As soon as you get into that hiking rhythm and are thoroughly into a cardio workout, you aren't noticing shit around you. Most of the time when you are hiking you are less present in the natural world than you would be if you were sitting inside calmly looking out the window watching a stretch of woods.

Hiking is fun, it is good for people, I am not bashing getting out and walking in nature but honestly for me walks in the woods are so much more fulfilling than most hikes these days for me. I can walk at a slower pace and focus on remaining present and aware of the forest around me. Often times I will just sit and do nothing for 20 minutes and just enjoy the feeling of the forest happening around me. Hiking to the top of a beautiful mountain after I got up super early to drive for a couple of hours and then rushed to the top pushing myself to the peak of my physical capability just doesn't do it for me.

I don't know, I think it is because of how many digital places I have explored and how many photographs and videos I have seen of stunning places on earth... going there myself is of course different but I find myself dogged by the question "Why?". Why do I need to climb to the top of Everest to see it MYSELF?". It is kind of an ego thing but it is also about the fact that even if I did climb to the top of Everest I do think I would still, in the majesty of that moment atop the tallest mountain in the world wonder "...but why did I need to come here myself when so many others already have? With video cameras, cameras, notebooks.... leaving trash and human impact everywhere on one of the most unique spots on earth with all the gear one could imagine. Am I exploring or trampling?".

In many hikers I have known there is a severe hierarchy of landscapes that are worth spending time in and that are not worth spending time in. Hikers will drive hours and hours past vast landscapes they completely ignore to reach one particular place. In a way that is cool and expresses passion but in another way it is a statement about how blind these people are to the landscapes between them and the "ideal nature" that they desire in a superficial way. It represents a deeply unhealthy subconscious perspective on natural spaces as exotic and beyond our everyday. No, do the opposite, go for a boring walk in your community, go for a local walk up that hill that is kind of lame and take it slow, train yourself to see the beauty of the nature beckoning you into the moment already around you.... Our desire to NEED the most beautiful mountain or natural vista is destructive towards nature itself even if it feels like we are in love with nature when we feel it.

Within me is not a hierarchy of landscapes, sure I love an incredible vista but a normal mediocre walk in the woods surrounded by normal woodland life in an unremarkable nature preserve near where I live is what I will think about on my death bed for sure... I don't think I will regret I didn't climb that last mountain on my list because that shit doesn't matter.

It really depends on the hiking group and I think it’s important for people to be up front about their goal. I’ve had some groups that just want to go constantly and I think that’s ok, just not my favorite.

My favorite groups are the ones who want to listen to me geek out on this really cool looking spider or talk about how that native plant over there can be used to stop the itch of mosquito bites. Or my buddies who I used to go bouldering with. That group loved talking about rock formations and how a giant rock got into its specific place.

I’ve had way more experiences with the latter group.

I can't even follow trails let alone stay with a group. I like just wandering around, I always find neat stuff.

If you read the article, a large portion of it is dedicated to people defacing and degrading the nature.

Hell the title card image is a tree with a bunch of initials carved into it.

Overall the headline blows, because the article had a large chunk dedicated to Native American Cultural Appropriation and other related criticisms.

Edit: My bad, I didn't see OP's message. Your comment is a pretty good take on OPs commentary. I'm not quite sure how OP tied that message to this article, this article is not really solarpunk focused.

I just read the article. I recommend doing that, it is quiet good.

Chinese tourists are in a league of their own.

Yes, yes it is. Just look at how the top of Everest is trashed by climbers insisting on conquering it and it is a perfect symbol of the broader outdoor movement in many ways.

When people relate to nature as something to be tested against and conquered/overcome they begin to lose the capacity to understand how they can have a meaningfully negative impact on nature from their actions because this entire perspective frames nature as an obstacle far bigger than us, hopelessly more powerful than us and so encompassing we are tiny in comparison. There is a rotting false, dangerous comfort and naivety embedded in the core of that belief. It reminds me of this catastrophically off base speculation in Moby Dick about how since Whales are so much more powerful than humans and the ocean is so big that we could never diminish their numbers in hunting.

But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for one cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their battalions. But though for some time past a number of these whales, not less than 13,000, have been annually slain on the nor'-west coast by the Americans alone; yet there are considerations which render even this circumstance of little or no account as an opposing argument in this matter.

...

Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah’s flood he despised Noah’s Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

How awfully wrong that quote was about the future of whales...