It seems equally likely it could go either way, but I hope that the deer in the really out of the way places, the âopenâ areas of the map, will be able to repopulate when unregulated, and thus fill in for the deer closer to civ who get hunted. Itâs just a hope, though, not a prediction.
Although this weekend I learned that bear are becoming more common in Missouri, so much so that bearbag rules are beginning to be required. If my home state can suddenly become bear country, I think the deer can find safe lands.
One of science fiction's best writers once said that science fiction isn't about predicting the future but preventing it.
This is a great clincher to a point of view, because it shows at the same time three things. The validity of both pessimism and optimism, the validity of speculation, and the very need for both things. However, I suggest to you that there has to be a better model to âprevent the futureâ that collapse fantasy.
Iâm waking up from a long sleep(figuratively) and I have so much to say right now, Iâm sorry Iâm not cohesive, yet.
But I ask you, how do we constructively build models in our mind to play with, so that they are more like science fiction, and seem less, for a lack of a better word âinevitableâ. Or, maybe a better way to ask, how do you help people and avoid playing the role of chicken little?
Just as people are willing to take the command and control out of the english language, how do we learn to speak with less certainty but with more clarity?
perhaps;
I imagine "conservationists" getting laws passed that make poaching punishable by death, and forest rangers being armed with assault rifles.
One could say hey, itâs just MY point of view. It seems to get us off the hook from trying to be future dogmatists, but I have spent a lot of time doing that, and I feel worse off by it.
I think one of the âirreversible effects of civilizationâ is horticulture and zooculture. I think we need to find it in our wild hearts how those two things come from a wild, hunting and gathering existence. And how itâs okay that some people are choosing that. In fact, itâs the only choice, as people have so keenly discerned. Most will not learn to fire a weapon or kill a deer; specialization in many ways, Iâm afraid to say(but will, anyway) is here to stay. With zooculture, a few can provide the protein needs for many. The few cannot provide for the many with hunting; itâs impractical and energy intensive for a small group of hunters to come back with enough food to sustain large groups.
I would love to see cultured animals become more wild as the gates of their pens are opened up, but I do not believe that humans will simply switch from beef to venison. I believe cowboys will make a comeback. Herding isnât particularly Native American, but it is human.
Right now in Indiana, we have too many deer, and not enough hunters. The licensing isnât prohibitive, and each county has their own bag limit, where some counties allow a few anterless deer; some counties allow as many as eight! HUnting s cheaper and easier than it has ever been.
I am more afraid of being âjudgedâ by the enormous amount of city-dwelling vegetarians than the deer running out.
I can tell that this is one of your fundamental qualms about this thread. Iâve explained that Iâm not scaremongering, not intentionally, nor, I believe, in effect (for the most part). Iâm just trying to size up the present situation and how it will impact the future, with the help of others who want to do the same (after all, arenât we here to help each other, whether itâs sharing thoughts, lending validation and support, or offering information about wilderness survival skills?).
Look, there are some who believe civ will collapse, just as there are others who donât believe it and others yet (myself among them) who are pretty sure we canât know what will happen.
I think that we can state some facts (without getting into epistemological or metaphysical nuances, pleaseâŚ). Itâs a fact that people have built nuclear power plants. Itâs a fact that without regular maintenance, those plants can be deadly. (Har har, Little Shop of Horrors⌠Feed me, Stanley! ⌠moving onâŚ) And itâs true that in a hypothetical post-crash rewilded world, (which is, I believe, the kind of world that many people on this board try to imagine from time to time), those power plants will still be here, and they will be dangerous. THAT is âinevitableâ: that we have this legacy (among many), no matter how our lives and societies are structured in the future.
Yes, I am concerned about civâs legacy (whether it crashes or not)âbecause I think we could do much better. Not panicking, but concerned, in a way that prompts me to speculate, to reach for kernels of truth, preferably with the help of others who are also so inclined. I believe the results of such (collective) speculation could be (collectively) useful, so I am quite serious about this and Iâm not merely doing this as an exercise or for entertainment.
Lastly, âconcernâ doesnât translate to âOh god, itâs hopeless, weâre screwed, the sky is falling.â Am I chicken-little hasty for stating a feeling? That feeling has meaning to me, and only until you can accept that a person is justified in feeling this way and expressing it honestly, Iâm afraid there is a wall between us. You are in no postion to authoritatively ascribe your own meanings to what I say and why I say it. I say precisely what I mean.
My rewilding efforts ground themselves in the spiritual truths I experience on a regular basis. My experience is validated through the consistency and constancy of my vision, my allies, and the infinite-oneness. My feelings mean nothing to the technicolor reality.
Rewilding to me is western repackaging of Taoism, and Iâm willing to play along because it forges a connection between my background in my outdoors training and philosophical truth.
Rewilding is Capital T Capital W âThe Wayâ. How does it resonate with fantasies and feelings and misappropriations? People have been protesting civilization since the first lock and key were forged. Back then, there were places to âwalk away toâ. You donât know about any protestors until the Cynics because most people who reconnected with âThe Wayâ simply dropped out.
What I advocate is nothing short of a spiritual awakening for all humans and sentient life. Because even many âwildâ animals have begun to âlook up to usâ to try and understand what is going on around them. The squirrel and the cow and the chicken are in is bad of a need for ârewildingâ as we humans.
Iâm sorry if make you or anyone else uncomfortable. I make myself uncomfortable, all the time. But Iâm willing to do that, to share with people what I know they have already experienced, even if they arenât willing to talk about it, yet.
I probably sound like a crazy at worst and pompous and self-important at best to the spiritually bereft. It not that we lack capacity, we lack clarity. Our minds are clouded with sugar and time.
As meaningless as all feelings are, they are still completely valid, but if you are willing to expand your understanding of history, youâll notice people have been praying for collapse at the very beginning. Those willing to teach civilization something new have endured. Thank you, Martin Luther. Thank you Martin Luther King. Those unwilling to engage the cultural cloud positively and result to force of the body or mind have, obviously, failed and perished.
No one person has the power to pull the plug, but each of us have the power to shape the future. You lose that power when you give it away to your oppressor. You regain the power when you swim sideways to the shore, not when you swim upstream to the source at the top of the mountain. We already see what happens to those who âgo with the flowâ.
Even nuclear plants canât keep life down:
In Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl (October 2005, Joseph Henry Press), journalist Mary Mycio vividly describes an extraordinaryĂâĂÂżand at times unearthlyĂâĂÂżnew ecosystem that is flourishing in this no-man's land, with radiation too intense for people to live there safely.
Ten years after the Chernobyl disaster, journalist Mary Mycio made her first trip to the Chernobyl region. Equipped with dosimeter [describe what this is used for] and protective gear, Mycio set out to explore the worldâs only radioactive wilderness environment and the defiant local residents who remained behind to survive and make their lives in the Zone."
She discovered a wilderness teeming with large animals, more than before the nuclear disaster and many of them members of rare and endangered species. Like the forests, fields, and swamps of this unexpectedly inviting habitat, both the people and animals are radioactive. Cesium-137 is packed in their muscles and strontium-90 in their bones. But, quite astonishingly, they are also thriving.
If anything, it appears to me that nuclear facilities will be one of the last remaining areas where wildlife are safe; and are likely to be strong vectors creating leaps and bounds in the evolution that christian âlion laying with lambâ theology tries to suppress.
Look, letâs not get into a squabble about our feelings, because weâre both going to lose. If all we only communicate how weâve been slighted, weâll only back ourselves against an indefensible wall of things we we need to let go in order to survive as we pursue The Way.
I want to love you, and itâs going to take a while for all of us to get to know each other. Letâs be full-frontal, letâs explore new ways of being and communicating for ourselves and with each other. My goal is to find greater strength and clarity of vision. Do you think there is a way that you can help me? How can I help you?
mostly, i just remind myself that everyone i know is fated to die and that âLife on Earthâ will go on with us. not saying there isnât a lot that can do here & now (there is), but itâs one way to âtake the edgeâ off the sometimes overwhelming panic.
then, too, thereâs:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
granted, iâm generally over my anger at christianity (and very much over my anger at christ), so, this may be more useful for me than others hereâŚ
ha! if only i knew how to do this. seems like a real stumbling block for us.
yeah, deer populations are way out of whack in ohio, too. and, again, too few hunters. i went down to kentucky this past weekend to see some family, and on this one particular stretch along i-75, we saw 10 deer (all alive), all young-ish (i would say 2 born this year, the rest born last year) and at least half borderline underfed.
OTOH, if everyone started eating deer, that would change in a hurry, but, still, weâve got to find a better balance with deer.
Iâve gotten in trouble for saying this on other boards all the time, but if you donât think the discussion is valuable, donât bother with it. Some of us do find value in it, and Iâd rather talk about our speculations than talk about the validity of speculation. I thank you for your insight, but maybe let us do our thing?
The one thing you see in most survivalist fantasies is the mobs of city folk rampaging through the countryside looking for food. The fear is that theyâll descend violently down on folks in their survival cabins and steal their years of hoarded supplies, or that theyâll eat every edible thing, scouring the landscape.
Historically, it seems far more likely that city people, when the food stops comiang in, will start by demanding the government do something. When the government doesnât, theyâll start violently protesting. Theyâll smash property, theyâll loot stores and other public places. Then when thereâs nothing left, some of them will start eating the weeds and the animals and maybe each other. But they wonât leave the city, not in large numbers. Theyâll keep thinking âitâll get better.â, few will make a paradign shift, and even those who do, few will even consider leaving for the countryside. It simply wonât occur to them that the countryside will be any better. After all, itâs farther away from civilization, how much longer will it take for help to get out there? Few modern people have the stomach for directly taking responsibility for their own survival. Most probably donât even consider it possible.
Not to mention food taboos and a lack of education.
If food becomes an issue, for the most part, people seem to quietly starve rather than become unruly mobs.
I have to agree with Andrew here. I enjoy reading some of what you have to share, Tony, but comments like the above donât indicate an actual dialogue, if I interpret its spirit correctly. If I didnât, please clarify, and do your best to have an actual conversation with Silver Arrow rather than whatever you call this. Or find a topic that actual feeds your spirit, rather than one you want to shoot down.
Iâve gotten more prickly about this kind of issue on rewild.info of late. I think before I wouldâve let it go, later I might again not comment, but for now, câmon. Pull it together, man.
oh jesus, that would have been one for PM, Willem. Youâre right, itâs simply poor editing. At first, Iresponded really shitty, then I went back, after a moment of cool, and realized just how I had gotten sucked in too. I wonât erase that first line, because itâs been responded to, but I will say, I am so sorry. Itâs a taste of Tony when heâs pissed and how I act when feeling cornered, and I didnât realize that line was still there. Canât always stop clever and crass from trying to come out
Canât take it back now, ya dick But really, Iâm the asshole here. Again Iâm sorry. ([size=4pt]not really an excuse, but did anyone notice the timestamp?[/size] Thanks for NOT being afraid to be moderator.
As for deer being âoverpopulatedâ truly, thatâs simply a baseline thatâs shifting back to ânormalâ or should we say âcarrying capacityâ. Without agriculture pushing back, there could be EXPLOSIONS in animal populations, if we can manage to find a balance between shifting baselines and extinction by hunting.
hmm, i thought deer populations were generally kept ~10 per sq mi in most of the Longhouse region prior to extirpation (or at least reduction) of most predators (ie, wolf, cougar, bear), and iâve often seen population levels of ~20 per sq mi suggested as ecologically healthy, but a number of counties in ohio have deer populations ~ 45+ per sq mi, leading to stress on not only the deer (in finding proper nutrition) but also the ecologies they inhabit. i have a friend in tenn who iâve discussed this with, and they seem to be having similar issues there. in fact, tennâs been having issues restoring their oak forests as a direct result of high deer populations.
from what jason has mentioned re: deer in penn, i gather itâs similar there as well.
granted, iâve seen some people (generally farmers and/or orchardists) propose populations of 5 per sq mi as âidealâ, which strikes me as the minimum bound of healthy (in terms of both the deer herd & the ecology), and the evidence iâve seen indicates 10-20 would prolly be a better âidealâ and a good balance, imo.
Ohio was once 90 percent forested, now it is 30 percent forest. in 1940, it was 15 percent forested.
what was the deer baseline before humans moved to this continent? There are 44,828 sq. miles in Ohio. There were an estimate 600,000 deer in Ohio in 2006(ODNR 2007). Thatâs 13.3 deer per square mile. Because western Ohio has few deer, and eastern Ohio is on the edge of the soy and corn belt, it makes sense that there could be some counties with a lot of deer, because they live at the edge of succession, where the largest abundance of food is available.
So really, if we can say that deer are âmaxed outâ at 20 per square mile (god, I hated typing that), then there should be almost 900,000 deer in Ohio.
Deer arenât over grazing, humans are.
In 1900 the majority of land in the state of Ohio was deforested. There were no regulated hunting seasons for white-tailed deer and the deer population was hunted to near extinction. In 1903 deer hunting in the state was prohibited, in an attempt to save the dwindling herd, but the closing of the season was ineffective. As a result, for about two decades there were no deer populations in Ohio. In 1923, the white-tailed deer population returned and began to flourish. In 1970, OhioĂ¢ââââ¢s white-tailed deer herd was estimated to be 17,000 and since then it has grown to approximately 700,000 in 2004, the highest recorded population for the state. In 2006 it was estimated to be 600,000. The number of deer hunter has also increased from 19,000 in 1965 to an estimated 500,000 in 2005. In 2004 a record breaking 216,443 white-tailed deer were harvested by hunters and since then hunting has steadily increased. The 2004 record was exceeded in the 2006-2007 hunting season as 233,000 deer were harvested (ONDR, 2007).
Wow, thatâs powerful. Maybe we should say, instead of rabbits, they were fucking like deer?
Of course, Iâm no dummy. There are 25,000,000 people in Ohio, that harvest is enough calories to feed all Ohioan for half a day. (two deer can feed 150 people for one day).
So whatâs the third handle for this issue? Letâs puts some facts together here. What is the most compassionate course of action?
excellent points, actually, glad you brought them up.
yeah, thatâs a big part of the issue, the distribution of deer in ohio. western ohio has had most of the forest removed, and has a very low (too low, imho) population of deer, on the other hand, eastern ohio has had much of itâs forests more or less regrown over the last several decades, which is great, and is actually quite good habitat for whitetails, but w/o predator relationships, the deer levels in eastern ohio are getting huge. both sides of ohio have ecologies out of balance, but in different ways.
we can say that deer are âmaxed outâ at 20 per sq mi only in some regions/ecologies, i think, but it does appear to be a good amount for most of appalachia (at the moment). i suspect that a lower level would have made more sense before the agriculturalization (&, of course, subsequent industrialization) of the area and possibly prior to human presence (really donât know enough about that). i base that on the previously higher populations of other, somewhat similar species (elk, moose [as far as much of appalachia is concerned these species have only in recent years begun to recover] and the eastern bison [now extinct]). granted, none of that negates your math :-), and again, as you have pointed out, ohio, examined as a whole state, has a deer distribution problem. if we take 900,000 as âidealâ for the whole state, but half (actually, less) of the state has the majority of deer (say, statewide 600,000; and if only a quarter of the state has ~ 45 per sq mi, that quarter would have ~ 500,000 deer, so, clearly, the majority), then i think itâs pretty clear that overharvesting of deer in the highest population areas just isnât happening.
thatâs true. but what, exactly are we (currently) overgrazing? not deer. i think overall deer populations in ohio could be raised dramatically if we worked on reforesting the western half of the state, but, if we were to do so (and let me be clear, i think it should be done) we would need more people out deer hunting (instead of raising corn, soybean, cows & pigs) and we would need to stop driving out other predators (i just donât think people alone are enough to balance deer levels in a healthy landbase).
In 1900 the majority of land in the state of Ohio was deforested. There were no regulated hunting seasons for white-tailed deer and the deer population was hunted to near extinction. In 1903 deer hunting in the state was prohibited, in an attempt to save the dwindling herd, but the closing of the season was ineffective. As a result, for about two decades there were no deer populations in Ohio. In 1923, the white-tailed deer population returned and began to flourish. In 1970, OhioĂ¢ââââ¢s white-tailed deer herd was estimated to be 17,000 and since then it has grown to approximately 700,000 in 2004, the highest recorded population for the state. In 2006 it was estimated to be 600,000. The number of deer hunter has also increased from 19,000 in 1965 to an estimated 500,000 in 2005. In 2004 a record breaking 216,443 white-tailed deer were harvested by hunters and since then hunting has steadily increased. The 2004 record was exceeded in the 2006-2007 hunting season as 233,000 deer were harvested (ONDR, 2007).
yeah, thatâs a good summary, it lacks the distribution info, tho, which is unfortunate as thatâs actually pretty important to understand the situation.
hell, it doesnât hurt that almost all does bear twins (or more) after their first breeding year.
[quote=âTonyZ, post:32, topic:454â]Of course, Iâm no dummy. There are 25,000,000 people in Ohio, that harvest is enough calories to feed all Ohioan for half a day. (two deer can feed 150 people for one day).
So whatâs the third handle for this issue? Letâs puts some facts together here. What is the most compassionate course of action?[/quote]
imho? increase hunting in the highest pop areas, start reforesting the deforested portions, try to slowly increase other predators. ideally, other game species like elk & moose would also find their way back during all of this. likely, it would also help out the beaver populations (which are recovering in the eastern portion, but are still distinctly underpopulated) and a number of other species. it would also cut down on soil erosion and water pollution (most of ohioâs water poll comes from some notoriously stubborn coal power plants, but quite a bit also comes out of agriculture, esp cattle & pigs). in short, i believe it wouldnât hurt deer populations (and ultimately help them) as well as increase ecological diversity, health & resiliency all while increasingly taking care of the people living here (if we could get a handle on human population growth). it seems like a sane plan to me.
except for the part that civilization wouldnât much care for it.
Suddenly I feel like a part of the woods has opened and there is something I havenât explored before, thank you!
It would make sense to me that as my generation buffers the baby boom population explosion through cooperative parenting, allowing homosexuality to be open and celebrated, and having children below replacement rates, predators will naturally come out of the shadows.
Food diversity will be key, as well. I think this discussion is helping me wrap my head around on how future societies will have to combine many civilization-inspired elements in order to survive practically for the transitional generations.
The principles I stake my soul upon wonât allow me to rely on âmost people are going to die off anyway, so need to worry about where our food is going to come fromâ. I have to, for me to feel okay with myself in the morning. This conversation makes me feel like Iâm not alone. Thanks for your thoughts and your friendship.
np, how to help our ecologies get healthy again has been a big interest for me for a while now and only seems to be getting bigger with time. i like having discussions like this.
yeah, i think some of this has already started to come out with the eastern coyote creeping into the niche wolves used to occupy in this bioregion, and as Urban Scout noticed, cougar arenât quite as âgoneâ as many think. so, ecologies are already working on adapting, but i think we can do a lot to encourage it (and stop doing a lot to discourage it).
i know what you mean, it seems like a monumental task to sort things out and find a way there from here. and, as you say, diversity is key, in fact, i think that two of the best things we can do are to build soil and increase diversity. like, w/ the deer; if the forest is sufficiently large, then having some sections w/ very high deer levels actually becomes attractive, as it will allow good habitat for a few species w/o putting undue pressure on all of the species that do better w/ fewer deer, but unless we have a lot more forest, those sections just arenât that helpful, from a diversity point of view. at least, thatâs the conclusion iâve come to (as always, i may well be wrong)
after studying fukuokaâs views & experiments along w/ hemenwayâs, jasonâs & a fair few others, not to mention some of my own fledging attempts, iâm reasonably convinced that much, much better âmanagementâ (read, âhonest, respectful, & caring interactionâ) of our ecologies can go a long way to cushioning the difficulties coming up, but it seems contingent on how many people get involved and when.
so, iâm encouraged that iâm seeing more awareness and interest in things like consumption reduction, permaculture, forestry, & ecology in ohio right now, but i still see a pretty long and rough road ahead (see this article for an example of the debate raging in ohio on deer). i doubt itâs much different for any of the surrounding states (well, probably in the details⌠:))
i donât think youâre alone. the difficulties weâre facing are being brought more in the open, even if itâs not mainstream. and a lot of people are finding themselves on similar paths, they may not agree 100%, but when has that ever been a prerequisite?
I suppose what Iâm saying is not that most people will die, itâs that most people wonât eat deer. They wonât leave the cities, the people in the country wonât ship the deer they shoot into the city, and even if they did, most people would be all âdeer? whereâs the fucking cow?â Food taboos are pretty heavy.
In the city, I think there will be a rise in veganism/vegitarianism, and in home-scale permaculture (in fact, Iâm willing to bet my livlyhood on it, so certain am I). Everything will be made from supercrops like soy, enriched by wierd science, and put in colorful packaging, because this is the âsolutionâ to world hunger that 50 years of science fiction has sold us on.
So we may have topsoil issues, supercrop genetic issues, and the like, but I donât see a hunting problem.
Speaking of genetic issues, go knows what that kind of tom-foolery will do. Worst case, entire species are lost because they are contaminated with genetic traits that canât survive outside of factory farms. Best case scenario, the delicious and toxin-resistance traits get absorbed by otherwise healthy wild strains. Resulting in super-wild plants that grow in polluted conditions and bear good eating for the hunter-gatherers of the future.
Crazy time: Along with ran prieur I hope for crazy sci-fi gene engineering. We get fun new forms of life and maybe a bunch of neat new genetic traits ourselves. Weird hair colors become genetically heritable, the weakening effect of domestication are reversed, etc.
I also hope that âbig scienceâ figures out nantites, but that they escape the lab and go wild. In the future our ancestors gather the solar cells and electronics that âgrowâ in the desrt, while others keep âculturesâ of nanites in jars like yougurt, feeding it raw materials and getting useful product.
And who knows how the celebrities of today will work their way into the pantheons of tomorrow? Elvis and Marilyn Monroe are already part of modern shinto.
Am going to jump in on this thread. Have any of you read the book that is
out now called, " The World Without Us". It is a very good read and looks at
what would happen if humanity suddenly vanished off the planet and
became extinct. In the book the author talked about how quickly would
nature retake so much back over. And how quickly would so many of our
human artifacts disappear. But one lasting effect would be the nuclear
radiation and even there like was pointed out, at Chenobyl - Life is
thriving. He went on to state how much life on earth came back after each
of the major extinctions in the past. Life would go on.
Now you were talking about Ohio. But look at Yellowstone Natâl Park here
in Wyoming. Guess here in the west, how much of the land is still so wild
once one goes beyond the end of the road. I myself go back into the
Absaroka Mountains every summer. And I do believe that it is more wild
now back in there then some years ago. Now how few people ever get back
in here. The grizzly is doing Great and one sees their sign daily. The Wolves,
Moose, Elk, and so forth. I think those critters are lots smarter then many
humans give them credit for. And do think they will be around long after
we are gone. How much can those critters be right near someone and that
Two Legged Human will not know it.
On people, we can be so dumb I think these days. I have seen sooooo
many who come back into the woods including many a redneck that if they
donât have their modern gadgets and goodies, they are LOST! And even
how many hunters, donât know many of the old skills and ways it seems.
I think when the collapse happens, how quickly would many of us Two
Leggeds be so thinned out. And since for many people this society -CV
is all they know, that when it collpased they would ravage everything to
keep going in our society and just how quickly would many peopleâs bones
be bleaching in the sun. Couple of things ⌠how many even hunters do
not know their edible or medicinal plants - one cannot live on Deer or Elk
alone. Also how many are just so afraid to drink out of a mountain stream
anymore - have to purify everything. I personally drink always straight from
the mountain streams and never have had a problem. But do watch myself.
Guess in short, because so many people have CV as the sum total as their
reality, so when it goes they will to and in the process so ravage all that
is left of CV. But then the few who do survive and know the old ways will
have to form a new life. Plus how quickly will nature reclaim once us pesky
Two Leggeds Humans are gone. Plus what about the Big Critters, as they
repopulate, Yellowstone or Glacier or such and such reserve will be too
small to contain them. And like I said earlier, many of those backcountry
areas in some locals are in my opinion wilder then some years ago. And do think that if something happened, give it only several hundred years and
this planet would be a completely different place. And then only some
thousand years ⌠well Life would go on with or without us Two legged Humans. Just my two cents worth.
Just will say some more, I do personally believe that a future collapse is
coming for in short I see this present path as so unsustainable and how
often after spending so much time in the woods does it appear so many
Two Leggeds are just so dumb. But this is just me.
But that is not what I want to say, it is to say more of what I have seen the
last some years in the Greater Yellowstone Wilds. Now even with all the
fires, bug killed trees, and everything ⌠is just how wild and wonderful it is
now. The Grizzly is doing Great! And those Great Yellowstone Wilds is really
to me looking pretty good!! And for us people, now as the Baby Boomers get
older how often they do NOT go out into the woods much anymore on deep
wilderness trips, and the young people - how many are in their techno toys
that they never go out at all. So these big western wilderness areas are
in my opinion, are being used to a lesser degree then it seem in the past.
I have heard how like in the Absarokas, how it was in the 60âs. And I
remember some trails in the Wind Rivers in the 80âs just being covered with
people. Now with most people seemingly less going out into the Deep Wilds,
then it looks to me that many of these Deep Wild areas are doing pretty
good. In fact last summer, I saw hardly any backcountry rangers to boot
because of the budget cuts in the government and then those that are left
are in the front country. There will be the many it seems that will be chasing
the dollar and what it can get someone. But for those that really want to
turn their back on CV, there is many a backcountry place here in the west
that one could sooooo literally vanish and disappear on purpose. Just take
a look at a modern atlas. It seems to me - with many of these modern
gadgets and goodies, do we really want to Rewild and turn our backs totally
on our CV. Because in what I have seen, their are those places that one
could vanish and wander in, hardly unchanged since the days it seems of
Lewis and Clark, for the rest of our days and not come close to seeing it
all. I have spent since 1981, exploring the Greater Yellowstone Area and
it seems have only scratched the surface.
But really, Iâm the asshole here. Again Iâm sorry. ([size=4pt]not really an excuse, but did anyone notice the timestamp?[/size] Thanks for NOT being afraid to be moderator.