[at-l] Cell phones VS Nature - An attempt to clarify -LONG(Shelly)

[shane at theplacewithnoname.com (Shane Steinkamp)]

> Could you do me a favor and tell me what you think
> of MacKaye's wilderness ethic and how it relates to cell
> phones and their impact on the Trail?

Before you can ask that question, you have to understand MacKaye's
'wilderness ethic'.

Since you aren't capable of actually providing that, please allow me to
provide you with some quotes from Benton MacKaye:

"The Appalachian Trail is a wilderness way through civilization, not a
civilized way through wilderness."

"[Wilderness] is a fund of knowledge and a spring of influence. It is the
ultimate source of health - terrestrial and human."

MacKaye wasn't the only one thinking like this. To varying degrees, Aldo
Leopold, Bob Marshall, and Benton MacKaye-three founding figures in the
modern wilderness movement-all marshaled familiar woodcraft language and
themes in setting forth a broader wilderness idea. In the 1920s, Leopold
emphasized wilderness not as a place, but as a means to allow Americans to
test themselves "living in the open" and "killing game." When Benton From
Woodcraft to 'Leave No Trace' 467 MacKaye outlined his 1921 vision of an
Appalachian Trail, he described more than a simple trail linking Georgia to
Maine. Rather, his Appalachian Trail was a reform project that promised to
weave new connections between American society and the land through a
working knowledge of nature. Marshall prized wilderness for its "fundamental
influence in molding American character" and because only in wilderness
could one be completely self-sufficient. For all three men, recreation was
an important strand of the wilderness idea. For Leopold, in particular,
wilderness recreation, in the tradition of woodcraft, promised to foster a
self-sufficient, intimate knowledge of nature.

I find this article to be very enlightening:

http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/Publications/EH/July2002/Turner.pdf

I've already expressed my thoughts on cell phones and their impact, so I
won't hash that again.

Shane