As someone who has been on a mountain crest before I was old enough to walk (thanks mom!) I live and breathe nature.
I’ve hiked Nevado de Toluca in Mexico, a whole range of mountains in Europe, and within one month of moving to Vietnam last year, I hiked the tallest mountain in Indochina – Fansipan.
Before visiting Bali this year, I did what I usually do – I Googled hiking trails.
And if your finger is not on the pulse of all-things-SE-Asia, then you will probably be as surprised to learn this, as I was – Bali is (planning on) imposing complete hiking bans.
Why? Take a not-so-wild guess.
People.
Lewd, disrespectful, people.
I did eventually decide to hike Mount Batur – the most accessible, and therefore popular mountain, out of the 21 other mountains on this Indonesian island.
It wasn’t a particularly scenic hike. Partly because it was night time and I could barely see anything beyond what my headlamp allowed. And partly because I was slugging behind many other people, on cemented and deforested areas. Not very romantic.
Nonetheless, as soon as the famous sunrise hit the summit, I excitedly pulled out my phone to take selfies alongside 500 other people.
How else would strangers on the internet know I was there?
Back in April, my fiancée and I visited Taiwan.
Three days after landing in Taipei, I, naturally, found myself hiking alongside a local guide up Jiantan Mountain.
Somewhere along the route, the guide stops and says, “This wasn’t here last year.” “What?” I ask, looking around me. “That” – and he points to a circular porch, covered in plastic flowers, suspended on the edge of the mountain.
“We call that internet beauty, or 網美”
There was a queue of (primarily) women, wearing dresses and high-heels, waiting in line to take selfies.
I saw the same in Fansipan.
Hundreds of people taking cable cars, complaining there are too many stairs from the cable car station to the summits. Yes, summits – as in plural. Because of the amount of tourists, they’ve created “fake summits” for photo ops.
Social media has changed everything, forever.
As a money-driven species, we’ve made our cities increasingly more uninhabitable, so it follows that, over time, people will gravitate towards the opposite.
And as the urban population increases, so does the concentrated pressure put on nature. Especially in places that are physically accessible to the masses.
A confluence of irresponsible influencers posting “hidden gems,” and the pandemic, radically exacerbated this trend.
I really am happy to see people “promoting” the outdoors. What’s tragic is that they do so without sharing important contextual advice.
The reality is that everything has a limit to how many people it can handle.
And when a large amount of people descend in one place at one time, it can cause damage to nature itself and overwhelm a system that has been designed to handle a more sensible flow of human traffic.
They punch in shortcuts, widen out and erode trails, and mash down sensitive fauna, making it impossible for nature to recover in time.
Once a place becomes popular enough. Roads and parking lots get built, alongside other facilities, cafés, hotels, and other ways the human mind can think of to make a quick buck.
In other words, functional vandalism.
Next thing you know, there are suspended bridges and trains and tunnels and elevators built at 3000 feet altitude at great cost to the nature that surrounds it.
All of this, and for what? Internet points? A short-lived aha moment? The once in a lifetime chance to wait 20 minutes for an influencer to take their “bottom of a waterfall” still? #blessed #ilovenature #followmeformore
Because of its sheer magnitude, nature can often appear imposing and indestructible, it’s not.
And while I don’t think we can realistically “Leave No Trace Behind,” there will always be traces of the human race, no matter how hard we try. We can substantially reduce them.
Here’s a non-exclusive list of things you can do to minimize your environmental impact:
- Get people excited about preservation.
- Volunteer for conservation work.
- Report problems to public land organizations.
- Advocate for state-imposed limits and permits.
- Carry out what you carry in.
- Observe outdoor etiquette and call out people that don’t.
- Most importantly, get educated. The books “Wilderness Ethics” and “The Nature of Nature” are a great place to start.
Am I Being a Hypocrite and Gatekeeping Nature?
I am a hypocrite.
Vietnam is the 5th country I’ve ever lived in. I travel a lot, especially by plane. I do a lot of mountain races that, by their own nature, bring a high influx of people into a confined trail in a short period of time. I am not without fault.
However. I try to offset my damage as much as humanly possible. I do community volunteering, I pick up as much trash I can carry, I hire small local guides. And most of the races I do, are involved in conservation work and enlist the help of the local community during the events.
I am gatekeeping.
I suppose you could consider this gatekeeping, insofar, as a metaphor, gates serve the purpose of keeping something, or someone, out.
This has never been about keeping people out of nature, to the contrary.
It takes time and effort to find inspiring scenery and solitude. You have to be willing to go out and explore things naturally. For me, getting to those remote, hard-to-reach spots on narrow paths and no infrastructure is a reward in and of itself.
By contrast, you have influencers influencing wannabe influencers.
Influencers that don’t use their platforms to educate on just how important and fragile nature is. They create itineraries, down to the GPS coordinates, and urge you to “save this post on your next trip to Vietnam” #bucketlist
Maybe not everyone should know about that one lake on the foothills of that one mountain that much of the wildlife in the area drinks from. Maybe we should leave those spots to the people who know enough to know better.
And as harsh as this may sound:
Most outdoors influencers are terrible for the outdoors. Especially the ones with drones. I hate those guys.
From where I’m standing, we have two choices:
1. Get educated, respect the laws of nature, only take advice from responsible influencers.
2. Sit back and watch as our lands are deteriorating until local governments ban them completely.
What’s it gonna be?
Please be responsible. Our values have shifted and so has the world.
