I didn't die or even disappear really. I spent most of the past few months on large wildfires in Wyoming and Montana. I immediately noticed a difference in "forest users" in these areas. You could cover many many miles of National Forest lands without seeing the trash, graffiti, litter, and illegal social trails cut by misuse of 4x4's, ATV's or dirt bikes. Why? Historically, Colorado has been known as a place of tree huggers and nature lovers. Anyway, I returned to find the same bad manners and all too common misuse of our public lands.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
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The biggest and most obvious reason - population densities. The Front Range gets slammed with heavy use. We have more than 2 times as many people living along the Front Range as they do in ALL of MT and WY combined.
Second to that - I think we also have to ask the question why do people go to the forest in the first place? And I think when it comes to the high stresses of this overgrown, urban, commuting Front Range, the answer often is just to get crazy & blow off steam.
People treat our forests like their personal "free party" zone - A place to drink beer, to get high, to party, to escape the rat race if only for a few hours at a time. And these kinds of people often leave a mess behind.
I meet many in the forest who are nice enough people. But they don't know the difference between a pine and a spruce. They don't want to know the wildflowers. They don't care to understand the fragility of a wetland. They're not there for that.
They're there to cut loose, to get wild, to get that adrenaline rush, to release that urban pressure that builds in their minds so they can go back to work on Monday and feel a little saner.
And if they leave a mess behind when they leave? Well you wouldn't believe how often I hear "the ranger will do it - that's what we pay taxes for".
They are truly only thinking of themselves. Then again that's pretty much what we all do if you think about it.
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