Even orange peels be damned — don’t toss your food on the trail.
Marjorie "Slim" Woodruff
Posted inArticles
Keep your tunes to yourself on the trail
A writer decries wilderness-destroying graffiti, litter, drones and booming speakers.
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Don’t even think about leaving a trace
An outdoorswoman reflects on the myriad kinds of litter she’s encountered in nature.
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Invasion of the butt flickers
When tourists toss their spent cigarettes at the Grand Canyon, I’m the one who picks them up.
Posted inJune 26, 2017: Personal Pilgrimage
I am the High Priestess of Leave No Trace
A miscreant is littering. What’s the Priestess to do then?
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It’s OK to be cautious in the wild
Where to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable risks.
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It’s not the Wild West anymore. Look before you shoot.
Carrying a gun in the backcountry isn’t the issue—responsible use is.
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An argument against internet access in parks
Tethered by their devices, “younglings” of today don’t want to camp.
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What every hiker should know (by now)
In the Grand Canyon, pack in some common sense.
Posted inJuly 25, 2016: Salmon Power
In this season of potential megaburns, nix the campfire
In 1972, Grand Canyon National Park outlawed campfires in the backcountry. Backpackers like me considered this an outrage. After all, the only people who carried those fancy little stoves back then were people incapable of building a fire. I bring this up because we are living through another explosive fire season in the West. Of […]
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Graffiti is destroying our national landmarks. I’m on a mission to stop it.
The Coconino sandstone at Grand Canyon means many things to many people. To the hiker, it indicates that he or she is almost at the top. To the artist, it is a graceful sweep of sculptured stone, and to the geologist, it evokes the trade winds blowing across Aeolian dunes 265 million years ago. But […]
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What if the Grand Canyon were private? An alternate future for the park.
In the beginning, you didn’t need any permits. OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. Even back in the halcyon days of the 1960s, permits were required to backpack in Grand Canyon, but they weren’t a big deal. We would drive up after school and bang on the door of park headquarters, whereupon a ranger would clamber […]
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Leave your dog at home, please
What I say will not make me a popular person, but here it is: For excellent reasons, dogs should not be – and usually aren’t — allowed in the backcountry of national parks. Dogs, being predators, bother wildlife even when they’re leashed. Then there’s canine fecal matter, which carries a number of diseases and parasites […]
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Endurance runners in the Grand Canyon are missing the point
When I was 18, back in the swinging ’60s, I ran with equally driven friends through the Grand Canyon, going from the North Rim to the South Rim in a single day. Our trek involved traversing the 14-mile North Kaibab trail, the 7-mile South Kaibab Trail and the Old Bright Angel Trail, 14 miles of […]