How Do We Tackle the Paradox of Accessibility in the Outdoors?

Perhaps a bit of personal risk has more value than we think. As technology and bureaucratic approaches to the outdoors evolve are we in danger of missing the point? Sam Cornell digs in.

In the modern era of adventure and travel, social media has brought mass appeal and awareness of the wonder and beauty of the outdoors to more people than ever before. Long gone are the days when gallivanting in the countryside was reserved for the privileged few whilst the proletariat toiled, or renaissance men like John Muir who would wax poetic of their wanderings in the New World.

We’ve experienced a democratisation of nature, and our access to it. This access has been realised not only physically, with the increased development of infrastructure in national parks, but also in our technology, and our minds. Access to nature – easy access to nature – is seen as an inalienable right.

We’ve developed roads that lead deep into bushland so that we can arrive quickly and in comfort – exerting ourselves minimally – at the lookout points for grand vistas; the only demarcation between us and the start of the panorama being a polished steel barricade.

Photo via Tourism and Events Queensland

We’ve built steel tracks over what was trail, through bushland, bordered on both sides by fences, that lead us safely and efficiently into the hinterland whilst we look out over the fences into nature, feeling a sense of familiarity with our iPhone wallpaper.

We’re chaperoned to our destination by man-made structures; warning signs, cordons, barriers, and sometimes even guides. We’ve prioritised form over substance; engineering over aesthetics; safety over experience; people over nature.

In favour of the large infrastructure project mentality championed by politicians looking to win votes, as observed by Tim Macartney-Snape in work published by We Are Explorers, we’ve chosen to add more stuff to our natural landscapes and in turn detract from the raw experience of being in nature. What was once inaccessible to all but the most intrepid is now accessible to almost anyone, regardless of skill or understanding.

Accessibility Has Been a Moral Good Without Challenge

Accessibility is, for many, a supreme positive. Of course, our ability to cultivate, manicure, tame, and engineer wild spaces enables more people to enjoy them. We should celebrate the fact that more people with disabilities can access nature. In this domain, there’s still more work to do, but that is not the focus of this piece.

What do we lose if we take the approach of ‘safety at all costs’ and knee-jerk responses to every incident in nature, to any and all newly-developed or recently popular, previously wild places? The ability to reach places with ease that previously required forethought, consideration, knowledge, skill, and competence; would have required some understanding of the natural world – the knowledge to not go for a bushwalk wearing high-heels; to not bring one’s cat in a backpack for a day out; to pack out what one packs in.

Read more: A Survey Reveals Aussies Are Lacking Hiking and Outdoor Safety Skills

What we seem to be lacking is some friction in the system.

By friction, I mean some challenge. Some arduous pursuit. Some difficulty in attaining the goal which dictates an appreciation for the experience and the journey. Which demands some respect for the surroundings. And what is respect if not a cocktail made of both fear and love?

By system, I mean the environment; nature; unadulterated Earth.

@deanaizawa

As championed by Nassim Taleb, we need some skin in the game. The burden of our actions should directly implicate us, and ideally nobody else. Having skin in the game means to be putting something at stake. It means to be owning the risk. Bearing responsibility.

Fundamentally, taking agency away from people by facilitating an unnecessarily mollycoddled experience in the outdoors reduces their pursuits to something more akin to a video game – albeit a very photorealistic one. Maybe, just maybe, if we treat people like the grown-ups that they are, and give them back some control, they’ll surprise us. They might plan ahead a little, read up on the area before they get there, suss out the spots they want to see, and even pack out what they pack in.

The Responsibility Sleight of Hand

Unfortunately, we’ve placed the liability of responsibility on the national parks and councils themselves and taken it away from the individual venturing into the wild. In our increasingly litigious society, land managers aim to mitigate the risk of being sued by a wayward traveller or their family members.

We’ve become accustomed to this norm, and expect to be spoon-fed with danger signs and safety cues. We’ve modified the landscape to protect those who are unskilled in moving through nature carefully and gracefully. These individuals, often led by curiosity, stray onto paths meant for their protection and find themselves in various dangerous situations when they cross into unfamiliar territories.

@henry_brydon

Our incessant need to pamper the public is justified when it comes to making our cities safer, our homes, and our streets. But in nature, there is no escaping risk. Risk is the reality. The very act of trying to remove danger in nature, or unremittingly highlighting its quite obvious presence, may even be a cause of our disconnect from personal responsibility.

When the goal is that every potential hazard is signposted, that every trail is manicured, the implicit message is that the environment has been tamed, that the wilderness is now a controlled space – as though we are planes being guided by the control tower through the air. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and this illusion can lead to individual complacency and a lack of preparedness for when things go wrong – as they inevitably will. When trails are unable to be modified to this high standard, they are often neglected completely, creating a dangerous dichotomy that makes progression abrupt and difficult.

This shift in accountability has placed the burden of all safety for the individual into the remit of national parks and local governments, forcing us to look at the environment from a completely different perspective. It pits us in an adversarial contest with the environment, in which we must display warning signs, erect barriers, and pave trails. Perhaps a lack of skin in the game means we aren’t earning our place in the environs.

And there’s a reward for earning one’s place. That which is given freely is often not appreciated. Ease, in the end, makes for weakness. Earning one’s place in the environment means having worked for it and means being connected to it.

@monsieurremi

It also entails developing a reciprocal relationship with the land, not simply consumptive. It means feeling less owed by the surroundings, and more in awe.

Earning your place demands familiarising yourself with nature and its rules – not simply the rules set by land managers – but those of nature itself. It’s knowing not to scramble on moss and lichen-covered cliff edges whilst wearing running shoes just after it’s been raining. It’s knowing not to wade into an unfamiliar river to make a crossing. It’s knowing when to turn back on a trek up a mountain before nightfall or an incoming storm approaches.

Fortunately, this learning is easier than ever to acquire with treasure troves of information archived online on sites such as this one and outdoors clubs found at universities or bushwalkers associations. We simply need a reminder to actually do the learning, that it’s our own responsibility.

Technology Has Disrupted Experience

It’s not just national parks and local government that are perpetuating easy access for the masses. Social media has enabled the unchecked, unvetted propagation of GPS files, videos of ‘hidden gems’ (a term that highlights the gamification mentality of social media-driven tourists), blogs, and geo-tagged locations.

Photo by Alec Cooks via Unsplash

On the one hand, this is alerting more people to the intrinsic goodness and wonder that is the outdoors (and people are indeed yearning for it). But crucially, on the other, this unbridled sharing of information facilitates an escalation in the number of ill-prepared visitors venturing out into nature.

The danger lies not just in the sharing of this information but in the lack of context around it. GPS files don’t convey the difficulty of the terrain, the variability of the weather, or the necessity of self-reliance. They’re simply coordinates, devoid of the wisdom that comes from experience. Blogs and social media often highlight the beauty and triumph of outdoor exploits without equally emphasising the risks and the preparation required to mitigate them.

‘Well’ you might say, ‘what does it matter, if the paths and signs and barriers are all ready and waiting for them anyway?’

To this, I respond, it matters. In fact, it is a matter of life or death. If this sounds affected, please consider for a moment the noticeable, and widely reported, increase in injuries, deaths, recoveries, and retrievals of people from popular, widely publicised, and easy-to-access locations (easy to access does not equal easy to retrieve from).

The concurrent expansion of accessible infrastructure and the widespread dissemination of these places on social media channels funnels a multitude of unprepared visitors toward either overly congested and altered environments or, at worst, to their untimely demise.

It affects the emergency service personnel who bear the responsibility (and massive expense) of rescuing or retrieving those wayward travellers. Additionally, it affects the environment, which suffers a dual blow – initially being marred to accommodate the unprepared and subsequently being overused without respect.

I wonder how we got here. It’s hard to pin the blame on any one particular actor in this story – the individual? The land manager? The tech companies or the out-of-control algorithms they design? In the end, we are all a product of our environments. But we can do better.

We can advocate for the development (or redevelopment, or perhaps the leaving-alone-of) natural trails in lieu of over-the-top, overengineered eyesores and footsores. We can preach the importance of personal responsibility, self-reliance, agency, and respect – respect for oneself, for others, and for the environment. One could argue that (anti)social media is anathema to respect in all of its requisite forms. I’ll save that one for another time.

Getting ‘back to nature’ might encompass embracing the analogue: paper maps, Silva compasses, metal canteens, and friends in the flesh. Switching off the phone, stowing it safely away to be opened only in case of emergency. Taking solace that all of the modern world’s technology and capabilities are only a text or call away.

@ben.savage

What I am sure of, though, is the commodification of the moment; the turning of experience into something to be captured, collected, the memorialising of even the banal, has transformed how we interact with and perceive the natural world. We are so concerned with capturing ‘content’ that we are distracted and inattentive to our actual experience.

We exist in a sort of techno-conscience milieu. If our very experience is commodified and sold to the ether as an Instagram post what do we have left of our true experience of nature.

It’s apparent that we should not aim to facilitate this type of outdoor recreation en masse. Such promotion is seemingly leading to over-tourism, overcrowding, and underappreciation of the environs.

We must find the balance between manipulating our natural places for safe visitation and leaving them as they are to enable a real experience of nature, in which we allow people the opportunity to learn and grow. I believe this approach is more innately rewarding, will lead to fewer incidents, and a more mature understanding of the outdoors.

Feature image by @lisabenjess