Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
Except that the people who think they can do that by off-road driving are just deluding themselves, because they're bringing the noise & chaos with them. If you want to get away from civilization, drive to the trailhead, then WALK.
|
Everyone does different things to make life worth living in between workin' and sleepin' hours. There are plenty of things people do which annoy me but I still respect their right to do it.
I can't speak for the East, but out West 99% or more of off-highway driving in
street legal vehicles is done on legal trails. Legal trails as in
actual designated roads.
For example the famed Rubicon is actually a road, no different from the I5 highway - except of course that it's not likely you'll be seeing any Prius' drive that road.
In other words since these trails are in fact roads, nobody would complain they are driven on if they were paved like any of the millions of miles of paved roads out there... so why the complaint that they're driven without pavement?
I get upset at yahoos who drive off-road (as in, blaze new trails that don't go anywhere, when an existing road is already in place) because not only do they make an area ugly, they also give ammunition to the jerks who want to close areas down.
Walking into the wilderness is great, but who decides at what point you park and start walking? The grand canyon is 200 miles of beautiful desert away from me. Do I drive on the paved road all the way to the rim, THEN park? Should I start walking from home, because it's ecologically irresponsible to lay down 200 miles of asphalt and then drive on it? Do I drive all the way out the old hualapai road which is unpaved & unsuitable to 2wd vehicles but still a perfectly legal, driveable road for high clearance vehicles and goes all the way to the river?
The whole crux of the eco movement is to minimize man's impact on nature, implying man is the one force of the universe that exists outside of nature. If we are to go with this definition, then the single worst thing any human can do to the environment is make more humans because those offspring and their offspring ad infinitum will consume resources and create pollution with anything they do. I can't have children. So I'm more eco-friendly than just about anyone without even doing anything. Nobody with offspring had better try to tell me my legal use of legal-if-challenging roads is "bad for the environment"... that would be an error of logic on their part. Frankly nobody with a car should try to tell me my legal use of legal roads that don't happen to have asphalt on 'em is bad.... what's worse for the environment? A 20 foot swath of asphalt times a thousand miles or a dusty pair of tracks that would grow over in 5 years if left unused?