Every Thanksgiving dinner, my family asks everyone around the table to say what they're grateful for. It puts new guests right on the spot, so sometimes they just thank the hosts — an easy exit that makes it even harder for anyone else struggling with a good answer. I've been in this position, but this year I know what I'm grateful for.
That's because after years away, I'm back in the West, where I live in western Colorado, near millions of acres of public land. If the love of open spaces is what defines the Western person, our region gives us much to love.
Alaska, with 95.8% public land, may be the king among all states, with plenty of space wide open for all, but Nevada is close at 87.8%, and Utah at 75.2%. Idaho ranks third at 70.4%, Colorado at 43.3%, and most of that territory lies west of the Continental Divide.
Until back in the West, I hadn't thought of public lands as vital to anything as basic as cutting firewood. However, in most states that don't have a lot of accessible public lands, firewood is an expensive proposition. Here, from May through October in Colorado, it's permit time, which costs about $4 to $10 for a cord of wood. That's enough to fill a full-size pickup bed four feet high.
How much do you want? I'm told that three ropes add up to "just staying" in Montana or Wyoming, but true winter wealth is more like a six ropes. While you are collecting firewood, you can also look for a Christmas tree. This requires only an $8 permit—far from the expensive conifers grown on a tree farm.
Firewood writer Dave Stiller's advice is to take blown up piles or fells left behind by logging companies. Once you've finished collecting, according to the Forest Service, "revisit and observe the effects of your harvest...be the steward of that place as you study the plants and how they respond." In other words, think like a landlord who cares about the land for the long term.
Patrick Hunter, a sustainability studies student at Colorado Mountain Community College in Carbondale, believes our public lands embody a "generational legacy" that has become a cornerstone of our democracy. From young to old, die-hard fans of public lands are volunteers from nonprofit organizations who "adopt" a trail, build for it, and endorse it.
Political cartoonist Rob Bodem tells of hiking a trail he'd worked on for several summers and feeling a sense of ownership: "I own this land," he recalls thinking. In a way, he's right. We own this land, though it is administered - even if we rarely see a ranger - by federal agencies.
No one knows how many people have gone to public lands for one solemn purpose: to throw the ashes of their dead into a creek or release them into the air from a mountaintop, a practice permitted in most national forests in Western states. It forever binds a person to that specific outdoor space.
And for many of us, the best things in life can be all about summer camping, mushroom hunting, fishing, wildlife viewing, or just "getting out there." Some hunters have also become advocates for wildlife and public lands, and advocate for public access.
Yet the damage we have done to public lands in the West is clear and remains - mining, drilling, building dams, testing nuclear bombs, dumping piles of nuclear waste along rivers and other sensitive places. Because of this legacy, the Superfund programme, finally established in 1980, aims to restore these lands, some of which have been altered so that they cannot be truly repaired.
Public lands also serve as a nexus of recent history. Throughout the West, we can still see the architectural marvels built by the Indigenous people hundreds of years ago. Ghost towns that were once small towns continue to impress us when we think of the economic shock that led to their abandonment.
Today, we are experiencing a similar shake-up as increasing drought is changing the way the West operates. or not working. In the meantime, as we struggle to figure out what we need to do to adapt, at least I know what to say this Thanksgiving. I am forever grateful for the common earth that gives us some breathing space.
Dave Marston is the publisher of Writersontherange.org, Writersontherange.org, an independent non-profit organization dedicated to lively debate about the West. He lives with his family in Durango, Colorado. Photo: Marston
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