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[at-l] Cell Phones -- Perception



At 09:54 AM 1/18/2005 -0500, Bob C wrote:
> >"...No one on this list nor even the entire list collectively, is in any
>position to roll back the popularity of cell phones. If that is your goal,
>you missed the boat. That tsunami is already miles inland," reports Jim B.
>
>I remember back in the early 70s when I was invited to a meeting of the 
>Fin and Feather Club, a hunting and fishing group in Millinocket, Maine. I 
>talked to them about litter and trash in the back country, especially the 
>piles of trash next to every fireplace at the campsites on the wild 
>Penobscot, and St. John Rivers. The members thought I was talking 
>nonsense. "What do you want us to do?" they demanded. "The nearest dump is 
>100 miles away." There were 70 people in the room. Everyone of them 
>thought can dumps had become a natural part of wildness and no amount of 
>talk would ever roll back their popularity.
>
>I remember also when the city where I was born first talked about sewage 
>treatment plants. The chairman of the Planning Board was adamant. "This is 
>a foolish idea," he exclaimed. "We have spent millions piping sewage to 
>the river. What better place for our sewage than in a river. It's what God 
>intended."
>
>And when I hike the Mahoosucs, Bigelow and Nahmakanta these days, I can't 
>help but remember the stories I wrote 32 years ago claiming Maine still 
>owned 400,000 acres that it had preserved and then forgotten about when 
>it's 6 million acre public domain had been sold 150 years earlier -- and 
>the chorus of derision that greeted those stories.
>
>While the Martin Luther King holiday remains fresh in our minds, who would 
>have thunk that blacks would ever vote in the south, right alone that the 
>south would have black mayors and members of Congress or that a Louisiana 
>governor would pardon a black law breaker in celebration.
>
>I like to think words and actions still have influence even in this new 
>era of instant gratification, 15-second attention spans, and belief in 
>comfort and safety regardless of cost.
>
>Weary

Weary compares cell phone use to trash dumps at campsites. He seems to 
think that since there are no longer 'official' dumps at campsites that the 
problem of trash has been solved by his persistence. As someone who 
maintains a lean-to, who has hauled out *many* packs full of abandoned gear 
including things I cannot image why anyone would take to the woods in the 
first place, who has picked broken glass/tin cans/aluminum foil/melted 
plastic from fire pits, who carries rubber gloves for collecting used 
Kleenex/Tampax/TP/etc. from the periphery of camping areas and has buried 
other people's feces, I am sorry to inform him that although there are no 
long formal 'dumps', the trash is still there.

He goes on to list other changes in human behavior outside the woods. At 
least in that he is beginning to be on the right track. The primary danger 
to the wilderness from cell phones is not from the hiker who carries (and 
perhaps even uses) a cell phone. The danger is from the intrusion of 
towers. As I said before that danger comes not from hikers but from 
outside. Simply put, if every hiker regularly carried and used a cell phone 
(when they could get it to work) it would not amount to a potential market 
that would inspire cell phone service providers to build towers that would 
cover the wilderness. Unfortunately however, to maximize coverage, mountain 
tops are the ideal (from the POV of cell service providers) locations. They 
provide the most 'bang for the buck'.

I repeat: If the cell phone I carry in my pack (when I remember to take it) 
upsets your sense of wilderness, I am sorry that your equanimity is so 
easily disturbed but frankly that is your problem to deal with, not mine. 
The sound waves and microwaves from occasional cell phone calls dissipate 
without any action on my part and (so far at least) I have never had to 
collect and remove abandoned cell phones on my clean-up trips. You may 
continue to rant and rail at cell phone users if you wish but I prefer to 
expend my conservation energy on issues that present a more grave threat to 
the woods.