Shane Rickert reaches for carp cruising the break on the upper Missouri. Image Jake McGlothlin
For a 12-year old kid growing up in public land impoverished Texas, the concept of the wide open swaths of public land in the West was pretty much incomprehensible during my first whirlwind sweep of the Western national parks one early 70’s summer.
When She Who Must Be Obeyed and I first moved to Utah in 1984, Utah’s public lands were in our minds an immense and beckoning playground (70.4% of Utah’s territory is in the public domain, 3rd highest in the country) offering freestone rivers, snow-buried peaks and thousands of acres of astounding desert country.
The visceral concept of what a value public lands are didn’t really truthfully begin to sink in until I became a fly fisherman in 1985 though.
It took hours upon hours of standing in those waters, hiking those shores, floating various waterways via raft and drift boat and even driving to those valleys and waterways to begin to understand what a vital role public lands play in the lives of millions of outdoorsmen and women.
Cruising the Rockefeller Parkway between YNP and GTNP.
[Hell, I even like driving to special places – drives to valued waters and camping venues have played a critical role in the life of my family for the past thirty years.]
Living away from Montana (with only 34.9% of land public it’s just the 12th best in the nation) for several years now brings into sharp relief what it’s like to be in a state with almost no public land (Alabama ranks 41st in public land available to we members of the ‘greater unwashed’ – a paltry 3.81%, though nearly double Texas’ downright shameful 1.92%).
Life without public lands sucks.
On the other hand, life is so much better with a bit of open space, meadow grass, river gravel or pine forest floor under your boots.
There’s powerful medicine in hiking | fishing | floating through | riding a horse | skiing | sashaying through a wide swath of public land and water – find some today and take a deep drink. Life will look a whole lot more manageable tomorrow.
I love public lands.
[The battle over public lands management is heating up around the West; please take the time to chime in on this most critical issue. The public land legacy for current and future generations is at risk. (We’ll have more to come shortly; Montana’s Capital Rally is coming up the 16th…)
The Montana Rally poster on the right via John T Robson (@DaysAtCamp) on twitter. ]
