Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments, excepting those wrought on the forests by the fires they made to improve their hunting grounds, vanish in a few centuries. --John Muir
I thought the quote was "walk softly in the woods." Anyway, I walked softly in the Indian Peaks Wilderness heading out from Eldora back from the early to late 70s. Registration was optional and based on the idea that if you were in the area, register at entry and exit so that if missing, someone would know where to look for you. I walked with my dog Niki, a Golden Retriever, and saw no one hike in or out in those days. My son accompanied me and our dog once or twice, and either alone or with this company we encountered snow we'd posthole through till exhausted, or be enchanted with the wildflowers till delirious with the colors and relief from built-world noise . . . high up, now and then, an airliner showed its tail heading west.
Backpacker ethics, which I picked up somewhere along the line in those days, was "pack it in, pack it out." I took it a step further, pack out stuff that I found that didn't belong, such as bottle caps, aluminum beer can tabs, bits of broken glass, foil wrappers for candies or chewing gum. And I, or we, did that, depositing same in some trash at the trailhead or at home in Nederland.
Seems to me backpacker ethics like those of (my) old days should apply to everyday living, although I know this is not realistic. But as applied to one's personal relations and effects, seems like a good rule of thumb.
