Re: [Paddlewise] Saturation Point

Matt Broze wrote:
> Should read: "must now" or "desparate enough" rather than "often willing"

Well, yea.  You're one of the old folks who are here to remind us of
what was lost.


> The arguement could (and probably will) be made that improving access to
> remoter areas will help to disperse the crowds more widely that are damaging
> nearby ones.

Yep, and if we do that we'll end up with a uniformly saturated
backcountry.  I've sat through the same debate about land wilderness. 
Hopefully people will realize that as long as we keep reproducing we
can't expect to find isolation in our own back yard.  Develop the local
areas for heavy use and preseve what we can of the wilderness.  Except
for the political difficulties now, I think it would be great to develop
the San Juans to the walls with kayakers SO THEY DON'T BOTHER going any
further afield.  And NOT improve access to what is remove. 
Unfortunately, every time someone in rural areas tries to make a living
providing access they are pushing back the boundaries of the wilderness.

[In recent years I've actually managed to get into country where I see
more signes of wild life than I do of people.  This August I did an 8
day backcountry traverse near glaicer peak and didn't see any other
parties except for the first and last days.  We camped as several
beauitiful lakes and didn't see any signs that other people had camped
there.  Certinaly not what you got to see 20 years ago.  Nor will it
last.  If the forest service ever gets funding for trail develpment
these places will disapear.]



> >3. Creation of new areas.  This is what is going to save us.  As more
> >people join sport the demand increases.  Both easy access/high use and
> >remote/low use areas must be added.
> 
> Just where are these new areas that are going to save us coming from? Maybe
> we should pray to the Creator to create some more new areas for us. Or we
> could improve access to more remote areas. That's it! That will save us.
> 
> We're Toast!

I agree with you.  When I think of what the future holds I get
depressed.  I like to give some practicle suggestions rather than
whining about what is happening, but I don't have much hope for people's
ability to take care of the wilderness.  Through individual actions and
selifshness we will destroy it.  

I know there is no hope because I see the selfishness in myself.  I love
the wilderness, I go visit it, and I see that my actions have impact. 
Even though, I will not stop visiting.  I try to live a pure life, but I
also want to enjoy my life, so I'm not as pure as I think I should be. 
Everyone finds some point of compromise at which they are comfortable. 
Unfortnately, I think that most people are significantly less aware and
have significantly greater impact.

I didn't think much about weather John's reference to "The Voluntary
Human Extinction Movement" was a joke or not, but I find that my
sentiments are not too far off.  I don't think that the whole human race
has to go, just the majority.  But it has to be voluntary.  I'm no one
to tell people what to do.  Neither to not have children or to not buy a
kayak and go out into the wilderness.

(Though if I was elected I would 1. Ban private ownership of automobiles
and 2. Ban all advertising.)

I don't see much hope for my children (good thing I don't and won't have
any).  Best we can do is slow the deterioration so I can get out on some
good trips while I'm still healthy.


I have here a quote from "The Great Deep" by James Hamilton-Paterson. 
This comes from a latter chapter called "Fishing and Loss".  It's
longish, but he says it very well.

  While endangered species embody poignant reminders of our own
  mortality, it is the vanishing of entire landscapes that upsets us
  most.  There is nowhere left to turn for solace and with which to
  re-create the continuity of our lives.  Sights, smells and sounds may
  all vanish.  I pretend not to mourn the wild profusion of the natty
  yellow-and-black striped caterpillars of the cinnabar moth which once
  stripped to the bone the clumps of groundsel to be found on every
  patch of wasteland in southern Britain.  Likewise I miss the sheer
  variety of other butterflies and moths (including many rare species)
  which appeared even in the most suburban garden as late as the early
  sixties.  One knew where Yellow and Red Underwinds would be, and when
  in May to look for the Angle Shades moth just after it had hatched and
  its colors were at their freshest.  The subtlest peach and brown and
  olive tints seemed to hover a fraction above the surface of its wings
  as if pure color stood off its scales by the thickness of dust,
  glowing and velvety.  It now seems both important and hopeless to wish
  for other people such pleasure and ravishment, whether of looking at
  moths or being frisked around by dolphins.  It is true that
  after-comers can never know exactly what they have missed; but missing
  things in our own lifetimes sets in motion the inarticulate hollowings
  of loss, and in turn we apprehend how quickly ordinary beauty is being
  made to vanish as if the hand of man held a wand whose touch made some
  things disappear for good and turned all the rest to lead.  Each
  generation adapts to an impoverished world, but for the first time
  people are conscious of having to make do with remains.  This has its
  effects.

  ...

  The oceans have long been, and will long be, subject to ruthless
  exploitation and even, in places, to ruin.  It is not really the sea
  which is in recession, though, but wildness itself.  Wildness is
  everywhere but it can no longer be seen;  and its apparent vanishing
  is a direct consequence of the new conservationists gaze.  "The Wild"
  is nowadays a concept ringing with the overtones of patronage, of
  collections by school children on its behalf.  The present generation
  is as much contaminated by its own reverential and placatory attitude
  as the older was by domination.  There is something ignobal about it,
  compounded as it is of urban sentimentalism, virtuous concern and
sheer
  panic at having irrevocably fouled the nest while so comfortably
  lining it.  Above all, the self-interest shows through.  Luckily,
  there is a chasm properly and forever fixed between the nonhuman and
  the humanist biospheres between wildness and caring.  It is seldom
  visible to modern eyes.  Virtue and the wild share no common universe.

  If the sea always was a rich source of melancholy, there is in any
case
  a new melancholy to go with the new gaze.  Conservation is only ever a
  rearguard action, fought from a position of loss.  It is ultimately
  unwinnable, and not least because there are no recorded victories over
  population increase, nor over the grander strategies of genetic
  behavior such as the laws of demand, political expediency, sheer
  truancy and a refusal to relinquish a standard of living once it has
  been attained.  There can only be stalemates, holding actions and
  truces uneasily policed.  A few affecting species will be saved, a few
  million hectares of forest, a few tribes of indians; but the world
  will never return to how it was when this sentence was written,  still
  less to how it was when reader and writer were born.  This has always
  been true and will continue to be so.  The mistake is to extend this
  sequence backward in time and imagine it leads to a lost paradise.  it
  is a safe bet that as soon as the earliest protohominid could think,
it
  invented a legend to account for its sense of loss.


Tom Unger
Seattle
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