![]() ![]() It goes by other names today: "wreckreation" or "ecotainment." To some degree, the new use results in higher wear and tear on the land it also helps to change the way we imagine public space, and potentially the way we experience it. He called it "industrial recreation" and used the term to refer to the deliberate selling out of landscape for profit. "The Monkey Wrench Gang" author Edward Abbey saw this coming more than a quarter-century ago. The links between nature and cigarettes, and between the outdoors and Marlboro-sponsored adventure sports, are cemented as the landscape becomes merely a backdrop for smoking and desert toys. It's an association that the company drills into its team members (and those who watch the footage in ads back home) as they experience the American outdoors - as presented by Marlboro. Philip Morris, for example, would have you believe the West is about a man on a horse roping cattle and taking cigarette breaks against the view of a snowcapped peak. Big companies like Philip Morris are part of that process, taking their products to the outdoors and roping us into their scheme through a kind of subliminal seduction of the way we see nature. Now it's the land itself that's the cash cow. Its chic center, a modest strip of shops just a couple of miles long, offers all the tourist amenities from art galleries to smoothie outposts.įor at least a century, policymakers looked at logging, grazing and mining as the best means for turning a profit on America's natural resources. The town hosts millions of visitors annually - cyclists, climbers and ATV enthusiasts among others. Today, Moab and its rocky environs are a top destination for outdoor recreation. When the mineral boom went bust, a different industry took over. The trails wind through sandstone cliffs and sand washes hidden by salt cedar scrub bush and pinyon. Mining companies carved many of them in the 1950s to reach pockets of uranium. Moab has more than 5,000 miles of off-road trails. "Are you ready for adventure, the thrill of a lifetime?" "How does it feel to be in Marlboro Country?" Someone announces the cameras are rolling, and a flood of questions shoots through the hot air. A camera crew pans in for close-ups of the team members, whose eyes are pinched shut from the sunlight. Cowboys on horseback whoop and holler with their packs of dogs yipping underneath. To welcome them to Marlboro Country, motorcyclists do doughnuts in the sand while Marlboro jeeps toot their horns and rev their engines. After conducting telephone interviews and a boot-camp selection process meant to measure charisma and athletic ability, the cigarette maker whittles its final choices down to 100 men and women aged 18 to 25 - most of them nonsmokers - who come from countries with the highest smoking rates in the world. ![]() In response to its rigorous international promotion campaign aimed at young adults, Philip Morris claims to receive nearly 1 million adventure team applications worldwide for its annual desert event. The journalists are here to cover the company's month-long, all-expenses-paid outdoors vacation in which four teams of handpicked participants will raft the Colorado River rapids, power their way up sand dunes by jeep and race across the desert on motorcycles and ATV's in the name of high-powered adrenaline adventure - footage from which will be broadcast overseas in Marlboro ad campaigns and as promotion for the next year's event. Eighteen members of the Marlboro Adventure Team and an entourage of foreign journalists step off the bus. Against the backdrop of wind-eroded red rocks in the desert outskirts of Moab, Utah, a bus the size of a jet airliner pulls to a stop in a cloud of dust. ![]()
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