A Photo Essay About Public Lands

I pair conservation laws with photos from my life. And how you can fight the Republican attempt to sell-off 3 million acres of federal public lands right now in the Senate.

I’ve been writing a lot about public land. You might ask, “Why do you care so much?”

I care about public land because I would estimate that 95% of the best experiences of my life took place outdoors. And about 95% of those took place on public land. And about 95% of those took place on federal public land.

One of the earliest memories of my entire life was camping with my dad in the White Mountain National Forest in NH. Here we are drying out after a night of thundershowers. We caught some fish in Little Unknown Pond and cooked them in a pan. This is around 1972 near Kilkenny.

Our country has made good decisions about public land. Our public land, water, fish, and wildlife resources are the envy of the world. You could even say that public land is an American invention. We were the first country to create a national park. Go to one. You will hear a dozen languages from the people around you who are visiting from around the globe. They know what we have. We need to recognize and protect what we have.

I’ve been reading a lot about conservation in the United States. I think there are two reasons we have our public lands. First, because we had forward-thinking, influential leaders who cared about conservation. People like Teddy Roosevelt. FDR. Rachel Carson. Aldo Leopold. Bob Marshall. LBJ. Even Nixon. Second, because of legislation and policy. We didn’t get here by accident. We have these public lands because we had leaders who passed good laws.

I cherry-picked some milestone conservation laws and put them in chronological order. I’m pairing these laws with pictures from my life. Maybe you’ll think of examples where these laws have affected your life.

Yellowstone National Park Act (1872). U.S. Grant Creates the First National Park in the World. For about 9 years in a row, from 2014 to 2022, our kids attended a cross-country ski camp in West Yellowstone, Montana in November. Each year, on the day before Thanksgiving, we all classic skied into the Park to the Madison River for a team picture.

Yosemite National Park (1890). I screwed around on the summit of Half Dome in Yosemite in the summer of 1988.

Forest Reserve Act (1891). Forest Reserves were the precursor to what would become National Forests. The Shoshone was the first Forest Reserve. This is me at the summit of Fremont Peak in the Wind River Mountain Range, Wyoming, in July 1996. The Shoshone National Forest is to the left side of the photo over the snowy peaks. The Bridger-Teton National Forest is basically all the snowy area and everything to the right.

Transfer Act (1905). This act moved Forest Reserves from the Department of Interior to the US Department of Agriculture, creating the US Forest Service. This is my daughter walking purposefully along a trail on Oberg Mountain in the Superior National Forest in Minnesota around 2005.

Antiquities Act (1906). This is what grants the President and Congress the authority to create National Monuments. This is video from when my family visited the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in 2015. We are looking across the canyon at the Painted Wall, 2,250 feet tall. When I first visited the Black Canyon in 1988, it was a National Monument, designated in 1933. We made it a National Park in 1999. It’s important to point out that many of our National Parks started out as National Monuments, created by the Antiquities Act. The Black Canyon is a perfect example, along with National Parks like Arches, Zion, Grand Teton, and even the Grand Canyon. (The Department of Justice is attacking the Antiquities Act, trying to gut it by releasing the opinion that Presidents can unilaterally revoke National Monuments without the involvement of Congress. Because of course they are.)

Weeks Act (1911). This law allowed the US to buy private land, primarily east of the Mississippi, in order to protect watersheds. This created 6 major National Forests and acquired 20 million acres of land for public use. One of those six forests was the White Mountain NF. This picture is from 1984 overlooking Carrigain Notch from Signal Ridge on Mount Carrigain in the WMNF. My dad and I spent most of my high school years trying to climb all 48 of the Four Thousand Footers there. I think I missed Zealand. I may go hit it this year to make sure I got all 48. Kind of funny that the last peak I may have missed as a kid starts with a Z.

National Park Service Act (1916). We made parks before we figured out how to manage them. This law established a service to manage the crown jewels of our public lands. My wife and son paddling through Tobin Harbor at Isle Royale National Park in 2017.

Bureau of Land Management (1946). Truman combined the US General Land Office and the Grazing Service to create the agency that now manages the most acres of federal public land of any US agency: Almost 250 million acres. In this picture, I’m standing on BLM land near Porcupine Dome (the peak to the left) in Alaska at around midnight in 1992. This is about 100 miles up the Steese Highway, northeast of Fairbanks. Weather wasn’t cooperating, but I was cheating in order to see the midnight sun. I was well south of the Arctic Circle, but in the long days of June, you can climb these peaks above 4000’ and get the midnight sun. In the distance to the right is the Steese National Conservation Area, the nation’s largest at 1.2 million acres, designated in 1980.

Wilderness Act of 1964. Paddling with my family below the Rose Lake Cliffs in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in 2024.

National Scenic Trails Act (1968). This created a system that now has 11 trails like the Appalachian Trail and the North Country Trail (NCT). The NCT goes through the Arrowhead of Minnesota. It includes the Kekekabic Trail, the Border Route Trail, and the Superior Hiking Trail. Leo and I hiked the Kek in 2018, the BRT in 2020, and ran the SHT over a 5 month period in sections in 2014. I've run several trail ultramarathon events on the SHT over the years. My family and I have hiked on the SHT more times than I can remember.

Call to Action

Continuing with the theme of “we are a nation of laws,” Republicans are trying to get around two of them right now. Senator Mike Lee of UT is leading the charge by trying to sell off 3 million acres of federal public land during the budget reconciliation process right now in the Senate. It makes an additional 250 million acres eligible for sale. No public input. No debate. Not up for filibuster since it’s part of the budget. Stealing your birthright through legislative shenanigans. This process skips the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, which says in the very first line that it’s the policy of the US government to keep federal public lands in public ownership, unless Congress gets involved. Sneaking land sales into budget reconciliation doesn’t meet that intent. It also ends around the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act of 2000. This directs any money from BLM land sales to go to a fund to purchase more land that has conservation or recreation value. Mike Lee’s land sales are being used to reconcile the budget that gives tax cuts to billionaires. Not cool, Mike.

Contact your representatives. Tell them to vote against any budget that includes federal public land sales. If Republicans get their way here, it will be the end of the system that I tried to show has taken 150 years to build.

Call: United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Email: Easy to fill form to tell your elected officials to oppose federal public land sales.