Leave No Trace, Practically

Leave No Trace has seven principles, developed for wilderness use and applied just as well at a busy family campground. Most people know the litter one. The interesting parts are the six others — and three of them are the opposite of what well-meaning people instinctively do.

1. Plan ahead and prepare

This is a Leave No Trace principle, which surprises people. Poor planning is what causes most damage: arriving after dark and pitching somewhere you should not, running out of water and drawing from a fragile source, going unprepared and needing rescue.

Check the regulations, check the weather, know the site rules, repackage food at home to cut rubbish, and arrive with daylight to spare.

2. Camp on durable surfaces

At a campground: use the pad provided. It exists precisely so the impact stays in one place. Do not extend your footprint onto the vegetation at the edge because it looks flatter.

Counterintuitive bit: in a popular area, concentrate your impact — walk the trail even when it is muddy, rather than skirting round the edge. Walking around a muddy patch is what widens trails into scars. In pristine areas the rule reverses: spread out, and do not create a new path.

3. Dispose of waste properly

Pack out everything, including the things that feel like they do not count: fruit peel, apple cores, eggshells, nutshells. An orange peel takes months to years to break down, and it teaches animals to associate people with food long before it disappears.

Washing up: strain solids into your rubbish, use biodegradable soap sparingly, and scatter the grey water at least 200 feet from any water source. Biodegradable means it breaks down in soil — not that it belongs in a lake.

Toilets: use the facilities where they exist. In the backcountry, a cathole 6–8 inches deep, at least 200 feet from water, trails and camp — and pack out the paper.

4. Leave what you find

Rocks, antlers, wildflowers, interesting sticks — leave them. It feels harmless because it is one thing, and that is exactly the arithmetic that empties a place over a season.

Also: do not hammer nails into trees, cut branches for firewood, or dig trenches around tents. Dead wood on the ground is habitat, not tidying-up waiting to happen.

5. Minimise campfire impacts

Use the existing fire ring. Never build a new one. Keep it small — a fire the size of a dustbin lid gives all the warmth and light you need and produces coals you can actually cook on.

Buy firewood locally, within about 50 miles. Moving firewood is a major vector for invasive insects that kill whole forests. This is the single highest-impact rule on this page and the one most people have never heard.

Burn it down to ash, drown it, stir it, drown it again, and feel it with the back of your hand before bed.

6. Respect wildlife

Observe from a distance. Never feed anything, including the very tame chipmunk — a fed animal becomes a nuisance animal and is often the one that ends up destroyed.

Store food, rubbish and anything scented — toothpaste, sunscreen, the dog's bowl — away overnight, in the car or a provided locker. Where bear rules apply, follow the campground's specific instructions rather than general advice.

Keep dogs under control. A dog running loose is stressful for wildlife and for every other camper.

7. Be considerate of others

• Quiet hours are real. Usually 10pm to 7am.
• Do not walk through other people's sites. The invisible boundary is universally respected.
• Keep white light out of other tents. Switch to red once it is dark.
• Speakers — headphones. Your soundtrack is not a shared amenity.
• On the trail, uphill walkers have right of way.

The version you can actually remember

If seven principles is too many for a Friday afternoon, this covers most of it:

Use the pad and the ring that are already there. Take everything out, including the peel. Buy the wood locally, drown the fire, and leave the site looking like nobody camped on it.

Do a final sweep before you drive off — the whole pitch, on your hands and knees around the fire ring and the picnic table. You will always find something. Tent pegs, bottle caps, a sock, foil corners.

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More practical guides in Field Notes. New to all of this? The nine-step walkthrough covers the whole trip.