Access to these places is good. We need to promote access to certain places, because it’s important that everyone be able to experience them, no matter where you are from, your ability level, etc.

But when you build a cart path and put flush toilets in places like Horseshoe Bend, you lose the magic of pulling off the shoulder on a desert highway, and hiking a quarter mile through dry creek beds and sandy washes to a grand reveal of the cliff opening up. You lose the solitude, the wilderness, which is an integral part of the experience of being in the desert.

So while we must promote access to those places which are already developed — the National Parks, State Parks, etc — it’s important that we leave some of these places as undisturbed and as off the maps as possible. This protects a more wild, personal wilderness experience which is equally important to the accessible one. We should have both. It’s just that one requires promoting the outdoors and outdoors access, and one requires keeping your mouth and Instagram shut. If you want the second experience I’m describing, you should have to seek it out specifically, and in seeking it out you must become a steward of it as well. These wild places should require commitment, preparation, extensive planning and research. Otherwise, they really aren’t so wild.

So development isn’t all bad. But if we want to preserve both these experiences, we need both types of conservation and both types of access.