Talking Trails: Navigating Outdoor Recreation and Conservation

In this episode of Wildly Curious (formerly For the Love of Nature), hosts Kim and Laura interview Leah Beck, a recreational use manager with The Nature Conservancy in Arkansas. Leah shares her experiences designing and managing trails, balancing public recreation with conservation efforts, and the challenges of maintaining natural spaces. Learn about the diverse ways people use public lands and how trail design impacts both the environment and the visitor experience. From building footbridges to dealing with the effects of social media on outdoor spaces, this episode is packed with fascinating insights for outdoor enthusiasts and conservation advocates alike.

Whether you're a seasoned hiker or just enjoy a casual walk in nature, this conversation will give you a new appreciation for the behind-the-scenes work that goes into creating and maintaining outdoor spaces.

Transcript

Yeah, and then it just goes away. I think it's recording now. Okay.
Hello and welcome to For the Love of Nature, a podcast where we tell you everything you need to know about nature, and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Laura.
I'm Kim, and I have the distinct pleasure and honor of introducing one of my all-time favorite people as our interviewee for today's podcast, and her name is Leah Beck.
Yay, welcome, Leah.
Thanks. Leah, do you want to tell the pod world a little bit about yourself?
Pod world, wow. We're happy. Pod world.
Sure. My name is Leah Beck. I'm originally from Iowa, but I moved to Arkansas from Maine, I think three years ago, so the summer has been pretty rough this year.
Yeah, real rough.
I work in outdoor recreation. I also recreate outdoors. I'm 30 years old.
I don't know what else to say, but I'm really happy to be here. This is great.
Cool.
That's great. We're so happy to have you.
Yeah, definitely. So we were looking for someone to interview about recreation. So thankfully, you are seeming like an expert so far.
So we're just going to talk with Leah a little bit and see how she feels about outdoor recreation, the types of careers there are, and like a little bit about what she does. Sound good?
Great.
Great. Great. I guess I'll start first.
Leah, what's your current role? What do you do every day?
Oh, interesting question. So I work for the Nature Conservancy. Nature Conservancy is a global non-profit.
It does conservation work on waters, lands, all the stuff that human life and animal life depends on. But my side of things, I work in recreation. So my role is a recreational use manager.
All that means is anytime the Nature Conservancy in Arkansas is planning on opening up a preserve to public use. I am helping create, design, implement, and manage any recreation amenities. So like trails, campsites, et cetera.
Gotcha.
I think you asked what I do every day. It's really varied. It's super varied.
I could be bushwhacking through thorns and ripping ticks off my arm, trying to flag out a brand new trail. Or I could be writing grants and trying to get funding for certain things. Or really just thinking about how we can better engage the public as a conservation organization.
Follow up questions. So do you do all the design of where the trails are going to be and the grade and all the tech stuff?
So yes. So I get to decide how that looks from start to finish, starting with talking to the community and neighbors of the area of whatever preserve we're putting in and figuring out, trying to predict future use, what they want and don't want. And then after that, I can draw lines on a map and try and make guesses on what's out there.
But the best thing to do is just to walk every inch of the preserve that I possibly can, lay out slopes and figure out what's going to be, A, the most fun for a visitor and the most useful for any, like highlighting any conservation work we have. So say there's like a sweet river or a beautiful river in Arkansas. We're going to try and make a view to that, to look over that river without putting someone directly next to it and, you know, dumping soil or sediment into it.
Gotcha. So you're kind of taking in conservation and people like you're trying to meet those worlds together.
Yeah, terrifying balance all the time. I'm sure.
And then are you actually like doing the grunt work of making the trails?
Sometimes. Yeah. So I mean, the last six or so years in my life, I was physically building features, tread for trails, big bridges, stonework, stuff like that.
Actually today, I built a bridge. It's like a 16 foot little footbridge.
Oh, you know, just a Friday.
Just building bridges. It was great. We're going to deck it with cedar, which is like a quote unquote native invasive of Arkansas.
So it's nice to be able to use something that we would take out of the landscape anyways. Yeah, so sometimes I do. A lot of times these days, I'm just, I'm behind the scenes managing contractors and working in an office.
I have, I literally got carpal tunnel and I've had an office job for like three months.
You're like, my body is not made for this. It's made for physical labor. I did one day of trail work when I worked at the state park and it was no joke.
What did you do? Like probably like 20 feet of trail. I don't, like not even a lot.
It was just like repairing and like fixing the slope, making it some like overflow stuff, some passages for water. So yeah, my friend who I was with, Elise, she's really into that stuff. And she was like, I'll teach you how it's done.
Cause she was doing some conservation work before then. And yeah, we took like our pickaxes or whatever out there. And yeah, it was very physical and to me very tedious.
So I appreciate anyone who takes enjoyment from doing such a thing.
I appreciate that you did a day of trail work. That's pretty rad. Also doing one of the most important trail maintenance activities, getting water to move off of the trail and getting water to move through the trail and through the landscape how it normally would.
Yeah, and just from that one day now, I feel like, you know how like when you've been in any career and Kim, I'm sure you know too, anytime you read documents and edit stuff, once you do a job, everything's forever ruined for you in that way. Like if I, so now when I'm out walking the trails where I work now, I'm like, oh my gosh, like these trails are terrible. They're so insanely eroded.
It's like a channel. And I'm thinking of like all the stuff that needs to be done, but we have nobody to do it.
I ruined many people's lives by sharing any trail of knowledge, including Kim's.
Yeah, we spent, we did a hike over at Pinnacle, because I forget why. We just wanted to. And I was like, Leah, tell me everything wrong with this trail.
I can only imagine. It's just like a lot of use. Yeah.
Yeah. And I remember on Pinnacle, they had like the, they had to do like some reroutes because people were just like taking over the whole side.
They're taking some good action now. They're widening the trail, lowering the slope and hardening it with rock. We live in Arkansas, there's rock everywhere.
So it's great that they're just using what's right there.
I also think it's important to point out, Leah, that Laura and Katie were at Rattlesnake Ridge once through the zoo, wasn't it? Yeah.
Yeah.
Some sort of workday there, and you got covered in ticks.
Oh, covered in ticks. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I think one time, I think we've been there twice. One was just like a walk to be shown around the property, because it was like when the zoo was doing stuff with them.
And then another time, yeah, I don't remember what we were doing. Maybe some kind of workday. I think just pulling trash out, or like something like that.
It was very early on from what I remember.
Yeah. It was like when the first got Rattlesnake Ridge.
Not get burned yet.
But the ticks.
The ticks were brutal. I think I had about 10 crawling on me today, and that was enough. That was a pretty good number.
You know for me, dog.
Well, Leah, like not many people really know that careers and jobs like yours exist. So what previous schooling and other steps in your career led you here?
That's interesting. So OK, so right out of college, I had a biology degree, and I thought to myself, will I ever use this? Unsure.
I really want to be outside, and I want to do outdoor jobs. And I wanted to move west, like a lot of people from Iowa do. So I moved to Utah, and I joined a conservation corps.
And if you don't know what conservation corps are, they're just AmeriCorps groups that have different focuses. And this one in particular was trails. But my crew was a 10-hour-a-day chainsaw crew moving invasive species from the Escalante River in Utah.
And I lived in a canyon, and I became a...
Dude, you must have been freaking jacked after that, okay? Because I've also done chainsawing when I worked in State Park. Like, we had to do chainsaw training, and my shoulders and arms were exhausted after just a couple hours of training.
Oh, yeah. I mean, we would come out of the woods after eight, I think it was an eight-day shift, and 10 hours a day just head to toe, caked in red dirt, and there were thorns in every part of our bodies.
And you went back for more?
And really strong.
Just really strong.
Yeah. Okay. So I went from there, got hooked immediately on outdoor work.
I love that that was your hook. Listeners, listeners, as horrible as it sounds, there was something that really touched Leah's soul.
Yeah, there's something about a suffer fest. I don't know how to describe this, but it's like the type of...
Do you like suffering outdoors? Yeah, it works maybe for you.
It was so beautiful.
Well, the strong part, like a good workout, you don't need to go to the gym anymore.
No, and you eat ridiculous things all week. I think I hiked in a pineapple and a full cake once because it was pretty... It just sounded fun.
It sounded like a good time. And we were strong, so we were carrying it.
Right, and you just worked it all off.
Yeah, yeah, I'm definitely not selling it well. That's okay. I moved to Maine to do the same type of work, but I was leading crews at that point, and they phoned out.
I wanted to do backcountry work and just sent me into the woods for like, I think, 10 months.
Just you?
No, me and my crew. I was leading a crew.
I was like, dang! They were like, this chick just wants to be all by herself in the backwoods. All right, see ya.
I'll see you in a year.
I'll never forget that there's black flies in northern Maine that are, you know, horrifying to deal with. However, we found that spreading mud all over her face. Kind of kept them at bay.
Just embrace it like rhinos, you know?
I remember our project sponsor came out one day rebuilding a stone staircase near the Canadian border, and he came out without asking or telling us, and we had mud all over her faces, full bug nets all over our entire bodies, and we're just like, we're feral. We were feral people at that point. Yeah, yeah.
How long have you been out there?
Yeah, he probably asks us that. We would go out, I think that one was also eight days at a time, eight or nine days at a time.
So when you say back country for 10 months, do you mean like you do not come back to civilization for 10 months?
No, we came out after every eight or nine days. Okay, okay. My favorite part about that conservation corps was they were like, okay, you know, well, we have something really special for you in your off time.
Instead of giving you housing, we're going to give you a state parks pass so that you can camp in your off time. And we were like, oh goody, I really missed camping from my eight days.
Oh my gosh. So you just camped for a year.
Yeah. Lived out of my car a little bit.
Yeah, I can't imagine. I mean, I love camping. I just can't imagine like, like having to like do that insane physical labor and then have to deal with like state park showers and not like a real bed.
Yeah.
After all the physical.
For sure. It was exhausting. But we were also young.
I mean, we were young people. Trying to find our way in the world.
And make it a better place.
Yes, exactly.
I remember being young and full of hope.
So, Leah, when you're not working, it's not 100 degrees every day. How do you like to spend time in nature? Like, how do you like to recreate?
Oh, I have tons of different activities I do. I feel like I'm very one dimensional now that I've said that I work outdoors, and I love being outdoors. I like to mountain bike, and gravel bike, and canoe, hike, and backpack, especially I especially love long distance backpacking.
So, yeah, I'll pretty much do anything else. I'll sip my coffee on my front porch. I'll work.
I'll work outside.
You know, any of that stuff. I really also love being outdoors with friends who have the same type of curiosity as me in nature. And so, like the folks who are going to stop when they hear rustling in the leaves and try and find like a lizard or a snake or whatever it is, or like stare at a plant for 20 minutes trying to decide if it's something we should take home or whatever, you know.
Yeah, it's definitely much better to spend time with your own people.
Rather than having to drag someone along outside.
I always think of some of my experiences long-distance backpacking where there's a subset of folks who, this is their own style, and it's totally respectable. It's just not mine. They're kind of on a mission.
They're goal-oriented, and they're going from A to B. It's about being in nature, but it's a totally different experience.
Right.
Right. I don't.
I'm looking at things that move.
Basically, just doing a biodiversity survey as I walk. What's one of the coolest backpacking places you've ever been or done?
I had the privilege and the choice to hike the Pacific Crest Trail a few years ago. I got to hike from Canada to Mexico over the course of four and a half, five months and walked through every landscape in the West that I had always dreamed of. It was spectacular.
Very challenging, very beautiful. A whole life-changing experience for sure.
I bet. Do you go with somebody else?
I started with a buddy, but we realized pretty quickly that she was much faster than me and much healthier in terms of injuries than I was. I just like immediately collapsed and all my knees broke and everything hurt. No, I struggled.
I had major blisters and injuries that were not compatible with like a crusher, someone going 30 marbles a day at first. So we split up and I did the rest on my own, but I say on my own, you meet people every day and you also hike with quote unquote trail families. So I was with one group for like a thousand miles or something like that.
And then the next 500 was someone else. So yeah.
Cool.
Dude, it's so cool.
It was cool.
It sounds really fun. Like, yeah, I've done, you know, I live out here in Pennsylvania, Maryland. And so I've done bits and pieces of the Appalachian, but of course, never the whole thing.
Yeah. I've heard the Atlantic states are pretty cool, but I did a I did research in grad school working with long distance hikers on the AT and asked them about their experiences and their preferences and all that good stuff. And one of my favorite questions is what was your favorite state and what was your least favorite state?
And I'm so sorry to tell you it's almost always Pennsylvania is the least favorite because it's so rocky.
It's rocky. I was just going to say I've seen videos of like where people take like a picture every day. And you can tell when you hit Pennsylvania because it's just bare rock.
Yes.
And yeah, for sure. No, I get it.
I do wonder. I'm like, or maybe they just have been spoiled by because I intercepted them at like the northern terminus. So I was talking to people right as they were staring at one of the most beautiful mountains in the country, Mount Katahdin.
And so they're probably trying to reflect back on all their experiences and they're like, yeah, I tripped over one rock in Pennsylvania.
And that was it.
It's the worst state.
The Appalachians there are just so worn down. Like everything is very like the rocks. There's just not a lot of soil there anymore.
It just feels really old, which is cool. But you can feel like you're in a very ancient, ancient mountain range.
That's pretty cool too. I feel like every state, there must be beauty and you know, influence.
For sure. Yeah, gotta be.
I mean, the half of a mile I hiked was just gorgeous.
Evidence right there.
That's right.
Half a mile, beautiful.
Half a mile in Shenandoah, it was great.
Yeah, Shenandoah is beautiful.
Beautiful part of the country for sure. So you talked a little bit about what you like to do outside, which is all the things. What about others based on like what you've observed through your career and just life?
How do other people use public lands and how do they like to enjoy the outdoors?
I think there's a huge spectrum of use across public lands and green spaces. I think we can all agree that green space, most green spaces are useful and good for the public. I've seen a whole slate of activities in the backcountry and the frontcountry.
Horseback riding, rock climbing, alpine skiing, anything that I said earlier that I enjoy to do, mountain biking, hiking, walking. But there's also like wanderers and bird watchers and folks who are just sitting and people who are photographers or disc golf or any of those types of things. I think there's just it's endless.
The list is endless for sure. There's even off-roaders like machine-based recreation too.
Yeah, yeah. My brother likes to do like the off-roading with the jeep and stuff.
Nice.
How do you or how do you attempt to balance the needs of everyone?
Wow, yeah. It gets really philosophical day-to-day up in my brain on how to create inclusive spaces while also creating opportunity for more rigorous or more, like I said earlier, backcountry recreation. But I guess I'll start with the balance.
Not everyone's going to be happy in each location. It's like a restroom. Right?
So you're going to have some places that are going to have paved trails because they're close to a bigger city like Little Rock, for example, where you can have folks that are either mobility impaired or people who just prefer to walk on paved surfaces. So it is important, right, to sift through preferences, opinions, you know, the I guess the trends and the popularity of what's happening in each area. But usually the landscape kind of lends itself to what's going to be the most appropriate activities to happen there or to go through there.
And then additionally, when you're building a trail or building a camping area or whatever recreational entity you're building, you got to think with a conservation conscious and then prepare for long term use of whatever activities you think might happen there or you're allowing there. And so it's tough to balance things like horseback riding or off road travel because those are going to be a higher impact on the type of trail or the type of recreation that's best for like a hiker or mountain biker. And so sometimes those things just end up being separated.
There's good examples balancing acts in the wilderness, but that's because the further out you go, the more filtered it gets and the less people you're going to see and the less people who are going to be upset that there's not a beautiful paved trail or something that's like not a tripping hazard or something like that. So yeah, I think it's a good question. I think it's a timeless question that the balance will be in peril forever.
And I think it's kind of a recreation professional's job to do their best to figure out what the most, I guess, what helps the most people and what goes through to nature and stays true to the environment.
Right, because I guess you're also balancing not just the recreation. Of course, every person wants to use this space, and then you have the people that don't want to use the space at all and leave it to nature.
Yes, and coming from a conservation, I mean, the Nature Conservancy is first and foremost a conservation organization. So they're protecting the resource first. We're not just building recreation for recreation.
It has a purpose. It's to show that, you know, having positive experiences in nature can lead to, of course, like a swath of health benefits and mental health benefits, but beyond that, future conservation supporters. Folks who had an experience in their childhood or someone who goes on their first hike or has a new place to recreate and they see wildflowers and they're thinking, oh, wow, conservation is the reason that this trail exists and that I'm able to have this experience.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, something that I've been thinking about a lot recently is it seems like visiting public lands and outdoor recreation, that whole umbrella terms for what people do outside. It just seems like it's grown in popularity so much since we were all kids, even. Is that something that you think to also be true?
Like, what do you think is prompting that?
Yeah, there have been several recreation booms throughout the last, like, 50 years. They're well documented, especially you just use the national parks as like a nice case study to base things off of. They've become more popular exponentially, so some years just from various schemes or whatever you want to call them.
But in addition to that, I think social media and the internet have really prompted a huge portion of the current increase in popularity and recreation. So... That makes sense.
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you can look up a picture of a backpacking trail somewhere that you've never been before and find every single bit of information about it. And if you weren't a backpacker before, that can give you some comfort.
And so someone who might not have traveled or done that, immediately has this ability to do so. It's kind of a blessing and a curse. But I think overall...
Oh, I'm torn. I'll also use the Appalachian Trail as another example. So, there were several books and movies.
I guess Wild is probably the most popular one about the Pacific Crest Trail. And there's this great graph of use on the Appalachian Trail. And the year after Wild came out is just the biggest spike that you'll ever see.
Everyone got inspired. Even when the book came out, there's a mini spike. Same with A Walk in the Woods, I think, is the other popular...
I think it was like a Robert Redford movie, which is hilarious. But there's a book read by Bill Bryson, a movie that came out similar. You'll see the spikes.
Social media and the internet have really facilitated part of this. But I also think the idea of disconnecting, getting out of the woods, and being away, all of that stuff is also just a general trend that people are experiencing, probably because we're just communicating about it more.
Yeah, and that we're, I think, right, more people spend their time inside, not by choice.
Yes.
Like, it's kind of like how, you know, like back in the day, like, nobody wanted to look tan, because if you were pale, that meant you could be, you were inside and you were rich.
Right.
Then everyone wants to be tan, because now we all want to show that, like, we have enough time and money to be outside.
Exactly. I mean, it ebbs and flows, right? I remember reading about Adirondack State Park.
Isn't that technically all a state park in New York? I think it is. But a long time ago, when they were first designating it as a public space, people were really upset about it.
And I'm sure that local communities, that has a different perspective. They will have a different perspective than, say, people from New York City. But it was advertised as a place to escape New York City.
It was a really long time ago. I don't know when it was. So it definitely ebbs and flows of what's popular when and how popular it is.
Well, and then like the pandemic too. Like use was like, even just at our little, where I work, we have just a little 100-acre nature forest preserve. The use was out of control.
I mean, everybody, that was the only thing people could do. You could just go outside. And so they were.
And it was great, like, to see everybody. But yeah, I'm sure all the parks got hit, slammed. And of course, then you get all the problems that come with that.
100%. Yeah. Parks were slammed.
I mean, any of our preserves saw significant use. I think we had 40,000 people in the first year, and that was all in COVID at this place. Rattlesnake Ridge, we were talking about earlier.
And then the next year was 20,000. And it's leveled off since then. So, yeah.
Yes.
Absolutely.
What are some of the impacts public lands are seeing from the increased or long term use, like we were just talking about with the pandemic?
Yeah, I will put them into two categories. So there's environmental impacts, and then there's social impacts that happen with increased use. So environmental impacts are what you're probably thinking about.
Degradation of natural resources, trampling plants or habitats, general pollution, trash, and things like that. Anything that you would imagine happening in a documentary where they're trying to tell you not to do this thing on the earth. So that's the environmental side of things when you look at overuse in parks.
But there's also social impacts that happen. So things like displacement, people who would normally go to a place that they love and they travel to all the time, but now they're seeing a lot more use and then they're displaced because they don't want to visit there anymore.
I totally know what you mean by that, for sure.
Yeah, I do that.
You know, if I go to a recreation, hike somewhere, and I'm like, you know what? That was too many people. I'm not going back there.
I think it's, sometimes it's situational, but a lot of times people just, that's their experience, and they'll hold that with them forever. So something like that. Also, the feeling of crowdedness.
You may have some negative feelings when you're on top of a mountain summit, if there's way more people than you and your brain think should be up there. So yeah, it becomes psychological really quickly. But those two types of impacts, environmental and social, they overlap, right?
They both circulate with each other. And I think you have to look more at why these things are happening. So if someone feels crowded, why do they feel crowded?
That's leading to them going off trail and trampling soil or habitat. So a lot of times managers say things like, well, it's just too many people. We have too many people here.
We need to just shut them all out. And instead, I mean, that's probably true. In some places, really, you know, like a sensitive cave or something.
Yeah, we probably should have the public in there, just scientists or something like that. But I don't think it's always the answer to just say people are ruining this place, too many people. Why are they ruining it?
Were there no trash cans and they didn't know what to do and they didn't have the knowledge, like I'm supposed to carry this out and not throw this on the ground, or were they just being jerks? Did they go off trail because they felt crowded or because they didn't know where the trail was and the trail wasn't built properly? So really analyzing those things, which I don't think, you know, often National Parks employees have time to do.
But I think it's important to me, and it's important for the future and any cultural shift we might make to try and avoid that in the future.
So then, I mean, you spoke to a little bit of it, but like, what is the solution? Like, what are things that we can do as regular public land users or, you know, someone who maybe be, might be in your role to minimize those effects? What are your suggestions?
Oh, I don't have an answer. I'm going to go.
Listen, here's the problems, but I got no solutions.
Yeah, I mean, we should be able to do that too, right? Give a problem and not have necessarily immediate solutions, but I feel like there's some pretty clear ones. From a project management or a recreation manager perspective, it's looking at that why, like I said before.
Why are people, why is it overcrowded? Where are people going? Why are they doing what they're doing?
And so that can help piece out what you need to do. And also potentially limiting certain spaces. Yeah, I know that.
I mean, even in the pandemic, they would limit by parking. At the very least, you could limit the amount of people by amount of parking.
Yeah, we have a really contentious parking lot. At one of our places, it's 15 cars. And the parking lot fills up and we close the gate and we say, you know, this is protecting our natural resource and the social experience that you'd have out here because you're now feeling solitude and people are upset, which is, you know, another thing I have to think about is, has this now ruined their interaction, you know, with the Nature Conservancy?
But the best thing I can do is communicate. We're trying to not overload our park and get people trampling anything or our trails washing out or anything like that. And we're trying to protect the feeling of solitude and wildness when we're like 20 minutes from Little Rock.
It's a rare kind of space. Like being next to a metropolis and feeling like you're not near anyone and way out there. And yeah, I think it's just really special.
That is one of the things about Arkansas in general. I was blown away by all of a sudden, you're in the city and then boom, you feel like you're in the wilderness. And I'm sure that's probably what most people think Arkansas is like, but it really is that way and it's cool.
I don't know what people think of Arkansas.
I think they probably think it's so backwoods, there's no cities at all.
I think that and they probably think of the Delta and farmland, but there are two mountain ranges, the biggest between the Rockies and the Abalachians, and they are spectacular. And they have incredible, incredible views and flora and fauna and all sorts of things. I think you also asked me what you can do just as a regular visitor to a park to avoid negative impacts or physical impacts to the environment.
Have you guys heard of Leave No Trace?
Yeah.
Of course you heard of Leave No Trace.
But our listeners might not have.
Right. So there's seven principles to Leave No Trace. I can list them out if you want, and then you can cut it.
The first one is travel and camp on durable surfaces. And so what that means is you stay on the trail. You camp in places that are meant for camping.
You drive in places that are meant for driving. And if there's an already impacted location and you're choosing between that and just open woods, you choose the impacted location first. So that's the first one.
I immediately forgot all of them as soon as you said it. Well, the third one is dispose of waste properly. Pretty clear to most people that you shouldn't throw your trash on the ground.
But there's way more to this than just packing your trash out. It means if you're going to poop in the woods, which sometimes there's emergencies, and sometimes you mean to do it. You need to follow.
I can confirm both of those are real.
I'm just picturing all the emergency poops I've had from backtracking.
Emergency poops.
But it also means disposing of your human waste properly. You should just follow whatever local regulations that is. So a lot of times it's digging a hole, which is quite arduous but necessary.
Or places that are really, quote unquote, sensitive like the desert. There are things called ditty bags, or you might have to poop in a thing called a groover. I can tell you all sorts of background.
We'll have to ask her a whole episode of poop. Yeah.
Leave What You Find is the third principle. I think that one's always tough for me. I just showed you a crystal.
Yes, it is so hard. It's so hard.
Yeah, we're like plants. Unless you're a botanist, it's hard to know if I'm going to hurt this little plant by taking a piece of it and making mint tea out of it. But I think, generally speaking, the best thing you can do is take pictures and not take anything out of the woods.
Yeah.
Leave it exactly how it looks. Minimizing campfires.
At least like in the places, too, that have state parks and national parks that obviously have very clear rules about, you know, don't take the stuff.
I think it's a crime if you take anything out of a national park.
I think so, too.
Can I tell you about the crime I witnessed? We were hiking down in Shenandoah, and we pass a couple with a dog. I'm looking at the dog.
And I see in a plastic bag, half in her day pack, she dug up some plants to take home with her.
Yeah, and I was like, that's bold.
So don't do that.
Definitely not in a national park.
Absolutely not.
Rangers will stop you, too. It's pretty risky.
I'm sure you'd get a hefty fine.
Unless you're barehanding some poison ivy walking out of there.
Then I think they'd thank you.
Oh, that's funny, Kim.
I had no idea what you were going to say was in that plastic bag. My brain was going a million places. I was like, a dead animal, a live animal.
That was what I was like. They have stolen a live animal.
I truly think it was just some wildflowers that they found particularly enjoyable on their way down. And I was like, I'm wincing to the people who can't see this. But yeah, it was wild.
I didn't think that people I never watched anyone do that before because I knew that was something you weren't supposed to do.
I'll just list the rest of minimizing campfire impacts, right? So you're building a campfire in an appropriate area, especially a fire ring. You're putting it all the way out.
Talking about you Californians. So always put a fire foley. Whatever you gotta do to put it out.
Respecting wildlife. I always think of the folks in Yellowstone who are trying to put the knife in. That is, I mean, that applies to all animals.
Quit petting things or trying to pet things. Respecting wildlife is part of leaving the area exactly how you found it.
Yeah, don't try and kill it.
Don't try and let a spider on fire.
As a visitor, it's your responsibility to research what you're going to encounter and what that animal will do if you're near it. So if you're going to Maine, for example, you should know that there's black bears, there are moose, there are like bobcats and smaller cats, and you need to know what those things are going to do if you come across them in the woods and how to look for them as well if you've seen bear sign. The last two are my favorite.
Be considerate to other visitors. So part of Leave No Trace is also making sure that you are protecting that social experience I was talking about earlier. And so I guess it's kind of an unwritten rule for all natural places that you shouldn't be disturbing other people.
You shouldn't be blasting loud music if someone's trying to bird watch or you shouldn't be a huge party on the top of the mountain if other people are also present. And then the last one is called Plan Ahead and Prepare. I think we're all guilty of not doing this properly.
Definitely.
Yeah. And so if you don't plan correctly, you don't prepare correctly, kind of like I was talking about with the animals, you're going to put yourself in a situation that is taking away from park staff or other hikers to help you or causing you to go off trail or any sorts of the other leave no chase principles. So always plan ahead and prepare, kids.
Yeah, I can just make stupid decisions because, right, you weren't or just not even thinking in general. But planning would be a good start.
Planning is a good start. Sometimes I just I throw a pin on the map and I'm like, I want to go there. Looks like there's a waterfall there.
How do I get there? How do I figure it out? And I don't do enough work.
I don't bring enough water. But if you have enough experience being yeah, especially right now when we're drinking like a liter every 20 minutes. No kidding.
My gosh. Yeah. Yes.
Um, well, is there, I guess, as like a fun maybe final question, is there any, um, any place that you've been recreationally that you do want to send people to? Like, everyone should go visit this place and a place that you hope that nobody goes to visit because you don't want the impact.
I can't tell you the place I don't want anybody to go. I'll hint at it. It's on the coast of Maine.
And at one point, it was a secret, and then Outside Magazine did some write up about it, and now everybody knows about it. But it is still beautiful and wonderful. Actually, anywhere on the coast of Maine.
Oh, yeah, that's like, I've been there once, and it's the only place I've ever seen tidal pools, because I've never been on the West Coast.
Oh, yeah.
I was like, ooh.
A place that everybody should visit? Oh, that's a really hard question, though. I mean, I think everybody should visit their local state parks.
I think everybody should go explore what's around them. And then your closest national forest. And literally just go park on a road.
You know, obviously travel camp on durable surfaces. And go exploring. And go see what you find.
Cool.
And look around. A place that I think is so beautiful that I think everyone should experience, but is hard to get to, is the Northern Cascades in Washington. Unbelievable.
Also, Central Oregon, hiking on the PCT, if you can do a section or a day hike, where you can see all of the big volcanoes in the area.
That's nuts.
Yeah, like Adams, Rainier, Seahaw, whatever they all are. It is breathtaking.
I bet.
But I think that it's... Leah, I think you said it right. To be able to access a bunch of these national parks or the places that you see on Instagram or TikTok or whatever.
It's hard and it can be prohibitive, but there are plenty of places near you. Big and small. That are just as worth exploring.
Yeah, and I just think it depends on your point of view and your level of curiosity. As all of us know, if you're really looking, there's always something cool, even if it's a place you've visited a hundred times.
That's right.
I spent a lot of time in my backyard, and it's just as cool as the first time I went in my backyard.
And at work, that little forest preserve, I've explored a lot of it, and people, it's in the middle of the city, but there's something cool. Almost every time I go outside, there's something new and different. Like an insect I've never seen before, or whatever.
Maybe that's the advice, then, right? It's just like, go find cool things. And redefine what you think is cool.
And go see what's in your little city parks, the corners of your city, or what's closest to you.
Yeah, yeah. I think that would be a really good advice. Get outside, spend the time outside, but it doesn't have to be like a crazy, you know, like an expedition anywhere.
Yeah, it could be. But also you could walk down your street and find a slug, and then ponder what slugs eat, and then Google slugs, and then go back out the next time, and then you know what it is and what it's doing.
Are you speaking from personal experience?
Yeah, there's a slug on my porch the other day, and I was like, what the hell is this thing?
What does it do?
Yeah. I love going down rabbit holes like that.
Yeah, and you all are the nature people. I guess I have a biology background, but that was so long ago that I'm not well-versed, especially in Arkansas. And so my time in the outdoors is probably a lot different than even yours, where I'm just staring at a bird, and I'm like, it's super blue.
It's not a blue bird, but it's something else. What is it? And I go text Kim, and I'm like, oh, it's an Indigo bunting.
Okay, got it. The first time I went camping in Maine, I had never heard a grouse before.
Like the drumming?
Yeah, okay, you all have heard it before. So I was camping the first night, I heard it, and I thought, I'm having a heart attack. It was incredible.
It was inside my body. That was the sound. And I freaked out, and the next morning, I confessed it to my entire crew.
I was like, you guys, I don't know what's going on. Were you hearing things or was that inside my brain? And they were like, that was a grouse.
It was just like right in the plant. Being a grouse, yeah. And then on the PCT, the grouse would show up, and they didn't know how to leave the trail.
They would end up on the trail on a very steep slope. And I would walk up to them and be like, sir, are you going north or south?
Like some dumb birds.
Yeah, and they would be like, I don't know who you are or what you're doing. And they would just walk down the trail. And I'm like, get off the trail.
You're like, they didn't just jump off. You're just masculine grouses walking along this trail.
They were better than the marmots though, because the marmots I would sneak up on in the fog, and I didn't know they would be there. And then they would scream whistle as soon as you presented yourself. Announcement!
There's an intruder!
That's so funny. Probably scared the crap out of me the first time. It wouldn't be.
Someone started shrieking.
Never heard one before, and I was just like...
Yeah. Alright. Well, thanks so much, Leah, for joining us and talking about, you know, recreation management.
I think it's something that most people don't think about. They just go out and play. Right.
But they don't think about, like, the thought process behind it all.
For sure. And that's all I think about, so I'm glad to talk about it with y'all. Thank you so much for having me.
This was an honor, truly.
Good, good. Laura, we're so glad you could make it, and Kim, thanks for setting everything up and tag teaming with me today.
Absolutely. It was fun.
Alright, everybody. Well, be sure to tune in next week. The season's not over yet, and don't forget, we're never stopping again.
Because Kim is going to be covering with many episodes in between official seasons.
Get ready.
We will be in your ears forever.
Bye everybody. Bye.