The latest mails from Rick & Joq came just in time - I think that this environmental/Darwinist/baby duck topic/whatever was getting out of control. Or coming to a dead end... To return the original subject, kayakers and taking care of nature: how many of you are aware, that you can destroy solid, bare rock by setting a campfire on it? The heat of the fire breaks the rock a little, ice forms during the wintertime to the breaks - and it will break the rock more & more during the next years. This will continue supposedly forever, as long there will be winter in this planet [though I am told that this will become a very hot place during the next million years - and not only on the PaddleWise list ;-)]. Have you ever considered the things which might happen when you are walking on a very thin soil found from the outer islands? A good bunch of eco tourists, power boaters, or whoever can do serious damage to the soil just walking around. Stripping the rock bare from the moss. It is as bad as taking fresh wood for your fire cutting branches from the trees. Because the soil is not very fertile there it takes an extraordinarily long time from the trees to recover (of course, only a real idiot would take fresh wood to the campfire because it doesn´t burn very well, but I have seen it happen). I think that Geo in his original comments was quite right - even kayakers can be claimed being negligent, though we usually do consider the effects very minor. How many of us can really boast not having left marks to the nature? Are you sure that you took all the rubbish back with you when you were out last time? BTW: I think that claiming international companies, governments, power boaters etc. is in a way almost the same as avoiding personal responsibility: "not me, them first!" Moral and ethic issues are subjects of real life and everybody´s personal choices. Our´s, meaning the little people. It is time to quit calling each other with various names. [However, it is good to see that these matters are very dear & close to PaddleWisers :-P] Happy birthday, Geo and merry springtime to you all. I saw eight cranes in the middle of Lahti on Tuesday, flying over the center of the city. Ari Saarto Principal Lecturer, dept. of Photography Lahti Polytechnic - Institute of Design Faculty of Visual Communication Kannaksenkatu 22, P.O. 92 15141 Lahti Finland EUROPE GSM +358 - 50 - 526 5892 fax. +358 - 3 - 828 2815 e-mail: asaarto_at_lpt.fi web: lpt.fi/mi/ *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Apr 23 1998 - 13:23:40 PDT
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