Wes Flynn , writing over at The Fleeting West wrote a scathing piece about the surge in Search and Rescue (SAR) activity in the Mountain West as a result of the area’s recent new residents who tend to be inexperienced in basic outdoors skills likely from living a lifetime in large cities away from such opportunities and who treat the actual hostile outdoors as if it were Disneyland.
I completely agree. Having grown up in the city and now spending time in Wyoming, my appreciation for the circle of life has grown. Watching water sources grow food, animals raised, the work to make all of this happen is awe inspiring. Spending time in nature should be a requirement.
The continual infantilization of society. You are absolutely correct about the disconnect of “thinking class” with the natural environment, and by extension production. **GASP!** it’s hot outside, whatever should I do? (Consults NYT) Oh, I better stay inside and watch ‘reality TV.’
Good post. As an environmentalist who grew up in southern California with a science Ph.D., I have a healthy respect for the outdoors. I was a member of the Sierra Club back when it supported nuclear power. When I was younger, I safely completed many wilderness hikes. As the Sierra Club morphed into essentially a marketing arm for the American Gas Association, among other negative changes, I dropped my membership. Wilderness is not an abstraction for me.
The Michael Shellenberger and Christopher Lasch quotes are perfect -- on the nose! The thinking class is alienated, indeed ... totally isolated from the people, systems, and ecosystem realities that serve them. And when they move to an area where they can see these things happening, their cultural identities prevent them from fully understanding what they're seeing, and they instead politically colonize and economically steamroll the people who put food on their tables, gas in their tanks, and roofs on their houses. Just take a gander at Colorado and most of the West for proof. Thanks for the love over here at GLF!
Great read. I’ll be checking out the source material in short order. As a former, lowly Southerner - neither cultured nor legacied into an appreciation for truly wild land - I’ve now spent a good decade working for and in western wilderness. More often then not the subjects of our backcountry SAR responses are (east and western) city dwellers whose REI dividends stack higher than their true outdoor merits.
Excellent piece. I suppose 'elites' have always been sheltered from many everyday realities. But as someone who went to the trades after college and who lives a life almost exclusively outdoors, the majority of our society are utterly separated from the realities of nature. It creates a false belief that they can avoid the very laws of nature when they find them inconvenient.
PS All climate conversation is ludicrous. A little critical thinking and a realistic view of geologic time will cure people of their hysteria. We understand almost nothing of the systems of Earth and their interactions and feedback loops.
I completely agree. Having grown up in the city and now spending time in Wyoming, my appreciation for the circle of life has grown. Watching water sources grow food, animals raised, the work to make all of this happen is awe inspiring. Spending time in nature should be a requirement.
The continual infantilization of society. You are absolutely correct about the disconnect of “thinking class” with the natural environment, and by extension production. **GASP!** it’s hot outside, whatever should I do? (Consults NYT) Oh, I better stay inside and watch ‘reality TV.’
Good post. As an environmentalist who grew up in southern California with a science Ph.D., I have a healthy respect for the outdoors. I was a member of the Sierra Club back when it supported nuclear power. When I was younger, I safely completed many wilderness hikes. As the Sierra Club morphed into essentially a marketing arm for the American Gas Association, among other negative changes, I dropped my membership. Wilderness is not an abstraction for me.
The Michael Shellenberger and Christopher Lasch quotes are perfect -- on the nose! The thinking class is alienated, indeed ... totally isolated from the people, systems, and ecosystem realities that serve them. And when they move to an area where they can see these things happening, their cultural identities prevent them from fully understanding what they're seeing, and they instead politically colonize and economically steamroll the people who put food on their tables, gas in their tanks, and roofs on their houses. Just take a gander at Colorado and most of the West for proof. Thanks for the love over here at GLF!
Great read. I’ll be checking out the source material in short order. As a former, lowly Southerner - neither cultured nor legacied into an appreciation for truly wild land - I’ve now spent a good decade working for and in western wilderness. More often then not the subjects of our backcountry SAR responses are (east and western) city dwellers whose REI dividends stack higher than their true outdoor merits.
Excellent piece. I suppose 'elites' have always been sheltered from many everyday realities. But as someone who went to the trades after college and who lives a life almost exclusively outdoors, the majority of our society are utterly separated from the realities of nature. It creates a false belief that they can avoid the very laws of nature when they find them inconvenient.
PS All climate conversation is ludicrous. A little critical thinking and a realistic view of geologic time will cure people of their hysteria. We understand almost nothing of the systems of Earth and their interactions and feedback loops.