So I stop by TrailForums and click on this link about Thanksgiving, just for fun. You know, that holiday about being generous and good and kindly toward one’s fellow man during the commercial breaks in the football games. The thread’s creator writes about a new shelter built on the Appalachian Trail and happens to mention the small detail that it’s been made wheel-chair accessible.

A few people really show their holiday spirit by going off the beam about how nutso it is to have a backcountry shelter built in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Now, granted, the trail is not wheel-chair accessible so it is absurd to add ADA-compliant features to a structure built miles from an accessible path.
But there is no way you can raise these complaints — in a thread about Thanksgiving — without looking like a soulless buffoon. Would you raise these same complaints in a roomful of people sitting in wheelchairs at their Thanksgiving dinner?

I know it’s too much to expect basic human decency anywhere on the Internet. But I’d like to see a bit more generosity of spirit from the hiking fraternity. People who walk for fun have no business scoring political points at the expense of people who can’t walk at all. It’s just plain offensive.
The main reason this bugs me is because all the hikers I’ve met on the trail have been cool, interesting, decent people. But the upside is, if a tiny minority of blowhards is posting crap on forums, it means they aren’t out there stinking up the trails.