What’s permitted? Where? When?

There are more and more articles being published about our National Park System being over-visited, although that’s not the term used. Much of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness use is permit based and the number of permits is being cut. As the human population increases and the global economy depends on perpetual, capitalistic, growth, we are encountering more and more resource conflicts. We are failing more and more to adequately and appropriately respond to those conflicts.

A different example, not based on wilderness or wild lands and waters is occurring right in the Twin Cities. No parking? St. Paul considers banning idle trucks from city streets. It all to often seems that the child care shortage needed to free women to participate in the labor force can’t or won’t be economically resolvable. An increasing shortage of doctors is making it more and more challenging to schedule an appointment within a single lifetime. Efforts to control costs are resulting in overworked, understaffed nursing units.

While all of this, and more, are going on, those on the radical right are feeding more and more mis- and disinformation and conspiracy theories onto social medial platforms that have just been held unaccountable by SCOTUS because ....

I seriously doubt we can institute enough permitting systems covering enough resources to resolve the growing number of conflicts. Or, that we would be willing to pay for enough police to enforce the permits and enough courts and jails to punish or rehabilitate miscreants, all while Congress sets a national example of acting like potential deadbeats and failing to put the country ahead of party political power. (Could some parents volunteer to teach Speaker McCarthy how to manage members with a case of the terrible twos?)

it’s a privilege and responsibility to cast these

Photo by J. Harrington

One of the country’s founding politicians, B. Franklin, was prescient by several hundred years when he noted “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” How might we again learn to hang together? We could go fly fishing and follow these rules [longer version here]:

• Fly anglers understand and obey laws and regulations associated with the fishery.
• Fly anglers believe fly fishing is a privilege and a responsibility.
• Fly anglers conserve fisheries by limiting their catch.
• Fly anglers do not judge fellow anglers and treat them as they would expect to be treated.
• Fly anglers respect the waters occupied by other anglers so that fish are not disturbed
• When fishing from a watercraft, fly anglers do not crowd other anglers or craft or unnecessarily disturb the water.
• Fly anglers respect other angling methods and promote this Code of Angling Ethics to all anglers.

If you prefer foraging to fishing, you could follow the guidance of an Honorable Harvest as described by Robin Wall Kimmerer:

The Honorable Harvest, a practice both ancient and urgent, applies to every exchange between people and the Earth. Its protocol is not written down, but if it were, it would look something like this:

Ask permission of the ones whose lives you seek. Abide by the answer.

Never take the first. Never take the last.

Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. 

Take only what you need and leave some for others.

Use everything that you take. 

Take only that which is given to you. 

Share it, as the Earth has shared with you. 

Be grateful. 

Reciprocate the gift.

Sustain the ones who sustain you, and the Earth will last forever. 

There are other examples of values that encourage ethical behavior, Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic comes to mind. As the younger generation attempts to educate us on better ways to use personal pronouns, perhaps they could include more lessons on dropping me and mine and more on using us and ours. We really only have one sand box we need to learn to play nice on it together.

Anatomy of a leap into the void

By Miroslav Holub

A.    Use of the lift

       going up

       is permitted, provided

B.    Use of the lift

       going down

       is not permitted, provided

C.    Use of the lift

       going up is

D.    Use of the lift

       going down is not

E.    Use of the lift

       going up

F.    Use of the lift

       going

G.    Use of the lift

H.    Is      Is not

I.    Use

J.    U--

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