The Road Too Often Taken: A Return to the Ethics of Wandering
A reflection on overcrowded destinations presents a dilemma for the travel enthusiast along with an acknowledgement of our cognitive dissonance.
Two trails diverged on a Hawaiian island. And though I traveled both, one soured my mood, and the other lifted my spirits. And that made all the difference. Okay, forgive me. I’m not Robert Frost. I’m not sorry I traveled both roads either because I believe there is still value in less-than-desirable experiences. Also, it inspired this post about overtourism. My recent experience hiking two trails in O’ahu resulted in two very different experiences and reactions that relate to the travel enthusiast’s dilemma—how do we balance the fervor of encouraging more people to travel with the potential threat it poses: that by doing so, we may come to stifle and love these places to death?
When Robert Frost was growing up in the late 19th century there were only about 1.5 billion people on the entire planet. While shrinking in population, China alone is estimated to reach 1.5 billion by 2033 and will supposedly drop below 1 billion by 2080. India’s population, on the other hand, is projected to continue to grow and hit 1.5 billion by 2030 and then peak at 1.7 billion by 2060. The United States is projected to reach 370 million by 2080 and will decline to 366 million by 2100. This is just an overview of the three most populous countries. Many other countries are projected to follow this trend of initial growth and then decline toward the end of the 21st century. Nevertheless, population growth is still going to be something we contend with for the remainder of the century as it relates to major issues like climate change, migration, and the overall demands it places on the planet.
People were much more spread out across the globe in Robert Frost’s time and there were no modern recreational or tourist industries to speak of. Recreation and tourism existed but nowhere near the scale seen today. Thus, going for a ramble in the woods was almost by default a solitary act. The global population had still only reached 3.2 billion people when Frost passed away in 1963. We currently have 8.1 billion people on the planet over sixty years later. This staggering population growth mixed with economic upward mobility percolating through many countries is having incredible consequences across the globe as people enjoy more leisure time and finances to flock to all our beautiful hotspot destinations.
The question then is, is it ethical to keep persisting that we all should travel more given the magnitude of continued population growth and its cascading effects? Should we encourage more people to explore our world and can we without trampling and destroying all the beautiful places like a herd of stampeding elephants? I contemplated how we become better world travelers in a previous post. And yet, each time I travel, I can’t help but return to the ethics of wandering.
On a recent trip to O’ahu, my family and I hiked two different trails during our vacation. One was a highly popular trail, the Diamond Head Summit Trail at Diamond Head State Monument. The “trail” (perhaps more appropriately a steep sidewalk) ascends the slope of a volcanic crater via an old military complex that reminds you of some Soviet bunker in the James Bond universe. The U.S. military installed this trail, bunker, and tunnel system for coastal defense, with the trail being built in 1908 and the fire station bunker and tunnels built in 1911. With increased popularity, concrete was poured across much of the trail to prevent erosion, and more stairs and metal railings were installed for safety. Nowadays, the place is so popular that even by 7:30 a.m. the place is swarming with tourists and the slog up the path is nearly bumper to bumper the whole way up.
After reaching the top to overlook the crater, expansive ocean, and lighthouse along the shore, you are soon corralled at the top shoulder-to-shoulder with the crowd and everyone with sweat beading their furrowed brows feigns patience and awaits their photo opportunity. On our hike, two state park security guards even accompanied us along this stifling sojourn which seemed to suggest that crowd control issues might not be uncommon here.
With so much demand, you not only have to reserve online for entry for this hike but also to park. If you forget to reserve your parking spot as we did, then you have to turn around at the toll booth, drive back the way you came another half-mile, pass through the tunnel bored through the volcanic rock, and hopefully get lucky at one of the few half-dozen parking meters stationed along a pulloff. We got lucky and snagged a spot at the turn-off, but if we hadn’t then it would be another half-mile back down the hill to find parking along the street and then turn around and ascend back up the asphalt hill dodging traffic for another mile before beginning the actual hike. And if you brought cash, well, you’re SOL because like so many other growing tourist-laden places, they only accept credit cards.
The point is, it’s a rather amusing and bewildering system we’ve concocted where we actually pay money to put ourselves through this miserable trial of errors and anxiety to simply go for a morning jaunt. Perhaps this is the “sunk-cost fallacy” at work. What’s amazing to me is that so many of us can keep a straight face during these sorts of tourist activities and pretend this is all normal and good fun. For those of us who prefer to travel more serendipitously and try to escape the crowds, this isn’t paradise, but hell. I was so overwhelmed with anxiety by the crowds by the time we reached the summit that I didn’t even capture a photo of the crowded scene but here’s one from a local Hawaiian newspaper from summer 2023:
The other hiking trail we happened upon, with no planning, presented a far different experience. After parking at the beach, walking a half-mile through an unassuming neighborhood to get to the trailhead, and passing a junkyard near the rundown gated entrance, you wouldn’t expect much out of this trail at first glance. You’re not even sure you’ve found a trail as dogs bark and people casually mowing their lawns glance at you as if you’re lost walking by their house. But after locating the State Park signage and entering a few hundred feet into the forest past the rusted gate, the trail quickly feels remote and gradually ascends to being epic.
There is a short, paved road before the trail splits off into two separate trails. The one we took winded up several switchbacks before coming to another split which looped around a constantly changing tropical forest. Eventually, we found ourselves along a ridge overlooking the lush green volcanic spines of mountains and gulches that Hawaii is famous for along with the ocean off in the distance. To top it off, we encountered only two other people during our entire trek. Unlike the previous trail that soured my mood, here I had entered a state of euphoria.
To be honest, I didn’t want to encounter another soul on this trail, and yet at the same time wanted others to have this experience—just not with me around. Perhaps we can refer to this phenomenon as the “travel enthusiast’s cognitive dissonance.” I’m not sure how to fully square these simultaneous feelings of wanting everyone to see the world given the benefits of doing so with the challenges and ethics of wandering in the modern world.
While this trail is also popular and probably not a secret to anyone who lives on the island, I’m still choosing not to disclose the name or location for a few reasons. And that’s not because I have any delusions that my writing about it will inspire legions of people to come here and start demanding cement trucks come slather and seal the ground because their shoes are getting too muddy. Again, I know I’m not Robert Frost. That said, I don’t want a place like this to be loved to death. What would it take to have this trail cemented and guard railed with a paved parking lot and all the equivalent amount of infrastructure and security that I witnessed at Diamond Head take place here? Presumably, more people are a part of that equation. When does the act of loving a place to death begin?
I’m starting to think that by sharing everything about travel destinations on the internet we might be defeating the entire purpose of discovering the world for ourselves. How much do all of us travel bloggers and enthusiasts of adventure out there contribute to the downstream consequences of over-tourism and the result of loving places to death? As much as we want to inspire others to have their own adventures because of the benefits that confer, doesn’t this act also potentially contribute to excess tourism?
This brief chronicle illustrates the consequences of excess tourism. And this is just talking about the impacts on a single trail on a small island and mostly me being cranky about crowds. However, the cumulative effects of excess tourism across the globe are not hard for us to imagine anymore. By now, most of us are privy to the debate on climate change, environmental destruction, and the laudable attempts at sustainability and ecotourism. Despite economic theorists who argue that endless growth and development are inevitable and necessary to maintain our system, it nevertheless comes with the costs of scarring the landscape, potentially disrupting ecologies and prior economic systems that left much less of a carbon footprint, and souring the moods of local communities and tourists alike.
In one case, over time the demand to simply hike a dirt path up a slope for a view brings with it inevitable infrastructure and security as in the case of Diamond Head where tunnels, roads, sidewalks, parking lots, bathroom facilities, vending machines, landscape architecture, engineering, and an entire state bureaucracy needed to be implemented to enable people to do what humans evolved to do millions of years ago: walk. Even if justified, the absurdity of the whole project can overwhelm us and cause us to question the impacts our travels have.
Thus, I don’t want the same thing to occur to the second trail and all the other special trails across the globe where demand unleashes a domino effect of development and can eventually lead to a place being loved to death. We all pay a significant price for making places safer and more accessible after all. From my forthcoming book,
“I argue that the most beautiful places ought to be the most difficult to get to, that somehow they deserve our blood, sweat, tears, and aching muscles to reach. And as the naturalist and explorer John Muir thought, certain wild places are pure, sacred, and of the utmost importance to preserve for posterity’s sake. Does everything we wish to see and know then require security, efficiency, and accessibility?
What trade-offs do we make when we attempt to make things easier, more efficient, and safer? If we paved the whole stretch of the Application Trail, notched out pull-off areas for our viewing pleasure, and stocked every mile with cafes and soda machines, it would surely make things easier and safer for us. But would we appreciate it as much? Could we draw any inspiring hard-won lessons from such a blasé experience?
And by the way, I am not exempting myself from these criticisms. I’ve added myself to the amassing crowds and bumper-to-bumper traffic in our national parks many times. I’ve consumed more than my fair share of gasoline and maimed and destroyed more than one vehicle zipping back and forth across the country.
These criticisms shouldn’t be taken to make us feel ashamed and guilty. Rather, they are meant for us to reflect on how we can better preserve and protect these areas without destroying the essence of what these places represent to all of us. The question is, can we design a system of adventure in our society that is less invasive, yet more fulfilling?”
So maybe the lesson learned is that the noble thing to do as a travel enthusiast is not to spoil the plot of all these beautiful places. Can we devise a way to simply just encourage others to travel more broadly, continue to spread out, seek out unknown places for themselves, and sometimes—maybe every time you find a special place—keep it to yourself and let others discover it on their own? Perhaps this is more naïve thinking and we have opened yet another Pandora’s box…
I have researched the statistics and impact on crowds in national parks and thought at one time that a solution to the problem was to simply encourage more of us to spread out to lesser known, less traveled “roads not taken” like other public lands such as national forests, Bureau of Land Management lands, monuments, etc. But perhaps those places have begun to reach critical mass too and we may already be at a point in time where all our roads are too often taken, severely rutted, and worn down to bedrock.
Here’s a great overview by the Honolulu Civil Beat news organization of the recreation industry and the paradox known as the “amenity trap” that many local communities who are dependent on tourism face when balancing their economies with loving places to death. And here’s another great Substack I follow and recommend
, which tracks news, statistics, and updates on public lands.What then? What does all this mean if we take seriously the context of a world with an ever-growing population gaining wealth and feeling entitled that the world is our oyster? Will we continue to see growth in the movement for people to stay home and endorse the environmental mantra to “think global and act local” by adopting the travel version of this as the “staycation”? Or do we simply learn to live amongst the crowds, practicing our breathing exercises for those of us full of anxiety and claustrophobia in such environments? What, if anything, can be done? The question remains an open one.
For consideration
What are your thoughts on the ethics of wandering amidst over-tourism and global population increase in the 21st century?
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Cheers!
-JSB
A great up write up of a complicated topic.
My view of the issue is the same as my view of most of life -- there are pros and cons to everything, and no one or perfect answer.
We've seen the overtourims ourself up close and personal and hate it and try to avoid it.
Yet we also write about our travels, including the less well traveled places we veer toward as much as possible.
I think -- hope -- that the good of travel from better understanding other peoples and cultures, as well as the environment outweighs the bad.
Is that wishful thinking? Maybe.
But now into our seventh year of traveling full-time, I feel like I have a deeper and better understanding of the world than if we'd just stayed in the U.S.
I am a travel advisor. I have worked in travel and tourism since 1991, and it is an industry that employs a mind-blowing number of people, from back-of-the-house staff at hotels, cruise lines, airports, restaurants to the front facing staff like myself who plan travel for clients to flight attendants who are on planes for your safety. I work at a travel company that is part of one of the major consortia, Virtuoso, and I am a member of the Sustainability Community. The focus on this community is working with those companies who have a commitment to sustainable tourism.
Overtourism is a real problem and an ethical dilemma for those of us in the business. Venice has introduced a modest fee for day-trippers (5 euros) which I think isn't enough to help combat the problem. Overbuilt hotel zones (Nicoya peninsula in Costa Rica; anywhere you look on Maui; the Yucatan in Mexico; the area surrounding Puerto Vallarta; these are only a handful of locations) create more of a problem than we realize. People are told it helps the local economy, but does it? I was on a cruise pre-Covid in the Caribbean as an educational trip (experiencing the cruise line, some hotel inspections) but at one port, doing some local market shopping, I found many of the "authentic" items being sold actually were made in China and Southeast Asia. This is overtourism.
Ethical companies that practice sustainable tourism follow certain core principles: to celebrate culture, support local economies, and protect the planet. There are notable hotels that work toward restoring ecosystems: Ted Turner Reserves in New Mexico renew ecosystems that were damaged by logging, mining, and agriculture; Nayara Tented Camp near Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica has restored local rainforest which have allowed a focus on rewilding animals that had disappeared from the area - a return of sloths and monkeys, for example.
Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda is a shining example - the few hotels in that region have restored habitat that had been destroyed by coffee plantations which has seen an increase in population of the critically endangered Mountain Gorillas. While still endangered, their numbers are growing almost faster than habitat restoration can manage. Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park charges a hefty fee of $1500 per person per day to trek to see the gorillas, and strictly limits the number of permits issued on a given day. The guides, all hotel staff, are all from the local community and a huge amount of the hotel profits go back into the local community for schools and health clinics. The number of hotels and the size of the hotels is also strictly limited.
Not everyone who travels needs or wants to work with a travel advisor like myself. Frankly, far too many travel professionals are "agents", order-takers who rely on mass market cruises and all-inclusive massive resorts for their business. But those of us who take the time to research, and to pick and choose who we work with supporting companies that we know work sustainably, provide a service that is invaluable for a surprising number of people. Not all of us are the problem, although there are far too many who are. Part of my job is to educate my clients about the solutions. There are companies I will not work with at all. I actively support the ones who adhere to solutions.