Dear Sundog,
I have a backcountry permit for a five-day hiking expedition in a national park. The trip required months of planning and preparation, including airfare. Now, with the government shutdown, my permit has been canceled.
But the roads through the park are still open. Can I do the trip anyway? —Not Picking Sides
Dear NPS,
We live in strange times, when the tussle over health insurance can cancel your vacation. One hotly debated topic among professional environmentalist types is whether or not the national parks should be physically closed—like, with a locked gate. It’s an interesting question, but not one that matters to your question. After all, gubment gonna gubment. That’s different than the ethical behavior of the individual who, like you, feels quite powerless when it comes to the actions of the federal government.
To address a second question that you also did not ask, we should consider the legality of your plan. If your permit is canceled, then your trip is illegal. You might get busted. But Sundog isn’t here to tell you law. This is a column about your personal ethical decisions, which may or may not conform with the legal system.
As for your actual query, my decades of wilderness exploration combined with deep intellectual meditations on the relationship between the human and non-human has allowed me to distill this complicated moral quandary into a single question:
Do you know how to take a shit?
When land managers speak euphemistically about “sanitation issues” that arise due to shutdowns or lack of infrastructure, what they mean is people dropping the kids here, there, and everywhere, toilet-paper roses blossoming with wavy white petals fluttering in the breeze. Sundog knows of what he speaks. As a young, eager conservation worker he spent a season in the Utah canyon country, be-gloved in latex, shoveling human scat into Hefty sacks around the Slick Rock Bike Trail, heavily used campsites without pit toilets.
There was no glory in this. It’s the kind of work that causes your political opinions to dissolve or at least soften, because regardless of whether I thought the area should charge a fee, or require reservations, or ban camping altogether, the situation before me was clearly unacceptable: minefields of turds in the sagebrush just pissing distance from where pleasant humans and their offspring roasted marshmallows over a campfire. It was gnarly.
Because you’ve planned a multi-day backpacking trip, I assume that you do, in fact, know how to shit. And if you’re skilled at the other basics of Leave No Trace, able to move through the hinterlands without setting fires, polluting water, stomping fragile flora and otherwise destroying our shared lands, then I don’t think your planned trip is ethically wrong. You are responsible. You will do no harm. Whether or not an official signs a piece of paper has no bearing on your behavior.
But what about those other people, the ones who will flock to the parks and F them up. It’s true that there is a small subset of land-users who at this very moment are gleefully adding to iCalender new events for the coming days like:
- Chop down Joshua Tree(s)
- Chisel petroglyphs
- Kill/capture an endangered mammal
Look: those people are not reading Sundog’s Almanac of Ethical Answers, and if they are, they will not be swayed by his wise musings. The fact that government dysfunction enables some people to do unethical deeds does not ensure that your deeds, performed during the time of government dysfunction, are thereby unethical.
Of course there is a lot of space in between the skilled backcountry ace and the raging saboteur. Most readers here fall somewhere on that spectrum. For them I say: If you require a toilet, you should not enter a national park. For the unskilled outdoorsperson, toilets are just the first of many reasons you should stay away. You will not be able to buy a snack, or fill your water bottle, or ask directions. If you get lost you are likely to perish, as people like rangers and rescuers—instead of being at your beck and call—will be home in furlough pajamas scanning the want ads or googling the nearest place to sell blood plasma.
To a large degree the Park Service exists to lure rookies into dangerous places where they have no business being, and to then prevent them from dying once they arrive. If you’re not able to operate without a net, Sundog would find these risks unacceptable. Go somewhere else! Try a state park. Or a shopping mall.
As for you, NPS, your plan is ultimately ethical but dangerous. I wouldn’t do it if I were in your shoes. Enjoy yourself. I hope you find the soulful connection with Creation that we all seek. And in the event you are apprehended, be sure you are carrying your citizenship documents, do not resist federal agents even if their badges and faces are hidden, and slide passively—eagerly—into their handcuffs and unmarked vehicles, because, after all, this is the land of the free.
The post The Government Shutdown Torpedoed My Backpacking Trip. Should I Still Go? appeared first on Outside Online.
