To write or not to write:
The ethics of adventure travel writing

The seminar was moderated by Geoff Powter, editor of the Canadian Alpine Journal and included Sam Lightner, a rock climber who wrote Exotic Rock and has helped develop adventure travel in Thailand; David Roberts, author of numerous books and freelance articles about adventure travel; and Hampton Sides, senior editor of Outside magazine.

What happens when your favorite trail is plastered on the cover of a local paper, or worse, a national magazine? Or a remote rainforest is shown on television as a great getaway?

The area becomes overpopulated with people, the trail loses its tranquillity, and pristine environments are sometimes altered beyond recognition. How can this be prevented?

One seminar at the film festival brought together travel writers to debate the dilemma of drawing attention to pristine and remote places, and the impact of such exposure on the landscape and its people.

"There is no way to experience a place without impacting it and therefore adventure travel writing has to be evaluated with this principle in mind," Hampton Sides said.

David Roberts noted that this sense of wilderness as a place wholly removed from the rest of the world is a distinctly American concept, "a sentimentalizing of the wilderness experience," he said. In contrast, Europeans have given up the idea of a true wilderness experience on the crowded European continent.

The idea that terra incognita will always be there is false, and should not be blamed on adventure travel writing, Roberts said. The panel suggested that experiencing the world is something more people want in order to escape the packaged, Disney-fied world of travel.

The panel also discussed the impact that writing can have. Sam Lightner spoke about his first winter in Thailand when he was climbing with 11 others on isolated beaches. Last winter, five years after his article on climbing in Thailand came out, he found himself surrounded by 4,000 climbers, many of them drawn there by his writings.

The power of the pen got Roberts banned by the Bureau of Land Management in Grand Gulch, Utah. He was denied entry to the park because he was in effect a commercial operator, making money writing about Grand Gulch, and all commercial operating activity had been stopped at the park. The ban was removed with a letter to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s office, but park officials worried that articles would boost visitors to unmanageable levels.

Although more visitors certainly alter the landscape, they can also benefit the local economy and advocates of environmental protections. Lightner explained that the vast numbers of climbers in Thailand have certainly helped bring a prosperity to the area for local businesses. But he added that the Thai government is considering ending climbing for fear of bad publicity if any climbers end up dying on the rocks.

Where would the defense of climbing come from if not from the many climbers who would be outraged by such actions? "I don’t think there’s anything to say against sharing the experiences of nature and passing it down by sharing it with others," Roberts said.

The discussion turned to what responsibility writers have to the place they write about. The panel and the audience agreed that a balance is needed. Each travel article could incorporate instructions about use of an area. Articles discussing the impact of development could be given more weight in travel writing. There could be efforts made to hide the identity of fragile environments.

"No matter what, we’re going to have an impact," Lightner said. "It’s a question of what kind of an impact we’re going to have." He suggested that a more proactive effort be made by writers and editors to have a positive impact.

Does travel writing create advocates for the natural world, or does it cause the demise? Or is it just possible that readers can be moved by new places, without even traveling there, and become supporters of a pristine world?

By Adam Hicks