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Comment by ty6853 | Hacker News Reader

I've never had this feeling more poignantly than one day, where I was deep in a wilderness zone of the Cascades, several miles from even the nearest logging road.

I was minding my own business, pack in, pack out, with not a soul in sight. And out popped a park ranger, the first person I had seen in days, asking me if I had a permit to exist in the wilderness.

No, no I did not. Sorry for the terrible intrusion of existing. Then he went up to write an order that I had 2 days to get off the public land, with it being a 2 day hike out. Before handing it, he wanted an address I had none. Apparently this somehow broke his brain. The dude would literally not let me go until I came up with an address, even though I legitimately had none.

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My understanding is that permits, especially quota permits in locations like the Cascades, are to protect the wilderness from too many people. In that case it sounds to me like the ranger was being a good steward of the land. In your case you may have been pack in, pack out (though there's still waste to think about), but in general that's not true and I don't see a non-blanket approach here.

The world is meant to be explored and people have dominion over the Earth and animals-not the other way around. Whatever happened to liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

There are a variety of public lands with a variety of management methods. It's important for some to be more restrictive and others less restrictive.

What? "Dominion"? What are you on about? What is the moral and rational basis of this supposed authority?

The stance is anti-authority.

I confused. How is this anti-authority?

To find someone minding their own business in the middle of nature/nowhere and then harass them out of said place is oppressive. I'm opposed to said authority. Just leave people alone. Yes I understand the tragedy of the commons and whatever, I don't think a dude chilling and minding his own business/liberty is _that_.

So I'm arguing to leave people more alone, which is more anti-authority.

It's a cultural rift. I also built a house with no code inspections, no building plans, and no trade licensing. Which seems to scare the shit out of a large segment of commenters on HN, meanwhile living in a place where that is actually allowed has enabled me to have neighbors who think alike, since these kind of neighborhoods scare the ever living shit out of the collectivist authoritarian types.

It's really hard for me to put into words the cultural rift, but it's almost like aliens colliding, the only solution I have found is to live in a different world and try to tread carefully away from theirs. By identifying a few topics like "is it wrong to exist in remote undeveloped public forest without a permit" I can immediately identify the sort of people I have irreconcilable differences with.

That's awesome and hits it exactly on the head. Notice how not one comment addresses the liberty comment I made. The meme "touch grass" could never be more relevant here. I'm sure the backpacker learned a lot about the world and humans in that exchange with the ranger.

We can believe in and experience different societies while ultimately participating in the meta society. In this way, it’s less a rift.

Sure, ultimately i learned meta society is a scam, being lectured about environmental responsibility by the same people that use their precious rule of law for vast destruction of wilderness area wildlife migration by building massive hundred+ mile border walls that let nothing bigger than a few inches through.

It was never a serious position, and all the raging about i.e. above poster paranoid about pronghorn movement while apparently being oblivious people were likely legally hunting the damn things in the wilderness areas they're thinking of, since the law apparently allows killing them but not a .00001% chance you spook one inadvertently into moving into a wolfs mouth. I cannot even begin to get on the level of someone like that,they may as well be aliens to me the rift is so severe.

Then the question becomes "why is that ranger, at the expense of the public, there, and what is the purpose of them issuing the order, and do we agree with that purpose?".

Its helpful to understand the intended purpose of something before calling for its removal.

It's a religious concept (from the book of Genesis). Some people forget that their religious affiliations/foundational beliefs are not universal.

> "Some people forget that their religious affiliations/foundational beliefs are not universal."

They also forget this one little story their "savior" (the son of god, the one true king; if you believe all that ancient religious gobbledygook) supposedly told (written in the very same book); "The parable of the trusted steward." "Dominion" does not equal neglect and destruction.

It's from the bible. He's citing God as the authority.

The Earth and it's animals didn't ask for a permit. Human dominion isn't being challenged. This is a people problem.

The tragedy of the commons.

Also, you have a scary view of humans' place within the world.

Responsibility is a scary thing. It means we have the opportunity to do well or to do poorly. And if we do poorly, we bear the consequences.

that sounds nice and neat to say, but it doesn't really bear weight when you insert that into the world we actually live in. who is "we" in this? i'm not DuPont dumping chemicals in a river. i'm not mining for rare earth minerals. i'm not nestle trying to privatize water. so i'm not that "we".

The point is, whatever it is, it's not the person I responded to. Unless that was Mr. DuPont himself dumping chemicals in nature and the commenter left that out strategically.

> Unless that was Mr. DuPont himself dumping chemicals in nature and the commenter left that out strategically

NPS is stretched on resources. They don't set up permits because it's fun, but because something needs to be conserved.

"People" may have dominion over the Earth, but that does not mean that you as an individual can turn a national park into a garbage dump without someone throwing you in jail.

OP might have been backpacking responsibly, but the permit system exists for good reasons and we bear the heavy burden of protecting the wilds from ourselves.

People should not have dominion over the Earth and animals, but neither would be other way around. Humans are also one of the kind of animals (and there are more stuff than animals of the Earth, such as trees and other plants too).

> Humans are also one of the kind of animals

We are. But we're also the most powerful. That power comes with responsibility, one of which isn't trampling through sensitive areas.

This is what happened: https://xkcd.com/1338/

>people have dominion over the Earth and animals

Then you should be happy: it's not the Earth and animals creating the permitting system.

> The world is meant to

No, it's not. It literally has no meaning.

> not the other way around

Yeah, until an alien species shows up that has more powerful weapons and decides your meat is delicious, and considers you a herdable animal. They might install you in a coup so you can play videogames all day and drink beer as your only source of nutrients, to give your meat that kobebeef marble.

> Whatever happened to liberty

The Americans decided that it wasn't worthwhile anymore.

> and the pursuit of happiness

It became profitable to keep you from being happy.

It's entirely dependent upon where, specifically, in the Cascades OP was. There are numerous wilderness-designated zones that don't have limits on number of people in an area and access is free, save for the requirement that you fill out a permit at/near the trailhead or wilderness boundary.

Most of the Cascades have no quota permits, you just need a basic pass that anyone can buy. The quota permits are for exceedingly popular areas like the Enchantments mountain range, and even then usually only for overnight camping.

I’ve backpacked into several parts of the Cascades without a special permit, because none were required, and never been hassled by a ranger. Most of it is National Forest; more restrictions than BLM land but you are generally allowed to camp as long as you follow the local rules.

> I’ve backpacked into several parts of the Cascades without a special permit, because none were required, and never been hassled by a ranger

I mean, yes. You followed the rules. If you wandered somewhere that does require a permit, you'd have been at risk of being stopped.

I live around national parks. A single obnoxious tourist can disrupt the life cycle of dozens of protected species by running feral through their mating and nursery grounds. (It's also not obvious that you're re-routing e.g. a herd of pronghorn from the safe valley whose floor you're on into the territory of a new pack of wolves.)

> protect the wilderness from too many people

The person you're replying to mentioned the park ranger was the first person they had seen in days.

I think it was Locke who talked about the "Social Contract". The idea being that society robbed man of the opportunity to live as a "feral" by inventing property rights and restricting their right to roam; therefore society owes each member a subsistence at least equivalent to the one nature would have provided.

I'm not sure I agree with Locke, but I at least feel that the parks are meant to exist as a partial means of living up to that contract and should be less strictly patrolled than this one was on that day.

That’s an interesting argument. I looked it up. Looks like it’s from Thomas Paine in Agrarian Justice.[0] It’s essentially an argument for universal basic income. Crazy, radical stuff, and it’s hosted on a government website!

[0] https://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html

It's been a very long time since I studied it, but... The founders of the US (including Paine) took most/much of their inspiration from the works of Locke who popularized a lot of the ideas about inalienable/natural rights coming from God and governing requiring the consent of the governed.

I'm fairly certain that Locke adapted ideas from some some older source, but Locke's work is considered foundational to the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and some of his phrasings found their way into both documents.

Definitely worth reading more about it if you're into that sort of thing. Especially in the current political climate where everything that doesn't fit the agenda is fast being swept beneath the rug of history.

:shrug: there is no right to roam in the US, you need to pay to use various state/federal parks. The money goes towards the upkeep of the park. The park ranger was doing his job and you made it difficult for him, I don't know what else to tell you.

This comment makes assumptions and gives OP crap for said assumptions. As someone who also frequently backpacks in the same region, it's just not true. OP specified "wilderness zone" and there are numerous wilderness areas where the only requirement is to fill out a permit yourself near/at the trailhead. Otherwise, access is entirely free. It's hard to know how much of a violation OP made without knowing exactly where in the Cascades they were.

Vast tracts of land in the US are explicitly open for people to wander around or camp-out wherever they want. On BLM land (much of the western US), you can stay at any particular site you choose for up to two weeks before you have to move on.

National Parks are completely over-run with millions of people from all over the world, it would utterly destroy the environment to not limit the number of people that access it and how they access it. They have to keep ratcheting up the restrictions because of extreme levels of demand that cannot be reasonably met.

National Forests and wilderness areas are somewhere in the middle. You can buy a general pass to use them but there are local restrictions on what you can do and some popular areas require additional limited-availability permits for backcountry camping and similar to manage the number of people occupying the land at any one time.

In this case, it seems like the ranger is being a bit of a dick. I’ve never been hassled in the National Forest backcountry of the Cascades in regions that require no special permit, just a cheap general pass that I buy every year that technically permits that usage. I did once get a ticket from a rural sheriff for not parking far enough off the shoulder on a forestry road when I went camping.

You might enjoy the book "the man who gave up money". He faced a similar experience, better brain breaking.

Why the hell should you need a permit? Sounds like you met a real jobsworth.

I'm so glad I live in a country with a legally defined right to roam, Norway [1]. There is a two day limit but that only means you can only camp for two nights in any one place not that you can be told to leave. There are provisions for the kommune (local authority) to forbid access to areas that have been damaged by over-use though.

[1] https://www.miljodirektoratet.no/publikasjoner/2020/juni-202...

Have you heard of "right to roam" laws in the UK? They make sense to me and maybe the US could use them for all public lands.

> maybe the US could use them for all public lands

We have this for some public lands. It doesn't work for all of them. Our National Parks would fail at their conservation mission if everyone were allowed to break trail, for instance. (You'll also see rampant poaching if refusing to provide ID or an address for a citation turns into a get-out-of-jail-free card.)

I wouldn't consider right to roam the same as right to hunt.

I think that's a symptom of there being too many people. Sometimes I feel guilty for reproducing.

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