This post is a follow-up to a post [LINK] explaining my mindset toward the notion of "wilderness" and appreciation of natural scenery versus urban scenery in the US. (That in turn was a follow-up to a post [LINK] about an essay by the environmental history professor William Cronon regarding the delusional or dishonest way that many Americans & Europeans have come to see notions of "wilderness" since the 19th century.) This post, which was not part of my original plan for this series of posts, was motivated by a recent vacation that I took with my family to eastern Washington & northern Idaho (which together form part of the inland Northwest, along with eastern Oregon & southern Idaho). In particular, my family & I, with me sitting in my manual wheelchair being pushed by them, took hikes on trails, usually built on former freight railroad tracks, that were paved with asphalt which was as smooth as advertised (smoother than many roads and much smoother than many asphalt walkpaths, including in some other state parks that we visited in that region).
There were specific instances when hiking on those trails where I felt like I was being hypocritical or unduly entitled, possibly at least superficially in contrast to my views & beliefs that I have articulated in the linked posts preceding this post in the series. This post is an exploration of those sentiments of hypocrisy & entitlement. Follow the jump to read more.
Availability of Smooth Paved Trails
Broadly, I have consistently had a fairly utilitarian view of natural spaces. I haven't sought them out much, and when I have been in them, I have been able to appreciate them to some degree but haven't felt any sort of transcendent joy or peace from being in them. Additionally, national parks in the US are well-known to many Americans, but I have generally not been able to go on most trails in those parks because hardly any trails are paved, and even in the last few years when I have become more aware of the possibility of searching specifically for paved trails, I have found that most national parks have no paved trails, and the ones that have paved trails have very few such trails that are very short (seemingly done as a barely meaningful token act of charity for people who use wheelchairs). This has reinforced my sense of bitterness about national parks, which has previously extended to the broader set of natural parks in the US (including state, regional, or local parks other than those in urban or suburban areas).
What changed for me was that through my job, I happened to come across information about the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes in Idaho, including its sordid history of being created as an asphalt paved trail to prevent further leaching of toxins from an abandoned railbed into groundwater (disproportionately harming the indigenous Coeur d'Alene Reservation there). I was intrigued by the promise of a smooth paved trail for dozens of miles through beautiful rural scenery in northern Idaho, and I further happened to come across the website TrailLink [LINK] which let me search for other paved trails, including long ones (which would more likely be in rural areas and not tokens of charity for people using wheelchairs), anywhere in the US (including the inland Northwest). Thus, upon finding a few other similar trails nearby and seeing how long (over 70 miles, entirely within rural areas) the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes is, I planned a family vacation there. I was very happy to see that the asphalt pavement in the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes as well as most other trails which we hiked was as smooth as advertised, so I felt no discomfort sitting in my manual wheelchair being pushed on those trails.
The joy that I experienced on this vacation in the inland Northwest was perhaps a bit less than what I experienced when traveling through rural New England just over 1 year ago (in the late spring). This is because I was still dependent on my family to get around in a car and to push me in my manual wheelchair on these trails, as it is extremely difficult (and expensive) to get a rental car that can accommodate a vacationer using a power wheelchair in most of the US. I would like to imagine that I might have felt at least as much transcendent joy if I could travel to & on those trails in the inland Northwest independently using my power wheelchair as I did when traveling through rural New England over 1 year ago. Even with this caveat in mind, I really liked the vacation and felt genuinely mentally relaxed throughout the vacation. More importantly, I felt motivated, like never before, to plan similar vacations for myself & my family in the future, specifically looking to hike similar paved trails in rural areas elsewhere in the US (with a nice bonus for me being if those areas are in states that I have not yet visited). This shows that my longtime past stance of not caring too much to visit natural parks was really reflecting a lack of access in the design of trails in such parks for people using wheelchairs (like me), so once that could be fixed, I could feel a lot better about visiting them by actually making an effort to do so.
It is worth noting that there are essentially no paved trails in rural areas in California, even outside of national parks. Thus, my bitterness remains about feeling excluded from natural parks in California, and those feelings of exclusion & resulting bitterness remain compounded the neglect of urban spaces & car-oriented transportation in California.
Obvious Rural Poverty around Slightly Less Conventional Natural Parks
Most national or state parks in the US that are meant to cover wilderness have large connected areas where there can be no permanent human development other than some minimally allowed facilities for park visitors. By contrast, some of the trails that my family & I visited, particularly many sections of the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes in Idaho, had private property lines extending to the edges of the trail, so the state owned & managed literally only the land covered by the trail in those sections. This meant that the particular order of trailheads along that trail which my family & I covered led to some unexpected twists & turns in the development of my opinion of the trail & more broadly of similar trails.
In particular, we first went to the trailhead in Medimont. As it was our first time seeing the trail, I was quite impressed by the smooth, flat, and wide surface of the pavement, and I therefore felt more willing to appreciate whatever natural beauty I could find there. Near that trailhead, there were signs of permanent human habitation & particularly rural poverty, including homemade snacks set by a local resident upon an unsteady table, a random basketball hoop set up, and a seemingly abandoned shack. At that time, I figured that this merely reflects what I already know about the way that humans have been able to live within such natural rural (not strongly urbanized) spaces with a light-touch approach to the land. Furthermore, I was reminded of how many national parks in the US were created as supposedly "untouched wilderness" after killing or violently displacing indigenous peoples who had been able to live in those places for many centuries with a light-touch approach to the land. Together, these points made me rationalize a sense of appreciation that the trail felt more honest about the relationship of humans with nature than most natural parks in the US are, and I could appreciate that more. I felt like I had to further rationalize an appreciation of the natural surroundings, as the hills & mountains were a little farther away than expected, we couldn't walk too long next to the Coeur d'Alene River (due to that section's greater distance from the trailhead) so we missed most of that, and there were random ponds that looked somewhat unsightly & had clear signs of harm by human activity in the form of eutrophication.
Two days later, we went to the trailhead in Enaville. I was again impressed by the smooth, flat, and wide surface of the pavement. That time, though, I felt more easily impressed by the natural scenery, which lacked signs of rural poverty or permanent human habitation very close by, had mountains & the Coeur d'Alene River much closer, and lacked ugly ponds containing eutrophication. This made me realize that deep in my psyche, I, like most Americans without disabilities, prefer natural parks with conventional natural beauty & without signs of human habitation, and all that it took for me to realize this was being able to experience such scenery on a smooth paved trail where I could be comfortable to a significant extent.
I still intellectually believe the things that I have believed about human settlement in such areas, light-touch modification of those ecosystems, and the dishonesty of national parks presenting natural spaces as "untouched wilderness" (especially in the US given its history of committing genocide upon indigenous peoples). I recognize that it is somewhat hypocritical for me to recognize this and still, at an individual level, prefer natural parks with fewer signs of human habitation & more scenes of conventional natural beauty, and I don't know whether the fact that I recognize such dishonesty or hypocrisy is worth anything to anyone else.
My Tolerance of the Weather of Different Climates
I came to realize too that a big part of this story was the weather during the vacation, reflecting the climate of the inland Northwest. The summer season in the inland Northwest features little precipitation, low humidity, high daytime temperatures, and mildly low nighttime temperatures (implying big temperature swings between day & night). This is quantitatively similar to the summer climate of the Central Valley in California and qualitatively similar to summer climates along the west coast of the US (though drier, with lower daytime temperatures, and with smaller temperature swings between day & night).
When I visited California a few times around the summers in the 2010s (while I still lived in the Northeast), I had some bad experiences with heat exhaustion, with symptoms including fatigue, elevated heart rate, and slight dizziness, due to the combination of high temperatures, direct sunlight unmitigated by cloud cover, and low humidity. Once I moved to California in 2021, I came to understand that I could have avoided some of these symptoms by drinking a lot more water than I was accustomed to in the Northeast, taking care to wear a hat & sunglasses, and taking care to stay in the shade as much as possible. My ignorance before was because I was much more accustomed in the Mid-Atlantic & Northeast to humid summers, where the persistence of liquid sweat on my skin (without evaporating, due to the high humidity) would be uncomfortable enough to ensure that I wouldn't stay outdoors for very long anyway, shade wouldn't make much of a difference, and drinking water wouldn't promote the evaporative cooling benefits of sweating; by contrast, in the dry heat, my sweat was evaporating in a way that I could not consciously perceive, so I was becoming dehydrated much more quickly than I could imagine. However, as I see now with the benefit of hindsight, this perversely calcified into a rationalization that I supposedly prefer humid heat over dry heat for a few reasons, with such rationalization coming in parts from the traumas of being hit while I lived in California, my growing desire after being hit to move back to the Mid-Atlantic or Northeast, the extremely high temperatures essentially every day of every summer in Davis, and the sparsity of shade from trees or rolling hills around Davis that could provide relief from direct sunlight (so even with a hat & sunglasses as well as drinking enough water, I still felt uncomfortable in that baking heat).
Two years ago, I spent the entire summer in the Mid-Atlantic, and I moved back to the Mid-Atlantic last year around the end of spring. Thus, I have spent 3 consecutive summers in the Mid-Atlantic, and I am willing to admit that especially with worsening global warming, the combination of very high temperatures & very high humidity levels along most of the eastern half of the contiguous US (outside of Massachusetts & northern New England as far as I know) is no longer tolerable to me.
By contrast, I came into this vacation prepared. I consistently wore a hat & sunglasses outdoors, drank enough water each time I felt remotely thirsty, stayed in the shade as much as possible on the trails (especially when not moving), and stayed outdoors only during the cooler parts of the daytime hours (i.e., the morning & early afternoon); the latter point was helped by the early sunrises & sunsets in the inland Northwest (compared to other locations around the same latitude & in the same time zone). My preparations were rewarded, as with the exception of one day which was extremely hot, I never felt heat exhaustion or even intolerable discomfort in that hot dry weather.
Thus, I am willing to admit, like I never did when I visited or lived in California, that when comparing summer climates, I physiologically & psychologically feel much better when it is dry than when it is humid even if the temperatures are higher in dry climates. I am in turn willing to empathize with people who live in the western half of the contiguous US (including California) who prefer dry summer climates on an individual level. That said, I still prefer summer high temperatures to be in the approximate range of 25-30 degrees Celsius (77-85 degrees Fahrenheit) with low humidity or 20-25 degrees Celsius (70-77 degrees Fahrenheit) with high humidity as I don't like much higher temperatures even with low humidity (while lower temperatures, irrespective of humidity, don't feel like a "proper summer" to me), and I still genuinely struggle with heat exhaustion even in dry summer climates when the temperature is more than 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit). Additionally, I still intellectually recognize broader systemic problems with large-scale human settlement patterns & encroachment on forests that are inherently vulnerable to drought & wildfires in hot dry summer seasons.
In any case, the positive experiences of this vacation due to my preparation for the climate being rewarded has given me more confidence to take vacations in the summer in other areas in the western half of the contiguous US & prepare accordingly. That confidence even instinctively extends a little into planning similar vacations in the eastern half of the contiguous US, though I intellectually recognize that the combination of high temperatures & high humidity levels may limit my enjoyment of natural parks in those places in the summer season. More related to the latter point, I even came to feel a little more bitter, like never before, about the summer climate of the eastern half of the contiguous US, including the Mid-Atlantic & most of the Northeast, because of the combination of high temperatures & high humidity levels making it such that I can only comfortably be outdoors during the fall season. (I anticipate that in most of the contiguous US, the prevalence of plant pollen in the spring season would make me struggle with seasonal allergies, so I wouldn't feel comfortable anywhere. Meanwhile, I feel marginally more comfortable in the slightly more moderate & dry cold climates of the winter season in the Northeast & Mid-Atlantic than in the extreme dry cold climates of the Midwest, Plains states, or Mountain West or in the slightly warmer but uncomfortably wet cold climates of the Northwest, the South outside of Florida, or California outside of the San Diego metropolitan area, but now that I work remotely, I don't really feel motivated to go outdoors in the winter season wherever I live, in part because anywhere in the middle latitudes, there are too few hours of daylight anyway; in fairness, I have not spent significant time in Florida, the Southwest, or the San Diego metropolitan area in the winter season, so I can't speak as much to those climates. In any case, this means that I can only hope to enjoy the summer & fall seasons outdoors.)
Changing Stages of My Life, Dependence on Others in My Life, and Changing Political Circumstances of the US
There have been a few other factors related to my life in the last year that I see as important for explaining why I was more willing to plan and then ultimately enjoy this vacation in natural parks. These are as follows.
First, since moving back to Maryland and reflecting on my past at my current age, I have come to feel a lot more settled in my life. I have a permanent job (as opposed to a temporary job like postdoctoral research). I feel much more emotionally comfortable with living in Maryland than in California (despite not living in an urban center and despite not visiting New York City or Boston as much as I would have hoped since moving to Maryland), not only because I am in a more familiar social & natural environment but also because I actually get to see relatives & friends a lot more often in Maryland than in California; a large part of this feeling of comfort in Maryland compared to California is that after I was hit, knowing that my postdoctoral research job was temporary anyway, I mentally strove to move back to the Mid-Atlantic or Northeast and never made any effort to become comfortable (through making friends or in other ways) with living in California. Because I feel more settled and also because my hobbies & other interests have shifted with age (the latter for reasons that I will at least partially describe below), I now feel more OK with trying vacations in natural parks and taking things slowly on such vacations without worrying about whether I could be having more fun in an urban setting or whether I could be doing something else more mentally stimulating (likely in my home at my computer).
Second, I have been living with my family for over 1 year in a suburban part of Maryland. This has made me depend on them for transportation. Because of this, I have become more accepting of taking vacations with them and depending on them to get around in my manual wheelchair, even if it falls short of my ideal of independent travel in my power wheelchair. It is worth remembering too that rural natural parks are by definition far from urban centers, and in the US, they are almost never connected by public transit or private buses (apart from occasional package tour buses, which are different anyway) to urban or suburban areas; this means that I cannot expect to be able to easily get to such natural parks using my power wheelchair anyway, so I am probably forced to accept some level of dependence on others in order to see those natural parks by having them drive me & push me in my manual wheelchair. That said, I will of course look for opportunities to visit such rural natural parks in my power wheelchair which I can get to using public transit or private long-distance bus services; I suspect that the best opportunities to do so may be in northern New England.
Third, perhaps from a combination of my aging, observation of deteriorating social trust in the US (especially given the political situation that has set in since the early part of this year), greater sense of contentment from living in Maryland, happiness with my current job, and particular happiness with the varied social interaction that I get with my colleagues at my current job, I don't crave spending time with relatives or friends quite as much as I did when I lived in California or earlier in my adulthood (though I still do want to spend time with them and enjoy doing so, especially on visits that I undertake through my own independent travel). For those reasons, I now feel more mentally ready than I ever did before to temporarily disconnect from my social networks and take vacations in natural parks in relative solitude. Additionally, I used to enjoy watching videos on YouTube, reading random things online, or reading books about important issues particularly in the context of US history & society, but now, from a combination of having less of a craving for constant mental stimulation as I age, disgust at the proliferation of AI-generated slop online (especially politically divisive AI-generated slop), and feeling internally discouraged from reading books about important issues particularly in the context of US history at a time when the US government is trashing so many of the things that made the US great & could have made the US even greater as a country for its residents, I am less inclined toward those things and therefore more receptive to simpler joys of natural parks (at least while they still remain without being polluted by resource extraction or heavy industrial activities, as recent laws & executive orders have favored such activities).
Summary
I still believe that national parks in the US promote a false dichotomy between wilderness & human settlement that elides light-touch indigenous land use that was destroyed by genocide and therefore do not promote good faith when refusing to create paved trails. In my current living situation, I still have a largely utilitarian view of natural scenery in my own life, as I haven't quite found transcendent joy from being in such spaces. I still find the most joy from being able to travel independently, comfortably, and safely in my power wheelchair, and thus far, that has mostly been in the context of visiting relatives & friends in or near New York City & Boston. I still believe that there are problems with large-scale human settlements in the western half of the contiguous US due to drought & wildfire risks inherent to climates with dry summer seasons. I still believe what I have written in the previous linked posts about the correlation between excessive exaltation of natural parks in the western half of the contiguous US and bad design & neglect of urban spaces in those regions. I still physiologically struggle with heat at temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), even with low humidity but much more so with high humidity.
However, these beliefs mutated in the face of me being hit, which amplified my feelings of exclusion from activities & socialization when living in California and thereby gave rise to less justified beliefs that seemed to calcify due to my bitterness. I used to believe that I would always be susceptible to insidious dehydration & heat exhaustion in the combination of high temperature & low humidity, so I convinced myself that I prefer the combination of high temperature & high humidity for at least being more obviously uncomfortable. I used to believe that I would probably not choose to take a vacation in a natural park and would only plan for myself to travel to New York City or Boston to see relatives or friends nearby. I used to believe that I would prefer to see honest scenes of human settlement in or near natural parks. Now, largely because I have had the experiences of going in my manual wheelchair on very smooth paved trails in the inland Northwest, I feel much more motivated to plan similar vacations in the future (entirely of my own volition), and these less justified beliefs have fallen away; in particular, in the contexts of individually preferring low humidity levels in the summer as well as individually preferring natural parks that have more conventional natural beauty & no signs of permanent human settlement too close by, I feel like most other Americans, even though I may be more aware than most Americans about these broader historical & ongoing systemic problems.