Thoughtful questions about the role of “Public Nature in American Life” pierce directly into the core of what it means to be a U.S. citizen in the early 21st century C.E. As scholar Phoebe Young highlights in her 2021 book of this title, queries such as, what does it mean to camp? and why does it matter?, offer a kind of periscope into American land-use controversies — and supply red meat to opinion-makers on both sides of the endless culture wars.
Following the Civil War (1860-1865 CE), surviving Union and Confederate soldiers returned home with significant “camping outdoors” experiences, shared tales around bloody campfires, and moments of mystic unity based on horrible battlefield reality (men were “camping” in trenches at the front).
Forty-five years later, President Teddy Roosevelt, a stupendous hunter, proclaimed the sanctity of some federal lands (4.1.1. Roosevelt). His reasoning combined a desire to preserve wilderness (under the influence of John Muir), to ennoble the citizenry, and to reserve large wilderness tracts in which he and his wealthy cronies could hunt and fish. Los Padres National Forest was once the Santa Barbara Reserve Forest.
Young writes that Roosevelt “hoped that these lands could serve as a place for citizens to resist both the ‘base spirit of gain’ and the appeal of a ‘life of slothful ease’ by testing their strength and building their character through natural outdoor play and ‘wisely-used leisure’” (Young, p. 10).
As I pointed out in Part I of this column, nearly half of all the land in the western United States is public property (4.1.1). Thus, it is of tremendous importance how we the people allow the federal government to manage this gigantic area. Which regions should be returned to surviving Indigenous communities, for example? How much fossil-fuel development — if any — should the government allow on federal lands? There are many more questions.
Since the Civil War and right up to the months-long tent-camping in 2011’s Occupy Wall Street movement, historians observed a complex interplay of political, recreational and specific on-the-ground camping.
By the 1920s, government actively advocated for public camping and built many camps (using the Meinecke loop). Our continuing discussions of, say, the blanket closures of four nearby national forests also symbolize larger issues such as the public’s right to saunter and hike safely into over-regulated areas. We observed scores and scores of snow-seekers and their cars lining Camino Cielo Road above Santa Barbara on the Feb. 24 weekend, as reported by Noozhawk’s Ray Ford and other news outlets.
Those motorists and happy children totally defied the feds’ stated rules not to head up Gibraltar Road to Camino Cielo, and not to drive on this forest road. Although some cars got stuck and so on, a large number of humans had a blast and a few kids witnessed snow for the first time (and it seems there were no injuries). How you view this as a reader may help define your political outlook.
The true outdoor camping explosion came after World War II. Tremendous quantities of surplus Army gear — heavy rucksacks and sleeping bags and the like — became available. Young’s statistics show these numbers of campers in U.S. Forest Service sites by specific year: 11 million visitors in 1940, 35 million in 1960 and 66 million visitors in 1970 (similar rises in the national parks).
While the National Park Service had often collected minor entrance fees, it wasn’t until 1965 that it began charging for campground privileges. I recall that USFS Davy Brown Camp was free at one time, then charged $2 per night in the 1970s and provided piped-in water (as well as the standard parking spot, picnic table and fire ring). Such minimal charges literally enabled the larger baby boomer families to enjoy important family vacations on public lands at little cost. This was the outdoor social contract in our democracy — and Young makes very clear that racism was an integral part of it: “Camping” was honestly a caste activity reserved for white Americans.
When the hippie era of the late 1960s erupted, “far out” camping was high on the list of counter-cultural activities — and great fun, too. In 1958’s “Dharma Bums,” Jack Kerouac outlined a personal-discovery path out of that hyper-capitalistic “work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume trap,” and later came the strong belief in nature-as-a-salvation from society’s ills movement. Author Young’s Chapter 5 devotes almost 50 pages to “The Back-to-Nature-Crowd” — and pokes fun at them, too.
The looming philosophical question concerns how big a role the federal government should play in allowing citizens access to our vast public lands, especially the more pristine areas. California alone has 149 specially protected federal wilderness zones, such as our nearby spectacular 200,000-acre San Rafael Wilderness about which I’ve frequently written.
In June of last year, four motorcyclists openly and illegally drove down the sketchy Salisbury Trail into this same sacred San Rafael Wilderness. After Santa Barbara County Search and Rescue saved them with water and food and a way out, Forest Service and Los Padres National Forest officials (C. Stubbs) did nothing to punish these lawbreakers and wilderness despoilers. Riding a heavy motorcycle, e-bike or mountain bike into wilderness areas has been strictly forbidden since 1964. In this incident, tires ripped up the fragile trail down to the Sisquoc. When I railed against it in Noozhawk, I received no significant response.
So, no going into the 1.9 million-acre Los Padres now for two months, and citations have been issued (where was the enforcement on the snow weekend?) — but running illegal machinery into a remote federal wilderness area is OK, and these scofflaw riders even get help riding out! Where is consistency? Why a wink-of-an-eye from law enforcement at wilderness motorcyclists and snow rules-breakers, but talk of using K-9 dogs and issuing citations in support of a two-month blanket closure of the entire Los Padres National Forest?
Rough sleepers, sprinter-denizens camping out in urban zones, backpackers and hikers, and environmentally-active Indigenous tent-folk at 2016’s Dakota Access Pipeline are all campers. In our shared democracy, public nature is part of our birthright as citizens, and our access to it should be supported and encouraged. Why is Parks Management Co. still running most camps, though it often doesn’t show up and its help is truly minimal? It now costs $20 per night at Davy Brown — if Los Padres is ever reopened.
What is the role of government in protecting these wilder areas? While the Santa Barbara über-wealthy fly off to elite private camps and second homes in Telluride or Jackson Hole, the average citizen cannot enter Los Padres National Forest until mid-March. These more recent storms may stimulate the Forest Service to extend the blanket closure past March 13. Law-flouting motorcyclists get carte blanche while average Americans cannot bring their family to a rustic local forest camp at a minimal price. When access is denied to the citizens, government is changing the “social contract” forged in the 1920s and 1930s, a compact even more important and needed today. We are all “the last child in the woods.”
Note: Part III of “American Concepts of Camping” will cover camping as a human right and environmental protest movements after 2012.
4.1.1.
The western United States makes up 1.8 million square miles. President Roosevelt from 1901 to 1909 signed legislation establishing five new national parks: Crater Lake; Wind Cave, South Dakota; Sullys Hill; Mesa Verde, Colorado; and Platt, Oklahoma, and many others. Roosevelt’s Antiquities Act of June 1906 enabled President Roosevelt and succeeding presidents to proclaim historic landmarks and other objects of historic or scientific interest in federal ownership as national monuments (e.g. Carrizo Plain). The U.S. Forest Service was tragically transferred from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture in 1905.
