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Before we start complaining about the draconian regulations that the U.S. Forest Service has proposed to take effect later this year, we should consider why the bureaucracy would consider adopting rules against loud curses, shooting and similar behaviors in the 360,000 square miles of National Forest land in the United States.
For instance, about a dozen years ago, we were ensconced at the Iron City campground near St. Elmo. Our party consisted of three adults and three toddlers.
Several campsites down the road, a few off-duty Denver police officers had set up camp. Then they got into their supplies: about 20 cases of tall boys. After that, they were ready for some night target practice, so out came the pistols.
This is not my idea of a fun time in the woods -- huddled in a tent with some small children while a nearby gang of macho drunks brandished firearms.
The campground host, a retired Texas woman who doubtless once dreamed of idyllic summers in the Sawatch Range, bravely approached their site to explain that shooting was illegal in campgrounds.
Their shouted response was that they were cops, and they could do whatever they felt like doing, and would she please mind her own business.
She said she'd call the sheriff, but the nearest telephone was 10 or 15 miles away then, and given the response time, it was unlikely that we'd see a deputy before dawn. Further, no county pays its deputies enough to wander into a drunken shooting spree.
Here was a situation where a Waco response -- tanks, tear gas and machine guns -- might have been appropriate, but we were reduced to hoping that no bullets came our way.
Now things are like that all the time in certain urban neighborhoods, so maybe there was some kind of Big Brother program where trigger-happy cops took urban youths on camping trips.
At any rate, one night like that is enough to convince you that we pay an awful price for growth in Colorado.
Our national forests have always been places we could go to goof off and get a little rowdy. But there used to be room enough so that we didn't bother anybody else.
My father recalls trips up the Cache la Poudre in the early 1950s. If there was anybody else at a campground -- not if the campground was full or nearly so, but if there was even one other car or truck around -- he just drove on, because the next one would almost certainly be empty.
So what difference did it make if a few drunks wanted to indulge in target practice then? And how different it is now, when you've really got to work at it to find an empty zone, and even then you can't be sure.
Another problem in the forests results from the popularity of four-wheel-drive vehicles, which are always advertised as a comfortable way to experience the wilderness.
Last spring, a friend and I took a Sunday stroll up Bear Creek. Since we were in a two-wheel-drive pickup with bald tires, we stopped at a prudent place and began to walk up the road, which quickly turned muddy.
An hour or so up the road, we hear a four-wheel-drive coming. It has Arapahoe County license plates, and it is leaving ruts of canyon dimensions that will cause severe erosion until the road can be graded -- if it can be graded at all.
Combine that arrogant ignorance with the folks who don't know how to close gates and do know how to drain their holding tanks into the nearest creek, and you can see that there's a problem.
But the Forest Service doesn't have enough personnel to enforce the regulations that are already in place, so how can it possibly enforce the asinine new regulations which, among other things, ban rock-hounding, arrowhead collecting and other wholesome hobbies?
Not only would it be illegal to pick up a rock in the
national forest, it would also be unlawful to swap it for
another rock. How do they propose to enforce this? Stamp
every stone with USFS
so they can determine its
source?
There's a big difference between picking up an arrowhead and going after an Anasazi site with a backhoe. But our legal system doesn't recognize differences of scale; if the latter is an offense against the cultural resources of the nation, then so is the former. This defiance of common sense goes a long way toward explaining why people hate lawyers and bureaucrats.
However, there are some sensible approaches. To solve the problem of people driving on roads during times of the year when the roads shouldn't be driven on, and similar complications of four-wheeling, a state law could help.
Require everyone purchasing a Trooper, Ranger, Scout, Blazer, Bronco, Wrangler or the like to pass a simple test. If you get caught driving a four-wheeler without your Certificate of Back Road Expertise, you get 30 days of public-service fixing fences and filling in ruts.
This will not solve the other problem of loud drunks shooting guns. But they haven't yet solved that one in the great cities of this land, so why should we assume that it can be cured in the boondocks?
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