I was travelling the Desert American south-west this past ten days. I went mainly to two destinations, Sedona in Arizona and Moab in Utah, for the hiking, scenery, and for me the spiritual aspects of these areas. Both Sedona and Moab are major tourist destinations geared to accommodations, unique feeding spots, the option to imbibe in their many local bars, and the many outfitters offering exciting ways to enjoy being in the ‘great outdoors.’
Most people were going for the monumental nature of the regions (see link to earlier post) with their towering sandstone towers and unique wind and rain sculptured sandstone features set in fantastic canyon country with soaring mesas and vast plateaus. They embody what modern adventure tourism has become. Many are fascinated with the many petroglyphs to be found, although the vast numbers of petroglyphs are not revealed to the public for fear that these historic messages from the ancient peoples will be defaced or even destroyed. A sad commentary really, that respect for what were ancient spiritual renderings is so easily dismissed in our modern world.
Aspen, Colorado, tries to embrace environmentally sound behaviors, even sustainable ideas, but in the end, it is just a big corporate ski area, and summer outdoor fun place to visit. A friend from Aspen once told me, that Aspen is where the billionaires force the millionaires out. At an environmental education conference, a colleague stated boldly that if we could just get people into the great outdoors more, they would become more environmentally minded. If that were but true, we would find that all the Colorado ski areas and the monumental destinations of the desert south-west rampant hotbeds of environmentalism driving the sustainability movement forward.
At the hotels in which I stayed, the signs placed for you to see emphasize that they believed in following sustainable practices. So much so that the daily housekeeping, the little bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, body lotion, and other miscellaneous extras that hotels once provided no longer exist. Now my question is whether they are truly being sustainably minded, or just following a business paradigm that simply uses the sustainability idea to reduce costs and expand profits, by reducing services, and getting to boost customer satisfaction from being ‘more environmental.’ To be honest, they also state that anyone wishing the extra services merely have to inform the front desk.
I don’t change my bed sheets at home every day, and few people I know do so. The friend I was with insisted on making the bed each morning as they do at home. I straighten the bed sheet and tidy up just as I do at home. I don’t need a maid to do that for me. So not getting housekeeping or the extras is fine by me. All the extras started coming in around 1950s as hotel chains competed for the generation of tourism that came after WWII and the increase in prosperity at that time. In that respect I like the business paradigm they use. This is were questioning the mindset behind the actions is important.
This brings me back to modern tourism. Does vacationing in the great outdoors make one more environmentally minded? For a few, maybe, but for the majority, not really. This is more evident when one looks at where the vacationers actually go for their entertainment. Just like the US National parks, 95% of the visitors see about 3% of the park, the rest being left for the 5% of adventurers that see the rest of the park. This is true for most areas that are not ‘the parks’ per se, but where the monumental sites exist. And out of that adventuring number, maybe a third to a half seek a spiritual adventure.
What I observed last week were a lot of visitors renting mountain bikes to run the superb bike trails at Moab (just like skiers in winter). And a lot of people (at both Sedona and Moab) renting off-road vehicles to run the many desert ATV trails that abound. For the hikers, there were many short trails to see monumental scenic spots not observable from the road. Hiking on any of the longer trails, especially not ending in anything special to see, was a more remote hike where you could amble along seeing almost no one, unlike the monumental destination trails, where people were really busy getting pictures of themselves (or selfies) to brag about having been there – or post on their favorite social media site.
For most it is about enjoying oneself in a spectacular outdoor setting. For the fewer, it was about being in nature itself – a more spiritual enjoyment. If it ends in a monumental view, all the better; but the view is the icing on the cake, the journey itself is the prime goal of the hike. So, where am I going with all this? The way most people vacation is like the scientific-materialistic-consumer lifestyle compared to what we need as a sustainable lifestyle. For now, the mindful minority enjoy the outdoors and the facilities that serve vacationers as well, but there is spiritual component that is as much, if not more, than simply being ‘out-there’ for fun. It’s nice to have such wonderful facilities – crawling into a tent starts to get old as you get older, but the economic model driving such niceties are rooted in the market economy of scientific materialism. And just tweaking the economics is not going to get the transformation we truly need.
“Ecological economists argue for reforms that would ground economics in ecological principles and the constraints of thermodynamics. They urge the embrace of radical notion that we must sustain natural capital and ecosystem services if we are to maintain quality of life. But governments still cling to the neoclassical fallacy that human consumption has no consequences… The idea that we should put limits on growth because of some natural limit is a profound error. Our leaders willfully ignore the wisdom and the models of every other species on the planet – except those that have gone extinct” Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass 2013).
So, yet again, I come back to the spiritual component. If we are to heal ourselves and the incredible and wonderful world in which we live, we need to change something profoundly. How we view the natural world is important. Seeing it as an inert but impressively monumental ‘thing’ to awe us, is all good, but seeing it as something that is intricately complex and full of life, even the mineral aspects that we look at in awe, is a change that needs to happen. This is directly connected to my five times we must address, even if I don’t emphasize it as much.
As scientists David Suzuki says, “The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity — then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective”. We don’t have to descend into ancient superstitions, but to understand that even while technological advanced from their time frames, many ancient cultures still practiced a mindful love and respect for the natural world, understanding it as the source of all life.
To Be Continued ……………
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