Learning to Care

I grew up in the southern reaches of the Adirondack Park. My memories are flooded with dark mornings on silent water, the hum of a motor, and my dad in green rain gear tugging a line – musing that they would start biting at any moment. 

I didn’t fall in love with wilderness on mountains, I fell in love on foggy lakes. 

In fact I never particularly liked hiking. It was a lot of work, and I always felt like I was falling behind.

I had only hiked in the High Peaks once before I started stewarding, and I did it in jean shorts. No headlamp and no map. Water purification? I didn’t even own a filter. Above tree-line I stepped on the gravel and had a Summit Steward kindly tell me that even the gravel areas in alpine zones should be avoided.

I had done a lot of research on the trail, but my family fished and gardened. We maybe went up a small local peak in jeans and cotton T-shirts, but that was about it. I had no knowledge of hiking something big. By big, I mean Cascade and Porter.

The world of hiking gear was completely foreign to me (and expensive), what the heck were gaiters and how could something so simple possibly be so much money? You mean we need special socks too?

I didn’t know you needed to use a bear canister in the High Peaks until I started working as a Summit Steward, I had never camped there. So much was new to me. I could read a map and compass, had all the basic knowledge of what to do if you get lost, mostly carried the ten essentials, and possessed an exceptional knowledge of the region’s natural history. But the vast majority of Leave No Trace, the concept of Wilderness Ethics, and hiking high peaks was completely new material for me.

I learned all this through the Adirondack Mountain Club. Specifically, through my incredible supervisors, co-workers, and mentors (many of whom were also Leave No Trace Master Educators). I watched them bury toilet paper, saw them pick up orange peels, paused as they took down illegal flagging, and stared in disbelief as they buried other people’s poop. 

I wanted to be like that. To care that much and to leave trails better than I found them. I am still inspired by their steadfast commitment to stewardship, and ability to educate people using a technique called “Authority of the Resource”, something that explains the reasoning behind an action as opposed to just confronting someone and saying they’re breaking a regulation or killing plants. 

While hiking up Algonquin with my supervisor on my first weekend stewarding in 2018, I grabbed onto a tree on the side of the trail to help pull me up a rock. My supervisor kindly told me that doing so can actually rip the little trees out of the ground, and that she always used trekking poles and relied on the extra grippy rock to help her up. 

That’s “Authority of the Resource”, and it worked.

Fast forward three years later, and I feel like I am approaching a level of stewardship and compassion for wildness and other hikers that I admire so much in the ADK employees. This came through countless educational moments, listening to them talk passionately about wild spaces, and seeing their stewardship in action. I’m still learning, I still look up to all of them, and  I’m still trying to be a better educator and steward of wild spaces.

This is where I found myself last weekend, as I swallowed my impatience, thought back to my own journey in become a responsible recreator, and spoke to people who were new to hiking with the same compassion I would have wanted someone to show to me if I had found myself in a bad situation.

I like to think I would have done enough research and preparation to avoid accidentally camping above the legal elevation, but who can say for sure where they would be if they never had an opportunity to learn?

Yes, it was an incredibly frustrating day, and unspeakably disheartening to see the damage to the trails and the alpine zone. Yes, of course when you speak to 326 people a few are going to be rude and not be receptive to the message. Yes, this season has been particularly hard. And yes, unfortunately we do currently live in a world where sexism affects my interactions with people. 

But most people, and I do mean 99% of the people I talk to, including the ones I wrote about last weekend are receptive to what I’m trying to say, and do change their behavior in the future. That is all I am aiming for as a steward. 

The article I wrote last week has received a huge amount of attention and coverage. I am glad that it has brought to light what we are dealing with out there, and how hard it is to keep up as just one person. 

It has however been interpreted in a few ways I did not intend. I was in no way trying to imply that hikers are trashing the Adirondacks or that Authority of the Resource and Leave No Trace aren’t enough. 

That’s simply not true. Education works, and it works well. I have witnessed that every day for the past three summers as a Summit Steward, and it’s what has turned me into such a passionate wilderness advocate. Understanding the reasoning behind why we do or don’t do something is critical to changing behavior, and that is what Authority of the Resource does. 

The point of my last article was this: We need help. We need more educators, we need more resources for getting the messages across, and we need the ability to give others the opportunity to care for this place as much as so many of us do.

We need to remember that for all of us who have grown up here – or have hiked here for years and love the Adirondacks – that is a privilege. We are lucky. We had opportunities that others did not, and that is why we can speak so passionately for the High Peaks. 

Who am I to say that we should limit how many people can come here, or that hikers are out there destroying the park. 

Maybe I’m a hopeless optimist but I do sincerely believe that most humans are good and want to do the right thing, no one is out there blatantly trashing the woods because they want to throw toilet paper on the ground. They simply don’t know it’s wrong. Why? They never had the opportunity to learn. 

I urge everyone to be careful before saying that the “hikers these days are different” or that “the respect isn’t the same” or “people are hiking for different reasons”. Yes, we have more hikers. Yes, I am personally seeing more resource damage this year, but the ratio of educators to hikers is much different now that it was ten years ago. 

We absolutely need to do something about it, and soon, but I do believe that we should give people the benefit of the doubt and give them the chance to care before writing new hikers off as irresponsable. We need new hikers, especially considering the painful lack of diversity in our hiking community. 

Let’s work together to welcome new people, kindly help them learn to recreate responsibly, and set an example for the kind of stewardship we want to see – everyone started somewhere. Talking badly about people, blaming and shaming folks who made a mistake, and assuming that we hike for better reasons that the new hikers is not going to get us anywhere.

People want to protect places they care about. I had the opportunity to learn to care, and to be a steward to this place. If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you did too. Let’s give other people a chance to learn as well. 

*I don’t hike in sandals, the photo at the top of the page shows me in sandals on a summit after changing out of hiking boots to give my feet a break