For more than 25 years, government rules have required most of the 43,500 visitors who come each year to explore the island on foot. But under a mandate from Congress, the Park Service plans to change that early next year by offering daily motorized tours in spite of the tough terrain and cries of protest from environmentalists.....
....Park Service ranger Pauline Wentworth says she often hears visitors, particularly seniors, say they wish they could take a bus or van tour.
Most, she says, have a particular destination in mind: “They want to see the church where JFK Jr. got married.”
Congress intervened in 2004 with a law removing the Main Road and two others from the wilderness designation that protects the surrounding forest. The same law ordered the Park Service to provide daily tours. Rep. Jack Kingston, a Savannah Republican, got the measure passed as part of a larger spending bill.
“The way it was, only an 18-year-old backpacker could walk the 13 miles up the trail to see some of these historical sites,” Kingston said. “This island is not paid for by some of the taxpayers for some of the people. I don’t think John Q. Taxpayer should have to walk 13 miles to see Plum Orchard.”
Ugh. I realize that the island isn't free of human influence: A few homes and a B&B speckle the landscape. But there's no reason to disrupt or change the current state of affairs. It seems the future of Cumberland Island, like most wilderness areas, depends upon its inaccessibility. The more people come, the more people find interest in the island (damn you, JFK Jr., and execrable pop insignificance), the more the essence of the island will be jeopardized. I guess that means I shouldn't add to its publicity.
Let's all recite together our Gerard Manley Hopkins:
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
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