Fifteen years ago I was still a teenager with beads of sweat running down my cheekbones as I crept through the dust in the ruins of a Middle Eastern city to defuse a bomb unseen by the terrorists – a bomb whose blast would have sent me into the next round with a losing score. Tough times. Back then, people used to say that the new computer you'd just brought home was already out of date. That's how fast things moved. And today? Take a look at Facebook – a live stream of your friend's life, and of the girl who sent you a friend request even though you haven't a clue who she is.

The world runs in sharing mode. Or rather – online sharing mode. It's not just the shooter Counter-Strike, celebrating twenty years this year, or the latest iPhone features that are upgrading at a dizzying pace – so is life in the mountains. Ten years ago, you really had to graft your way up a hill, unfolding and refolding a paper map again and again, only to end up back at the last junction at least once anyway. Today you ride up on an e-bike with a satnav on the handlebars. Back then you climbed alone, three free chamois watched you from the forest and a startled doe crossed your path. Today you stand on the summit with ten, twenty, thirty other people. And not a single animal. Unless you count the Yorkshire terrier in someone's rucksack.

Is that a good thing? Or a bad one?

Let the qualified experts judge that – and the self-appointed investors will rush in to refute their arguments. Truth takes many forms. But the facts are indisputable – humans are part of nature.

"Homo is a genus of animals in the family of great apes (Hominidae), which includes the only living representative of humans – the wise human (Homo sapiens)... Hominids are medium-sized to large mammals with pronounced sexual dimorphism in orangutans and gorillas and less marked dimorphism in chimpanzees and humans."

— Source: wikipedia.org

And as part of nature, I feel responsible for the place I live in. Responsible for the mountains I live beneath, which can bathe in bright moonlight just as they can drown in fog and rain – like right now, as I write these lines heading towards... writing.

You've got the internet, you've got Facebook, you've got a blog, you've got freedom. You can write anything. Share the GPS track of any trail the soles of your running shoes have explored. You can share with the whole world your photos from skiing down the Velký kotel cirque – never mind that the area lies in a national nature reserve and the whole site is an avalanche zone, and that anyone who follows you might not assess the risk correctly. You can broadcast tips on the best climbing routes, or even details of a whole area that only locals go to. Or rather, used to go to.

Behind the screens at the many other ends of the internet there will certainly be people who appreciate your tips. But there's also a perhaps even larger group that can't defend itself against the published words – animals, plants, local residents. Before you posted, did you ever ask whether they mind?

"One person's freedom ends where another's begins."

— John Stuart Mill

I write a lot myself – for a magazine and several blogs. And one of my motivations for sitting down at the screen and tapping out stories on the keyboard is surely to share the experiences, feelings and emotions that shook me in some beautiful spot in the mountains. You probably feel the same. But I don't think it's necessary – in fact, I think it's right – to leave that place unnamed. Unspecified. Undisclosed.

I recently finished a big feature about climbing around Zbiroh, during which we found an old summit register on top of one of the sandstone towers, with entries by local legends dating back to 1965. And only half filled. So it could last up there another 55 years – as a testimony and a romantic memento for several more generations. Or I could reveal the name of that tower so that... well, why exactly? So the reader misses out. Misses out on the name, but not on the story. Their own story, though, they'll have to find for themselves.

It's easy to write something. To break a secret kept for years. To intrude on the living space of your fellow members of the kingdom of multicellular heterotrophic organisms – in other words, animals. It's so easy to send crowds of people heading for the crag right past a local old-timer's house. Across his land. And to tell the world that freeriding in the "Kotel" is awesome, without adding the B side – that avalanches come down there and the law doesn't even allow entry to the area.

Writing is also a responsibility.

That's how I see it. That's why you won't find specific names and descriptions in my writing. This is where my fingers fall silent. I write about emotions, feelings, atmosphere. Is that right? I don't know. Make up your own mind. We're free, aren't we?