Leave nature as you found it.....please!
WARNING: THIS ARTICLE HAS COLORFUL LANGUAGE! I remember as a young boy being on a walk with my father in the Irish town of Bray - a beautiful hilly coastal town at the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains. We came across some youths trying to snap a branch off a tree by hanging and swinging from it. The type of thing that truthfully, I might have done myself. It infuriated my father and he approached them. I was really scared because he was outnumbered and they were aggressive with him, but he stood his ground and told them to fuck off, which eventually they did. I was quite proud of him, but more so, I understood why he did it and was proud that he was standing up for nature and against mindless vandalism.
Literally this very week, I counted 11 pieces of trash on a single hike in Indian Valley, my backyard hiking place. Plastic water bottles, tissues, bar wrappers and unclaimed dog shit bags. I walk these trails daily so I get to see if they are there multiple days in a row, particularly with the dog shit bags. Like my father, it infuriates me.
So this post is about my take on the philosophy of "Leave no Trace". I actually didn't realize this until I started researching the subject, but despite being drilled into people in California, there is an actual organization behind this movement found here: LNT.org.
So, Leave No Trace follows 7 principles:
Plan ahead and prepare.
Travel and camp on durable surfaces.
Dispose of waste properly.
Leave what you find.
Minimize campfire impacts (be careful with fire).
Respect wildlife.
Be considerate of other visitors.
LNT describe all of this in greater detail than I can on the link above, so I won't go through each bullet point by point, but I will state my own opinions of aspects of it.
If you walk trails, don't leave a single piece of your trash behind. If it is a biodegradable tissue, an apple core, or a plastic water bottle, pick it fucking up. If you are in the wilderness, scraping a 1 inch hole to hold your shit and covering it with dried leaves is not sufficient. We all camp in the same places, scout out big rocks to go behind, and nobody wants to stand in your crap.
Pack out your toilet paper/wipes. It really isn't that hard. Use a coffee ground bag with a zip lock, and you won't smell it or see it. Drop it in the trash at the finishing trail head.
Don't cut wood off trees to make a fire. If there is no downed wood available, then, like on my last backcountry hike, venture further to find some. I walked a half mile to find wood as did each of my companions.
Only light fires where a fire has been previously lit.
Basically, LNT seeks to leave nature as we found it and undisturbed. Humans, particularly shitty humans, mess with that and I can tell you from personal experience that in remote places of indescribable beauty, I still see garbage and remnants of lazy human presence. It saddens me.
Be human, be mindful, and leave no trace please!