Leave-No-Trace Spirituality
December 1, 2002
The First Universalist Church of Rochester
The Reverend George Tyger
When I was first introduced to leave-no-trace principles, I immediately saw their wisdom and necessity in any outdoor pursuit. We often imagine that a wilderness experience is a solitary one. Many times I have found myself somewhere in the wilderness, totally alone, not another soul for miles. It easy at these times, too easy perhaps, to imagine that in the vast outdoors you are the only other human being. It is easy, too easy, to fall into the trap of thinking you are too small to make any real difference by what you do. One left-behind piece of wrapper, a tiny bit of soap near a stream, what harm could that little bit do? But the truth is that you are never the only one. There will be another solitary soul, and another, and another who will tread upon the same ground you are now on. Your little piece of trash, your tiny bit of soap will be just one bit and one piece more added to others left by those who will go by that spot. This is what these ethics recognize. No one of is ever the only one. No one of us can truly believe we are just a solitary soul. There is no wholly severed thing.
While small campfires may be okay, no campfire at all is best. I resisted this ethic for a while. I believed a campfire to be so important to my outdoor experience that I could not give it up. How would I cook, keep warm and see at night? I had been trained by untested assumptions to believe that a fire was a necessity. Even though I had often eaten cold Spam© on many a rainy night, somehow I insisted on a fire. Then I began to look at the impact those fires had on those other beings, human and non-human, with whom I shared the woods. I began to recognize the fact that, no matter how I may have felt, I was not alone. My actions made a difference.
Campfires, though they seem to go along with camping, have a lasting environmental impact in backcountry areas. The risk of forest fire is the most dramatic impact, but others are far more pervasive. Campfires permanently scar the ground and the rocks often used as fire rings. They destroy the delicate balance of bacterial life found in the thin organic layer of the forest floor. In even moderately used areas, there develops a “human browse line” surrounding campfire areas. In these areas, trees are stripped bare from ground level to about seven feet high, the highest most people can reach. This zone of devastation can range a hundred yards out from the central impact area, the fire ring. Brush and forage that give wildlife food and cover are destroyed. As easily reachable wood becomes harder to find, live trees are cut or torn down. Delicate habitat is lost. Ash and partially burned branches litter the area. Once-pristine areas become scarred and ugly, places to be avoided rather than enjoyed. Now when I hike, I do so with a different eye than before. I see what could have been avoided. I understand what might have been.
The solution in the backcountry is simple - a small backpacking stove. My first camp stove was the now-ubiquitous MSR® Whisperlight Stove. It burned white gas, a highly refined petroleum product. Better than a fire, it still had a gasoline odor, could flare and smoke if you were not careful, and spilled fuel could contaminate ground water. Just last year I bought a tiny alcohol stove. Its main by-products are water and carbon dioxide. It is silent and has almost no odor. Compared to the low impact of my Whisperlight, this stove comes as close to no impact as possible. Cold Spam© on a rainy night is a thing of the past with one of these devices. In a pinch, the stove can even give off a fair amount of light, although a flashlight works even better. If you need a campfire for ambiance, you could do better to go to an established campground. An hour of heat and light for you may spoil an area for decades.
Stoves do not do away with fire in the wilderness. We will always need something to heat water, cook up Ramen Noodles or melt snow on a winter’s night. The fires of stoves are simply safer, cleaner burning, more reliable and easier to cook on than any campfire could be. They do everything the campfire did - only better. Anyone who has ever tried to hold a small metal cook pot over a blazing inferno knows what I mean.
What might all this instruction on outdoor ethics have to do with a religious community and our religious lives? I have discovered as I have integrated my love of the outdoors and desire to preserve its beauty for generations to come with my life as a minister that there are a number of connections between ministry and outdoor ethics. In this case, what first comes to mind is how, as a minister, I often have found myself putting out fires and dealing with the lasting impacts of those long burned out.
Our need to fuel our angers and resentments can burn like fires within us. While we may bask in their light and take comfort in their warmth, it is too easy to forget the lasting impact they can have. Our fires may seem so necessary to how we live and make our way that we cannot give them up. They can seem to give warmth and light to an otherwise cold and lonely world. Yet where do we get the fuel to keep them burning? What must be broken or torn down or destroyed to keep our anger hot and bright?
Our anger and resentment can burn as hot and as destructively as any fire. They do not often remain contained. They spill over and spread to those around us. How often our fires burn those unassociated with them. How often they are fueled by carelessness, brokenness and unthoughtful acts. How often we can feel entitled to burn ourselves and others. How often they get out of control, destroying all those in their path. Once they have burned out, the initial spark long forgotten, the fires of anger and resentment leave a community scarred, taking decades to heal. Sometimes it can feel like anger keeps us warm. It can feel as if anger is what is needed, what is justified, what is required of us. When we look closely at the impact of our anger, we might begin to find better ways to deal with it in ourselves and in community.
Anger and resentment are probably inevitable in community. People do not always get along. We do silly “people” things that we may not even realize are hurtful or annoying others. Changes in comfortable patterns and ways of being can spark fear and uncertainty that can, in turn, spark anger at those people or things we believe responsible. If we are not careful, the anger we hold can grow. As our personal anger dims, we can begin to pull others in as fuel for the fire.
Rumors spread, stories are told, sides are taken. Soon there is a zone of brokenness surrounding us. The community can become unattractive, scarred, a place to be avoided rather than enjoyed.
Use a light-weight stove for cooking and enjoy a candle lantern for light. In community the key to controlling our anger is finding an alternative to open fires. Though our anger may be real, even legitimate, we do not have to allow it to get out of control. We do not have to build an inferno when all want to do is cook some Ramen Noodles. Usually it is only ourselves who get cooked. We can express our feelings creatively, constructively in a controlled and careful manner. We can use our feeling of anger as a resource for growth and change in ourselves and in the community. If we have resentments, they can be dealt with better through direct communication and honesty than through breaking down others’ feelings to use as fuel. Hurt can be healed through apology and forgiveness much better than by burning up the brokenness. Differences can be worked through by careful consensus building and creative interchange. We can do all the things we believed anger and resentment were needed for in more constructive, more reliable and more helpful ways.
Where fires are permitted, we can use established fire rings, fire pans, or mound fires. In the wilderness these techniques keep fire from spreading out of control, but you have got to prepare for the fire ahead of time. It is not so different for ourselves. Positive and creative anger management and resolution skills can be built before anger threatens to break us apart. Often, once the anger has spread, it is too late. Simple skills - as simple as taking a few deep breaths before responding in anger - can go far in containing what might otherwise get out of control. We can learn the vital skill of asking questions first of ourselves. What in you causes anger to build? What is really what the other said or did, or is it something deeper in yourself that caused such strong emotions? The skills of introspection and self-understanding, put into place before anger takes hold, prevent our anger from becoming destructive of ourselves and others. In community, what are the resources we create for raising differences and expressing anger in helpful ways? Do we create places where fears, anxiety, and concern can be safely expressed and not allowed to spread out of control? Are there places where we permit real anger to be articulated, or is it pushed underground to smolder and finally explode?
Keep fires small. Only use sticks from the ground that can be broken by hand. If anger is an inevitable human response, we can work at keeping our anger in proportion. It is easy to stew upon some small nuisance until it has become a major crisis. Soon we can be building our anger to gargantuan magnitude. What is it you are really angry about? Does every word out of another person’s mouth really have to spark rage in you? Does that one change in the way things are done have to cause ranting and raving about every other change that has been conceived for the past ten years? Must you pull everyone around you into you personal anger? When we feel angry, it is important to ask, who is involved in this issue. Then go directly to the person or persons involved and express your feelings, calmly asking for understanding or clarification. Pleading your case to others, hoping to spark in them the same anger you feel, will soon begin to create a zone of devastation surrounding you. The more you seek to pull others in to fuel the fire, the greater the destruction will become until eventually all the fuel is exhausted and everyone is burned out.
Burn all wood and coals to ash, put out campfires completely, then scatter cool ashes. In the backcountry, the greatest danger caused by campfires is wildfire. But even without this danger, the impact of half-charred remains of long-dead fires can devastate delicate ecosystems and make otherwise beautiful areas ugly by half-burned branches and scorched earth. Much the same is true of anger in our own lives. One of the greatest mistakes in dealing with anger is to not fully work it through, either by leaving it smoldering, waiting to erupt, or by having its wounded remains littering the landscape. Half-resolved anger does not go away. Unspoken hurt does not disappear. Forgiveness cannot be offered for hidden grievances; healing cannot begin for wounds left silent. Think of how often an old pain comes back in new forms. Think of how past conflicts continue to impact present relationships. To fully work through anger is the only way to fully put it to rest, preventing it from flaring up when least expected or creating an ugly mess others must keep looking at. The most effective way to fully work through anger and pain is through direct, face-to-face dialogue.
Dialogue is not argument or debate. Anger is not resolved by argument. Trying to change the other’s mind only builds greater anger and resentment. To dialogue is to speak to be understood and to listen to understand. Those who enter true dialogue do not do so expecting the other person to change or become convinced. Theologian Martin Buber wrote of dialogue in terms of meeting on a narrow ridge. Neither person can force the other to move out of the way or both will fall. To meet on the narrow bridge is to be open to fully understanding the other, even in disagreement. It is to enter into the relationship with the goal of deepening understanding rather than changing opinions. It is to listen to truly hear, rather than to find a point of debate or weakness to exploit.
This is a very different way of being with each other than we are used to. Yet it is only by this kind of deep listening and understanding that we can be assured that the fires of anger will be fully quenched and that the debris it leaves behind will be fully consumed.
I continue to put out fires. I continue to look for lower impact ways to express my anger, my fears and my misunderstandings while helping others to do the same. While life will never become a no-impact experience, perhaps, with careful consideration, we will leave no trace for others to repair.