents are more of an intrusion on the woods scene than they need be (“like a light you can never turn off,” says conservationist and author John Hart). And we should have gone farther from the banks of Lincoln Brook.
Still, if you went back to the places we camped on that trip, you’d find no sign of our having been there. Indeed, it might be hard to find the sites at all. Where the tents were, no tent has subsequently been, and the forest floor is well on its way back. You’d find no blackened fire ring, no stripped branches or bark, no cut boughs, no dug latrine, no litter or can pit unearthed by animals.
When we were on that trip, we couldn’t help thinking back with a smile to what it was like when we were learning how to live in the woods in the years just after the war, but before prewar camping technology and habits had changed the old ways we described in the last chapter.
As all of us who were around when the lug-soled army invaded the woods in the 1960s and 1970s learned, the old ways couldn’t continue. With increasing numbers projected to rise through the 1980s and 1990s, backwoods managers were bracing for the onslaught and prepared to introduce restrictions and permits and quotas, maybe to macadamize the trails, or make them one-way, or something . . . anything!
What happened? How did we escape that Orwellian scenario?
For one thing, the backpacking boom slacked off long enough for two other things to happen: regulations and education.
Land managers implemented the regulations. Backpackers were warned not to camp in the vulnerable spots, such as along heavily used trails; where any trails crossed streams; or within a quarter mile of backcountry facilities like shelters or huts. Shelter sites were made over with innovative platforms on which you were to place your tent, thus getting if off the ground. No camping at all was permitted above treeline.
Big change! That generation was the first to find out that the freedom of the hills had its limits. If we were not going to destroy our own resource, we all had to accept restraints on our actions.
But in the long run an even more important requirement was a change not just in our behavior but in our attitudes, our perception of our role in the backcountry.
You couldn’t write regulations to cover every conceivable situation, and even if you could, you couldn’t enforce them. One US Forest Service researcher, David N. Cole, pointed out the problem in regulations standing alone:
For example, visitors are commonly asked not to camp close to lakes; however, defensible reasons for this request are seldom offered. Without a rationale, visitors may not understand why the action is important and may decide that it is not important. They are more likely to interpret recommendations incorrectly, and they are less likely to think of additional means of mitigating the problem.
Another way of putting it was expressed by the Izaak Walton League’s newsletter in a message to fishermen about responsible behavior in their realm:
Every time the legislation of ethics comes up, it shows the failure of education. The sad thing is that we increasingly turn matters of conscience over to cops.
You had to reach people’s minds and get them to understand the underlying rationale for change. You had to help people see the fragility of the apparently rugged terrain they were visiting and the consequences for that terrain of their own actions as visitors. You had to change people’s perceptions of their own place in wilderness.
The mentality of the frontier had to close down, as the frontier did long ago. The frontiersmen’s children needed to move into new frontiers of consciousness, to explore new ground in understanding their relationship to the land. Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis needed a replacement suitable for our time. A new generation needed a new ethic through education, not just regulation.
A regulated camper begrudges what you tell him he must do (or must not do). He’ll be tempted to cheat when you’re not looking. An educated camper is intrigued with what he can do, recoils from what he should not do, and takes pride in finding an appropriate place for himself in the mountain environment. As forester Cole concluded:
Low-impact wilderness education must be an ethic and a way of thinking if it is to realize its full potential. It is more a matter of attitude and awareness than of rules and regulations.
And so began the process of thinking about our own actions, helping to educate the whole backcountry population, and especially reaching the new generation of enthusiastic recreationists. Backcountry managers developed communication arts they’d never needed before. Hiking clubs played a major role in reaching their members and the public. Both the managers and the clubs reached out to leaders of large youth groups, summer camps, Boy and Girl Scouts, and school groups. Some of these youth leaders became zealous prophets of “clean camping” or “no-trace” wilderness travel. Their teachings were especially valuable because they addressed the next generation of hikers.
Education took many forms. Every shelter and hut, every trailhead and information point in the forest had signs and leaflets advising visitors how to camp and hike responsibly. Magazines such as Backpacker, Wilderness Camping, and New England Outdoors carried frequent articles on the new ethic. Outfitting stores responsibly preached the message to their customers. Some manufacturers of outdoor equipment prepared educational leaflets on the proper use of their own gear. The hikers themselves, as they began to soak in the word, felt the missionary zeal to spread the word to fellow travelers.
What was this new backwoods gospel?
1. Carry a lightweight backpacking stove. No fires. Leave the ax at home. In areas where campfires are still appropriate, there are a lot of sensible practices that fire builders can use to minimize their impact, both physical and visual.
2. Those who do insist on a fire, and are in an area where it is both legally and environmentally feasible to have one, have an obligation to take special pains to keep it safe and small, and to destroy all evidence of its having been there when they leave.
3. Use a lightweight foam pad. No more cutting bough beds for mattresses. (At least one camping manual of the old days had advised taking one entire balsam fir tree per bed!)
4. Wash both dishes and yourself away from streams, using biodegradable soap, and not much of it.
5. Choose a low-impact tent site so that you don’t need to provide drainage by digging a trench around your tent. This one is a bit tricky, and it illustrates the need for campers to understand the subtleties of the problem and the underlying objective, rather than just memorizing a rule or regulation. If you are in an area already heavily impacted, it is better to use the site that everyone else already has, rather than create a new one. But if you come on a lightly used site that is just beginning to show wear, it is better to disperse and find another place, preferably one that others are unlikely to find or reuse. No pat instruction can be handed out, but if you understand what the objective is, you can choose the right place to camp.
6. As a general rule, camp at least 150 feet from water and hiking trails.
7. These days it’s increasingly possible to purchase tents and packs of softer colors—green or brown—rather than the flaming reds and oranges that stand out so blatantly from far away and trumpet your presence to every other passing hiker.
8. Some conscientious campers carry hammocks to sleep entirely off the ground. More on this in chapter 10.
9. From wherever you camp, take a different route between there and the trail and the stream when you go for water. That way you won’t wear a path. Take a large water carrier with you so you can get ample water on the first trip.
10. Choose a different campsite every time. Most important: Never camp where someone else has (but also see rule 5 above). It’s repeated use of the same site that causes the damage. Limit use of any one site to two or at most three nights. (Some would say just one night.) It’s rather difficult to stay longer in one place and not have it look—and be—well worn.
11. Wear soft-soled shoes around your campsite. Take off the heavy lug-soled boots while in camp so as to take it easy on the ground cover. For that matter, many hikers feel that running shoes or similar lighter footwear are entirely adequate for most day hikes at least. Automatically strapping on the big lug soles is not necessarily the way to go.
12. No litter, of course. Carry out everything you bring in. Go one step further and pick up trash left by those who haven’t gotten the message yet.
13. Dispose of human waste with discretion and some understanding of what pollutes and how decomposition acts fastest. Where toilets are available, use them. In remoter locations, dig a very shallow cat hole, maximizing the speed with which nature can compost what you leave—well away from streams and trails, of course.
14. Don’t pick the wildflowers or forage indiscriminately for what some nature writer told you were edible wild foods. And will this generation at last be the one to leave all the birchbark on the white birches? Nothing symbolizes irresponsibility in the woods more than stripping birchbark.
15. Limit group size. One of the primary findings of the 1977 report of the Adirondacks’ High Peaks Wilderness Advisory Committee was that groups of more than 10 hikers have “a greater pressure on the resource than would the same number of users as individual day hikers or backpackers.” All over the country now, officials frown on groups of more than 10.
16. Keep voices down near other parties, and especially keep quiet after dark. As for radios—?!?!
17. Remember, it’s low-impact hiking as well as low-impact camping. As you hike along, stick to the existing trail rather than skirt its edge and widen it. Resist the temptation to walk alongside the person you’re conversing with if that requires you to walk outside the existing track.
18. When hiking off-trail, fan out through the untrampled woods, rather than tramping single file, thereby starting a herd path that could become a trail.
19. On trails, if you see drainage that’s clogged, scrape it out with your boot or a stick. Trails would survive so much better if every hiker had a sense of stewardship. We should stop thinking of ourselves as trail users and instead think of ourselves as trail stewards.
20. Have consideration for the local regulations when using pack animals. Nothing tears up mountain meadows and trails or pollutes watersheds quite so much as a string of horses, mules, burros, or llamas.
21. Even on human feet, think about your impact. Notice the season of the year when the snows thaw and reveal the land for the first time. The earth is uniquely vulnerable then. The mud that churning hiking boots create at such time goes deep fast. It is not like mud in a midsummer rainstorm. It is much deeper, much more disturbing to the integrity of the soil. Therefore, many hikers stay out of the hills in mud season. It’s not a great time for hiking anyway. In the 1970s Vermont’s Green Mountain Club began urging its members to stay off popular mountains in May, and Vermonters bought the idea. Now state government officials take to the television screen every spring to exhort the good citizens not to hike on vulnerable trails at that critical point of the seasonal cycle.
22. Above treeline, exercise special care to protect alpine vegetation. This means sticking to a designated trail where there is one, and where there isn’t, walking carefully on rocks only. It certainly means not camping on the tundra vegetation. The tent above treeline has to be a luxury lost, save in winter on a protective snow cover or in remote areas where a site may never be found and used again by other parties. But beyond camping, the aware hiker has developed an instinctive concern for where to put each footstep.
23. Cooperate with the sometimes onerous restrictions that backcountry managers install to cope with the impact of people.
24. Contribute constructive thinking to the problem. Those in charge are looking for ideas, and “public involvement” is a byword in the lexicon of modern backcountry management.
25. Remember, every time you’re walking up a trail or camping in the backcountry: The mountain environment is fragile.
That was the basic agenda of the new backwoods ethic. What was the result? A good answer is to go back and look at that clearing in the Krummholz near Greenleaf Hut that we described at the start of the previous chapter. It is now thirty years since the regulations and (more important) the education began, and since hikers started to live by the new ethic. What do we see?
The change is perfectly extraordinary for anyone who can recall what it looked like in 1970. It is tremendously heartening. Now we see a clearing still, but it is grass green. It might not remain a clearing long. Bushy shrubs and young balsams to a height of several feet grow in around the edges and cluster in the middle. Look for those bludgeoned-off stumps we mentioned. The new growth of fir overwhelms them—scarcely a stump visible! As you gaze, a snowshoe hare hops out from the dense edge and begins to nibble on that tempting, thick grass. (Or is it sedge? The hare doesn’t seem to care.) On a young balsam a white-throated sparrow sings.
What did we learn from the backpacking boom and its aftermath? The first two lessons are these:
1. When people come to the mountains in large numbers, they can, wittingly or not, do great damage.
2. But if we back away, see the error of our ways and try to correct them, try to respect the land and become stewards of wilderness, then nature has magnificent restorative powers. The forest, at least in our Northeast and to a degree everywhere, can come back.
Nature has an irresistible urge to grow, to regenerate, to rebuild. Fortunately for us in the Northeast, nature does this growing with surprising speed and ease. She is helped by a wet climate. (Backpackers know that wet climate all too well!) Some call it the asbestos forest: It is so wet it is hard to burn. In the West the land recovers more slowly, but there you also have wider expanses over which to disperse. Above treeline, East or West, recovery is also slower, so restraint and respect are especially needed in alpine areas. But in any place where we can reform our ways and walk quietly over the land, nature can restore itself.
But only if we do the right things. The optimistic message is valid only so long as we correct our abuses and give nature a chance. A sense of stewardship is vital to the future of the backcountry.