If you get out and enjoy public land, hunting, fishing, using trails, or whatever, you’ve probably had an overwhelmingly positive experience. America’s public land legacy really is one of the best things about this country, and against a backdrop of an emerging police state that keeps stolen children in cages, it stands out even more.
Foreign and domestic policy in this country is quickly fitting the dictionary definition of “blowing it,” but somehow public land protections are emerging as a silver lining of bipartisan progress. Now, don’t get me wrong, I would never say that we’re not blowing it. Our climate “policies” are the least funny jokes outside of an Adam Sandler movie. This Administration’s forestry and energy directives seem to be convinced that the year is 1884. And there is an ongoing, and increasing threat of privatization of America’s west.
But at the same time we just permanently reauthorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is our strongest conservation tool. We’ve passed large scale conservation and public access bills nationally. And public lands have emerged as a unifying issue for the left and the right. Hunters and hippies, united at last.
It turns out people love to go outside, and will actually vote about it when you tell them they can’t. This is great. Outside is where we go to recharge our batteries, and have fun, and be alone for a while. Outside is important, and it’s worth going to the mats for.
Of course if everyone is outside, at some point they’re going to have to see one another, even though sometimes the whole point is not to see anyone at all. When this happens, you would be forgiven for thinking that folks who see other folks doing pretty much the same thing with their disposable time would more or less get along. And oh boy would you be wrong.
It turns out that even though spending time on public land is the great common denominator of the American West, we can still spend our entire lives fighting about it. Complaining about trail use and etiquette is now the most popular use of public land in four states*, if you can believe that.
And there are a lot of schools of thought behind how to deal with this. Some merry bands of misanthropes would modestly propose that if we would all simply recreate the exact same way that they recreate, then everything would be fine. Others prefer a rigid, bureaucratic flow chart for each trail user to keep in their pockets and reference when encountering another user.
I would like to propose a third way, wherein we recognize that we are different, and all just try to be nicer to each other**.
The reality as that most anxiety around public land and recreation management is rooted in narcissism. Consider your own behavior. When you’re out on the trails, do you expect that you won’t see anyone else (looking at you, headphones people)? Do you feel like the way you enjoy outside is more pure, more rooted in heritage, or somehow better than another way of enjoying outside? Do you define the best use of a place in terms of your own experiences? Think about that.
I mean, I don’t like seeing people out there either. That’s a big part of going out there. To be alone. To be small. To be shocked from our daily status quo of bustling, and competing with the Joneses, or whatever. But the whole point of wide open spaces is to remind ourselves that not everything is about us. In the era of Strava, and Instagram, and self-righteous letters to the editor, that is easy to lose.
So get out there. Have fun. Try not to be a dickhead. And let’s build a tradition of trail etiquette from there.
*this is a made up fact.
** this may also work in other places, such as when driving, talking to customer service employees, and on the internet
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More and more the US political landscape resembles a kind of bizarro-fantasy world of backstabbing, intrigue, and high drama. It can be hard to keep straight whom we’re cheering for, whom we’re cheering against, and who even still has their head. (Who’s the Secretary of State, Defense, and Interior now? I would actually have to Google that).
And so I think it will be helpful to connect the dots to everyone’s favorite children’s show, Game of Thrones, to keep things straight. If I’ve missed the mark to let me know – still searching for Tyrion . . .
Game of Thrones Characters in Real Life
(if we can call this real life)
Joffrey Baratheon is Donald Trump – Because obviously. Have you seen this new crossbow? It’s the best crossbow. He has all the best crossbows.
Tommen Baratheon is Barron Trump – Again, you know, obviously.
Cersei Lannister is Mike Pence – Always lurking in the background, pulling the strings he can. Of course the King is the King, and won’t be controlled all the time.
Jaime Lannister is Ivanka Trump – She’s pretty hard to feel sorry for, but ever so often there’s a glimmer of dignity and grace. I love the idea of redemption here, but I need to see some effort. King Slayer’s gonna slay?
Margaery Tyrell is Steve Bannon – A master manipulator of the king. Not long for this world.
Lord Varys is Lindsey Graham – He’s been around as long as the kingdom itself, and does what he needs to do to stay relevant. He’s got a keen sense for the political winds, and will probably make it through just fine as long as he can live with himself.
The Minstrel Guy Who Sings The Wrong Song And Then Joffrey Has His Tongue Cut Out is Chris Christie.
Petyr Baelish is Stephen Miller – A tactical and strategic genius, and wildly ambitious. He’s never far from the king and has a knack for staying in the game. Objectively a bad person. “He would watch the kingdom burn if he could be the king of the ashes.”
Grand Maester Pycelle is Sebastian Gorka – Full of stories. Documented mouth-breather. Has he been stabbed by children yet?
Sir Gregor Clegane is Fox News. You don’t fuck with Fox News. Fox News will crush your skull.
Robb Stark is Beto O’Rourke – Had a good run early on, but it went to his head a bit. You don’t want to be too big for your britches, do you? Patience, bro. Patience.
Arya Stark is Glenn Greenwald – She’s got a bit of tunnel vision, sure, but punches well above her weight. You don’t want to find yourself on her list.
Sansa Stark is Elizabeth Warren – She’s had her ups and downs, and been treated cruelly by the King and his Court. But she’s got a head for this, and shit who knows? She could run this place.
The White Walkers are Bernie Bros – Dudes only, very white. Initially a pretty good idea for protecting the helpless against the powerful, but now march onward in dead-eyed obedience to the Night King. Just hope they don’t get a fundraising dragon.
The Night King is Bernie Sanders – Is he a hero or a villain? That’s a good question. We’ll have to watch next season and find out.
The resemblance is undeniable.
Night’s Watch is The Progressive Left – Really between a rock and a hard place here. Sworn to protect the realm against the army to the north, but then again the kingdom really kind of needs to be saved from itself, too, doesn’t it?
Wildlings are Millennials – A rag tag bunch of bearded young people who don’t own property. They’d be a real force in the world if they’d just get their shit together.
Jon Snow is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – Leader of the Night’s Watch and a voice to unite the Wildlings. Still has one get-out-of-dead-free card, too.
Craster is Ted Cruz – No one likes him, but they keep him around because, well, it’s cold outside, I guess. Definitely a creeper. Not a popular man.
Ramsey Bolton is Alex Jones/Rush Limbaugh – What happened to you? Why are you like this?
Ned Stark is Howard Dean – Good guy. Really could have gone places, but picked the wrong hill to die on. Sorry dude.
Daenerys Targaryen is Hilary Clinton – She’s got an army of fundraising dragons and won’t stop until she has claimed her birthright on the throne.
Look, I get it. Climate change is real. Humans are causing it. I’m not going to argue with that.
Because, I mean, any rational person can look at the overwhelming body of evidence, or at least listen to unanimous scientific consensus, and pretty much land in the same place, right? NASA, the Euros, everyone, really. We’ve got good people working on this. We’re on the same page. The climate is warming. We’re causing it. At this point “climate skepticism” is really just deliberate obstinance, like a toddler repeating “why?” ad nauseum.
So no, I’m not a climate denier, or a climate skeptic, or whatever. It’s just, like, you know, fuck everyone else.
And bicycles seem fine, I guess, if you’re a child, or a peasant, or something. But I have a job, you know? Bicycles are undignified. Someone might see me. Besides, you would have to get up early, and going to the store to get a light seems like a lot of work*. Yeah, technically, the global hunger crisis is recently on the rise again after more than a decade of consistent decline, but bike commuting in the winter would mean wearing two jackets. Fuck those people. I’m not about to wear two jackets. It would look ridiculous.
It’s not that I don’t believe the climate is warming. That would be silly. I believe it, I do. But I work hard, you know? I’m important. When I need to be someplace I need to be there already, and when I need to blow off some steam then I do it. After a long week of blogging, or thinking about blogging, or driving too big a vehicle into a small parking lot, sometimes I just need to get away for a while. Reboot. Get some perspective. So I hop on a plane. Screw you. I earned it, and what am I going to do? Not go to Mexico for the weekend? You must be out of your damn mind. What would I put on Instagram?
It’s not that I don’t care about those people, I just don’t care enough to do anything. It’s different.
The thing is, I feel for those people who lost their homes in Houston and their lives in New Orleans. I do. But when I’m on a road trip and I need a burger, am I supposed to not get a burger? Do you know how that sounds? Sure, industrial agriculture and rain forest deforestation contribute to 24% of global carbon emissions, but it could take as much as thirty minutes to make a sandwich. And besides, burgers are good. I’m getting one and that’s that.
At the end of the day, it’s not my fault people live in Miami. That’s their bad, you know? I understand that my actions contribute to increased flooding and storms, but do they understand how depressing it is to read about those storms? Shouldn’t they just move? Like, we’ve made it pretty clear that climate change is going to flood their homes. That’s not in dispute. They should probably get out of there, because I’m definitely not going to stop hitting McDonald’s.
Just don’t come to Montana. Montana is full, haven’t you heard?
*ugh omg and then you’d have to charge that light, eventually. No thank you.
