Common courtesy isn’t that common

My good friends and colleagues Joe Dadey and Tim Keyes recently spent a weekend hiking in the High Peaks Wilderness Complex and couldn’t wait to share their somewhat bizarre experiences with me.

They hiked up Mount Redfield, one of the forty-sixers. From the summit they made a short yet challenging bushwhack to Moss Pond and then on to Lake Tear of the Clouds. They tented along the Opalescent River, and as is unfortunately all too typical, they encountered way too many unprepared people to count, the most amazing of which didn’t even carry a water bottle.

I saw Joe last week at the Trail Center, and he was eager to tell of their adventures. His first story was about a couple they met who were camping at the Calamity Lean-to. As Joe told it, “A family was staying in the lean-to, when a group of four stomped into camp around midnight. They made no effort to be quiet and even hung up a string of lights around the campsite. It was like a trailer park at Christmas. They gabbed incessantly until, at 2:30 AM, when the father had had enough and complained. A member of the group said, ‘Oh, we’re just catching up. We haven’t seen each other in ages,’” They prattled on without a bit of consideration for the family.

When Joe and Tim finally reached the summit of Redfield, there were a couple of Gen Zers who had one day pack between them, from which they pulled two camp chairs which they proceed to set up on the summit. Tim said, “Keep in mind that summit is only about 8-foot square. They monopolized the entire patch of bare rock making up the summit. It made it impossible for the five or six others to take in the views.”

Joe said, “The guys were pleasant enough but clueless when it came to courtesy.” They also were apparently clueless regarding Leave No Trace practices. Tim said, “As we headed down, a pungent odor of urine filled the air. It was obvious that one of the young men had urinated right on the side of the trail.”

From there they bushwhacked the short but rugged quarter of a mile to Moss Pond and then a rugged trailless mile to Lake Tear of the Clouds. Joe said, “We were in the middle of nowhere, literally, and there on the ground was an empty Oscar Meyer cocktail wiener container.”

Tim Keyes and Joe Dadey at MacNaughton Cottage at the Upperworks trailhead

After a marathon day they arrived back at their campsite at 10:30 PM. They didn’t waste any time getting into their sleeping bags and were soon sound asleep… until they weren’t. Joe said, “Around 4:00 AM we heard a loud voice say, ‘Look, a campsite!’ The intruders flashed their lights throughout the campsite like it was a Hollywood premiere and carried on a loud conversation. They finally hiked through to Lord knows where.” Tim added, “They contrasted with a French-Canadian couple who were camped right next to us, who got up, broke camp, and left without Joe or me ever hearing them.” Courtesy isn’t completely dead.

Joe then shared the first of their two encounters on their way out. “It was like we were in a Wilderness Twilight Zone. We met a different team of Gen Zers. They were nice enough guys but had a wireless speaker booming music from their phone. Nothing like the serenity of the Wilderness—until some stranger blasts Greta Van Fleet like he’s headlining Coachella... in the middle of the High Peaks Wilderness.”

And finally, Tim shared his coup de grâce. “I saw what I assumed was a doggy poop bag that someone had left behind at the trailhead. I picked it up to properly dispose of it, only to find it wasn’t filled with doggy poop, but the human variety. A fitting ending to a crazy weekend.”

It’d be great if these incidents were aberrant. But they’re not. We could debate the cause of the death of courtesy endlessly, but it seems that it has gone the way of the 30-cent milkshake.

So how do we bring back common courtesy? I think there are two components to learning common courtesy. The first is a mind set and the second is role modeling.

We have to realize our actions can always impact others, and we have to anticipate what those impacts might be. For example, when I come to a canoe portage I never know if someone might be coming down the portage from the other direction or a paddler might come up behind me at a faster pace than I can maintain. As a result, the first thing I do when I get out of my boat is move it and my equipment up the trail out of the way of others. I didn’t have to be taught that, I just figured it out and hey, if I can figure it out, anyone can.

Role modeling, on the other hand, starts at home, but we all play a part. If you’re a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a coach, a mentor, or just a good friend, it starts with us modeling the behavior we want to see in others. I learned early on that the saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” just doesn’t work. Others have to see us model the behaviors we want them to exhibit.

I frequently remind parents and teachers of one of my favorite quotes from Rober Fulghum's book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It goes, "Don't worry that your children don't listen to you; worry that they watch everything you do." If they see you cheat at something, they’ll cheat at something. If they see you exhibit road rage, they’ll exhibit road rage. If they see you being rude to people, they’ll be rude to people.

We all learn by mimicking what we see, and children in particular learn more from observing others' behavior than from simply being told what to do.

It certainly appears that the loss of common courtesy is a trend. Is it the result of covid isolation? Is it because courtesy is considered weak by some?

Who knows and who cares?

Because why people are discourteous is irrelevant. What is important is that courtesy needs to be the norm, not the exception.