Wait, so are you saying a solution to your concerns about the "wildness" of the forests is to build more roads that go through the forests?SWriverstone wrote: ↑February 5th, 2021, 10:42 amNot only are there not enough trails, there aren't enough roads: here in the West, access to the mountains (for the average public) is limited to a relatively few number of paved state highways that cross mountain passes—so huge numbers of people are funneled into those relatively few access points. And of course now I'm seeing crowds even on unpaved forest roads that climb into the mountains from the foothills.
If forests are crowded on weekends but not on weekdays, can it really be said that the forests are generally or usually crowded? If forests near a metro area (which usually are not National Forest designated) are more crowded than forests farther from a metro area, can it really be said that most forests are generally crowded everywhere? Etc. Rhetorically speaking, these sound like personal problems having to do with your personal schedule and driving radius - not with the state of forests in general.
I think it's one thing to discuss specific environmental impacts - like roads, dirtbikes, trash, logging - but you can't conflate those with subjective disapproval about whether people are enjoying the outdoors "correctly." There are definitely a lot of people out there, and they are definitely tromping all over everything and creating user paths and stepping on flowers and leaving trash and TP everywhere - but the kid playing Gameboy in the middle of the forest is harming literally no one.