There Is Only One Route to Happiness!

Michael J. Vandeman

March 7, 2026

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy." Rabindranath Tagore

Every now and then I wake up in the middle of the night with an insight, and have to get up and write it down so I don't forget it. Last night I suddenly realized -- what should have been obvious -- that there is only one route to happiness: doing things for other people or wildlife. Have you ever noticed Vladimir Putin's face? I've never seen him smile! He's never happy! And the reason is obvious: he cares only about himself! The same goes for Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Ali Khamenei, etc.

I spent the last 15 years doing habitat restoration (removing invasive non-native plants) in my local park, occasionally with others, but mostly by myself. Whenever I worked near a trail, I would see dozens of people hiking by, and occasionally I would suggest that help me, given that they use the trail for free. In fifteen years, two people actually helped, each for one day. During summer, I would see lots of school children doing "ego-centric" (competitive) sports, but none of them doing any public service. Several times I suggested to the staff that they do some form of public service, but nothing ever came of it. I suggested the same thing to the local Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, with the same result: nothing.

The Sierra Club began with a promising proposal: to "enjoy and protect nature". But lately, the "protect" part seems to have been lost. There's no conversation about habitat restoration. Trail-building is very popular. It's rampant. But no one talks about the wildlife habitat that is being destroyed to create the trails and fill them with humans. Wild animals, of course, don't like being around humans; it's the first thing that you learn about them, when you are a child: if you approach them, they run (fly, swim, slither, etc.) away. Of course, you need to experience something to appreciate it, but at the same time, you have to stay out of it, if you are going to preserve it! As far as I know, there isn't one square inch of the Earth that is off-limits to all humans! In 1998, when I presented my paper advocating human-free areas, it was received with stunned silence, instead of the usual applause, and the copies I displayed for the conferees mysteriously disappeared.

Mountain biking has taken over the Sierra Club -- especially the San Francisco Bay chapter. No one seems to understand or care about its impact. It's very unpleasant for a hiker or equestrian, who wants to enjoy and listen to nature. Instead you have to constantly be in guard to listen for the slight noise of an approaching bicycle and be ready to jump out of the way to avoid being hit. It's impossible to enjoy being in the park! There is a reason that bicycles are prohibited on sidewalks, and they are much safer than unpaved trails, which are random and constantly changing. But by far the worst impact is that a bicycle (and even more, an e-bike) lets one travel much farther in wildlife habitat, and hence have a much greater negative effect on the wildlife, making it impossible to make full use of its habitat. Mountain biking is a selfish, environmentally, socially, and medically destructive activity, and mountain bikers -- no matter how many trails they gain access to -- are never happy, and provide no benefit to anyone but themselves.

In 1985, biologists invented a new discipline: conservation biology. The idea was, instead of simply studying wildlife in their ivory towers, to actively work to preserve it. Of course, they would face a lot of opposition, and many academics were not used to dealing with political fallout. The passion sems to have greatly dissipated since then. I used to be able to request a "free literature" table at conferences to display my papers. Not any more! And my paper on trail-building as habitat destruction was banned from the North American conference.

Someone like Mother Theresa or Rachel Carson should not be an anomaly. They are "on to something"! So are our mothers, nurses, doctors, teachers, reference librarians, conservationists, etc., who practice compassion for humans and other species.