Today about twenty of us spent an entertaining eight hours reviewing some of the basics of wilderness rangering, as volunteers with the Ventana Wilderness Alliance and US Forest Service. This fun including the filling and sending out of forms—a necessity but, given technology, not always as straightforward for all of us as one might wish; ranger–backcountry user interactions in tricky situations; and Leave No Trace education—because LNT is the bedrock of our job.
As part of all that, our ringleaders had us watch part of a video. What I'm posting here isn't from that, but it presents what I thought was the most interesting part of the whole otherwise rather humdrum batch of information we were presented with.
This stuff needs to get reinforced—over and over. I had even forgotten a few morsels: like that one reason to discourage people from tossing their (fully biodegradable) apple cores off the trail is that critters will pick them up and take them to their burrows, where the apple cores may contaminate the poor critters' food stash.
So, seriously: pack out what you pack in.
(And don't get me started on toilet paper. Grr.)
But one of the bits I really did like was a presentation of the 7 Basic Principles of Leave No Trace in a sort of rudimentary sign language:
I honestly do believe it will help me remember what the 7 principles are.
And I had a good time today. Our valiant leader, Beth, always puts on a wonderful show.
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