#wilderness

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Wilderness Parking: The Myth of Wilderness

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Wilderness Parking: The Myth of Wilderness

“Native lands, the places where California Indian tribes had interacted closely with the landscape for generations, were designated as unpopulated ‘wilderness’ areas to conform to Euro-American notions of idealized, pristine conditions that supposedly existed before contact. This assertion was, in part, built upon the idea that Native peoples were not and had not interacted in any meaningful way with significant portions of California. These systematic attempts to attack the very existence of California Indians were a means by which white settlers set out to exterminate, control, and dominate the land, flora, and fauna of Native California.” Baldy 2

I’m here to share my journey toward a better understanding of the context of our public lands with the hope that it will inspire you to learn more as well. As a young bike tourist, I was shocked at the manner in which people were engaging with our public lands and held many ableist and entitled views about enjoying such places.  Originally enraged by the almost being killed by rental RVs on the road, I later became enthralled with the vignettes plastered on their sides. As I started to dig into some reading about the origins of wilderness areas and the terrible atrocities committed that created them, I became starkly aware of how little I understood of our county’s history and the formation of our public lands.  Much of the writing I was able to find disproportionately deals with our National Park system which is almost unanimously managed as wilderness areas which isn’t something that we encounter much as cyclists, especially if you are trying to ride off-road. Nonetheless, the park system became the archetype for how we manage public lands and thus is important for understanding the rest of our non-NPS lands and our broader definitions of “nature” and “wilderness.”

Forest Service and Interior Department Endorse Bikes in Wilderness

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Forest Service and Interior Department Endorse Bikes in Wilderness

As reported in the Sustainable Trails Coalition last week, there’s been a bit of development in the often debated topic of whether or not bicycles should be allowed in designated wilderness areas:

“Agency staff testified before a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee regarding S.1695 – the Human-Powered Travel in Wilderness Areas Act, introduced by Senator Mike Lee (R.–Utah). Click here for video of the full testimony.

S.1695 would remove the agencies’ blanket bans on bicycling in Wilderness and revert to the Forest Service’s 1981 rule, allowing line officers to treat bikes as they do horses, hikers, campers, and hunters—i.e., allow or prohibit access based upon local conditions.”

This is a massive undertaking, with many details that would need to be ironed out if it passed.

Read the full report and many more details at Sustainable Trails Coalition.

A Discussion About Wilderness: Backpacking and Fly Fishing in Northern New Mexico

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A Discussion About Wilderness: Backpacking and Fly Fishing in Northern New Mexico

There is a case for wilderness in the American West, which is defined in the Oxford dictionary as “an uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region.” The problem is, this classification was written by colonizers and erasers of indigenous history. Humans have long inhabited these areas, before the Spanish or the Pilgrims infiltrated these lands, long before it was called New Mexico.

This topic is a heated one. Organizations like the Sierra Club lead the way in this classification, establishing rules about who can or can’t visit these lands: for instance, cyclists. I’m not here to talk about whether or not bikes should be allowed in areas classified as wilderness, so let’s step back a bit and discuss what that word, wilderness, means in the context of the original inhabitants of the Americas.