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| Grass, Rock - Point Lobos 2008 |
Weston Beach is still blocked off. One wonders if park authorities are trying to prevent degradation of the site due to overuse. I was going to ask about the issue at the entrance station, but they had their hands full with a long line of cars waiting to get in. Luckily for me, I have plenty of earlier photos taken at this location (2008 photo, taken with an Olympus E-510 and a 12-60mm lens, shown above).
So, once again we have the issue of overcrowding. At Point Lobos, its gotten to the point where a reservation system is being put into place.
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| Weston Beach Closed - Point Lobos 2019 |
1 comment:
I think the problem of overcrowding is going to get worse.
On the one hand, we want our national parks and wilderness areas to perform the function of getting people attuned to nature values, and direct experience is the shortest route to that. How else to build support for preservation?
On the other hand, too much love leads to over-use and degradation.
How to balance these along the spectrum of use?
As population grows, the pressure on all parts of the environment increases. So too the parks and outbacks.
As a fly fisherman, I've seen this evolution in another way--private water becoming prohibitively expensive, public waters becoming progressively more crowded.
As photographers, we're seeing it first hand, in places like Point Lobos. Soon it will cost $100 for a party of two to walk along a strictly hemmed-in pathway to selected "viewpoints"--with photo restrictions, and admonitions to "please move on" so others may pass. But the underlying significance of such places belies the artificial and over-restricted access. Such places become miniature golf parks, or little Disneylands. Unreal, homogenized, anesthetized.
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