Eco Travel

I won’t have a computer, an iPod or even a cell phone on my nature trip. So don’t e-mail, voicemail, Facebook or even try to call me. Don’t even phone me on a landline. I can’t be reached. When I travel, I purposely sever all lines of communication with my everyday life. I think you should, too. Because when you don’t, I get annoyed.

As I hiked with my dog through prairie open space on a recent morning, we were both captivated by the wild creatures around us. In his case, it was the prairie dog colony; in mine, a long V of geese honking overhead. The swallows have left, and I haven’t heard a meadowlark since early September.

“After” photo: ship is gone; more highlights (see the “Before” photo below). ©Candice Gaukel Andrews

It looked perfect through the lens. I had the shot all lined up: blue mountain in the background, a rocky trail winding through the middle, and wildflowers in the foreground that made up two-thirds of the composition. I rotated the polarizing filter just enough so that I had a bright blue sky. Click.

Only about 400 Spirit Bears remain. ©Candice Gaukel Andrews

It almost sounds mythical.

But there’s truly a place on the far western edge of our continent where a rare animal — a white black bear — can still hunt, fish, gather berries and raise cubs unbothered by humans. There are no roads here, no cut trails, few settlements and even fewer trappings of civilization. It’s a good place to be a bear.

The last time I rented a car, I was able to help the environment by tacking on a mere $1.25 to my rental cost. Granted, I’m still driving and spewing CO2 — but that small amount allowed me to offset my contribution to the carbon emissions generated by the typical rental car: about 300 pounds.

“Glamping” is camping in high style. ©Wilderness Safaris.

There used to be two opposite ends on the travel-comfort continuum: Starting on the left, there were those who didn’t mind camping out in the backcountry. And at the far right terminus were those who preferred a private cabin on a luxury cruise, complete with a bed dressed in Egyptian cotton sheets and a down blanket. Never, it seemed, would the two types of traveler meet. The new trend of “glamping,” however, has changed all that.

I love harvest time. What more savory feast for the senses is there than a Saturday morning stroll through the local farmers market in September? Here in Boulder, Colo., I love gathering a basketful of Palisade peaches, pungent peppers, fresh-picked organic salad greens, and a big, sweet Rocky Ford cantaloupe (the melon equivalent of a vine-ripe heirloom tomato versus a pale January supermarket variety). And soon, I’ll add a jug of cloudy, fresh-pressed apple cider.

I knew I had a problem with my Facebook addiction when I kept thinking of last weekend’s camping trip as a series of status reports:

Wendy Worrall Redal

… swore she would not camp in a tent in the rain again, and here she is.

“Eco” as a prefix has gained some potent marketing cachet for all sorts of goods and services in recent years, not least for travel. Nearly every jungle accommodation in Costa Rica seems to bill itself as an “eco-lodge,” for instance, and ecotourism is promoted as an important, even essential, means of protecting species and habitats.

The tonic of wildness. ©Candice Gaukel Andrews.

“We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.” — Henry David Thoreau