“We must think 7 generations ahead, that is what the elders (of the Tohono O’odham Indians) say.”  Yet we see more and more evidence of people using the remaining wild places who don’t think 7-minutes ahead.  They think about “NOW!”  They think only about themselves.  They could care less about other people, and even less about the creatures who inhabit the wild places.  Many of which are now either on the endangered species list, or about to be listed.

America is a HIGH consumption society.  There isn’t enough stuff for a person to accumulate.  And everyone wants into the game.  It's a nation in debt up to its eyeballs and it still can’t get enough.  We’re down to just 4 percent of the old growth forests.  Numberless billions of trees have been cut down just to clear space for farming (millions of small farms are now abandoned) and to build houses that begin falling apart in less than a decade.

We do not see people moving away from an anthropocentric -egocentric lifestyle.  But we do see some people waking up enough - whether through educational enlightenment or fines or threats of imprisonment -  to begin taking responsibility for their own body waste when visiting these last of the wild places on earth.  Will this be enough to save the remaining wild places?  Nobody knows. 

What we do know is that we see signs of some people changing their behavior.  Some.  We also know that protecting, preserving, and expanding the wild places is a long-term proposition.  Obviously the more these places are used, the more destruction is caused, even by those who do care.  It’s impossible not to leave some remnant of our visit.  Everyone leaves some evidence that they were there.

Stop Making Fires!

We at Ultralight ask you to stop making fires.  Bring the lightest stove you can find and put up with a little cold.  The image of the burning fire flickering on one's face - you know the old frontier myth - is over.  Many of these areas are simply too fragile to behave like it was 1875 - especially the desert wildernesses.  Places like the Grand Canyon and much of the Sierra Nevada Wilderness areas of California have banned fire-making.

Cleaning Up Messes Left By Others

Most of us can’t even entertain the thought of cleaning up someone else’s mess.  But we at Ultralight Wilderness Toilet Company are asking you to do just that.  Take one of our greenbags and pick up any bottles, cans, wrappings, and whatever else you have the guts to pick up that some 7-minute thinker left behind and either bury it or pack it out.  There’s a good feeling that comes with this.  Picking up after the 7-minuters protects wild life, micro life, and helps restore the beauty these people obviously don’t care about.  It’s the feeling of having tried to restore some small place to its original beauty - that provides the good feeling.  And the best time to do this is when no one else is looking.  Character is what we do when we’re alone.