Hi, all. My
friend, Michael Frome, writes an occasional message he calls a
"Port-O-Gram," named for the city where he lives, Port Washington.
Here's Michael's Thanksgiving message. It's right on target, as always.
Send him a note and share your thoughts.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Later...
Here's Michael's message:
My
friends know that for many years I have been engaged in the battle for wilderness.
I've learned over time that a wholesome natural environment provides the
foundation for a wholesome human environment. We can't have one without the
other. The preservation of nature is a use in its own right -- a "wise use,"
as Gifford Pinchot would say.
On
one hand, Americans can be proud of the 107 million acres of public land
safeguarded by the Wilderness Act within the National Wilderness Preservation
System. That act of 1964 defines wilderness in law and public policy, and
how it should be cared for and used. It does even more, encouraging us to
conserve the skills of self-reliance.
As
I see it, wilderness above all its definitions, purposes and uses, is sacred
space, with sacred power, the heart of a moral world, a way of understanding
the sacred connection with all of life.
On the other hand, however, it disturbs me to see
the wilderness concept diluted in proposal after proposal before Congress,
and in management plan after management plan prepared by our federal resource
agencies. In addition, I feel deep concern
over the willingness of
some of our conservation leaders to compromise the law, to accept
something-less-than-wilderness
and say it's okay. When you read congressional legislation providing
for "conservation, recreation and development" in the same package, you
can bet
your bottom dollar that wilderness protection will come last and least.
"It
must be clear," as Harvey Broome, a pioneer wilderness champion, warned over
fifty years ago, "that the demand which now looms over us can never be satisfied.
To protect what is left we must live with the facilities we now have. The
hardest thing will be the decision itself."
Yes, I recognize these are tough times. It
frightens me to read of plans to privatize public lands -- to give away,
or sell for a pittance, precious public property to corporate land grabbers.
But
it's been tough before too. It took eight years and eighteen hearings for
the Wilderness Bill to become law. Rep. John P. Saylor never gave up. "I
cannot believe," he said, "that the American people have become so crass,
so dollar-minded, so exploitation-conscious that they must develop every
last little bit of wilderness that still exists."
The
point is that people truly care -- yes, even now. I lately heard from my friend
Tony Dean, a prominent outdoors writer and TV personality, about the fourth
annual Wilderness Symposium in Rapid City, South Dakota. Tony wrote that
the symposium was highly successful with more than 100 people attending,
and with much enthusiasm for the proposed 77,000-acre wilderness on the Fort
Pierre National Grassland.
Ranchers
at the symposium spoke in support of wilderness designation. They said the
national grassland provides for healthy cattle as well as a tremendous population
of lesser prairie chickens, sharptail grouse, mule deer and antelope. One
of them, in fact, is trying to restore native prairie by grazing buffalo
instead of cattle.
My
friend Tony talked on the program about wilderness from a hunter perspective,
noting that hunting is always best the farther you travel from a road. He
said that wilderness doesn't mean a dip in the economy, citing the example
of Ely, Minnesota, a community supported by wilderness, with a canoe outfitter
around every corner.
Opposition
to wilderness in South Dakota comes from the Black Hills Multiple Use Coalition,
composed of the usual self-serving timber, mining and livestock interests,
and from a group of gem hunters, who say they are too old to access a wilderness
area on foot.
Tony challenged them as follows:
"Too old to walk? I'm sixty-five years old and I'll walk most of them
into the ground. But this isn't about us seniors. Wilderness is about our
children, and the legacy we leave them. When I can't walk those hills, I'll
admit it and recognize that I've been able to enjoy the highest quality of
outdoor recreation in a lifetime. We all grow older and when you can't do it
anymore, well, you can't, but that's a poor excuse for robbing from our
children."
That is absolutely correct. The most important legacy our generation can leave is not a world at war. Our
most precious gift to the future is a point of view embodied in the protection
of wild places that no longer can protect themselves.
In this same vein, in the November 18 issue of Wisconsin Outdoor News I found a remarkable essay by a retired Wisconsin wildlife biologist named Jim Evrard. Here it is:
"Increasingly
rare wilderness and wild areas are being destroyed by those 'sportsmen' demanding
road access due to claimed physical disability, in many cases caused by lack
of exercise. Others claim it's their 'right' as American citizens to drive
anywhere they please on public lands. Acting in self interest, extractive
industries like logging and mining are only too happy to encourage the mechanized
outdoorsmen to lobby for more roads -- thus giving the industries more opportunity
to exploit natural resources owned by the public...
"When
some trails on public lands are managed and gated to promote foot use, the
access outlaws go around or tear down the gates and rip up the managed trails
with their four-wheel drive trucks and ATVs. Many of these same outlaws also
illegally shoot hapless grouse and other wildlife on these trails from their
vehicles...
"This
summer I traveled to one of my favorite trout holes, only to find the area
trashed by outlaw fishermen on ATVs. A legal road goes within several hundred
yards of a beautiful waterfall on a northern wilderness river. The deep pool
below the falls is a great trout-fishing spot. Not content to walk the short
distance to the falls, ATV riders ground the foot trail to the falls into
a muddy mess the day before my visit. In the rocks around the falls I found
empty beer cans and bait containers along with discarded fishing line.
"The
illegal activities of the outdoor outlaws are encouraged by TV and other
media advertising, some of which shows four-wheel drive trucks and ATVs ripping
through streambeds or up steep slopes, throwing dirt and mud from their spinning
wheels. The off-road vehicles then come to stop at some beautiful vista with
peaceful music playing in the background. Do you hear the noise pollution
of the ATV or see and smell the machine's exhaust in these ads? Do you ever
see an ad that shows heavy rainfall eroding soil down off-road tire tracks
into a chewed-up stream?
"Outdoors
media that supposedly support conservation prominently display the damaging
advertising. Local business interests demand more mechanized trails on public
lands, since ATVers spend money in their businesses. Money speaks loudly
in this form of environmental prostitution...
"Another form of machine over-dependency is the technology that's now exploding in the outdoor world.
"How
many hunters today truly know how to use a magnetic compass to find their
way through the woods? Do we really need a global positioning system to find
our way to our deer stand? ... The earth's magnetic field will be here forever,
and a simple, battery-free magnetic compass has only one moving part -- a
needle -- that rarely, if ever -- breaks.
Do
we really need underwater TV cameras to catch fish? Does a trail camera guarantee
you a Pope and
Young buck? Do we need motor-driven duck decoys to bag ducks?
Does a bright yellow or pink plastic kayak make a float trip more enjoyable?
Do we need a 200-hp outboard boat to go around on a 40-acre lake?
"There
are many examples of the business world trying to convince outdoor folks
that they need new and more high-tech gadgets, gear and equipment to be successful
hunters, trappers or anglers. Again the real motivation is not to increase
our enjoyment of the outdoors, but it is the almighty dollar...
"Even
in my early 60s, I still get satisfaction in being able to walk more than
a mile on a gated trail to my favorite deer stand in the predawn darkness.
I feel good about being able to sit on a log with my back against a tree
for several hours in cold temperatures or in a driving snowstorm. If I'm
lucky enough to bag a deer, I can still drag that animal back to my truck.
"I
know someday I[base ']ll probably be physically unable to do those things, but Ill
know that I once did -- without gadgets and machines."
This calls to mind a phase of my own life. Until 1967 I knew very little about Field & Stream magazine. I also thought that Field & Stream's
appeal was to users rather than conservers of the outdoors, and that I was
hardly meant to write for it. Clare Conley, the editor, however, wanted me
to join the staff as Conservation Editor and expressed confidence that I
could bring something of value to the magazine.
I
was not a hunter and not much of a fisherman. I enjoyed and loved the out-of-doors,
true enough. In fact, in this particular period I was more than just a writer
but an activist and advocate for nature. My professional and personal outlook
was strongly shaped by the wilderness idea and ideal and by the study of
the history and literature of conservation.
I found that F&S and competitors, Outdoor Life and Sports Afield -- "the big three" -- concentrated on how-to articles, how to catch fish and
kill game based on secrets from an old guide named Joe. The advertising was
about fishing tackle, rods and reels, high-powered rifles, telescopic lenses,
outboard motors, trail bikes, snowmobiles, and game preserves mostly preserving
game for the kill. They made me feel that I was in the wrong place, but at
least in the wrong place at the right time.
For
seven years as Conservation Editor, I investigated and wrote about politics,
bureaucracy and corporate power, naming the wrongdoers. I tried to involve
and activate readers so they would not feel helpless against the odds and
received warm response from rednecks and professors and people who wrote
in penciled scrawl. In looking back, I believe that I struck a chord among
outdoorsmen and women who wanted to rise above themselves, and above exploitation
of nature as sheer resource.
But
where have we come since then? Every day of the year I read about
wildlife
in distress, about species diminishing or disappearing, as a
consequence
of habitat destruction, poaching and poor hunting practices. I don't
really
have to read about it, for signs of the war against wildlife are
abundant -- more building, more roads, more cars, degradation and
drainage of wetlands,
logging trucks rolling through old-growth forests.
It shouldn't be that way.
When
he spoke at Stanford University in 1903, Theodore Roosevelt said there is
nothing more practical than the preservation of beauty, than preservation
that appeals to the higher emotions of humankind. But where are you, Teddy,
when we need you?
Now
that June and I live in Wisconsin, I've become aware of a Wisconsin-born
author named Sterling North. You may remember his classic story, Rascal. He wrote another lovely book, Raccoons are the Smartest People, which ends as follows:
"As
Thoreau suggested, all living things are better off alive than dead, be they
man, moose or pine tree. And as John Muir believed, man cannot even survive
without the wilderness to freshen his mind and revive his perception. We
are but the ephemera of the moment, the brief custodians of redwoods, which
were ancient when Christ was born, and of the birds of the air and animals
of the forest which have been evolving for countless millenniums. We do not
own the land we abuse, or the lakes and streams we pollute or the raccoons
and otters we persecute. Those who play God in destroying any form of life
are tampering with a master plan too intricate for any of us to understand.
All that we can do is to aid that great plan and to keep part of our planet
habitable..."
Be of good cheer, I say, and let us celebrate Thanksgiving with thoughts of hope and something special to be thankful for.
MICHAEL FROME
