When Natalie Matias was a child in Florida, her dad would get the whole family together — grandparents, aunts, cousins — for day trips or camping expeditions. “A big thing to most Latinos is music and food, so whenever we would recreate outside, my family would prepare huge luncheons for us, and we would always bring a little boombox and listen to music together,” she said. Reggaeton tunes played while they grilled meat and served up rice and beans. During these trips, Matias’ father also taught her to care for the land. “While we were having picnics, he was like, ‘We will make sure that we pick up every single piece of trash. We will leave it better than we found it.’”
These days, Matias tries to model that outdoor ethic as a NextGen Trail Leader for the American Hiking Society and a science communicator who has worked for the National Park Service. But looking back, she realizes that some people may have faulted her own family’s trail etiquette — criticizing them for playing music or traveling in a large group.
So what is the proper way to behave outdoors? “Etiquette is this often unspoken idea of what is polite or correct to do in a space,” said Gabaccia Moreno, executive director of Outdoorist Oath and Leave No Trace Ambassador. But it’s not as simple as it sounds: “We really are a multicultural country, so to assume that everybody is on the same page about how to behave on the trail is already problematic.” And not all experiences, cultures, and histories are represented in the dominant outdoor culture, which, according to a 2020 general technical report by the U.S. Forest Service, has been defined primarily by upper- and middle-class white men and women. “There’s a bit of a monoculture in hiking in America, so it becomes a little nerve-wracking for people of color, because (we) are sometimes held to a standard or to a social etiquette that we did not know existed,” said Matias.
Yet with outdoor recreation’s popularity hitting record highs — 168.1 million participants in 2022 — trail etiquette is more important than ever, not just to preserve wildlife and ecosystems, but also to protect the human visitors. “That’s the thing about public lands — they’re public. We all have to share them,” said Rue Mapp, founder and CEO of Outdoor Afro. “So there have to be guardrails, right?” And that leads us to etiquette: When you see someone breaking guidelines, is it OK to call it out? And how do you do it in a respectful way?
The first step is self-reflection. Matias said it’s important to ask yourself: “Is this something that just bothers me specifically, or is this something that is a safety concern?” If a stranger drops a banana peel, for example, it may not be worth causing a scene over.
“Is this something that just bothers me specifically, or is this something that is a safety concern?”
But if it’s something that endangers other people or the environment — throwing rocks off a cliff onto a trail below or building a campfire during a fire ban — Matias suggests reaching out to someone who has the power to intervene and stop the behavior. Park officials or volunteers are trained to handle these situations. But if you’re in a wilderness setting where this isn’t an option, Mapp suggests acting with empathy and respect, rather than accusation. Start, for example, by learning where the other person is coming from and why they may be acting in a certain way. During her years as a Park Service volunteer, Moreno learned how much harder it is to communicate with people you have no relationship with. “It’s really about relating to others,” she said. “That’s why I use curiosity as an invite: I want to understand you.”
Starting a conversation is more effective at changing behavior than making accusations or reciting rules: A 2017 study in the Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism found that even when government officials were enforcing the rules — in this case, unauthorized trail use by mountain bikers — it resulted in hostility that could prove counterproductive to their overall management efforts. The bikers were likely to react with defiance and simply take their actions elsewhere.
Both Matias and Moreno often employ a technique called “authority of the resource,” where you use nonjudgmental language to highlight the natural resource you’re trying to protect. Instead of a stern pronouncement — “You shouldn’t step on these flowers” — Matias suggests something like: “We try to not step on these flowers, because the more they get impacted, the less likely they are to grow next year.” “It’s not about rules,” she said. “It’s literally about this flower right now.” When you focus on “the needs and the health of this space that you’re already sharing, that can really be more powerful,” said Moreno.
It’s important to remember that not everyone is an expert on the place they’re visiting; a lack of destination-specific knowledge isn’t ignorance. For example, etiquette concerning off-trail travel and waste disposal is very different in a desert environment like Utah’s Zion National Park than it is in, say, the Pacific Northwest’s Olympic National Park. Providing context about the impacts of certain behaviors on the local ecosystem can help visitors feel more connected to it, as well as make them feel like they’re learning something new, not just being scolded.
Strangers aren’t always open to feedback from other trail users, though, so you may want to focus your efforts where they’re more likely to succeed — with friends and family, for example. “The best we can do is start with ourselves, then with people in our inner circle,” said Moreno. “If you get your best friend to care about cryptobiotic soil, they will probably really care, and maybe they’ll tell someone else about it.” And you don’t need to be an outdoor pro to be a good leader: “I’ve always believed that you only need to know a little bit more than someone to bring them along and continue to learn together,” said Mapp. “It’s a lifelong journey.”
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