From peak-bagging to thru-hiking, Americans have turned traversing land into personal milestones. This wilderness ranger and Indigenous writer has witnessed it firsthand

Outdoor recreation often slips into what I call an achievement-based relationship with nature. I’ve been guilty of it myself. Whether it’s “bagging peaks”, racing to finish the AT, or stamping the land with machines and monuments, the focus shifts from ecology to ego.

Being obsessed with Peak Bagging is not Solarpunk.

Nature is not your personal obstacle to challenge yourself against, it is a shared place of discovery you trample when you only see it as a place to endlessly, exhaustingly conquer.

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzOP
    14·
    1 day ago

    Witnessing is an experience. That’s your experience. You are conquoring the desire to interact with nature, fulfilling your ego goal of passive acceptance.

    What a tortured twisting of my words, of course witnessing is an experience, it is an experience that brings you outside yourself unlike a physical battle with the limits of your body that draws you inward.

    I joke - but really, go to a hiking trail sometime and tell all the people who show up to hike they are all selfish and egotistical for wanting to hike the whole trail instead of just stopping whenever the mood strikes them and going home.

    Why would I do that?

    • blarghly@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      Why would I do that?

      Because it would be an experience that brings you outside yourself, giving you the opportunity to directly witness the beauty of the human experience through others’ point of view.