Moments when I myself had been a part of making nature uninviting to others that would enjoy it in a way that I considered less than ideal, subpar, or plain wrong. How many times had I giggled at the sight of the person that has the wrong type of tent, or that is carrying beach chairs and a radio to their campsite? How many times had I seen something like that, shook my head and thought: “that is not how you enjoy nature”.
I remembered meeting with a field dog trial association representative, a meeting where we had to tell him that no,we could not allow his group to use a specific piece of state owned property to run field trials. We told them it was bad for the habitat, the birds needed peace. And later, it was also decided in that same meeting to mow a portion of the property and install a couple of fake electricity lines to improve dove hunting opportunities. So, highly trained dogs running around 3 or 4 times a year were not good for the habitat, but mowing and filling the field with toxic lead was? I don’t really know which one is worse, but I do know that one was allowed over the other, not because of logic, but because of personal and institutional experience.
Once we experience and enjoy nature in a specific way, we expect others to enjoy it in the same way, our way, the right way. We love to tell others how to live their lives. And if you are amongst the privileged enough to be part of the group that is making the rules, then you get to do so. But if you are not part of that group, you are told that there are all these boxes to check before you are allowed to actually enjoy nature. You need the right gear, the right purpose, the right amount of time, the right amount of physical exertion, the right amount of solitude, and the right distance from a populated area. We continuously push these boxes and constraints in the way we market nature, in the way we fund land protection and access, in the way we support legislation. And as we push the “others” away, we get further isolated in our echo chamber of people that enjoy nature just like we do, feeling justified in keeping the “others” out. And nature is no longer nature, but something that requires you to change who you are, while looking down on your shoes. And then we say people are losing touch with nature.