ActiveTrails allows you to view coordinates of trails that you have conquered through Google Earth. I could buy a GPS, spend hours figuring out how to use the dang thing, then spend weeks being the enterprising soul that would add more trails to this mashup. But I might want to simply hike those trails instead.
Tag Archives: Earth
Sensible Saturday Links
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Bloggers and journalists in the U.S. and around the globe are finding reasons for hope and a new direction regarding Earth’s environment.
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Since Tuesday’s Election Sweep: Cautious Optimism for the Environment
Our beloved Earth: spinning in a new direction?
As a result of Tuesday’s election here in the States, bloggers and journalists here in the States and around the globe are finding reasons for hope and a new direction regarding Earth’s environment. From Green Clippings in South Africa comes a story with the headline, “Democrat’s victory a step forward for environment and global warming,” in which America’s new direction appears:
“…set to bring energy reform and environmental issues to the forefront of American politics, and ultimately result in more action to curb global warming.”
From Dan Worth, a blogger at the Huffington Post and Executive Director of the National Association of Environmental Law Societies, comes a post in which he asks, “Am I Dreaming?” Deciding to spurn all media on election night only to wake up Wednesday morning to a new world, and realizing that:
“The climate-neutral Governator will be around to make the California renewable energy market less flabby!
Nancy Pelosi, the first female speaker of the house ever is a staunch believer in the new Safe Climate Act!”
Deval Patrick, the Governor of Massachusetts, writes,
“We are often asked to choose between economic development and environmental stewardship. From my experience in the energy industry, I am convinced that this is a false choice. In Massachusetts, I believe we can and must have both.”
From Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, by way of Grist and Muckraker magazines, in How Green Was My Election?:
“This is the first election I can remember in U.S. history that has put such a specific focus on a top-priority environmental issue, which this year has been a clean-energy future.”
The news is good for the environment, surely. I sincerely hope, however, that we can flexibly adapt our American budget away from war and devote it toward the much more important problem – one which the greater global community has noted for a number of years and Dan Worth sums up as:
“…we urgently need someone to invest $4 billion in somebody or something that can build a new world by 2050 that provides 9 billion people with adequate goods and services without drastically raising the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And we need that investment yesterday.”
Though I would contend that our most pressing problem isn’t war or greenhouse gases but the collective and burgeoning impact of 9 billion people on a stressed and finite Earth, I must agree with much of what he says. But that “someone” he refers to is none other than us.
Dan goes on to quote author Michael Crichton:
“Nothing is more inherently political than our shared physical environment, and nothing is more ill served by allegiance to a single political party. Precisely because the environment is shared, it cannot be managed by one faction according to its own economic or aesthetic preferences. Sooner or later, the opposing faction will take power, and previous policies will be reversed. Stable management of the environment requires recognition that all preferences have their place.”
I would add that the environment was never a subset of the economy; the economy will always be a subset of the environment. After all, if (heaven forbid) economies disappear, there will still be an environment (perhaps not a good one we can live in safely, but an environment is still an environment). But if the environment should go away, no economy will ever exist again.
Nor will anything else.
If we can all work together in bipartisan fashion rather than dictating mindless policies, we’ll be reversing the current myopic course. At least the current administration will no longer be staying the course. For the near term, and perhaps longer, that’s good for the environment.
And what’s good for the environment is good for growing grapes and walking in Nature.
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It’s our fault
Choosing technology over trees.
Where are we headed from here?
I’ve been reading some of the posts on Cutter’s blog. In one of them, Whose fault?, Cutter, with reference to a Nature Conservancy study, examines why there’s been a nine-year decline in visitation to our National Parks. He raises such questions as “Are we distracted too much by toys and technology?” and “Is it a case of today’s generations going soft and lazy?”
Says Cutter:
“We’ve become afraid of the outdoors. And worse, we have no patience for it. In the process, we’re driving out our natural need to remain connected to the outdoors.”
I have heard — yes, even felt — that siren call of the outdoors for so many years that it’s almost hard for me to grasp that most other people don’t hear it. So Is Cutter’s pronouncement true? Sadly, I feel that it is. Just look at today’s trends — we as a global society tend to admire style over substance, as if being fashion-conscious rates higher than exploring our natural surroundings.
As parents, it’s our fault — we’ve failed to honor the relationship with Nature that we once enjoyed as kids. We’ve failed in our commitment to pay it forward.
Nature giveth. Nature also taketh away. Which is why we need to remain connected to Nature.
But time accelerates. It’s not a case of “need to” — we MUST. We must place less emphasis on our supposed need for toys, set them aside often, and realign ourselves with what’s really real out there. We must honor the real and the tangible (the real rock.) We must continually strengthen our natural connection with our one-and-only Mother Earth, and do it as a matter of course — as part of our educational system, and as part of educating each other, young and old.
It’s either that or hurtle pell-mell toward oblivion because we can’t persuade enough of the next generation that this planet — whether in the macrocosm of global warming or the microcosm of local disappearing species — is worth saving. If we as a society choose to lose our connection to Nature, the consequences are deeply foreboding.
Tell your friends to “go take a hike.” Better yet, take them by the hand, and lead them. I can help
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Really cool websites I’ve stumbled upon
As if I actually have time for surfing websites, much less stumbling upon them…
- American Trails: your national resources for trails and greenways
- The Bay Area Travel Guide from WikiTravel
- The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun
- I Will Knot!
- Breathing Earth
And, because “timing is everything,” a graphical interactive time zone checker.
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Walking with Cactus Ed
Cactus Ed’s old Ford pickup suggests the kind of character
my truck may someday exhibit.
I mentioned yesterday that I learned a lot of valuable wilderness advice from the teachings of Don Carre. Subsequent to high school I came to admire, and was profoundly influenced by, the writings of Edward Abbey. More than any other, with the possible exception of my own parents, it is the influence of these two men that have endured for me.
I actually met “Cactus Ed” Abbey in the Fall of 1988, six months before his death. He was on a book tour plugging what was to be his final novel, The Fool’s Progress, and I visited a crowded Keppler’s Book Store in Menlo Park to listen to him read from the new book. It was a priceless moment for me, one I’ll not soon let fade.
Much of Abbey’s work is worth quoting. A few of my favorites appear below.
“There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who’s always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated. To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.”
–The Journey Home (1977)“The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need — if only we had the eyes to see.”
–Down the River (1982)“According to the current doctrines of mysticoscientism, we human animals are really and actually nothing but ‘organic patterns of nodular energy composed of collocations of infinitesimal points oscillating on the multidimensional coordinates of the space-time continuum’. I’ll have to think about that. Sometime. Meantime, I’m going to gnaw on this sparerib, drink my Blatz beer, and contemplate the a posteriori coordinates of that young blonde over yonder, the one in the tennis skirt, tying her shoelaces.”
–A Voice Crying in the Wilderness: Notes from a Secret Journal (1989)
“Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.”
–Desert Solitaire (1968)
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Why “Leave No Trace”?
Many of us have taken a pine cone or rock, veered off the trail to dodge mud puddles, gotten too close to wildlife, or tossed an apple core into the woods. While these actions may seem harmless at the time, until we learn to reduce our impact, the quality of our outdoor experiences and the recreational resources we enjoy are at critical risk. Also at risk is our continued access to wildlands, [since] land management agencies sometimes take restrictive action to protect the resources they manage. Unless, of course, education catches up with behavior, and we all learn to leave the outdoors as unchanged as possible by our presence.
While these impacts are widespread and the causes are complex, the solution is simple: change behavior through education, research and partnerships one person at a time.
‘Leave No Trace’ is not a set of rules or regulations. Nor is it simply about remembering exactly what minimum impact skill you can practice in every outdoor situation – how far you should camp from water sources, where to pitch your tent, how to build a minimum impact fire, using no charcoal lighter fluid, or if you should build a fire in the first place. Rather, it is first and foremost a [fundamental] attitude and an [evidentially mandatory] ethic [that we should be teaching all of our children].
‘Leave No Trace’ is about respecting and caring for wildlands and doing your part to protect our limited resources and future recreation opportunities. Once this attitude is adopted and the outdoor ethic is sound, the specific skills and techniques become second nature.
Folks, those are not my words – except for the bracketed embellishments. Nevertheless, I heartily believe in them. They comprise the mission statement of the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics, a non-profit advocacy and educational group headquartered in Boulder, Colorado.
The following is a list of The Center’s Principles of “Leave No Trace” when spending time in the outdoors.
- Plan Ahead and Prepare
- Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces
- Dispose of Waste Properly
- Leave What You Find
- Minimize Campfire Impacts
- Respect Wildlife
- Be Considerate of Other Visitors
There’s so much wrapped up in these principles. I hadn’t been aware of this organization until recently. And yet I’ve been practicing these principles – to a greater more than lesser degree – ever since I learned them from one of my high school teachers, an avid backpacker named Don Carre, a man whom I wish there could be 10,000 copies of.
As a matter of fact, one doesn’t have to spend time in a campground or natural oasis to practice Leave No Trace principles. It’s quite worthwhile to consider one’s impact when grilling on one’s backyard barbecue. Or driving on the highway. Or walking down the street.
Or tossing a cigarette.
How ethical are you outdoors?
It’s been said that cigarette smokers represent the largest segment of litterers on the planet. I challenge anyone to refute me on that statement with a sound, well-reasoned rebuttal.
Better yet…
I challenge everyone who reads this post to share it with 10 people (or 100) whom they think could stand to be educated about Leave No Trace principles. If those folks have already seen Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (or the blog), that’ll make your convincing them a whole lot easier.
We still live on one finite planet. It’s the only planet we have. And each of us who lives upon it still has one definitive chance to make their mark by not leaving one.
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Connecting People with Wild Lands
Have you observed that most children, by nature, are naturalists? When I’ve watched children, I’ve often noticed that they will pay close attention to the details of the natural world: a little plant or animal, a dandelion, or an ant hill. We adults might say, “Look, an ant hill,” and by naming it, we walk on – we dismiss it from our thoughts.
What would a child do?
What is your link to the inquisitive nature of your childhood?
There seems to be a trend today that allows people to believe that scientists will give us all the facts we need to know about Nature. Much of our “environmental” education involves no contact with plants and animals. Students may watch videos, memorize how many legs a spider has, or learn that biological diversity is being lost in some remote rainforest. I know some kids – and no doubt, so do you – who spend more time in front of a computer monitor than in direct contact with Nature. Not to mention adults!
I know, I know – I’m sometimes guilty of it too.
But the spontaneity and unpredictability of the natural world are never communicated to us in this “virtual environment.” What we get is Nature being sold to us as an economic system, as part of a great machine. Regrettably, our links to the land, and to our childhood, become disconnected.
Each of us is capable of making valid observations about how the natural world works. We have all, at one time or another, been inquisitive children. It’s been said by contemporary anthropologists that we need everyone to behave as naturalists, to observe and judge whether the ecological processes around us are working. I have read of Mark Plotkin, an ethnobotanist, who has said, “conservation is too important to leave to scientists alone.”
Our environment is wherever we choose to live. It is not an isolated scientific topic, but a unifying and fundamental theme across all disciplines – from botany to winemaking, from manufacturing to consumer purchase habits. To be aware of how the environment underpins all human pursuits is to learn how the world works and how there are wonderful lives being lived very near us, and all around us, even in our own backyards. It’s time we stepped back outside, into Nature’s living room.
Taking a walk in the wild – even our own backyards – can enrich our lives. It costs very little for the well-being that is gained. Those moments can provide an escape from the craven virtual environment – an escape that can further enrich us when accompanied by an awareness of the place we choose to live. It’s more than knowing the names we give to things – it’s bearing witness to the relationships those things have to us and to each other. In microcosm, it’s about living in, and recognizing our effect on, the present moment in the natural world. In macrocosm, it’s about the legacy our human society will leave to the future.
Our thoughtful stewardship of the land, this Earth we call home, is often perceived to be our fundamental obligation as humans. Why? For the sake of ourselves and our children. And our children’s children.
It is not outside the realm of possibility and imagination to believe that we have the power, collectively, to sustain and perpetuate the quality of life on our planet – our only home – to enrich the lives of our children, and of all species yet unlived.
Take a moment to think about that. How important is it to you?
Be daring! Vow to take the rest of your lifetime to rediscover the child within, and to rediscover your role in the life of Planet Earth. Take that first step to connect, or reconnect, with the wild lands. Take a hike!
Winehiker Witiculture 