Our public lands are this nation's greatest legacy and, as conservationist Randy Newberg states, are our greatest form of undistributed wealth ever. They're where we go to find respite from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Where we go to commune with nature, and quiet all the ills that plague our modern lives. They're largely untouched, unmolested things, and areas that abound with natural life that cities, towns, and suburbs have all eschewed in favor of convenience.
They're my favorite place to be.
Yet, whether I'm fly fishing Montana's backcountry, elk or deer hunting in Utah, or camping, hiking, or otherwise recreating with my family near our house or around the country, there's one underlying issue I see wherever I go: trash, and I'm not talking about some yahoo blazing a single track trail at Mach Jesus in a trophy truck smoking Marlboros and drinking Bud Light. I'm talking about the physical trash that literally everyone and their mothers leaves behind at camp sites, trail heads, or parking lots where they unload.
And I'm freakin' sick of it, as on a recent trip into the woods to look for elk, I not only brought out another bag of trash, having already filled two bags the trip prior with my children, but I found a massive pile of dumped construction piping just lying in what should be a pristine wash along a sage brush hill. I knew right then and there I had to write this because it's getting frankly ridiculous, and it's the sort of thing that shady-ass politicians on both sides are going to use against us to take away our public lands.
Politicians love to point to the mismanagement of our public lands, and specifically how both the workers responsible for their upkeep, as well as trail users, fail to keep these lands clean and kept up with. You'll here from one side of the aisle that we need to downsize our lands—sell-off—so a reduced workforce can keep up with the mounting pressures, while the other side will close trails because recreators can't be trusted not to only keep things clean, but to stay on the designated trails.
And while both are right in identifying the problem, one is helping to create it by laying off thousands of workers and land managers, while the other is relying on us to ensure they have all the evidence they need to close those lands to us. Both get the same outcome, though, and that's less public lands for you, me, and our children's children to enjoy.
But while hundreds of thousands of you, and me, are fighting the former, we're doing a truly shit-ass job at the latter, i.e. being better land stewards so they don't have the ammunition to send toward us. Honestly, we suck at it, and it's time to change that.
I've harped on this topic before, as well as talking about how we need to better police our own outdoor communities. I've also highlighted the good work of organizations like Tread Lightly!, onX Off-Road, and others, and there are groups like the Gambler 500 which organizes massive cleanups through its Sons of Smokey smartphone app that are doing great work at reducing the trash on trails every single day. All of which is to the benefit of all trail users, not just off-roaders.
Yet, still, I see, find, and pickup hundreds of pounds of trash each and every year because hikers, campers, backpackers, hunters, anglers, off-roaders, dirt bikers, and ATVrs all just can't pack it out with them. And it's infuriating.
One of the easiest ways to mitigate this, apart from just not being a complete and utter asshole with a selfish disregard toward our public lands, is by taking a trash bag with you whenever you recreate on our public lands. You can either take one of the countless plastic bags you have stored underneath your kitchen sink—I know everyone has a cache—or you can get purpose-built mesh trash bags like the ones that Tread Lightly! has and just bring them with you. Furthermore, if you bring something into the backcountry, just take it out with you. It's really just that easy.
What's truly mind-meltingly stupid about this whole rant is that we're doing the politicians' job for them in terms of giving them exactly what they want: for us to have less public land that we can enjoy. By not cleaning up our trash, by making the backcountry worse for everyone, we allow them to capitalize on our idiocy and make it easy for them to point at when they want to lease or sell it to a company that'll turn it into a strip mine.
So remember that the next time you leave a water bottle, Coke or beer can, a pile of old rubber hoses, or a busted tire in the woods. Just take it out with you, people.
