Earth Day is My Day

It is remarkable how many people I cross paths with at conferences and meetings take some sort of ownership for creating the Leave No Trace Seven Principles. I’ve heard everything from, “I was there at the table when we said, ‘Wow, we need a SEVENTH principle’” to “We hashed out back there in the eighties.”

First I thought it mirrored Al Gore and his early claim that he started the internet, though now I look at it in another way. I enjoy each story, many people were involved at different points in Leave No Trace’s evolution. It is an incredible thing that such a broad community takes personal ownership for the development of the Leave No Trace basic tenets.

The same is true for Earth Day. Many on the Leave No Trace staff volunteered at some sort of earth day event last week and pinpointing the event’s true origins is not a straightforward exercise — so I turn to Al Gore’s internet I found endless iterations, but here are two relatively consistent ones:

http://earthday.envirolink.org/history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day