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lostagain View Drop Down
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Posts: 2595 		Direct Link To This Post Topic: Humans
    Posted: 01 Jan 2019 at 6:05pm
...a couple of observations/opinions:
..... well maybe more than a couple.

The "Golden Rule" - If we all followed it, we'd have a much better world.

Responsibility for our conduct - If we honestly evaluated our conduct and how it affected those around us, including our precious natural resources - our world - we'd find that we need to make some big changes.

Empathy and patience - When we put ourselves into the position of those whom we criticize or condemn, we often learn that maybe our views aren't the only valid views about any given topic.

Being honest with ourselves - most of the time we rationalize or justify our positions by lying to ourselves, or by being willfully ignorant, about the consequences of what we do.  We have a responsibility to honestly inform ourselves about the world in which we live and act accordingly.

Caretakers of our world - we have a wonderful gift from our Creator that we need to cherish and tend so that those who come after us can enjoy those gifts as well.  

This topic is important, but it also can slide quickly into a partisan political battle.  When I watched the video that David posted, the shutdown was not what came to my mind  Rather, it was the fact that some people simply don't care about the treasures of nature that we're privileged to enjoy.  That is truly sad.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Jan 2019 at 6:18am

IMHO the current trajectory is not sustainable. The top priority of parks that I am familiar with is "to protect and preserve" the natural resource. Human use and recreation is further down the list and is a means by which to help finance the cost of the top priority.

More trash and damage requires more personnel and money to remedy. As national (and Indiana) parks are largely funded by user fees, it is necessary to try to attract and accommodate even more users - some who create even more costs. Some things can't be fixed and are forever lost.

There comes a point where the situation is cost prohibitive and the top priority/mission can not be accomplished. The gates get closed and, if you enter anyway, you are trespassing and subject to arrest. The "shut down" demonstrates what happens when there is not enough money and/or personnel to remedy the situation. I believe the article mentions that some areas would be closing.

Freedom abused is freedom lost.



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lostagain View Drop Down
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Posts: 2595 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Jan 2019 at 10:46am
The majority of people treat our parks pretty well, but enough people don't that serious damage is all too common.  It has been this way with our species for eons.  In the San Francisco Bay Area, in the early  & mid 1800 when the area was being settled, it was a virtual paradise with year round streams filled with trout and salmon, huge stands of redwood trees thousands of years old, grizzly bears, wolves, deer, and so much water fowl that the sky would be dark when they took flight.  This is described in the first few pages of a book called The Ohlone Way https://www.amazon.com/Ohlone-Way-Indian-Life-Francisco-Monterey/dp/0930588010/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546445911&sr=8-1&keywords=the+ohlone+way  It isn't even a ghost of its past now.

We have lived an effort to conquer Mother Nature instead of playing by her rules.  She's a harsh mother and when we don't play by the rules, extinction inevitably follows.  Our public lands are under assault like no time in history.  I have personally seen in what should take centuries to happen, changes in the Sierra Nevada that are heartbreaking.  Millions of trees dying, glaciers disappearing, fires of unprecedented proportion, extinctions of species, and desertification of formerly lush forestland.  Soon, in order to preserve many of our forests we will have to treat them like museums, where you go to look but only behind a glass wall on a special walkway.  That is not experiencing nature.

It used to be, that you could head out and go camping pretty much anywhere in our western wildlands but now, if you don't make reservations months in advance, the campgrounds are full.  Camping used to be a spontaneous experience of serendipity and freedom.  Now, to take a camping trip you have to carefully plan and reserve for each stop, and often have to alter your route because one park or another is full.  

We humans are simply lousy caretakers of the gifts our Creator has allowed us to use for our moments of existence in this world.  What is happening to our parks in these days of unsupervised use is just one more example of how we treat this gift.  We have to understand we don't own the land.  We are only short term itinerant tenants destroying what our Landlord has allowed us to use with the understanding that we'd pass it on to future generations for their turns.  
Never leave footprints behind.
Fred & Maria Kearney
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Jan 2019 at 12:58pm


I didn't see a date on this article but, just stumbled across it:

https://start.att.net/news/read/category/news/article/travel_leisure-the_government_shutdown_is_turning_national_parks-rtime

Hooray for the good volunteers at Joshua! Why can't everyone, everywhere be like that, all the time?

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Posts: 3419 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Jan 2019 at 5:20pm
Beautiful park, I used to rock climb there in the 70s. Believe there was a rock star that died there also in the 70s, and there was graves in the confines from miner days.
Mike Carter
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GlueGuy View Drop Down
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Posts: 2702 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 Jan 2019 at 10:16am
Originally posted by mcarter

Beautiful park, I used to rock climb there in the 70s. Believe there was a rock star that died there also in the 70s, and there was graves in the confines from miner days.
That would have been Gram Parsons in 1973.
bp
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mcarter View Drop Down
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Posts: 3419 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 Jan 2019 at 2:54pm
Yeah, attempted cremation, I was stationed at MCB 29 Palms. He died at a Joshua Tree motel.
Mike Carter
2015 178
" I had the right to remain silent, I just didn't have the ability."
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GlueGuy View Drop Down
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Posts: 2702 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 Jan 2019 at 4:37pm
Humans can disappoint, and sometimes they can inspire.

bp
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