Letter to the Editor:
Open Letter to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy Date: 5 February, 2018.
The Hijacking of the Appalachian Trail
Has it now become imperative to award a position of board membership to each person who celebrates claim to every identifiable gender, ethnic, racial, social, political, and religious group? To guarantee absolute equity in all things human? Is board membership to be handed out like candy, at a Fourth of July parade, making certain that each child gets his/her allotted piece?
Or is it most important to appoint the individuals to board membership, who have the best proven qualifications, the best ability to achieve the goal of preserving and protecting the Appalachian Trail?
One would guess, that members having demonstrated social, political, and financial, skills and experience; with demonstrated good judgement, would be the strongest forces in achieving that goal. Which again is to preserve and protect the Appalachian Trail.
It’s about the trail!
Is it imperative to appoint board membership to those whose first thought is; “Me, me, me; and my social, my political, my ethnic, agenda? How can I use the Appalachian Trail as a platform to promote my goals?”
Or, as stated in AT Journeys, is it about service? Might it be more beneficial to appoint board membership to those whose first thought is “the trail, the trail, the trail”?
Regarding AT Journeys, January 2018, and board member Mr. Shalin Desai’s celebration of being a “Queer, South Asian male”: I really do not care. If you are a “Queer, South Asian male”, good for you. Tell me all about it as we hike the trail together. If one's major motivation and qualification for being an ATC Board Member is to advocate for those identities, as he clearly has done in said issue, and not the AT itself, then appointing him to represent me, an ATC member, was ill advised.
While I happily agree that his perspectives would provide opportunity for interesting conversation along the trail, interaction that may be productive to both parties; I have no desire to be lectured, to be indoctrinated, to be held hostage to gender, ethnic, social, political, religious, ideologies, as part of ATC membership. Mr. Desai informed us that
Open Letter to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy Date: 5 February, 2018.
The Hijacking of the Appalachian Trail
Has it now become imperative to award a position of board membership to each person who celebrates claim to every identifiable gender, ethnic, racial, social, political, and religious group? To guarantee absolute equity in all things human? Is board membership to be handed out like candy, at a Fourth of July parade, making certain that each child gets his/her allotted piece?
Or is it most important to appoint the individuals to board membership, who have the best proven qualifications, the best ability to achieve the goal of preserving and protecting the Appalachian Trail?
One would guess, that members having demonstrated social, political, and financial, skills and experience; with demonstrated good judgement, would be the strongest forces in achieving that goal. Which again is to preserve and protect the Appalachian Trail.
It’s about the trail!
Is it imperative to appoint board membership to those whose first thought is; “Me, me, me; and my social, my political, my ethnic, agenda? How can I use the Appalachian Trail as a platform to promote my goals?”
Or, as stated in AT Journeys, is it about service? Might it be more beneficial to appoint board membership to those whose first thought is “the trail, the trail, the trail”?
Regarding AT Journeys, January 2018, and board member Mr. Shalin Desai’s celebration of being a “Queer, South Asian male”: I really do not care. If you are a “Queer, South Asian male”, good for you. Tell me all about it as we hike the trail together. If one's major motivation and qualification for being an ATC Board Member is to advocate for those identities, as he clearly has done in said issue, and not the AT itself, then appointing him to represent me, an ATC member, was ill advised.
While I happily agree that his perspectives would provide opportunity for interesting conversation along the trail, interaction that may be productive to both parties; I have no desire to be lectured, to be indoctrinated, to be held hostage to gender, ethnic, social, political, religious, ideologies, as part of ATC membership. Mr. Desai informed us that
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in seeking advice prior to hiking the AT, that he sought exclusively, the segregated opinions of those who shared his gender, ethnic and social identities. Why did he not simply query input from all former thru-hikers? Is this inclusiveness?
This achievement of board membership, this leeching onto an established organization, and then holding the membership captive to one’s ideologies, to promote one’s causes, is not something to celebrate. This apparent transition of board membership of the ATC and of the publication AT Journeys, into a personal launching platform for political and social agenda, a personal forum of self interest, a personal crusade of advocacy; this use of the ATC name, membership, and money, to promote personal self interest, is ill advised.
The Appalachian Trail is the people’s trail.
The ATC certainly was never intended to be your platform of indoctrination, a venue to lobby your causes. To assert the pretense of impartiality, to decry political polarization, in AT Journeys, and then to participate in it, is dishonest. Campaign for your causes on your own time. Resist reducing the world’s most famous hiking trail to a mere forum for your own personal ideologies.
The Appalachian Trail, and the experience of hiking on it, is a treasure. It is intended to be enjoyed by everyone.
The focus of the ATC and your publication AT Journeys, in representing it, must be the trail and all of the people who tread on it.
George R. Finn, Jr.
Thru-hiked the AT in 2013, and an ATC Member
This achievement of board membership, this leeching onto an established organization, and then holding the membership captive to one’s ideologies, to promote one’s causes, is not something to celebrate. This apparent transition of board membership of the ATC and of the publication AT Journeys, into a personal launching platform for political and social agenda, a personal forum of self interest, a personal crusade of advocacy; this use of the ATC name, membership, and money, to promote personal self interest, is ill advised.
The Appalachian Trail is the people’s trail.
The ATC certainly was never intended to be your platform of indoctrination, a venue to lobby your causes. To assert the pretense of impartiality, to decry political polarization, in AT Journeys, and then to participate in it, is dishonest. Campaign for your causes on your own time. Resist reducing the world’s most famous hiking trail to a mere forum for your own personal ideologies.
The Appalachian Trail, and the experience of hiking on it, is a treasure. It is intended to be enjoyed by everyone.
The focus of the ATC and your publication AT Journeys, in representing it, must be the trail and all of the people who tread on it.
George R. Finn, Jr.
Thru-hiked the AT in 2013, and an ATC Member
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