My friend, Amber, pointed out this NPR article today about how people are spending less time outside, and more specifically at national parks.
At first, I found it deeply disturbing, especially when one of the experts quoted coined a new term for our propensity to spend vast amounts of time sitting on the couch : "The era of mediated nature."
He goes on to say that: "It clearly seems to be the case that we seem to not need to experience the natural world in the ways that we did previously."
Lost (The Best Show on Television, Ever) is a prime example of this, actually. Why go tramp around in a national park when you can watch Sawyer and Kate tramp around in the jungles of Hawaii without leaving your living room? There's definitely a lot less effort and gear involved.
But after I got over the fact that people are more fat and lazy then they used to be, I realized that this article is actually good news. Really good news, in fact. Because if you are active and you love national parks and you do get out a lot, you will see fewer people on the trail. Which actually makes this trend better for the environment, just maybe not so great for national parks funding.
To be honest, I don't want everyone to enjoy the outdoors. Because then there wouldn't really be an outdoors to enjoy.
2 comments:
Yay! Thanks for visiting my humble blog. I agree with you on this post, it's so much nicer to have room on the trails and in the campgrounds.
Let me know if you ever need a hiking partner. I'm really out of shape right now, but I plan on climbing to Camp Muir again this summer, so I need to start training some time. (maybe when it's not soaking wet and freezing though!)
Or they might just not be getting out because everything is closed. But yeah, let all the lazies eat cake. I'll take the trail and enjoy the silence.
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