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Show 499 encouraged to r e t u r n , because numbers mean support. He i s not encouraged very much t o g r a d u a t e to more a u s t e r e kinds of recreation, and so when he goes to the next Park down the l i n e, he will engage in s i m i l a r a c t i v i t i e s . Rather than appealing to the diverse needs of v i s i t o r s , the h i e r a r c h y of roads, trails, and s e r v i c e s has helped entrench and perhaps c r e a t e a static caste system i n the Parks, from the r e s i d e n t s of the Ahwahnee Hotel t o t h e Winnebago owners, to the pickup truck and "Van Campers, " t o the backpackers, and f i n a l l y mountaineers and r i v e r - r u n n e r s . Each group seems fixed i n t o i t s own sphere of activity, and none of them b e n e f i t from commerce with the insights a v a i l a b l e to the o t h e r s . Further, the Parks now need the great numbers of v i s i t o r s in order to j u s t i f y the services they offer. In the same way, the S i e r r a Club Outings have become a hierarchy of d i f f e r e n t kinds of e x c u r s i o n s , r a t e d by difficulty, each of which a p p e a l s to a d i f f e r e n t group of members. There i s no longer the same sense of community between p a r t i c i p a n ts of the same o u t i n g , l e t alone the sense of community between the p a r t i c i p a n t s of d i f f e r e n t kinds of o u t i n g s . The kind of accidental and yet l a s t i n g r e l a t i o n s h i p s which Muir made on his excursion in 1895, when he led a d i v e r s e group of people in the mountains - t h a t seems a t h i n g of the p a s t. THE REAL ISSUE: POLITICS AND COMMUNITY The S i e r r a Club, as a communal o r g a n i z a t i o n , had po s- |