Outside Manners One morning in a willow swamp I carried a camera close to a bull moose. I wanted a full-screen portrait. The moose, accustomed to trespassers, calmly went on browsing, his head low. Wanting him head-up. I made a sudden forward lunge. He tipped his antlers forward and came at me. I ran. From a safe place I looked back, saw that the moose had taken only a few steps to achieve his purpose. I gave myself an F. Bad manners, invasion of another creature's personal space. A few years later I met a moose standing on the trail looking at me. On his left, the roaring waters of Cascade Creek, on his right a steep brushy slope. I took to the slope, intending a polite detour. The moose had the same idea. We raced for higher ground. The moose let me win. Encounters like these call for interpreting the minds of others. Of course it doesn't always turn out in our favor..When a bull elk took the initiative and chased me I had only one option: scramble. When too many of us came too close to a pair of black bear cubs, the mother gave us a lesson. Robert Krear, field biologist, tells of similar experiences.

Concerning lions, both African and American, for example, he advises that steadily meeting the other's gaze while raising your arms is a useful signal. The vast majority of creatures do not condescend to negotiation: mosquitoes, blackflies, ticks, leeches ... the list is long, but we can be grateful for the buzz of the rattlesnake, the high pitched cries and warning dives of falcons, the sudden synchronized body elevations of wasps, the hiss of the cornered badger. There are many signals out there, information that can make a difference. But what about machines in our lives? A huge subject, I'll narrow my question: What negotiation space do foot travelers have when meeting that modern centaur, human-on-machine? Snowmobile, ATV, chopper, SUV, jet ski, power boat, bike ... what are the chances? Not good. For one thing, with the exception of muscle-propelled bikes, centaurs don't hear very well beyond the roar of their motors. For another, they often lack a sense of possible danger that is bound into the daily and nightly behavior of other forms of life. It's elitist label. That, like cowboy myth rhetoric, is outworn and untruthful. It's effective only in tearing up more ground between us. Skiers, though, that's a difficult category. Are some of them still hiring choppers to save them a long alpine slog by lifting them to powder paradises in the Wasatch? Now that's elitist. I'm not saying that we foot travelers are squeaky clean. Far from it. One of our behaviors that bothers me is the tendency to carry too much stuff. Do we really need to make ourselves into human mules? I'm thinking especially of kids in family groups or safaris led by scout masters or Outward Bound expeditions and the like who labor into wild country overloaded by gigantic packs on young shoulders. Where's the fun in that? Does it develop individuality, confidence, expertise?

Once I came upon a kid in one of those crocodiles who was literally wobbling from side to side, each step seeming to be his last, and the dad urging him on, and there was agony and hatred on the kid's face. Hatred of the dad? Could be. Whether mechanized or not, we're all implicated in, and captives of a gigantic RECREATION CULTURE where individuals are expected to reach their "own best" and then surpass it. For me, the most aggravating trait of this intense, striving culture is its extreme self-absorption, individual life styles expertly manipulated by solid phalanxes of makers of ATVs, equipment, clothing, adventure and all appurtenances thereto. We endure countless scenes of environmental gung-ho on millions of screens, every day; tough vehicles driven by rugged trespassers crunching across rough terrain. Governments too are players. Consider the Forest Service's proud slogan, Land of Many Uses. You can even pay to watch wild wolves hunt. The whole shebang, packaged so neatly, we fall for it. One, two, three, down we go. The basic idea seems to be that outside is a place where everybody has inalienable rights to do whatever the hell they take a notion to do, and recreation industries aided by governments are happy to accommodate all comers. If we accept such a premise we're in for endless turf battles; drawing of complicated lines giving each and every "stakeholder" a piece of the action. Example: a"consensus plan" in the Owyhee country (southwest Idaho, parts of Oregon and Nevada) threatens to shrink wilderness proposals to allow ATV access to wild country in order to avoid violation of the Wilderness Act. The rationale is that a shriveled wilderness bill that leaves out lands of true wilderness quality is better than no bill at all. If we give in to plans like that we can't help asking if we aren't selling the whole store I offer this description of actually existing wild country, whether authorized by Congress and signed by a president, or not: a place you enter at your own risk, where a mountain lion might be watching you, the weather might catch you. Take the cell phone if you must, but don't leave behind your ancient and inborn all-purpose lifesaver: the ability to pay attention. And here is a sentence to think about, from Scott Silver: "Wilderness is not just a place, but it is a path and above all else a portal where those willing to throw off their encumbrances can reconnect with their humanity." Arguments against ATVs et al. usually dwell on disturbance of wildlife (which is not always the case), danger to human life (this is real), damage to ecosystems (demonstrated). But the case is not complete until we put all the cards on the table, including those we hold close to our chests. To summarize then, here are my closely held cards, face up: Ace of Spades "Recreation" is not a sacred cow. Ace of Clubs: No creature on this earth is absolute lord. Danger and surprise are the lot of all. Ace of Diamonds. "The Wild" is where you meet other lives, sometimes of your own species. They all deserve a modicum of respect. Ace of Hearts: The life of paying attention, trying to use the full range of sensual, biological and mindful abilities, is a requirement for human living. Machine intrusions dangerously limit that life. (1) Robert Krear, "Eye Contact With Cats is Vital," Trail Gazette, Estes Park, CO. (2) Robyn Morrison, "Riding the Middle Path," High Country News, Dec. 8, 2003. (3) Scott Silver in /The Zephyr/, February-March, 2004. UPDATE Well, whata ya know, no sooner do I throw down those cards when a spectre from the past, James Watt, rises up to refute all of the above. I'd thought he was dead. Oh no, very much alive. In a poorly conducted interview on NPR (not his fault, he was most articulate) Watt announced that history has confirmed everything he tried to do when he was Reagan's Secretary of Interior in the eighties. Patricia Limerick shared the interview with Watt. She had gone back through the print record and discovered that Watt had not actually said national parks ought to be privatized. But this proved nothing, because, as Watt went on to explain, in a beneficent atmosphere created by governments that allow private initiative a very wide scope, citizens or corporations don't have to actually take over as certified owners. Precisely. Witness the huge roles non-governmental organizations as well as regular profiteering businesses play inside federal land agencies today. Having been deliberately fiscally starved for so many years the agencies naturally turn to other sources of money, and are encouraged to do so. Now we see, in dramatic profile, the result. Those who pay the piper are playing the tunes all across the land. And Watt is feeling good. I have in my possession a brochure, "Prairie Dogs and Their Ecosystem," written by biologists at the University of Nebraska, distributed by Browns Park National Wildlife Refuge. The brochure carries the logos of U. of Nebraska, U.S. Dept. of Interior; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Wildlife Refuges, and CHEVRON. I inquired about those logos and was told that Chevron had "provided some of the funding" for the printing. Do federal land managers go directly hat-in-hand to Chevron et al. or does an embedded non-governmental entity do the heavy lifting? And don't forget, NGOs themselves need funds; where do you suppose those come from? I tried, and failed, to discover the fiscal and organizational details of the "Adopt a Black-footed Ferret Program" at the Bureau of Land Management office in Craig, Colorado: ($100 will give you adopter status). Are the account books so intertwined that nobody knows? Or was I being stonewalled? I honestly don't know, but it is clear enough that the regime Watt strived for is now with us full bore. This situation is directly relevant to outdoor manners because every one of us is under unrelenting pressure to buy, behave and believe in certain pre-set ways coming at us from all corners of the market economy.

Witness: Yellowstone Park's attempt to ban snowmobiles. Contrary influences came from everywhere: manufacturers, drivers, gateway businesses. How do we find our own ideas and desires in the midst of such a day-and-night onslaught? I'd like to ask the gals and guys on snow machines, "How driving into Yellowstone and Teton snow?" And here's a question for high-tech rock climbers: "How absolutely essential is your right to climb Devil's Tower in Wyoming, a formation held sacred by some Native Americans?"

Finally, for us walkers, "Should we be utterly heart-broken if we lose the right to step on certain fragile areas of alpine turf, or desert crust?"