Field is an environmental activist who lives in Roanoke.

Rupert Cutler (“Have a restaurant and an easement,” Dec. 23 letter) suggested trading the most valuable parcel of Mill Mountain Park to those wanting it for a commercial development, in exchange for a conservation easement on the mountain’s slopes.

But the mountain doesn’t belong to Cutler or Valley Forward to make these trades with. It’s a natural heritage left to all Roanokers, now and future. This purely political trading reminds me of the story in the Old Testament, in which Esau trades his birthright for a mess of pottage.

A trade like this is not required to place a conservation easement on Carvin’s Cove, so why must the most valuable location in Mill Mountain Park be turned over to developers before an easement can be considered? It seems a contradiction.

This restaurant’s design may look small on paper, but it would leave a big footprint with its extended porches and three floors. The bottom floor would include a fast-food café and other rooms.

Moreover, the city code would require this project to include 70 or more parking spaces that would be blasted into the mountain’s crest, and whose glinting parked cars would constitute the first “view” head-on, of anyone driving up the road.

When people say that we must commercialize the mountaintop to attract young people, we should realize that many who are young don’t want restaurants and asphalt on top of mountains, and many who will be old in a few decades will appreciate our few nearby refuges of nature, quietness and beauty.

On a recent holiday, I saw numerous individuals and couples in their 20s strolling the paths, talking, holding hands and enjoying a chance to get away from the crowd. They apparently did not miss the fine dining or cocktails.

Will these young couples find that same serenity in a restaurant parking lot? Will they have the financial means to exchange the peace of nature for an indoor dining experience?

Maybe some will. But land-use studies show that young people want their restaurants in a central location with other venues available and the ability to walk between them among groups of other young people. They want their night life where the action is but flock to enjoy outdoor recreation in green, uncommercialized settings.

And how many older folks who simply wish to sit down for a hot meal will want to navigate a dark, winding mountain road on a winter night? For about half the year, our land is dark by dinner time. How much of this dark view would be seen from within a lit-up building at night?

Meanwhile, a restaurant on Mill Mountain would bring with it the noise of commercialism that would shatter the quiet silence of nature, frighten away the wildlife and disrupt that sense of getting away from human development that so many seek from this mountain.

But worse, a commercial restaurant dominating a beautiful mountain would strengthen the heresy of humanism, that narcissistic devotion to developing and building wherever there is green space. It would also display the domination of a small business group over public land they did not donate to the city — a natural heritage that belongs to everyone.

Mill Mountain is a park dedicated to recreation. It seems people could let it be kept as that and find enough locations for business deals, cocktails and commercial dining in the 400 or more restaurants in our valley.