Blurred Lines in the Wildnerness of Southern Megalopolis

“There are some who can live without wild things
and some who cannot.”  - Aldo Leopold

This girl at work today was telling me about how she hates wilderness. I thought, "Who hates wilderness?" She talked about trail maintenance and trail-use issues that impact her niche community within the outdoor recreation industry - cross-country skiers - and she was aghast when I told her I agreed that wilderness areas be free of the impact of mountain bikes and motorized, man-made vehicles of any kind.

I work for a local outfitter that does probably a third of its business in bikes, so she could have easily assumed I blindly support all types of cycling in our preserved natural areas. This could not be further from the case.

Then again, I'm a hiker. So as long as humans are allowed to lightly tread these areas free from the pestilence of mechanized contraptions, I'm happy. Even better if I don't run the risk of being knocked off a rocky path by a mountain biker whizzing by.

My colleague argued that horses do more environmental damage to wilderness areas than mountain bikers - who are vehement trail maintainers. And I shrugged with a retort that did nothing to make her feel she had not wandered ass backkwards into a verbal lock-down.

She had some good points, but hate? But how could anyone hate wilderness?

And this made me think, "Who is wilderness for anyway?"

"How do laws protect it?"

At the end of the day, the important questions is, "How do we foster a culture of conscientious wilderness use in an increasingly diverse society?"

Bottom line, leave no trace ethics remain important regardless of the sport or recreational activity one wishes to do in our fragile, remaining open spaces.

THE WILDERNESS NEAR HERE

On Old Rag Mountain's busiest day of 2014 I was lucky to get a people-less shot!

Look at the map of wilderness sections of northern Virginia and eastern West Virginia. Notice how major routes from ports along the Chesapeake Bay thread whole populations of urban dwellers in the likes of Norfolk and Richmond, Baltimore and the Washington Metro. All these people here in the southern end of Megalopolis could be potential users of a very limited amount of wilderness spaces.

Any open space invites outdoor recreants, so potential users are many:

Hikers
Equestrians
Paddlers

Bikers

Hunters

4-Wheelers

Mudders

Fishers

And residents of these areas come from a multitude of nations to coexist here. But wilderness law in America exclude some of these dynamic user groups, seemingly along facet lines that are force-filtered into perhaps the most-frustratingly partisan republican two-party system on earth.

In short, I guess my conversation with this colleague found us along blurred lines. Perhaps it's really time to start listening more than I speak. I want to understand what people are really saying.