Freedom
Long May It Burn.
“One breath of juniper smoke, like the perfume of sagebrush after rain, evoked in magical catalysis, like certain music, the space and light and clarity and piercing strangeness of the American West. Long may it burn.” — Ed Abbey
We are losing our public land, and that smoke from the burn is going out.
Public Lands are the last thing we have. The only thing that we all have, together. America’s best idea.
We have been losing access to public lands since the day they were established, but with recent terminations of federal workers, and a ‘drill, baby, drill’ presidency, things are moving much faster than ever before. Their “plan” to cut back on US bureaucracy should have never included the NPS or the USFS. This is a plan to remove the lands we know as ours before we have a chance to do anything about it.
It will only be a matter of time that the roads and trails you once traveled through freely are gated up. Closed for mining operations, or for a new private luxury resort. That is — if they haven’t already been.
When will people realize that these public lands are all we have. Public lands are the true definition of Freedom. The most American thing there is. But the ‘Patriots’ saving us are taking them away because they know they can. They know they can shake more money out of them as they flip them upside down to rattle the loose change out of them like a school bully in a cartoon.
Freedom
Be it on foot, by bicycle or even car, the public spaces we roam through embrace a sense of Freedom that is impossible to find elsewhere. And America is blessed to hold so much of this space for its people, especially here in the West.
There is no feeling that rivals that of spending time outside in nature. Packing a camp out into the woods with a friend, or lover, to watch as the stars fill the sky and you can forget about the rest of the things going on in the ‘real world’ is true Freedom. Setting out to climb a mountain, all the way to its peak, just for the sake of doing it is Freedom.
The isolation and helplessness one finds themself in while standing at the base of something like the Palisades Glacier in the Sierra Nevada, or while deep in a narrow canyon of a Utah desert proves to be an experience that is not matched elsewhere.
Hell, even the pain is a Freedom unlike anything else. Be it the thrill of spotting a mountain lion track on the trail you are following, or a leg full of cactus as you brushed against a cholla, or a burn on your finger from cooking a hot meal over an open campfire flame — humans need to experience this, and we’ve been so fortunate in this country to have this Freedom for so long.
But Freedom ain’t free, so as one public lands lover to the next, we must get together and fight to keep what is our free
.