By any measure, the outdoor education and
indoctrination of mountain bikers has been a story of unparalleled
success. In less than 20 years, mountain-bike advocacy groups like
the International Mountain Bicycling Association have accomplished
what other traditional user groups have had centuries, if not
millennia, to address. And as the article in your Sept. 18 issue
points out, mountain bikers have often accomplished this with
little support or acknowledgement — if not outright
opposition — from other elements of the outdoor community.
All trail users could stand some behavioral improvements and
we’re better off pursuing that together than apart.
Had cyclists been welcomed to the public lands, just imagine how
much further along we all might be toward preserving and protecting
the dwindling wild places we all love. I can’t fault
traditional trail users for their early suspicions or their initial
dismissal of mountain biking as a passing fad, but today I am
astounded and dismayed by the failure of some trail users and some
conservation organizations to recognize that mountain bikers
represent the greatest injection of outdoor enthusiasm and voting
power that the conservation constituency has seen since John Muir
invited the masses to outdoor worship. The bicycle is, rightly so,
the darling of environmentalists worldwide. Treating it otherwise
can only hamper conservation efforts.
Daniel
Greenstadt
San Diego, California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Hug a mountain biker.
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