People need to be more widely dispersed in the back country, the very opposite of the (Nuts to) Leave No Trace folk, who have got it all wrong. I know you may not want to hear this, but please read on.
Just camping alone with my dog, Spot in the trackless Victorian Alpine wilderness (2021).
Theirs is a city-based philosophy, one utterly parasitic on those huge cancerous growths which most everyone lives in today – and all the opposite of ‘leaving no trace’ they involve.
Only a couple of hundred years ago there were only a handful of cities in the world with populations over a million – now there are hundreds, and some (like Tokyo) with populations greater than Australia ie over 25 million. Horror!
And enjoying the delightful amenity of a cosey fire on a chilly night – Bliss!
Bizarrely these city folks, having abandoned the country (and almost wholly ignorant of it) now want to ‘teach’ us country folks how to live in the country. I have lived in the country (mostly out of sight of the next house), and smack up against ‘untouched’ forest nearly all my life. I am 73 now.
If LNT means cities and development, leave me out. My philosophy is more a Thoreau-ean, rural and village concept, with folk living in and engaging with the wild.
Or lying in my hammock by a remote river on a warm winter’s day.
It seems astonishing to me for example that folks can espouse ‘leave no trace’ and yet mandate gas canister stoves and all the massive industrial and environmental complex that an enormous fossil fuel industry (not to mention cities) implies. How much worse is cooking your meal in a billy over a DIY twig-fired hobo stove!
I also notice that the tiny ‘scars’ left by my widely dispersed campsite fires (I hardly use the same one twice!) quickly sprout a host of rare plants (orchids etc) whose regeneration has become linked by a million years of folks doing what I am doing. What people have considered ‘good’ for a million years (eg hunting) ought not be just dismissed in/by the current ‘woke’ generation.
Just love waking up to such a solitary view as this:
Their philosophy also seems to require the creation (and maintenance of) a vast network of hiking ‘trails’ (little better than walking super-highways in reality) and vast soul-less camp-grounds where people can crowd together as they do in their cities. Too often the trails/campsites are also badly routed/sited.
And of course most LNT folk live in cities and only get to such ‘wilderness’ places by traveling in aeroplanes, staying in large hotels & etc on the way. Such pathetic virtue signaling.
Whereas I would rather folk camp alone in a tiny clearing (just enough for a tent/tarp) – it almost never needs to be created – beside some forest stream. I follow game trails which I sometimes enhance by trimming overhanging branches a little – so one does not have to stoop so much (and neither do the deer)! Even just in Eastern Victoria (where I live) there are literally hundreds of thousands of such spots with no-one there.
Or this:
Through some distorted thought process they seem to see my way of doing things as dreadfully sinful , indeed the very antithesis of ‘leave no trace’ (their mantra), even though I leave so little trace I doubt they could follow or find where I have been.
And it is strange that every year there gets to be more and more wilderness (and more acres of it per person). In the last 30-40 years an area of forest several times the land area of Australia has been added to the world (by carbon dioxide) as NASA satellite imagery shows.
Or watching wild streams run unseen by any other.
A huge increase in the share of wilderness per human being who would explore it. Such a huge quantity and such a wealth of living things too. Something to celebrate and enjoy, surely?
Of course I take my rubbish with me (but I don’t bring much either). Even more than that I am wholly opposed to folks finding a beautiful spot/view somewhere and deciding that the best thing to do with it is ‘develop’ it – to build holiday homes, caravan parks, condominiums and the like, (dare I say hiking trails and campsites?) so that the ‘view’ too often becomes that from the penthouse of a multi-storey hotel.
Where only deer and other wild creatures roam.
I would rather ban the ‘development’ of towns and accommodation of any sort in the vicinity of ocean, lakes, rivers and the like. It is far better for people to come for their infrequent vacations and simply camp amongst the trees, then go away ‘leaving little trace’ that they have ever been there.
When I was a kid (around seventy years ago) you could walk (pretty much) all the way up Australia’s East Coast without encountering very much that approximated a village even. Mostly just bush and uninterrupted beaches along which one could walk barefoot (I did) without ever cutting oneself on broken glass from discarded drink bottles etc. Just the odd campsite amongst the banksias.
But no more. There are few stretches of coast like that – fortunately (for me) mainly in Gippsland where there are still sections of 100 kilometres or so, and may they long remain!
And untrodden beaches stretch beyond the horizon:
I would also like to point out that I build the things I use and fix them. This maybe used to be what ‘recycling’ meant. I drive 30+ year old Land Rover vehicles which use less fuel per kilometer than most modern cars anyway, and whose every part can be replaced again and again (as I have) as they wear out. There is never the need to buy a new car with all the waste and ‘environmental’ destruction that implies. I have not done so in nearly fifty years, yet I have driven millions of kilometres in my lifetime.
We built our own house (out of the earth itself) and entirely with our own hands, every brick was hand-made and every piece of wood sawn by hand and nailed together with a hammer. Even did our own plumbing and wiring. We have lived here now for decades and intend to die and be buried here too. Compare the ‘trace’ of my lifestyle with your elegant ‘leave no trace’ philosophy decided upon in your city apartment built by someone else.
Following streams where maybe yours are the first footfalls:
We also pretty much grow all our own food on our own land – and have done so all our lives (and my parents’ lives for that matter). Indeed (as farmers) for decades we have fed several hundred other people each year. We also make many of our own things: clothes, camping gear, furniture, fences, outbuildings, much equipment etc and repair our own things (including motor vehicles). In our lifetimes we have planted and nurtured many thousands of trees and created many beautiful (large) gardens. Compare the ‘environmental footprint’ of my life to yours before you start ‘casting stones’.
I also see LNT as just an offshoot of a lamentable (socialist) state-ism where government and (increasingly) public servants decide every detail of our lives. First they ‘lock up’ a million acres or so in some vast ‘National Park’ – as if the self-same area had not been preserved for hundreds (or thousands) of years by the previous land management (or even mis-management). And often better.
Maybe having to force your way through the undergrowth:
After all, how often is the argument for the creation of the park the preservation of some rare species which has been found there (such as the mountain pygmy possum in Victoria which now exists in much greater proliferation in these logging areas – which must now be ‘protected’) than in the already ‘protected’ National Parks where the mismanagement caused by wildfires has all but exterminated it!
Anyway, first they lock up the area then exclude the public (and all management – such as fuel reduction fires or vermin and weed control) and close pretty much all the existing roads and tracks, then if any access is permitted it is restricted to ‘designated’ trails and camping grounds so that what use the area gets will be maximised in a small area such that the visitor will never be able to even view the ‘unspoiled’ area – and they will have the maximum ‘environmental effect’ on that area they do visit.
Leaving only such a trace as this:
Whilst severely curtailing all visitor activities the lack of management only leads to the widespread creation of awful weedy growth and a proliferation of pest animals ‘managed’ only by episodic disastrous wildfires. I’m sorry this is neither ‘conservation’ nor even ‘leaving little trace’. Wiping out everything in half a million acres or so (as the Victorian Government regularly does) is a disastrous land management practices – the sooner ended the better. Away with ‘National Parks’!
This new ‘management’ style replaces a long period when many more people actually lived and worked in the forest (than now visit it) and their activities so ‘protected’ the environment that the prevalence of species found there was a compelling reason for arguing (for) its preservation.
The pure delight of wild trout taken from such a crystal stream:
‘Leave No Trace’, the environmental movement and socialism in general are all just versions of each other, and work together mostly just to enslave us all.
There is nothing wrong (for example) with traveling through and camping by oneself in the wilderness or wanting to build a small ‘wilderness hut‘ (out of native material) deep in the wilderness far from any roads or trails where people might retreat in solitude and privacy.
One of my old (late) friend Arthur Meyer’s ‘Wilderness Huts’:
It would not detract from the ‘wilderness value’ of the over a million hectares of our Alpine National Parks in Victoria if there were 50,000 such huts – as there might well be! I have found many such in my own travels – and intend to create a few more before I am done.
See Also:
Find Your Own Places to Explore
TL;DR
Your bad! Please don’t make any further comments as my time is valuable too.