The Accessibility of Nature: The Pros and Cons

Improving access to the Adirondack Park remains a topic of contention among visitors and dwellers of the park. Interstate 87 for instance, which runs through the park from Albany to Canada, has made the park more accessible, reducing the trip from New York City from ten hours five or six hours.   Yet, John Davis refers to the highway as “the worst ecological disaster in Adirondack History.”  Evidently, there are costs and benefits to making the Adirondacks more readily available.

            Efforts to make nature more visitor-friendly are evident throughout the world and could provide some guidance on how to approach issues surrounding access to the Adirondacks.  In Cape Town, South Africa for example, there is a cable car that transports tourists to the top of Table Mountain, one of the seven natural wonders of the world.  This allows visitors the option to bypass the hike usually required to reach the mountain’s peak and resultantly, broadens the scope of people able to experience Table Mountain.  Yet, I must admit, during my own experience, the crowds brought by the cable car diminished the aesthetic appeal and quiet, natural beauty that Table Mountain retains.

            Interstate 87 in New York has served a similar purpose to Table Mountain’s cable car, making land available in the Adirondacks for tens of thousands second-home owners and vacationers.  Unfortunately, as I found on Table Mountain, increased access to nature interferes with the qualities of nature for which many hold it dear.  Kevin Fedarko highlights the magnitude of this problem in an article arguing against the construction of a tram traveling into the heart of the Grand Canyon.  He argues, increased access “would amount...to the annulment of a space whose value resides not in its accessibility to the masses, but precisely the reverse. It is a violation of the very thing that makes the space holy.”  Bill Mckibben points to this issue in the Adirondacks, stating that the “High Peaks Wilderness in particular, gets too much use.” 

There could be positive ramifications of improving the Adirondacks’ accessibility however.  With more visitors, the park gains supporters and appreciators who will likely advocate for the park’s preservation as a result.  In fact, when the park was created, the individuals promoting the protection of the Adirondacks were those from Albany and New York who owned vacation homes in the park.  Thus, the question remains how to increase proponents for protecting a place without jeopardizing the very essence of the place itself.

Sources: 

Wandering Home, by Bill McKibben

A Cathedral Under Siege: Two Development Projects Threaten the Grand Canyon, by Kevin Fedarko, The New York Times