Above my house there is an office space that operates on a first come first serve basis. Which is to say, if you get there first, you get to use it for as long as you like to, and everyone who swings by (and no one ever swings by) can find a space of their own, elsewhere, on a different mountain peak.
I arrived by 4×4 around sunset the other night, just as a blood red forest fire sun was sinking through the clouds over the Snake River Plain. I had the dogs with me (you can take your dogs to this office no matter how rowdy they are) and they galloped through indian paintbrush and fireweed hunting for marmots as I sat with a stone for a backrest, balanced my sketchbook on my knees and poured black ink over six pages, front and back.
I live, quite literally, on the very edge of one of the biggest cities in Idaho (there are about 50 000 humans in Pocatello) and the only reason I can live in town like this is because this space, THIS SPACE, is directly across and above the street from my house. I can be on a single track trail in thirty seconds if I run out my front door. The West Bench feels like an extension of my property, and in a way, it is, since I pay my taxes to the United States government. Public lands are mine, and they’re yours too if you also render part of your income to the government here. That’s cool to think about, isn’t it? Here in the USA, we are rich in so many ways. I saw Utah Phillips play in a tiny venue in Grass Valley, California once with Robbie. Something he said between songs has stuck with me for ten full years now, it’s something I share with others regularly and I’ll paraphrase the heart of what he said here because the truth of it is sure to resonate with you.
One of the most special things about the American West, the American interior West to be even more specific, is the huge sum of land that is held in trust as wilderness area and public use area. I’m talking about Beaureau of Land Management lands, Forest Service lands, National Parks and National Monuments. By the nature of the fact that your tax paying dollars go towards the care and preservation of those lands, you OWN them. They are yours to explore, to keep, to treasure, to adore. They are yours to escape to, ride your horse on, graze your sheep and cattle on. If you are a meat eater and you believe in eating clean meat and you choose to hunt wild animals in order get that clean meat, public lands are the lands you take your meals from. They are yours to draw your water from, if you own water rights to a spring, creek or river like Robert and I do. They are yours to glean peace, comfort and inspiration from. They are yours to love, cherish and keep clean. They’re yours to fight for, to represent, to speak on behalf of.
One of the reasons I go out, so often, to explore the land around my home and the land directly up from my house here in Pocatello is because I own it as a taxpayer, but I’m also beholden to it. This is the dirt, forest, sagebrush, water and moonrise that informs my work, inspires my pen and claims my heart. I walk, run, ski and hike the mountains here because I need them and because they need me, too. When I write about the land and sky here, I write for myself, but also on behalf of the space I call home, the space that owns me back, the space that has been entrusted to me.
This space outside my front door is entrusted to you, as well, if you are a USA citizen or greencard holding permanent resident (like me). You may not live here, but you still own it. I share it with you through my writing and photographs so you know it exists, so you can believe in it and cherish it, so you can be a part of it when you are on holiday driving cross country in your mini-van with your kids and dog in tow, so you can feel the spaciousness of our wild lands through your computer screen when you sit in your office cubicle and secretly check out my blog between coffee breaks. We humans are going to seek out the wild places more and more often as life and technology begins to overwhelm us to a greater degree. The wild spaces are our redemption from the synthetic, fast paced nature of our culture and lives; they will become increasingly important to humanity in the years to come as they are dissolved and are taken from us, foot by foot, mile by mile.
A friend of mine recently wrote a blog post on a similar topic and I want to take a second to direct you to his blog. I have been a fan of his writing for well over a year now. He is an avid bird hunter and angler and I believe, a passionate, straight shooting advocate for the interior West and her shrinking wild spaces. Plus, to be perfectly honest, he writes like a son of a gun. He’s going to publish a book one fine day in the future and I’m going to buy a hundred copies of it and hand it out on street corners to perfect strangers. I encourage you to head on over to read his most recent post.
Long live the West and may her wild and free spaces remain unchained, unexploited and cherished (though it’s already too late to hope for such a thing, in some places) for years to come because I dearly love an office space at 8000 feet.
