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Show 46. The implications are obvious now, however. "Take only photographs and leave only footprints" is not a guide to experience of the wilderness, because it misses the point of the experience itself. One shouldn't leave even footprints, for they will become a beaten track, and the photographs are worthless anyway. "Take only photographs, leave only footprints ..." the Sierra Club used to advise, because people were littering the backcountry. But why take photographs? These days all the traveller's experiences are designed to insulate him from the truth he confronts. He takes snapshots or buys postcards. Even the most urban commentator recognizes the disappointment with Nature which results from putting it on a time schedule, setting up bleachers, and viewing it through a camera. This is not the way things ought to be. In my childhood I remember Carl Sharsmith speaking to us, as we sat around the campfire in Tuolumne, where they never got around to putting up the slide projector and screen. Carl described the tourist who attempted to take a picture of huge Mount Dana, and what was the end product? - a little rectangular piece of cardboard with a small rubble heap depicted on its surface. Going light requires that a man cease to use any method of perception which mediates between himself and Nature. But more important, my imaginary interview resolves a problem I have always had. Why, I have always wondered, am I so irritated by the fellow who comes along on a walk in the mountains with his bird book or flower book or camera, who wants to make sure he knows what he is seeing, by finding it |