402 Cynthia Radford ~ Do You Know How to Leave No Trace?

Transcript

Holly:  Hello adventurers and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 402. This is your host Holly Worton, and I am back with another fabulous guest.

Today I will be talking with Cynthia Radford, a lovely Instagram follower recommended that I have her on the show after we had a chat about some of the grey areas of Leave No Trace. This was such a fantastic interview, and I am so happy that I finally found someone to help clarify some of these grey areas for me. I learned a lot about leave no trace and I have a new perspective on several things, which was really enlightening to me. I have written about leave not trace in the past, I have definitely talked about it on the podcast, but it was really great to talk to someone who was an expert on this topic and learn some of the finer details.

Covid lockdowns has meant that many people who previously weren’t spending time on the trails are now getting outside more than ever before (which is great!) but many of them lack the common sense to know how to behave in the outdoors because they just don’t have the experience. So in this episode we talk about the finer details of leave no trace and how we can help people to gently educate others on this topic.

About Cynthia:

Following corporate roles in Management and   Development, Cynthia launched GreenLeaf, her own consultancy, where she’s helped diverse teams and leaders from more than forty countries align, thrive and accomplish important work.

Cynthia celebrates the possibilities of growth, insight and potential and specializes in creating nourishing learning environments where clients discover fresh perspectives to revitalize themselves and enable their organizations to flourish.

She’s a lifelong nature lover and explorer who finds peace and centeredness in the beauty of the natural world, enjoying hiking, gardening and photography. Adventures have taken her to a host of off-the-beaten-path places including trekking in the Himalaya and Andes and a successful Kilimanjaro summit bid to celebrate her 50th.

As a certified Nature Retreat Leader, Cynthia loves creating experiences for women to step out of life’s particle accelerator and reconnect with their authentic path and purpose in the tranquility of nature. Being with women on the same wavelength is healing for many – especially when the alchemy of that connection happens in beautiful natural settings where nervous systems can relax and reset. She facilitates higher level conversations, community and reflection to replenish women so they can keep making our world a better place and achieve soulful success.

Please visit greenleafconsulting.com to find out more about Cynthia and her work, you can find her on Instagram at Instagram.com/GreenleafCynthia. She has gorgeous photographs I really, really love them!

What are you going to learn on this week’s episode? We talk about what is Leave No Trace (or LNT) and why is it important. What to do if you’re new to the outdoors and don’t know the “rules”. Our thoughts on what may appear to be grey areas of LNT. Some surprising aspects of LNT that you might not know about (there are a lot of different things that you just don’t think about if you are not aware of these details, so it is really interesting). Finally, we talk about our leave no trace pet peeves.

So I hope you find this episode interesting and useful, and I hope you learn a little something about leave no trace.

 

Holly: Hello Cynthia.

Cynthia: Hi Holly!

Holly: How are you doing today?

Cynthia: I am fabulous today; spring is springing into action here in the Carolinas and it is such a great time of year to be alive!

Holly: I know, we had sunshine yesterday and today is overcast but brightly overcast, so you can really feel that things are changing, it is very exciting.

Cynthia: Absolutely and I saw my first hummingbird at the feeder yesterday so that is truly a harbinger of Spring.

Holly: Yes, I miss hummingbirds, we don’t have them here in England, so it is one of the things that I miss most about living in North America.

Cynthia: I can imagine that but there are other compensating factors for sure.

Holly: Yes, yes, we have other wildlife.

Cynthia: Indeed, you have hedgehogs.

Holly: Yes and they are so cute!

Cynthia: Absolutely adorable!

Holly: So, I asked you to come on today because a conversation has been sparked, first on my Instagram and then in my private Facebook group about the concepts of leave no trace. So I think some of the principles of leave no trace are common sense but not everyone has common sense and thanks to coronavirus we have got more people getting outdoors than ever before which is a good thing but not everyone knows how to behave in the outdoors. So I think this is a really important conversation to have.

Cynthia: It is incredibly timely and and I am so happy to have the chance to talk about it because certainly around here, and I would imagine around your way as well, the exuberance of well-meaning people getting out into nature and discovering for the first time has been fabulous but in some places the over-loving if you will has decimated some previously fairly pristine areas.

Holly: Yes. So leave no trace, what is it?

Cynthia: It is really this easy to understand framework, there are seven principles of how to have a minimum impact for anybody outside. And it was originally put together with back country settings in mind, so you know heavy duty backpacking but over the years it has broadened and been adapted so it can apply to a local park, it can even apply to your own backyard.

Holly: Yes. So why is this important?

Cynthia: Well, we only have one outdoors and we only have one nature and if it is gone it is gone. So to make sure that those future generations coming after us have that same opportunity to enjoy the multitude of benefits that are well-documented of spending that time out in nature, we need to get our act together!

Holly: I agree. So what are the main principles of leave no trace?

Cynthia: Well the first one is planning ahead and preparing. If you are new to the outdoors you may think, I will just hop in the car and have some sunshine and stretch our legs on a lovely trail. There are so many things to think about to make sure that goes well and one of the simplest is: don’t count on having a GPS signal on your phone to tell you where you are. You might think all of that has got a perfect trail map on it, but I am not so sure!

Holly: Google maps does not work in the outdoors! {laughing}

Cynthia: No, no, no, no, no. Study a map in advance and bring a copy with you. Signage may or may not be the best in the world, so you need to know where you are going. Part of the prep too is hey check the weather – it is more than, ‘do I need to take an umbrella?’. You need to know for instance, especially in the summer when there might be some electric storms, thunder and lightening can be deadly. I remember last year heading out on a pretty trail and hearing some fairly ominous thunder in the background and beating a quick retreat back to the car and meeting other folks who were just starting on the trail and I actually said to them, ‘do you hear that thunder?’, and they said, ‘ah yeah, we don’t mind a bit of rain’. And it was tragic that day about a mile away from where I was parked one person was killed and two were in hospital from a lightening strike. So do have precautions in mind when it comes to that. Another thing about planning is that it can make it a more fun experience because what we were saying before about how these areas that were once fairly away from the madding crowd if you will, are now full ,and packed, and some forethought might have fought a chance to sidestep some of that by taking a day off in the week if that is possible, what a treasure that would be to shake the weekend crowds. Or you know, if you are an early riser, get out there and see the sunrise and then be off the trail or out of the park by the time it is attracting the largest crowds. So that is part of planning ahead.

Holly: Yeah absolutely.

Cynthia: You know, make sure you have done due diligence, there is a terrific website, and I think you have already mentioned this in a previous conversation, lnt.org, they have a handy checklist. What are the ten essentials you need to take, even on what might be a short little walk in the woods? Always, we need more water than we think we will, yeah it is heavy, but you have got to stay hydrated. That extra layer, it may be a beautiful day, but you know just like we were just saying things change. So I fall back on my good old scouting days and that classic motto, “be prepared”.

Holly: So for people who aren’t used to going outdoors where else can they learn how to prepare? Do they need to go as far as taking bushcraft courses or that might be a little extreme? What kinds of things can they look into learning?

Cynthia: Sure well lnt.org is fantastic, the centre for outdoor ethics, they have educational materials that can even be downloaded and used for scouting groups or if you are needing a homeschooling lesson that relates to biology, those are fabulous resources so I cannot praise that highly enough. Obviously many other websites, magazines, books. I am certified wilderness first aid responder.

Holly: Ah yes, me too.

Cynthia: So one can get to great lengths, but don’t let that scare you off, don’t feel like you have to be credentialed in one of these things, with a bit of that common sense you mentioned and just simply thinking things through and ticking off that tick-list before you go, you will be perfectly fine.

Holly: Good. So what are some of the other main principles?

Cynthia: Well the next one would be travelling and camping on durable surfaces. I hear most folks say, well I am not a backpacker, I don’t plan on doing an overnight expedition, I am just going for a hike in the woods. So how that would relate to a typical woodland saunter would be stay on the trail, even if it is muddy and it means getting your beautiful new hiking shoes or trainers a little bit gunked up. Stay on the trail because you know that can lead a permanent scar if people are taking shortcuts, not only does that cause erosion as one can imagine but I have been reminded, just last week I was out to spot some really early spring wildflowers, the ephemerals that come out before the trees get leafy (they are just so pretty!). And I was noticing that they are really tempting fate because they are attracted to the extra sunlight that you get and when you have a trail through the forest there are extra light over that opening where the trail is and the canopy has a break in it. So some of the most fragile plants and wildflowers are nestled up there right next to where all these heavy boots are going by because they want the sunshine. So if it has been wet and rainy and folks are like: I don’t want to walk through that muddy patch I will just go through the woods and take this little shortcut, they are probably trampling out some things even if not visible now that might not have emerged yet. That’s just not a good thing to do.

Holly: I think that is a really good thing about not widening the trails and taking shortcuts and that is something that I have seen a lot on the trails, because it has been a wet, wet, winter here in England and there has been so much mud to the point where every time I went out I would come back and say to my husband, ‘there is so much mud, I am so tired of mud’, but I could tell that the trials were getting widened by people who were trying to walk on the edge of the trails. That meant the edge of the trail was growing and growing and growing. We will see how things emerge once things dry up in the summer and what the trails look like, but I definitely think there has been some serious damage done.

Cynthia: I’m afraid so too and it is just at the time when we really don’t have the extra resources, a lot of these places are either local or state parks that, they don’t have a full time staff, they don’t have a big budget (and if they have a budget it has been cut), to go out and put stepping stones and, sometimes I see them put logs or things for folks to walk on, but just when we need it most they are really not in a position to be able to do that so much. I just wanted to mention one other thing about the durable surface; a lot of people are really entranced by waterfalls and that is one of my magic places absolutely and those lovely mossy boulders and stones around waterfalls look so enticing. I have been learning that many of those are fairy fragile plants and some of them quite rare, especially close to the falls they have these spray cliff communities, so just take some extra care and think twice before you tread on places that look mossy and lush because it may actually do some harm.

Holly: Yes, they are quite delicate mosses.

Cynthia: Some of them are one cell deep and they depend on the moisture from the falls (and I could really go off on a riff here), suffice to say we could do irreparable harm to something that grows really slowly and has worked really hard to get to the point when we see a pretty community of it thriving.

Holly: So what’s the next principle?

Cynthia: The next one is one of those that sounds quite commonsensical, dispose of our waste properly of course. Don’t toss rubbish, don’t litter, that includes some fairly unpleasant things – I know you have touched on human waste for instance; human waste, pet waste, learning to dig a cat hole if that’s not possible depending on where you are, or you are not carrying the proper tools and implements, which would be part of our being prepared, then you need to bag out and carry it out. Heavy duty zip bags, there are systems in place if you want to get fancy about it, but that can have a real dreadful effect on the environment and I have seen things like discarded dirty nappies, bags of dog waste.

Holly: Oh yeah, that’s a problem here in England. You have got to bag up your dog poop there are huge fines, for some reason people will bag up their poop and then sling it up into a tree so it hangs off… they will just throw it so it hangs off a tree branch and then you have got these trees that have got these poop bags hanging from them.

Cynthia: That is just revolting, I have seen that too, sadly.

Holly: What are people thinking!

Cynthia: They are not! It would be far better just to fling the waste into the woods and let it biodegrade. There are problems with doing that, it needs to be buried, but that is far better than encasing it in plastic that essentially never biodegrades.

Holly: And I think one thing that people don’t realise here in England, we have a ton of public footpaths that go through farms, and dog waste can carry pathogens that can cause cows to miscarry and that’s a huge financial loss for a farmer if someone has their dog poop in a field, they don’t clean it up and the cow gets ill and miscarries. There are so many things that dog poop… urgh.

Cynthia: Yeah, people may think about, ‘well I will close the stile behind me’, but be the good neighbour and the responsible user of someone who is gracious enough to have the footpath through their land. And that actually applies not only to those footpaths but also in the wild, dog faeces can also carry pathogens that have great harm to wild creatures too. So the next one also sounds pretty commonsensical, leave what you find, we have all put that saying ‘take only memories’, ‘leave only footprints’, and some folks like to collect stones or natural objects, pinecones. You know it is all there for a reason, the stones may prevent erosion. For heaven’s sake please don’t pick the flowers because they can’t complete their life cycle for the next season. So just leave it, leave it where it is.

Holly: What about non-native plants. So one time I was out on this wildlife tracking course and one of the guys on the course was an ecologist and I stopped, I saw this flower that I had never seen before, stopped, bent down to look at it and he comes up beside me and says, ‘that’s a non-native’, click, and he just chopped its head off with a knife! Obviously, I think he was doing the right thing, he is an ecologist, but I never really thought about the impact of having non-native plant species that have been introduced that can cause havoc. So what about that, what are your thoughts?

Cynthia: Yes, that’s a very real issue. I would suggest leaving the eradication to the experts because plants can be confused but, indeed, some of the universities around here take groups of botany students for field trips and I have seen them before that have been encroached upon by non-native species and actually not just cutting them but rooting them out and burning them because that’s a horrific problem, especially some of the more slow-growing native plants can be completely bullied out of their habitat by these things. So the next principle again is fairly straightforward sounding: minimising the camp fire effects. Folks that going on a day hike most likely won’t have a camp fire but [may be] enjoying a wild place and think, ‘let’s toast some marshmallows/make some samoas’, is that only a US thing?  

Holly: It is a very US thing. We don’t have graham crackers; I have never seen graham crackers in any other part of the world.

Cynthia: Maybe a digestive biscuit would work, probably.

Holly: I think so too. I think so they would work. But Samoas are very American, I haven’t had one in years, they are so delicious!

Cynthia: Well, whatever one’s favourite thing might be, just sitting around, looking at the flames you know that is just so mesmerising but if able to do that obviously; just check to make sure that the conditions permit it, it is not too windy, too dry. And talking about the non-native things, another that has become a real problem is bringing fire wood from another location and perhaps introducing some non-native harmful pests even. So make sure that the wood is locally procured, or if you are in a remote place and you are gathering it yourself, there is a term ‘dinky, downed wood’, so that means no larger than your human wrist and that it is already down on the ground. If it is dead but it is standing that might be someone’s home, home to a critter or two. So those are obvious things to think about that. Then the respect wildlife principle, I think it may be some things beyond the obvious, people don’t always consider or know. Give them space, obviously, you see a creature, because we are visiting their home, right! We don’t want them to get scared or run away because of us! If we are into photography, using a long lens that zooms in, versus doing the human zoom. I have always loved the thumb trick, were you taught the thumb trick?

Holly: No, what’s the thumb trick?

Cynthia: Right, so take one of your arms and extend it out straight and make a thumbs up with your hand and then close one eye and try to completely cover the animal with your thumb. So move your thumb and when one eye is closed if you can’t see the animal anymore, if your thumb covers it up, you are far away. If you can still see the animal you better back her up a little bit more.

Holly: I like that!

Cynthia: Yep the thumb trick! It is so easy to get excited and say: well, they don’t seem frightened, but it is just best practice, give them some space. And then the other thing I have been seeing quite a lot more of lately are the cute little furry pan handlers. I think with increased visitors to parklands, you know, ‘just a little bit of a muesli bar’, ‘just a little bit of trail mix, it won’t hurt’…

Holly: Not good.

Cynthia: That’s not good at all because we know that animals that become habituated to human food, lots of bad stuff can happen. They might stop looking for their own food and natural stuff where they don’t get the nutrients they need. They can become aggressive which isn’t good for anybody! Then even worse some things that I hadn’t thought about personally, you could alter their migration habits and they could get stuck somewhere past where they are supposed to be and die from cold weather or their hibernation patterns could get thrown off if they are a little critter that hibernates. And some of the kind of things that can happen can actually lead to them having to be euthanised or moved to another places. No matter how cute they are just say no, just don’t go there!

Holly: Yeah, just don’t feed the wildlife.

Cynthia: And you know, we were talking a little bit about dog poo. Well dogs, even the most well-mannered, on a leash, they can scare wildlife just through their scent and some animals can be scared from their nesting places. To them, in many cases a dog scent means predator! And so they may hide in their burrows the whole day once they smell a dog and not go out to get their food or abandon a nest, so all that is something to think and be mindful about.

Holly: It is and that’s a pet peeve for me because here in the UK we don’t have leash laws, so as soon as someone gets on a trail they let their dog off the leash. 

Cynthia: Oh my goodness!

Holly: Yeah, so I am trail runner, I am a hiker and many times I have been out running on a trail and dogs have either barked at me or challenged me or jumped on me. Sometimes in a friendly way and sometimes not so friendly. And I just think: I am human, and they are doing this to me, what is the wildlife thinking? They must be terrified. I remember this one time I was walking this trail and there was this dog that was just going crazy, and I eventually saw that he was chasing a deer. So we are in the deer’s natural habitat, this dog is off leash, chasing the deer, just going crazy. I could tell the owners were behind me on the trail and I was getting so riled up and I stopped, and I said, ‘you might want to get your dog back on the leash because it is chasing a deer’. And then I turned around and walked back off and they just didn’t say anything. {laughing} Nobody had ever said anything to them like that before probably because people just let their dogs do whatever but I was so angry because we are in this deer’s home and yet it is getting terrorised by this dog that was just chasing it through the woods and these people were doing nothing about it.

Cynthia: Well that is being very inconsiderate not only of the animals and the eco system but other visitors too, which bleeds right into my next point, which is don’t be inconsiderate, even the best behaved dogs sometimes they get overstimulated when they are out, it is like a kid in a candy store, ‘wow all there things to see and smell and…’ you might not expect some of the behaviours that come out.

Holly: They are domesticated but they are animals, so they are going to get excited.

Cynthia: Absolutely! One of the things that I love about being in nature is hearing the sounds of nature and barking dogs really aren’t part of that mix.

Holly: Especially when the dog doesn’t have good recall and the humans are screaming at the dogs, you have got barking dog on one hand and screaming human on the other, and it is like, ‘my god can you just shut up or train your dog, so you don’t have to scream at it!’.

Cynthia: Exactly, you think about going to a spa and you go to zone out in tranquility and many people they want their time in nature to be like that not hearing someone scream for spot the whole time. It is not just screaming at the dog but noticing people that travel with groups or friends, the chatter, making sure the volume is a little bit muted on that front, so nature can prevail. I would much rather hear the wind in the leaves or the babbling stream rather than a babbling person.

Holly: So this is another pet peeve of mine that has developed over the last year and I actually wrote a blogpost on trail etiquette because I was so annoyed, I just needed to get it out of my system but so many people don’t seem to know the unwritten etiquette of sharing the trails with others because they don’t have the experience, because they don’t have the common sense, because common sense kind of comes from experience a lot of the time. So how can people learn what it means to be considerate of others out in the outdoors?

Cynthia: I’d send them back to that LNT.org, because there are some really foundational things. You know when you do your driver’s training to get a licence to use an automobile you learn there are certain right of ways for instance and so on a trail there are right of ways. And if you have been the person who has been huffing and puffing up a steep incline and then this cavalcade of people come down the trail and are forced to stop, you have realised how discourteous that was because you have lost all momentum. So for instance on the right of way, you yield to people coming uphill and give way if you are coming downhill, just for instance. So trying to be mindful of other people and help them enjoy their experience, in a safe way, obviously with Covid. I am one of these folks I still wear a mask outdoors if I am crossing paths with other people, just as a courtesy, it is probably not quite as crucial, but I would rather be safe and model the example of that more gracious behaviour.

Holly: I think that is a really good point about knowing the right of ways and who has priority, and that kind of thing is something that a lot of people don’t know. Here in England we have a thing called the Countryside Code which talks about who has the right of way over others and leaving gates as you found them and that kind of thing so I think there are a lot of rules that are out there that have been written or guidelines that people could seek out.

Cynthia: They all have a purpose to them, it is not just to make life mind numbing lay bureaucratic, it has a good foundation in the reason that it was created.

Holly: It’s funny because I belong to a bunch of hiking and running Facebook groups and things and I had asked a question in one of the Facebook groups about what is some of the unwritten etiquette that people might not know, because I seem to keep having clashes with people who aren’t aware that they are not the only people on the trail. And so many people said, ‘the reason I go outdoors is because I don’t want rules’. And I am like, yeah, but what about just being considerate about other people? It is not… some people just don’t realise that there are other people on the trail. I had such a pushback from the question there were so many people who said ‘I don’t want rules’.

Cynthia: Well if folks think about it, it is simply being kind to give other people that opportunity to get whatever benefits they are looking for when they come out in nature, not to inhibit other people’s ability to have that nourishing experience that everyone is entitled to.

Holly: So I wanted to ask you about some of the grey areas of LNT. This was something that came up on my Instagram post where I posted a picture of some fairy doors which were very delightful. And so there is this little woodland about a seven minute walk from my house. It is at the start of the trial, so it is near some houses, you are just starting to get into the woods and someone, probably a child and their parent, had painted these lovely little fair doors and put them all through this little woodland, there were about seven or eight fairy doors. And the first time I saw them I was like, ‘oh my god how delightful’ (they were so cute!), and I took pictures of them all and I was like, how cute, what a great idea, what a great project for a child. It really brightened my day, but it is not LNT, it is these pink and orange doors which are super cute but don’t really belong in the forest, but they were cute. I don’t know, it was like one of those things where I thought: I like it, but I don’t like it! {laughing}

Cynthia: Yeah and I think there is some confusion around a few things like that. I guess my fall back is that you wouldn’t want to redecorate someone else’s house without asking them.

Holly: Ooh I like that!

Cynthia: Mother Nature’s house is just the way she wants it to be, so it shows respect to forgo those kind of fairy doors or children’s shelters. Around here lately has been these inspirational stones, where people take a stone and paint ‘breathe’ or ‘smile’ or you know, ‘hope’ or ‘faith’, you know all these lovely words and then leave these stones behind a trail or in an opening in a tree or somewhere and no, no, no, no. It is beautiful in your garden, but it is sort of like imposing your own garden gnome vibe on everybody else. Nothing against gnomes but that is not what nature is. So to respect the nature experience just like we don’t take away we don’t bring in and leave things either.

Holly: I really like that and I am glad that you mentioned those inspirational stones, because they are actually some Facebook groups and communities here in my area, the Surrey Hills rock finders thing where children paint stones with little artwork and stuff and they will leave them somewhere in nature on a trail and then the idea is you find the stone, you carry it somewhere, you leave it somewhere else so that someone else can find the stone and the kids see how far their stones have travelled. Yeah, it’s fun, but it is not nature.

Cynthia: No it is not nature.

Holly: And also you are painting nature.

Cynthia: You are. It’s like the graffiti that people leave on a stonewall. Granted this is on a removable piece but still you are imposing your own aesthetics somewhere. And I would like to riff a little bit on cairns, and I know this can be a little bit controversial so I apologise in advance if I am opening a hornet’s next here, but I can get rather passionate about this, given some local issues here.

Holly: No, go for it!

Cynthia: Stone cairns have been used for centuries for navigational purposes and I am not talking about those; you know, they mark trails, some things I have read say they may have been originally created in Scotland. Wherever they started people have used those to mark a trail and a path and I have no issue with those.

Holly: Those are on a map here and you can see, especially in the really wild parts of Scotland, a cairn will be marked on a map so that you can navigate with it.

Cynthia: And bless them! I have hiked in the Himalayas, bless them thank goodness they are there! But we have all seen in recent years that people have started stacking them for art or for fun and just like the painted stones that we are talking about, that’s an issue; there is a visual standpoint but there is an ecological toll and some of the consequences have been really dire in this area because especially when you remove rocks from moist forests and streams you may be destroying the home of a critter and vegetation. And here in the mountains of the Carolinas we have some fairly rare salamanders.

Holly: Yes I saw that tell us about the salamanders!

Cynthia: Well there is a big one called the hellbender!

Holly: Yes that one, that has an awesome name!

Cynthia: Isn’t it great! It is like an amphibian, a critter with attitude, gotta love that. But these little guys, there is a whole list of them, but they live, some of them, up to 20 years, under a particular stone or a big stone in the case of the hellbender. And folks that come along and unwittingly move these things and stack them up they are destroying the home and some of these critters die. And some of these little animals are actually endangered and not only are we perhaps taking away the shelter but if you are around a little stream, you may have noticed that a lot of the rocks are slimy and green, that’s algae. I trashed a camera once because I stepped on a stone without algae and fell in and busted my lens, but anyway I have a history with these guys! The algae, if you stack stones up into a little tower, into a cairn, it drys out, it dies. And you may think, ‘that’s no big deal’, but it is because if a lot of that algae dies that was a food source for fish and other aquatic creatures and algae is oxygenating the water and serving like a filter to clean out the impurities and the heavy metals. So if thousands of folks are taking these stones and stacking them up and leaving them up you have just messed up the homes of a lot of little organism as well as impacting the water quality and while some things think that is art, it is just another infraction on mother nature’s own aesthetic and another sign a human was there.

Holly: If you want to make rock art do it in your garden don’t go out and do it somewhere else.

Cynthia: I don’t see much of a distinction if someone stacking a bunch of stones and saying that is art or someone writing big graffiti and painting ‘Fred loves Mary’, you know? Those are both changing the vibe.

Holly: Also, if you are creating rock stacks or cairns in an upland environment, mountains, or hills, you could be throwing people off course, you could be causing navigational errors which could be really dangerous to people if they are navigating using these cairns in let’s say a low visibility condition, they come across your stack and they think it is the cairn and they get totally off course, they get stuck out in a storm and it could be disastrous.

Cynthia: They could get hypothermia or worse. So innocently meaning as a decorative thing can have big time consequences for sure. Here where it can get even a little bit more controversial, my approach, when I find some, and they are always around the streams, especially around the waterfalls for some reason they seem to speak to people, I unstack them. I don’t kick them because, depending on how long they have been there, if you just topple them over willy nilly some animals might have started to live there, right? So I gently unstack them, place the rocks back down on the ground or in the stream bed, if they are right by the water. I always say to folks, you know if you have an overwhelming artistic urge to stack something why don’t you gather all the rubbish that you see along the trail and stack that and take a photo of it and then of course bring it out with you and put it in the rubbish bin! It takes a lot more skill to stack up some beer cans or cigarette butts or crisp wrappers. I have even seen cheap abandoned tents that people haven’t wanted to bother taking back home with them. Make some art out of that, take a picture and then dispose of it.

Holly: Good plan. And I thank you for saying about dismantling, gently dismantling the rock stacks because there have been many times where I have just kind of knocked them over because I am angry of them, but I haven’t thought, obviously, that there might be critters in there. So that is a good thing to keep in mind. So circling back to children’s shelters, this is something that also boils my blood when there are a lot of them in the woods and I feel bad because it is like: they are kids, they are making play, they are building shelter, that’s so great that kids are out in nature. But they are so unsightly, especially when there is a lot of them, and I am always tempted to knock them over but then I don’t want to be like the bad grumpy old lady who is knocking over children’s play things! I asked, I have been taking a lot of wildlife courses and that kind of thing, and I asked my teacher, we were talking about LNT and I said, ‘what about children’s shelters, what should you do with that? Should you knock them down?’, and he said, ‘well Holly the most important thing to do is to make small children cry’. And I was like okay, so is that a no? So I don’t touch them, but I am so tempted to because they are quite unsightly when there are a lot of them. What do you do, what do you recommend?

Cynthia: Well those aren’t so much of an issue around here, at least in the trails I have been frequenting I haven’t seen one in over a year, it is just not a thing yet. I am sure it will catch on if folks see it on social media and things tend to catch fire, but I would dismantle it, for all the reasons we have talked about and you do want to support the next generation of nature lovers. Part of that is educating them: animals homes, the eco systems and by not inserting ourselves into that we are being the best stewards of the land, so some of those lessons could be gently passed along.

Holly: And again gently taking them apart rather than kicking them around, because especially with these children’s shelters they are made with sticks and twigs and things where little creatures might be living, so that would be something that you would want to be gentle with dismantling. So another one of my pet peeves, and I have written a blog post about this as well because it drives me crazy, is what I call ritual rubbish. There are a lot of ancient sites here and one of my favourite sites is West Kennet Long Barrow, which is a 5500 year old tomb, which has been excavated and you can actually go inside it. But a lot of people will use it for ritual and pagan ceremonies. I myself have spent many hours in there meditating, it is one of my favourite places but every time I go there I bring a garbage bag, to remove the crap, because you have got candles, spilled candle wax on these stones, people have ceremonies where they leave photographs, they leave flowers and offerings. Stuff! The organic rubbish is one thing, but the candle wax just boils my blood and the incense sticks — people have their ceremonies and just leave stuff there.

Cynthia: I am in your camp 100%, Holly, because that shows disrespect not only to the other people that want to enjoy the special environment there but to nature, because these things don’t go away. There is a fascinating study, I was just reading some work out of one of the universities in New Zealand about the time it takes different things to biodegrade. Some of it is actually surprising, I thought ‘oh that’s organic, it’s an orange peel’, actually takes a long time.  

Holly: It takes ages.

Cynthia: So when you are thinking of candle wax with a petroleum base, that’s going to be there and if everyone did that the place would soon be unrecognisable.

Holly: Absolutely and if it is a space that is special enough to be doing a ceremony in it you would want to keep it clean and sacred and beautiful.

Cynthia: Yes and it is imposing on other people, leaving photos and other things like that, so once you have done your observance please pack it out, please remove it.

Holly: So are there any other aspects of leave no trace that people may not consider or be sure about? Or maybe they think it is a grey area?

Cynthia: I think there are few. I will say that I truly like to ascribe good intent. I think that folks that go into wild places in general never willingly do things to harm the places they visit but it is really good, even for those of us who know the principles, to refresh sometimes because there will always be an update because new things come along. In this time of overcrowding, we are all wanting that solitude and that magic, I think these are extra important to lessen the impact. Part of it is that we are all drawn to these beauty spots that we may have seen on social media or in guide books but what about seeking out some off-the-beaten-path places to spread out the impact; and then to give ourselves a little bit more of that solitude. Something else I would suggest is if folks are doing some overnight experiences, some camping, to make friends with the dark because light pollution is also a thing! I have been in some camp grounds recently where you have folks that are probably there for the very first time and I don’t know if they are scared of the dark, but they are lighting up their campsite like a UFO, it is like: turn those lights off people and look up! Once you are away from the town you can see things you normally wouldn’t but not if you are lit up like a fair. Just thinking about things like that. One other pet peeve of mine (actually I have got lots of them!).

Holly: Oh good, that’s my next question for you! {laughing}

Cynthia: Yeah, it kind of rises to the rock stacking level would be tree graffiti because I am seeing a lot of that and people carving initials and you may think, ‘oh how sweet’, ‘JJ+CR’. But no, no, no, no, no; buy some chocolates, a bouquet of flowers, it is not romantic and there is no reason to carve into a tree, and if you remember your basic biology about the Phloem and the Xylem and the different layers of a tree, even though it may be fairly shallow, you are cutting into the business part of a tree. That’s the place where the nutrients and the water are transported up and down the tree trunk and if enough people do it, I have seen a few places, again close to some scenic waterfalls recently, I just cried because they’ve essentially girdled the tree and they were all at human height, at hand level where someone could reach and above that the tree is going to starve, it may die. Even a few can introduce opportunities for pathogens to get under the bark fo the tree. When you have a ‘me too’ kind of an attitude where folks are like, ‘oh I want to do that too’, it can actually kill a very old and noble tree and I just think that’s a travesty.

Holly: And you are creating another permanent body modification on another living being without their consent. So it is interesting that you used the words ‘me too’, because the tree didn’t give consent to that!

Cynthia: Exactly, that was not a consensual arrangement!

Holly: It is like tattooing a small child or something, you don’t do that!

Cynthia: No, no, no.

Holly: So do you have any other leave no trace pet peeves that you would like to share with us today?

Cynthia: I think those are the biggest ones. There have been an abundance of new people into the area and something that I would say, for those of us that are more seasoned, is to be kind again, to have some patience and try to think in gentle ways to educate rather than shame, because those are newbies and they probably would like to do the right thing but if they haven’t been to scouts or girl guides or if they haven’t had opportunity in their various educational curriculums to learn these things, how would they know? So trying to come from a place of: how do we help and serve those folks that don’t know vs constantly being pissed off and that’s sort of a pep talk to myself, because I have been highly agitated so many times and it is hard sometimes to walk off that ledge and think: right, how can I help and perhaps prevent this in the future?

Holly: It’s funny because I can feel myself getting riled up last year about people being really inconsiderate and not stepping aside and big groups of people. I would be running and fastly approaching them and they were just talking, and I am like, where do I go? Do I go straight through them? I can’t go to the side… Anyway once I wrote that blog post on the etiquette of sharing trails with others like it was like it disappeared, it was like I needed to get it out of my system and it was just, it cleared up.

Cynthia: You put that out in the universe and…

Holly: I think so. So educated gently!

Cynthia: Absolutely and maybe just dropping little tidbits in social media, in conversation and it is amazing how those things can have an influence. Something small that we think can have absolutely no moving of the needle, accumulatively it can help.

Holly: absolutely, absolutely. Well thank you so much for joining us today. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do and where can people find you online?

Cynthia: Oh I would love to! So over the years my special area of expertise has been working with leaders and with teams to help them create the kind of place that folks appreciate getting up and going to work in the morning, these days if that is just around the corner to the closet that has been turned into a home office but creating those nourishing environments for professionals. And in the past few years I have been wanting to give back to women because I have seen how it is still much more of a challenge, for women to rise to the places of influence and have those careers where they can feel that they are significant and creating good in the world. That’s really where I am looking to specialise these days, women that maybe over 50 for instance and thinking about: okay what do I want my next chapter to look like? It may be completely different; I think after last year a lot maybe in that boat. So getting people to find resilience that nature can provide has often been part of that mixture, it has been so, so, important for me and I am finding as I really want to work with folks more authentically that I am bringing that into the formula and people are appreciating that, so greenleafconsulting.com has the whole scoop and I wish everyone well as they are looking to reconnect with nature and I think where most of us are going to find our trueness (that’s what I call it), just going back to ground zero.

Holly: Yes. So what social networks do you hang out on?

Cynthia: Instagram is my play place of choice and in fact I help moderate a leave no trace account there, so if folks are on Instagram look me up at greenleafcynthia and then if you would love to chime in on the conversation to leave no trace then just add something in your caption about that and there is more in my Instagram account about how to participate, because I think it is great, the conversations are so important and sometimes people get a little riled up, but that is good, get it off your chest, let’s talk about it and gather together as a community of people who are concerned and who care.

Holly: Yep. Sounds good. Thank you so much for joining us today, this was such a fantastic conversation.

Cynthia: It was a pleasure I wish you lived nearby; we could hit the trails together one of these days.

Holly: Maybe! You never know!

Cynthia: Look me up when you are in the Carolinas, I will show you some of my favourite haunts.

Holly: I would love to, I have never been to that part of the States and I have always wanted to, I have heard so many great things about the Carolinas so I will hopefully look you up some day.

Cynthia: that would be lovely, Holly. Thank you so much.

Holly: Thank you for listening, please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of this week’s episode, you can email at [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there, I would love to hear from you.

Thank you for listening and remember to visit: HollyWorton.com/402 for the show notes on this episode.