"Keep Off" or "Keep Out": Mixed Messages at Rocky Mountain National Park

The life in an alpine tundra is fragile. This land type occurs above the treelimit where trees cannot grow. Trees need the average temperature of the year’s warmest month to be above 50˚F. The word ‘tundra’ is Russian for ‘land without trees.’ Alpine tundra has a very short growing season, but it is long enough to support a complex ecology of wildlife. The trees grow slowly often starting behind sheltering boulders. Once exposed, they twist into what is called a Krummholz, a German word for ‘crooked wood.’ These trees may be several hundred years old, yet they barely stand a foot or two. This tundra goes through nearly a hundred freeze/thaw cycles annually. Because water expands by nine percent when it turns to ice, these dynamic forces split rocks and ice/rubble flows create patterns of debris where fragments eventually settle. Reading this landscape to understand its life and forms is difficult although the National Park Service has done a masterful job of marking paths and overlooks, providing parking and installing instructional plaques.

One such overlook is about one hundred feet away from the parking area. It’s worth the trip because it presents a 270 degree panoramic view of astonishing valleys, meadows, glacial pockets and mountains covered with pole pines (many dead from the Pine Beetle infestation) and aspens with leaves that glow as if illuminated. Signs clearly warn people to stay on the path so as to not injure the adjacent plants that can take decades to recover. In no less than ten minutes, I had to remind three people, of which only one was a child, to stay on the path. The signs said “Keep Off” and perhaps this is just vague enough for people to think its negotiable. After all, the ground looked dry and bleak, just rocks and a few straggly plants. Other parts of the park are under restoration and entire areas adjacent to the path demand that you “Keep Out,” and people do. What’s the difference?

Both are lands that are clearly inhospitable to human occupation, at least according to modern sensibilities. That makes everyone a visitor. Warnings that insist you “Keep Out” give the clear indication that you don’t belong there because park operators are doing something and a visit will have to wait. On the other hand, “Keep Off” seems to be about protecting surfaces that appear tough. What’s the harm if I want a photograph from a slightly different angle? You can’t possibly mean that I can never go someplace I can clearly see is easily accessed. The problem, of course, is that not all landscapes are for people. The National Park Service weighs carefully the paradox of exclusion thus protecting wilderness versus the potential to enhance a sense of stewardship people gain by a limited experience such places. For them to increase restrictions caters to people who only respond to yelling and jeopardizes opportunities for others to listen for whispering.