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Posted by Ballpark Frank (99.197.42.18) on 08:55:31 11/30/11
In Reply to: You came back posted by Doug Ammons
Doug,
I hope you see this, since it will tend to get buried beneath the daily flurry of post activity. I had not checked the page since Monday morning. I typically only check it out once daily, in the a.m., and on Tuesday, I got distracted, and never got around to it.
Like I said in my subject line, your post really captures the essence of the modern times conundrum surrounding our relationship with wild places. Incidentally, I read your story of the kayaking adventure in Yellowstone. I had heard rumors over the years of several groups having made the trip. or "a trip", down the river, below the Lower Falls. Apparently, some got caught and cited. Some got away. I have a friend in Gardiner, who is a hard core kayaker, and used to run a rafting outfit. I will likely see her later today at the IBMP (bison issue) meeting at Chico Hot Springs. I'll have to query her on whether she has ever succumbed to the siren song. Having done a bit of whitewater kayaking myself, at a much younger age, I have looked longingly at the stretch of water between the Lower Falls and Gardiner on more than one occasion.
I have a lengthy history with numerous western national parks, and a fair familiarity with resource management issues in them. I spent a decade as a volunteer at Rocky Mountain National Park, seven years as a recurrent visitor to Olympic, moved to Montana from Colorado in 1997, and worked for the NPS as a seasonal interp ranger and as interpretive staff in Yellowstone in the early 2000's. These days, I am in Yellowstone most weekends, and spend a lot of time off-trail. We still make non-published discoveries periodically, and that is a major adrenalin rush.
You allude to what I would call the true remaining wild places on this planet, e.g. the Amazon, polar regions, etc. I've never been to any of it, but I prize it for its wildness, and sleep better, knowing it is out there. I do worry about the continuing encroachment of technology-driven intrusion on the last wild places.
I have a term for the process by which well-intentioned, but misguided folks, publish "how to" information about special places and how to get there. I call it "kiss and tell"! I would put the waterfall book, written by Lee Whittlesey, Mike Stevens, and Paul Rubenstein smack in the middle of the continuum between what is acceptable to me and what is not. It caused a lot of concern among the resource management staff in Yellowstone when it was in the making. It has brought a lot of pleasure to many of my fellow backcountry travelers. Based on what little I know about it, I don't think the worst of the NPS staff's worries have been realized. Further out on the continuum, we have Backpacker, which started the bad habit of publishing accounts (typically, rife with serious errors) of "secret places", years ago, complete with GPS coordinates. I used to subscribe to it, and read every issue, cover to cover. I eventually wrote the publisher (never heard back), telling them of my concerns, and stopped subscribing. I still read OUTSIDE, because I don't think they have gone as far with their "kiss and tell" publishing. I grew up in the Catskill valley of New York, at the edge of those mountains. I thrived on self-driven exploration. Moving to the mountain west at the age of 16, I continued the exploration. It continued in the Pacific Northwest, and back again to Colorado. Living close to Yellowstone, I have probably reached the pinnacle of my exploration exploits, but it would have been so diminished if I had simply been able to pick up a book, and be led by the nose to some "special place". (Actually, once the whole world knows about one of those places, they become just another place.)
I have learned the hard way to keep my mouth shut about many of the newer discoveries I or my hike-mates have made. You never know when the lure of easy money or a misguided intention to alert the world to something will result in the trampling of some very sensitive piece of the ecosystem or even, antiquity.
As you no doubt have figured out, through hard recent experience, these pages in cyberspace can be something of a "social frontier", with some folks conducting mob trials or lynchings. It's just part of the "new frontier". I've gotten used to it, and so have most of the individuals that frequent this page. I hope you will stick around, contribute when you get the urge, or at least, stop by once in a while. You have added mightily to the breadth and substance of the discussion.
Ballpark
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