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.
I try to stay on trails, but that’s because theres a lot of trails up here that go through protected wetlands, and I don’t want to trample an endangered plant or something
I’d follow trails if it was somewhere like that. I’m out west though, big mountains, massive forests, seemingly endless desert.