Hiking is a petroleum sport.
Let’s talk about the myths curated around outdoor recreation as counterculture to consumerism and fossil fuels. I have some bad news about your new Patagonia jacket…
Sometime around the 2010’s, John Muir’s quote made it into mainstream culture – onto T-shirts, hats, tattoos, and even tire covers for rear-mounted spare tires on 4x4s. You know the one, “The mountains are calling, and I must go…” The quote imprinted itself in the minds of urbanites all across the country, from those living near the shores of New Jersey to the beaches of California where Barbie struts her stuff. How many of those inspired by this quote1, do you suppose, have read any of John Muir’s writing, or any other environmental history of the West? By my observations, very, very few.
Rewind a couple decades to when Muir’s quote was still hidden in dusty books on library shelves and in the curriculum of nouveau graduate school classes on environmental subjects2, and the boom in interest in outdoor recreation was only starting to take off. Outdoor gear companies were starting to pop up all over the West, and more people were taking to college campuses donning hiking boots and down-filled coats – if for any other reason than the peacocked, rugged appearance it offered.
The outdoor industry’s rocket-like trajectory in popularity and profitability centered on the realization of large areas of open public lands that were once scary or used primarily for resource extraction – all of which changed quickly and markedly. These places could now be explored more easily with new materials and gear that were developed by and for military use. Yep, Vibram boot soles, leather lace-up boots, wool knickers, knicker socks, gaiters, wool hats and gloves, metal canteens, metal frame packs, and insulated bed-rolls – all of these things came about by and for the military. What the heck were Americans to do with all this stuff that was sitting around at military surplus stores than to go use it?
Hiking, mountaineering, skiing, and backpacking all started becoming activities synonymous with being in the “Great Outdoors” (with a little trademark symbol). The rise of these activities as pastimes opened the door to an entirely new market and industry.
A little slow at first, companies like The North Face were born out of smaller and earlier companies, like Holubar. Patagonia was made from a couple dudes who liked to climb tall peaks all over the world for the first time, and also somehow had the resources to find and go to Patagonia, Chile. REI3 popped up as a fair-priced outdoor gear maker, which spread like wildfire once the ‘70s outdoor / mountain-man aesthetic caught on (think Robert Redford riding a buffalo on the Frontier.)
The snowball of interest and new innovations led to more products – and more new materials, and more innovations. Everything from new boot sole materials, to new types of sandals, to new waterproof materials that were light-weight and breathable (at the same time!). Even metallurgy was being explored for creating better and safer rock anchors and carabiners – no more melted food cans poured into sand shapes to make new types of climbing equipment. Not kidding, that’s how early rock climbers were making their gear … because it had to be made, not bought, and they used what was available.
With the rise in popularity of outdoor recreation, the ensuing perception of a novel lifestyle, and the clear trendiness of it all; The imagery that came along with the outdoors became a permanently attached sidecar. Images of tall mountains with no signs of human development; Gaping, open canyons with no way to cross other than by going down in, then up - at great risk; And images of sole-individuals standing on precipices that were once regarded as horrifying, but are now highly alluring. Hell, most of the places in these images were once regarded as useless and dangerous places because they were associated with pain, suffering, and being uncontrollable. Why would you go there, when all you would find would be boils, blisters, and a likely death from the multitude of hazards?
Hiking became the most approachable new centerpiece of the American/European pastime for “connecting with nature.” It’s the one thing that you can do with very little experience, especially as trails became more infrastructured. Hiking became the thing that almost anyone could go experience with very little perceived risk – especially in relatively near proximity to established urban areas, highways, and roads.
Hybridize this return-to-nature movement with the American tendency to turn everything into infrastructure, invent new things for every new activity, and spin up markets from seemingly nothing, and you have the birth of the outdoor gear industry. And the industry has made billions off the imagery that now drives Americans to go buy their gear, and to go use it in special places that have been set aside as playgrounds4.
The great irony of the outdoor gear industry is that their entire ethos is centered on imagery of wild places, getting away from your consumer lifestyle, being kinder to the planet, and to get out of your car and house — yet every single dimension of the sport they’re advertising, every single piece of their products, and the process of getting people from their houses to the trail, is either 100% made with a petroleum product or is 100% dependent on one to be manufactured and delivered. When the mountains call those not acculturated to environments that aren’t urban-domesticated, those responding to the call are somehow mentally and ethically freed of the systems that brought them there and make their experience possible.
To bring the deep irony into focus, today’s outdoor gear is made from one source material – and little else. Every single piece of outdoor gear sold at REI, The North Face, Patagonia, Columbia, and all other makers and outlets are made with:
Nylon (Polyamides)
Polyester (Polyethylene terephthalates)
Urethanes (Ethyl carbamates, and polyurethanes)
Olefin (Alkenes)
Polyethylenes - numerous types of plastics fall in this category, including low and high densities, etc.
Polypropylene - multiple polymers that are common in products designed for the outdoors
Rubber - which now rarely comes from rubber trees, and is now largely synthetic materials derived from petroleum distillates
… and numerous other related materials.
I simplified and shortened that list, of course. The remaining material names are all relatives or descendants of those, and I excluded adhesives, other plastics that you would see on things like coolers, all of the different types of foams, and metals, and the fuels needed to process and transport them.
The takeaway point for those who don’t know or care what all of these materials are is: 100% of them are derived from crude oil. All of our outdoor gear today – from Cordura to Vibram soles to high-strength polyester sewing threads – are petroleum products.
If I lost you there, this is a moment to pause and consider the presence of a collective illusion5 that appears quite unique to European and American culture. We all believe that when we hike, we’re somehow connected to or in Nature (with a capital-N - the brand, the place, the entity...), we all think we’re mad about oil and gas and the evils of “big oil,” yet 100% of our outdoor gear is made with petroleum products. Let that stew for a minute – explore it – it’s far more profound than many will recognize on first-experience.
And it doesn’t stop with the outdoor gear alone…
How do you get to the trailhead? Not just in what, but with what fuel, and on what type of ‘trail’?
What made that trailhead?
In the modern day, how was that trail made to begin with?
How did you find the trail? Was it on a computer? Paper map? A plastic National Geographic-brand map?
The entire system of outdoor recreation is built on petroleum. I know people who fly an airliner across continents and oceans to go hiking, skiing, or for an “outdoor adventure.” A Boeing 737 burns 850 Gallons (US) of jet fuel per hour. Every single part on the jet was made either with a petroleum product or was made entirely possible by a fossil fuel (e.g., making the aluminum panels, rivets, hydraulics, and so on).
When I go ski a trail in Colorado, I drive a car to that trailhead - every single piece of the car was made or made possible by petroleum. When I get there, I put on my skis made of petroleum-derived plastics, and I’m wearing my nylon and polyester outdoor gear that are made 100% from petroleum products. The list goes on and on.
To be clear, the purpose of this exploration is not to take a position for or against petroleum – this post is entirely agnostic to that. The purpose of this post is to highlight that much of the American understanding of outdoor recreation is made entirely possible by purified imagery and a deep and clearly visible cognitive dissonance in the discourse that frames our cultural myths about outdoor recreation.
If those who are inspired by the mountains calling them realized that;
(A) the mountains aren’t actually calling them (it was actually a brilliant marketing campaign),
(B) their time spent outdoors is not in any way noble or morally virtuous, and
(C) areas in the outdoors were made safe for their recreational use and are part of an energy intensive infrastructure system …
… the outdoors would look and be perceived extremely differently today. Especially in the American West, where the whole country believes they should move to get a piece of that adventure glam for their Instagram.
If you really want to get rowdy on breaking down some of these collective illusions, take a gander at skiing. Downhill skiing, especially. Imagine this; Someone believes they’re responding to the mountain’s call, they’re going to be in the Great Outdoors™ and Nature™ and they’re doing this because they care about the environment. In their downtime at their mundane and overpaid urban job, they spar with anonymous opponents on the internet about climate change and the evils of Big Oil™ (joking with all the trademark symbols — I’ll stop), then they get in their car, drive 60 miles to the nearest ski resort, ascend 4,000 feet in elevation in a cold and aqueous environment (snowy and wet roads), and then put on all their outdoor costume pieces6 (plastic ski boots, nylon/poly shells, etc), and get hauled a half mile up a mountain that was clear-cut so they could ski down it easily, on a cable system powered by diesel fuel or electricity, and then they slide down it on their skis made of ABS and other plastics … and that’s just the fun and quick elevator version of what made their outdoor adventure possible.
I get it – we all like to hike. Some of us like to ski. Some of us like to do more technical activities to escape the hordes of undead humanity (i.e., urbanites, bumpkins, the masses). But there’s an elephant in the room that hasn’t been exposed to most of the ‘outdoor community’ (that gets single quotes because we’re all in some imaginary named ‘community’ now). And the elephant is that the imagery driving outdoor recreation is a masterfully curated myth. It’s a pernicious myth that I consider to be directly caused by disconnection.
The cause of the disconnection is how most people think of themselves in these outdoor spaces, what they’re doing, what they believe being in these places does for them, and how much better these places may be than the spaces they occupy on a daily basis. The outdoor industrial complex has created a collective illusion about what happens when your car door is shut and locked and you start walking that hiking trail with your adventure costume on. Suddenly, you’re on a human-powered “adventure”, not using petroleum - you’re finally with Nature. And the disconnection is exacerbated by the images that are used to sell that petroleum-based costume you’re wearing. They never show the highway, which is made from a slurry of petroleum tar and wastes. Most never think of their hike as being something their car made entirely possible. Most don’t even know that every single thing on the shelves and racks at REI are 100% made from petroleum, and got to that store with petroleum.
The disconnection the outdoor industry created is a very brilliantly curated collective illusion that nature is pure, it’s a place you go to, and you can go there if you wear these special clothes, and once you’re there, your actions are of your own doing – and are separate from the consumptive human domestic environment, such as your home city. You’re responding to the call of the mountains, the call of the wild, John Denver Rocky Mountain High … and you’re finally alive and ready to survive.
It’s a highly inconvenient truth that hiking is a petroleum sport. Skiing is a petroleum sport. Camping is a petroleum sport. Getting out of your city into what most of the urban transplants call “Nature” requires amazing amounts of petroleum. Moving West to be closer to Nature is Fern-Gully-Hexxus-level petroleum consumption heaven7. If you drove an EV to the trailhead, hiking is an open-pit-mine-and-natural-gas-or-coal sport. All outdoor activities are fossil fuel sports - from the soles of your boots to the fabric of your tent to the car you got to the trailhead in.
How does that all pertain to the West? Well, all of the companies making and selling gear right now are using landscapes from the West as their backdrops8. They’ve tied their imagery and profitability to open-looking lands where they can snap an amazing looking photograph of someone wearing their outdoor explorer costume without obvious human infrastructure in it. The outdoor gear industry is constructed on a layered myth that most of the consumer public hasn’t yet recognized as a new intellectual relative of pornography.
If they had, the luster of moving West to get closer to nature and to hike and ski might be a little tarnished. The beliefs driving their artificial feelings of wonderment and “connection” with Nature would immediately be self-reflected as inauthentic if they pulled back the curtain and revealed that their entire perception of these places and actions were made possible by something they view themselves as counter to.
Want to prove me wrong? Start checking your outdoor gear labels – what are they made of? Do you have any outdoor gear that’s part of your system that’s not petroleum based? What about the soles, linings, or insoles of your hiking boots? How ‘bout them Chacos or Tevas? That nice Arcteryx GoreTex jacket? Unless you’re a horse with a fat ape riding on your back (Mr. Ed, is that you?!), I bet less than 1% of all your outdoor gear is not made from petroleum. If you’re really mad about this insane post, go to REI – see how much of what they sell isn’t a petroleum product. The answer is that more than 99% of everything REI sells is petroleum-based – by weight, area, volume – whatever measure you want to use. And 99% is very likely a gross understatement.
Unfortunately, the only way the discourse on outdoor recreation and the West will be granted any authenticity and sanity, will be if more people realize that the history of their false enlightenment to Nature and the ethical dimensions are born from an iron-clad collective illusion that is long overdue for being unveiled.
The Fleeting West is written by a rooted Westerner with many miles spent contemplating and studying the cultural myths driving change in the American West.
Footnotes and Citations
Muir’s famous quote came from “The Mountains of California,” John Muir, https://www.amazon.com/John-Muir-Mountains-California-mountains/dp/1785430580.
Even Adventure Journal, a perfect case study on the collective illusion I’m addressing in this post, pinpoints the viral popularity of this quote to around 2016 - which is around the time I started to notice it floating in the new transplant rhetoric scum pond about why Colorado and the West is the new must-have accessory for every urbanite’s online identity. That poseresque rerun post from 2018 can be found here: https://www.adventure-journal.com/2018/08/what-muir-really-meant-by-the-mountains-are-calling/.
For more about REI and what’s going wrong with the outdoor industry, check out, “Why I’m boycotting REI…” -
What I’m talking about here is wildness vs. wilderness vs. Wilderness — and how most people can’t decipher the difference. More about that here —
Concept borrowed from “Collective Illusions” by Todd Rose, 2022. https://www.amazon.com/Collective-Illusions-Conformity-Complicity-Decisions/dp/0306925680.
Check out “What’s a poser, and why is the West full of them?” for more about outdoor costume pieces —
Remember the kid’s movie, Fern Gully? It was popular in the ‘90s, especially for those in the more liberal regional bubbles — and included this demon called “Hexxus”. For a taste of what that looked like, check out this clip on YouTube:
For more about how companies are using the West as their backdrop, check out, “When companies use places to sell their products…” —
Cruel but hilarious and true takedown of a myth that thrives on the inability of so many supposedly smart people to see the big picture or wonder where the stuff they use and enjoy and makes them feel superior to the grubby masses comes from. Kind of like the people who think the electricity for their Tesla comes from a wall plug.
Reading this makes me think about how great wool is, and how sheep have been vilified as an environmental catastrophe. But all these petroleum-derived fabrics are considered to be just fine.