Re[4]: [at-l] Icons

[RoksnRoots@xxxxxxx (RoksnRoots@xxxxxxx)]

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In a message dated 4/7/2003 8:10:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
ellen@clinic.net writes:


> RnR has it right (though his words are a bit garbled. He needs a rewrite
> person)
> when he proclaims, "That is the Trail as a wilderness mechanism designed to
> be a
> sanctuary from civilization and a place maintained that way by theme."


         ***    (I'll shake off the list-compulsory punching clown swats at
the RnR effigy first. OK, there, better now.)  God forbid Weary ever left
this list. That said, I can't help but say directly, although he obviously
fathoms MacKaye's functional AT design, I feel he tends to leave off an
important component of MacKaye's ideas at their expense.




>
> I don't know whether the trail was "never supposed to get to the point
> where
> individuals are left to choose what level of remoteness they choose." But
> practically speaking, his plan dies if everyone is free to destroy the
> wildness
> they personally dislike, since it eventually would destroy the wildness
> that
> MacKaye thought so important for a joyful life.
>

        ***   In my mind the Trail was more than wildness. Yes, wildness was
an irreplaceable component, but that wildness was supposed to be part of the
functional mechanism MacKaye intended to be activated by the total AT idea.
That idea could exist separately as untouched wilderness tracts supporting
nature left alone, or it could exist as a man sitting at home in his room
with MacKaye's AT in his head. That indoctrinated "Barbarian" was now a new
form of human being. An advancement of the species. A subspecies of evolved
human being who could hold and employ MacKaye's concept of
natural/environmental proliferation as a real practice or believe. Sounds
like crackpotism until you realize we are on the verge of permanently
destroying nature as a social practice. This is far from "socialism," and is
the precious baby being thrown out with the bath water by those who so easily
dismiss MacKaye. On the AT today you could hike right by all this and never
realize it...

         Yes, as MacKaye indicated in his comments about through-hiking, this
dynamic form of AT did require on-Trail conformity of behavior and aim - but
let's not push it too far for now...