Leave No Trace

“Leave No Trace” is a bedrock principle of all backpacking and hiking, as well as a key tenet taught in scouting, and in my mind, should probably be incorporated into more of our actions we take every day. At its core, Leave No Trace is about not making an impact where one travels, carrying out any garbage we might create, staying on established trails, camping in designated campsites, and not disturbing nature when at all possible. Its about leaving as little of an impact on nature and the world around us whenever we travel into it, especially when we go hiking or backpacking. Yet, shouldn’t we all strive in our everyday lives to leave as little impact on our surroundings as possible? But I digress, Leave No Trace, or LNT is about common decency, about allowing others to experience the natural world in as pristine condition as possible. Yes, humans have laid their hand on almost every aspect of the natural world at some point in history, but if we want to preserve it in its current state for future generations, then we must do our part to travel lightly through it and leave it as we found it. This all makes sense on a basic level, most of us would not litter when we are out and about, perhaps even some of us would hazard to pick up someone else’s garbage and carry it out with us? (This is something I do on a regular basis because garbage in nature bother’s me.) But there is another aspect to LNT that didn’t really sink in until a few years ago when we went on a road trip to South Dakota and were on a hike in Custer State Park.

On that hike, we were traveling through a field of tall grass on a meandering trail when one of us peered down and saw a tuft of buffalo hide on the ground. It was such a cool, unique find, the fur still attached, brown and thick and not nearly as “fluffy” as I would have imagined. So we took it with us, not thinking anything of it. When we got back to the ranger station, we were talking to one of the park rangers and told them what we found. Well, after listening to our story, they went on to politely inform us that we should, if at all possible, put the hide back somewhere in the wild on a trail. They continued on, siting LNT principles, but framing it in a way that I had never thought about. They said that by leaving that hide where it had fallen, and not taking it with us, we were affording all those who traveled after us the opportunity to discover the hide as well. In short, we were perpetuating the opportunity for acts of discovery to unfold, for others after us to be amazed at finding the small patch of hide lying on the ground. If everyone took every cool piece of hide, a rock, a stick they found that stood out to them, we would, over time, be fundamentally changing the landscape and removing all those small pieces that amount to a large part of the natural world. In addition to that patch of hide being able to be discovered by someone else if we left it, so to could it be used by another animal, perhaps in a nest by a bird, or in a burrow by some ground dwelling animal. These principles carry forth no matter where we are or where we travel, the less we can take out of the natural environment, however much it pains us to leave that glittery, shiny, rock on a National Seashore, the better.

I got to emphasize this point on my recent trip to Maine with the scouts when we camped at Cunliffe Depot. At that campsite, there were piles of old metal, old engines, strapping, bricks and plates of iron, all left behind from the logging operations decades and decades before. All of it was rusted, but all of it also told a story, or was part of a story that was still being discovered by people traveling down the river. So shortly after landing at the campsite, my son grabs a big hunk of rusted metal probably an inch thick and roughly 6″ square, and asks if he can bring it home to forge it and make something like a massive knife out of it. Thinking for a minute as to how to address this, I drew on the lesson I learned a few years ago in South Dakota and politely re-iterated what that park ranger had told us. I said no, and explained how if we took it, we would be robbing someone else of the act of discovery. It was even more relevant with the old rusted metal as no one was putting more metal in those woods. There is a finite amount still there and if everyone were to take a piece, it would slowly disappear, taking away the opportunity for others to marvel at it, to wonder as to how it got there, who the people were who logged that forest many years ago, and what their story was. If there was no metal left because it had all be scrapped by travelers, the story as it was left by those who worked there would disappear.

The same holds true wherever we go, especially if we stumble upon ancient artifacts. I recently finished a book called “A Walk in the Park” by Kevin Fedarko, about hiking the length of the Grand Canyon. During parts of that hike, traveling where very few modern humans ever travel, they at times stumbled upon shards of broken pottery or other remnants of older civilizations. Members of his hiking party would pick up the pieces, marvel at them, turn them in their hands amazed at their age and the markings still visible, and then place them back exactly where they had found them. Even though very few people walk through those sections of the park they traveled through, it was important that they allow some other person, even if it was decades or centuries from then, to discover those pieces of ancient civilizations for themselves. We all deserve to engage in our own acts of discovery when we are out in the world. So let us carry that forward and allow everyone after us to discover what we discovered for themselves. The world is full of wonder, still full of things we can discover anew for ourselves. The more we leave no trace, the more we can let others discover those things to, as well as leaving the world in perhaps a little better state if we clean it up as we go.