Industrial Wreck-Creation

To better understand how we relate to the outdoors through recreation,
read Aldo Leopold's essay Conservation Esthetic. Some gems follow:

"To him who seeks in the woods and mountains only those things obtainable from travel or golf, the present situation is tolerable. But to him who seeks something more, recreation has become a self-destructive process of seeking but never quite finding; a major frustration of mechanized society."

"Very intensive game- or fish-management lowers the unit value of the trophy by artificializing it.
... Artificialized management has, in effect, bought fishing at the expense of another and perhaps higher
recreation: it has paid dividends to one citizen out of capital stock belonging to all."

"To promote perception is the only truly creative part of recreational engineering."

"Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods; the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas. Perception, in short, cannot be purchased with either learned degrees or dollars; it grows at home as well as abroad, and he who has a little may use it to better advantage than he who has much. As a search for perception, the recreational stampede is footless and unnecessary."

"He is the motorized ant who swarms the continents before learning to see his own back yard, who consumes but never creates outdoor satisfactions. For him the recreational engineer dilutes the wilderness and artificializes its trophies in the fond belief that he is rendering a public service."

--Aldo Leopold in his essay Conservation Esthetic.

This photo shows a waterskier on Mono Lake in the 1950s. It wasn't really "industrial" back then, since it was only a small hard-core group of locals that used to do this. Why "hard core", you ask?

     "Taking that first plunge filled me with an eerie feeling like I was doing something wrong. I had the feeling we were trespassing in God's private biology lab and, at that point, I just wanted to get our photos shot and get out of the water.
     My first fall also gave me a feel as to the level of salinity this lake possessed--fish can't survive in Mono's unusual chemistry. My eyes burned from the water that is three times more saline than the ocean and 10,000 times that of your average fresh water lake. It also didn't take long for the skin on my face to harden to the point of crispness. I was the benefactor of a high-speed facial.
     The water below the craft was surprisingly translucent, clearly showing the submerged tufa and providing a constant reminder that this wasn't altogether safe."

"Each fall caused temporary blindness..."

"Since it would be criminal to be disrespectful of this natural wonderland, we were extremely careful not to disturb anything."

"She laughed at the amount of salt buildup on our faces..."

"We don't usually steer personal watercraft users away from potential riding spots, but perhaps this is one spot that's better left alone."

--excerpts from November 1990 Personal Watercraft Illustrated Magazine

"In short, the very scarcity of wild places, reacting with the mores of advertising and promotion, tends
to defeat any deliberate effort to prevent their growing still more scarce." --Aldo Leopold in his essay Conservation Esthetic.