COLUMN: Do something for the planet, do nothing
I have always considered the most extreme, earth-hugging practice you can find is sitting at home and doing nothing. It is the ultimate in low impact. Don’t drive to Moab, don’t take your bike out on the already eroded trail, and don’t buy any Power Bars. And while you are at home, don’t water the yard so you don’t have to mow it. With all the energy you have saved up, ride your bike to the store, buy a pizza and rent a movie about some exotic place. Net savings comes to about 40 gallons of gas and $5,000 worth of gear. Net effect on your psyche: more relaxed, better fed and more informed.
The problem with doing otherwise is that it keeps getting harder to get away from it all because there is more of “it” and you have to go further “away.”
On any given weekend the lakes and woods are just chock-full of people looking for a little privacy. People drive their cars hundreds of miles to find a place to ride their bikes. People pack carloads of stuff with them to help them get back to the simplicity of nature.
Most of the time you are not getting away from it all as much as you are trading one batch of “it” for another.
You have to understand that I’m at my cynical biorhythm peak because it’s Monday morning and I’m still sort of bleary-eyed from another weekend of trying to get away from it all. The worst part is that “it all” is still piled all over my living room floor.
That’s the root problem with trying to get away from it all. It takes too much equipment.
If you’ve never been to an REI (Really Expensive Items) store or browsed their Web site, you ought to check it out. It is the nexus shrine to getting away from it all. Anything you have in your home, REI can duplicate in miniature for you to take along in your pack – which, by the way, they have lots of, too: day packs, bike packs, fanny packs, those giant expandable army-of-one packs. They even have dog packs so Rover can escape his hectic life of Frisbee catching and naps.
They’ve also got those elfin-sized one-burner stoves that cost more than the basic four burners with an oven model that could feed a family of eight.
I can hear my father now, “That flimsy little thing cost more than your mother and my first Kenmore range and it had a self-cleaning oven.” Dad was and is right. This is obscene.
Don’t forget those lightweight camp pads that cost more than the mattress you’re sleeping on now is worth, tents that cost a month’s rent and mountain bikes that probably cost more than the first car you drove.
REI has even brought a little of the “away” in the form of a fake rock climbing wall, and placed it right in the middle of “it all.” This way you get to see what it’s like getting away from it all without all the bother of the getting away part.
So next weekend, do something for the planet. Do nothing. Go nowhere. Be happy.
Dennis Hinkamp’s column appears weekly in The Utah Statesman. Comments can be sent to dennish@ext.usu.edu.