Iliza Shlesinger's "hiking" bit is always on my mind for things like this... "I like hiking, I really do!"

From peak-bagging to thru-hiking, Americans have turned traversing land into personal milestones. This wilderness ranger and Indigenous writer has witnessed it firsthand

Indigenous dude recounts his tribe's history (and being The Guardian, past atrocities and oppression...), as viewed through a coastal hiking trail -- parts of the Appalachian:

Outdoor recreation often slips into what I call an achievement-based relationship with nature. I’ve been guilty of it myself. Whether it’s “bagging peaks”, racing to finish the AT, or stamping the land with machines and monuments, the focus shifts from ecology to ego.

Sort of. Probs toxic masculinity, too, and phallus symbols.

"When personal conquest becomes the point, it bypasses not only the importance and complexity of ecosystems, but also the Indigenous peoples who have long cared for them.""When personal conquest becomes the point, it bypasses not only the importance and complexity of ecosystems, but also the Indigenous peoples who have long cared for them."

Appropriation has a long history in American outdoor recreation. For example, Scouting America, formerly known as the Boy Scouts, founded the “Order of the Arrow” in Lenapehoking, naming their first lodge, Unami, after us and modeling it on romanticized notions of Lenape culture.

Our hike began at a mountain lake where our ancestors swam and fished soon after the glaciers carved it. Not far along we came to a beaver pond with a large lodge. Aside from the faint hum of traffic through the trees, the place seemed much as it must have when our ancestors lived there. We stopped to examine the previous year’s chestnuts scattered on the forest floor, and marveled at how food literally fell from the sky to feed our ancestors.

I dunno man. You can also just go out and be with nature and the divine... not sure you gotta drag your ideological blinders and single-minded obsession out there.
Pretty nice travel piece -- if you can stomach the oh, indigenous woe is me.

P.S., I take that back... because of course there had to be digs at capitalism for no obvious reason:

Lenapehoking is now home to hundreds of Superfund sites and some of the worst pollution on the continent, and the Delaware River contributes more plastic to the Atlantic Ocean than any other waterway in North America.

I often think about how that wouldn’t be the case if we were still caretaking Lenapehoking, because we would never devise an economic system that requires us to commit genocide against our own ecological family.