A Symbol

War isn’t about guns. It’s about symbols.

Make no mistake, we’re at war. The battlefield is no less than our earth. The enemy are those for whom the almighty dollar trumps any other consideration. The symbols are our pristine places.

And no symbol stirs the passions of the fly fishing community more than Alaska’s Bristol Bay. No enemy is more reviled than the Pebble Mine partnership, now resurgent and emboldened by an administration that’s undermining the environmental safety net that we’ve fought long and hard to establish. The safety net that we, as a species, desperately need. In Alaska and everywhere else. There’s more than salmon runs at stake here, precious though they may be.

Today, hopefully, you will find your inbox, your blog feed, your online reading list, filled with this message. It’s no coincidence. We who have platforms from which to speak, be they large or small, have gathered together to send a unified message and hope that you, in whatever capacity that you can, will help pass it along.

I’ve said enough. You don’t need to hear the details from me. I’ll let Mark Titus, director, of the stunning documentary feature, The Breach, tell you more and give you your marching orders. He will also give you the opportunity to see his beautiful film for yourself, to inspire you to follow us into the fray.

Save Bristol Bay

Let’s use this symbol to win back Bristol Bay.

And then let's move forward to win the war.

The Day After

Image Courtesy of Jason Tucker

What do I know of public lands? I live in the east where the concept of wide-open spaces, owned by us all, is a beautiful abstraction. A concept to be envied and cherished and protected, but an abstraction just the same. Yes, we have our parks, but they pale by comparison to the western expanses. So when Jason Tucker suggested to the outdoor blogging community that we designate yesterday, September 13th, as Public Lands Proud Blog-In Day, I enthusiastically responded, I’m in. And I was, until I sat down to write my piece and discovered that I had little worth saying.

Our world is full of people who thump their chests and bellow loudly in platitudes based only on intractable opinions with little to no fact. They might be right, they might be wrong, but without substance it doesn't much matter. I try not to be one of them. So as the Blog-In arrived I decided that I’d wait a day and do what no one seems to do anymore. Instead of speaking, I would listen.

Here’s a small sample of what I heard:

... we are the only developed nation on the planet that still has wild lands; that has game available to anyone willing to buy a license and has places for people to go and enjoy nature in it’s honest, naked and raw form. For kids to learn, vacations to be had and memories created. We aren’t perfect but we are pretty damn good. 

Now there is a movement afoot to destroy that system. Washington DC is careening down the path of turning over Federal Public Lands to the states in a thinly veiled attempt to force their sale. My own local Senator responded to my request for an interview that the transfer of land was a necessary step to reducing government spending and balancing the budget. This transfer of Federally held land to the states has always met with the land being sold for resource extraction of development. In fact, the number of acres of State owned public land has shrunk almost 90% in some states. 

While environmental groups, sportsman groups and a number of other organizations have come out against the proposed transfer, only a massive public outcry will divert Washington from it’s current trajectory... 

Public Lands Proud - Dan Frazier, Hatches Magazine

My younger brothers wore hand-me-downs... It occurred to me this spring that the Superior National Forest — a name so familiar that I had to rediscover it — is four million acres of open public land. I’d been hunting and fishing within a tiny part of the southwest corner of it my entire life. I bought a paper Forest Service map. It’s four feet by six feet, both sides. It’s like the sun rose from behind a mountain, illuminating an entire kingdom I’d not known was there. That’s one hell of a hand-me-down. 

Tom Hazelton - We Are Lost Without It, Voyager Pursuits

The anti-public lands movement has never been about giving average American citizens more land or more access or more timber or gold or grass. From day one--as soon as the first lands were set aside—the movement has been about getting as much of the commonwealth as possible into the hands of the best connected and the most well heeled... 

Western states have been selling their lands since they were awarded them at statehood. New Mexico has sold off 4 million of its original 13 million acres. Nevada, awarded 2.7 million acres at statehood, has 3000 acres left. Montana has sold 800,000 acres of state lands so far. Idaho has sold 1.2 million acres. Colorado has sold 1.7 million acres. Arizona has sold off 1.7 million acres... 

When citizens forget what it is they fight for, things do change. They change big time, and for the worse... 

Hal Herring - The Return of the Public-Land Privatizers, Field and Stream

It’s hard to discuss this issue without appearing partisan. While opposition to the land heist is bipartisan, support for it comes exclusively from Republican lawmakers, and the corporations which fund them... 

According to Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewel, who has spoken out strongly against the heist, states couldn’t even afford the annual firefighting budget such large tracts of land require, positively guaranteeing their sale to private interests. 

Wes Siler - The Great Public Land Heist Has Begun, Outside Online

That night, my son and I sat in camp amid the enclosing dark pines—a glittering canopy of stars overhead—and talked and laughed and connected in a way we hadn’t for a long time. 

Randy Scholfield - Going Home to Public Lands, Trout Unlimited

While the true nature of public lands remains an aesthetic to me, simply knowing that they exist, and why, makes me sure that they need protection. From a purely practical standpoint, turning public into private usually screws the public. It’s the nature of our insatiable greedbeast.

Having read what my peers have so passionately and eloquently expressed, I am even more in love with the abstraction and more certain that the reality needs to remain. So I’m here, a day late, to echo yesterday’s voices and, hopefully, to keep the conversation going. To keep the fight alive. The idea that I own a piece of this beautiful thing and that I, and my grandchildren, might one day partake of its wonders, fills me with optimism.

Now I ask you to do what I have done. Listen. Do your homework. Understand who’s grabbing your land for personal gain and who’s protecting it for all of us. And, most importantly, armed with that knowledge, take your conclusions to the polls this November. Vote for your land.

For when the smoke finally clears, what do you want the day after to look like?

Grow Gather Hunt Cook

I don't get excited, these days, about trips for the mail. Sure, it's a nice walk down the ridge, along the winding gravel road, but what typically awaits in our rural box is disappointing. Junk. Bills. Solicitations. If it wasn't for the exercise and the chance to listen to the birds, it wouldn't be worth it.

But not this week. This week I was looking for something. Something good.

I have had the great pleasure, these past couple years, to follow a captivating blog out of Australia - Rohan Anderson's wonderful Whole Larder Love. Now, to my great delight, he's published a book to accompany his online work that advocates and celebrates "the innate need for a relationship with nature through the soil, plants, water, and wildlife." It was delivered today.

There is a sense of satisfaction from getting your hands dirty, nurturing your food from seed, and enjoying something that nature has provided, while inevitably spending time outside in the elements to make it all happen. Our basic primeval needs can be satisfied with some time spent out in the fields, foraging in the forests, and hunting and fishing as our ancestors did. Our affluent, post-industrial-revolution society looks down its nose at this rugged lifestyle, preferring the conveniences the civilized world provides. I know which I prefer. - Rohan Anderson

Whole Larder Love, the book, is many things: cookbook, gardening primer, gear advisor, hunting and fishing journal, survival manual, education tool, father's gift to cherubic children. It's a dirt-to-table roadmap and a peek into the fascinating lifestyle of a gifted individual who's investing his soul into the pursuit of a simpler, healthier, more natural way to live.

And it's unbelievably beautiful. Roh's camerawork is as earthy and appealing as the natural lifestyle itself. It was this imagery that captured my attention two years ago and it continues to delight me today. If you're into that kind of thing, Whole Larder Love is a lovely addition to your coffee table, though that alone seems a terrible waste. It needs to be used.

So my mailbox trips have been rewarded and I'll dig deeply into this wonderful work in the coming days and weeks and years.

I just wonder what will motivate me to go down the hill tomorrow.

On Our Side - Trout Unlimited

"If you’re fishing for trout anywhere in the U.S. and you are not a Trout Unlimited member, you seriously need to ask yourself why not."

Chris Hunt - Communications Director for the Sportsmen's Conservation Project

This is a No Politics Allowed! blog. Because of this, you won't hear me rant about my profound disappointment in the impending extinction of elected officials who are able to think independently rather than as party lemmings, who are unafraid to at least listen to the ideas from across the aisle, who understand that compromise is not a sign of weakness, and who are capable of hearing the quiet voices of the majority of their constituents above the din created by the political fringes, twenty-four hour news bobble heads, and perpetual re-election campaigns.

Such things have no place on Mike’s Gone Fishin’.

The Best Trout Fishing Trip Ever

"… and as she’s releasing this big, beautiful brown - a fish she’d caught with G-Man’s setup and from the pool that G swore was as empty as Frank’s beer cooler - she looks up, gives him a wink, and says that when he’s ready for some real fishing lessons he should give her a call. Poor G-Boy couldn't utter a word."

Hearty laughter flares around the campfire, though G’s is understandably a bit forced, as another best trout fishing trip ever story draws to an end. It’s time for a brief nature-driven excursion beyond the fire’s bright glow, another pass of the flask, and the start of the next tale. My turn.

Redfish Can't Jump

If the weather won't let you go fishing with your buddies, you might as well go drinking with them. And it helps when there's a good fishing related event in the deal. Wednesday's grim weather forecast kept Eric and me off the western roads (we're such wimps) but allowed us the great pleasure of attending a screening of Redfish Can't Jump at a local Raleigh watering hole.

Redfish Can't Jump is a captivating treatment of the joy, beauty, and difficulty of chasing our state fish, the redfish (or red drum, spot tail, puppy drum, whatever you might call them) in these North Carolina waters, but it’s also a thoughtful documentary on the issue of gill nets and how our state's fishing regulations are exposing the species, along with the sea turtles that share the coastline, to great harm.

Scarecrows

Scarecrows typically do a decent job of keeping the smaller natural critters out of our gardens, but the real varmints, land developers and city planners, don't seem to be much put off by them. This whimsically protected garden sat on the outskirts of a municipality that has exhibited a distressing penchant for rapid suburban creep into the surrounding woodlands, so it was with no small amount of trepidation that I cruised back by the area where this shot was taken a couple of years ago.

Warming the Soul - Work to Do

It felt like one of those muggy Carolina 90/90s, ninety degrees Fahrenheit and ninety percent humidity, and the deck thermometer, caught in full sun, was pegged at 120. I was soaked to the skin and thinking that gills might just have been more effective than lungs in this soup. And, oddly enough, I was worried about keeping warm.

Haw River Cleanup

Just a quick thanks and job well done to the guys (and gal) from the Triangle Fly Fishers who carted out 425 pounds of trash from the Haw riverbank this morning, around the Robeson Creek area. Keep up the good work, folks.

Let's all strive to keep our waterways clean.