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.
Being obsessed with Peak Bagging is not Solarpunk.
Nature is not your personal obstacle to challenge yourself against, it is a shared place of discovery you trample when you only see it as a place to endlessly, exhaustingly conquer.
It really depends on the hiking group and I think it’s important for people to be up front about their goal. I’ve had some groups that just want to go constantly and I think that’s ok, just not my favorite.
My favorite groups are the ones who want to listen to me geek out on this really cool looking spider or talk about how that native plant over there can be used to stop the itch of mosquito bites. Or my buddies who I used to go bouldering with. That group loved talking about rock formations and how a giant rock got into its specific place.
I’ve had way more experiences with the latter group.
I think local culture also has a hand in it. I’m in the Pacific Northwest, and we’ve got a serious hiking culture up here that is both obsessive and gatekeep-y.
I have been on hikes with rockhounds, and that’s been great, but they don’t call themselves hikers.
I spent a month in Seattle and know what you are talking about. I’m in the Pacific Southwest, so we have a lot of hikers here as well. It’s not always easy to find that balanced group.