[peteorpeter]

The price of solitude is effort. Don't want to share nature with others? Walk a mile and you will filter 99% of humanity. Three miles uphill will filter 99.9%.

My trip to the Grand Canyon was tailored for solitude. We drove hours to get to a trailhead on the North Rim, hiked a a steep trail down, camped (by a hard-to-believe falls/spring), and hiked up and out by moonlight to avoid the heat. I don't mean to sound hardcore - I'm really not - I just like solitude and that's how you get it.

I'm ambivalent about this particular proposal. Exposure to nature creates naturalists. At the same time people ruin nature - the experience of it and it's physical environment. It's a balancing act and I have no idea if this is too much or too little.

[ebbv]

The proposed development doesn't expose people to nature any more than a shrub in the middle of a shopping mall does. It is simply trying to convert one of the greatest natural wonders in the world into a cash grab for greedy, short sighted developers.

Preservation of natural beauty like the Grand Canyon is one of the most important functions of government. Allowing this would be a disaster.