As Americans, it’s easy to overlook the uniqueness of our relationship to our land. Yes, nations across time and space have bought, sold, developed or preserved land, but the sheer scale and availability of American public land is incomparable. We see it in our National Parks Service, Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service and a dozen other alphabet agencies. Through them, the land is theoretically and literally ours.
I thank a coalition of scientists, citizens and activists for that privilege. Using wisdom severely absent from contemporary America, they preserved the natural bounty of the land for generations. On paper, we have the God-given right to enjoy this land. In practice, for some communities the fight to fully exist in these places continues.
Policy, both benevolent and at the expense of the original inhabitants, has created a one-of-a-kind environment. We need to be especially aware of the latter as the land changes and the culture warms to reparation. How we treat our land and how we compensate the native communities will be a defining decision of our generation. Rarely (but thankfully) some land became public to defend it from the depredations of private development.
My home state of Oklahoma is for all intents and purposes the direct result of the criminal acquisition of land. A trace of the native nations remains in family and tribal tracts sprinkled throughout the state. All administered to some degree by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an organ of our Bureau of Land Management. The textbook anatomy of a nation is cultural and spatial; the people plus the land. To be an American is to be the beneficiary or victim of the policy that shapes our public land.
Until we eliminate the effects of harmful policy, what do we do? How do we protect, promote and benefit from our public land?
How about camping? Use the land, learn the land, live the land; ultimately, save the land. This blog began as a way to elucidate that sentiment. There are so many ways we can responsibly use our land that will further its preservation and return it to a sacred place in our culture.
That’s why I camp, and why I invite you to camp federal land. To camp our land.
Good talk, see you out there.