May 24, 2020

"Allemansrätten ('every man’s right') is in the Swedish Constitution, guaranteeing the right to camp, swim, build campfires and gather wild produce..."

"... such as flowers, mushrooms, and berries. Similar rights, whether formalized by law or accepted as historic custom, exist in Central Europe and the Baltics. Now, covid-19 has underscored the value of roaming rights. In Sweden, 80 to 90 percent of the country’s land mass is open for responsible recreation.... In the United States, I calculate that a little more than a quarter of the country is theoretically roamable. That sounds like plenty of space, but the great bulk of these places — mainly federal and state public lands — are either crowded (such as our heavily trafficked national parks), inaccessible or in sparsely populated Western states and Alaska.... [A]s the need for social distancing continues, many will begin to feel stir-crazy in the same pedestrian-unfriendly sprawl, on the same dangerous country roads and around the same dull cul-de-sacs. A more evolved understanding of private property will help us feel healthier, freer, more equal and more connected to our communities and local environments. It’ll help us get out of the house in good times and bad. A crisis gives us an opportunity to rethink how we normally do things...."

From "America may be opening back up, but most of our land is still off-limits. Let’s change that" (WaPo).

43 comments:

RMc said...

A crisis gives us an opportunity to rethink how we normally do things

Doesn't it always...?

Michael said...

"A more evolved understanding" - of what people who live in big cities, read the WaPo, and suffer no downside from this evolution, want. An evolved understanding always means agreeing with them.

Freeman Hunt said...

I cannot relate to this at all, and I don't live out West. There are trails, state parks, rivers, and city parks with land to roam everywhere.

Nichevo said...

A more evolved understanding of private property will help us feel healthier, freer, more equal and more connected to our communities and local environments.


Can we just start killing people now? Because that's what they want.

Nicholas said...

A more evolved understanding of private property would prevent someone like Jeff Bezos from having the WaPo as his personal bully pulpit from which to attack anyone who might threaten Amazon's online reatail hegemony.

PubliusFlavius said...

Goodness knows I'm flying somewhere while tickets are cheap.

Stephen Taylor said...

"....more evolved understanding of private property..."

I don't like the sound of that; the rest of my fellow Texans won't either.

Sebastian said...

"[A]s the need for social distancing continues"

Everyone assumes this. Why? Covid-19 is harmless to healthy people under 65 and gradual spread helps herd immunity.

"A more evolved understanding of private property"

Like, understanding that it is not private, that Bezos's billions are actually mine?

"A crisis gives us an opportunity to rethink how we normally do things...."

Never let a crisis etc. etc.

Prog predictability doesn't make them any less dangerous.

Howard said...

Too much of federal land is desecrated by cattle run by right-wing bootstrapping welfare Queens like Cloven Bundy and his Branch Davidian style cult of Cosplaytriots.

Achilles said...

The goal of the shut down wasn't to stop COVID-19 or mitigate a virus outbreak.

It was to destroy the economy and disrupt the elections and cause as many deaths as possible.

They shut down schools where the flu was more dangerous to students and shipped COVID positive people to nursing homes.

The response makes no sense unless you understand the goals of the people pushing this crap.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

The WaPo hasn’t thought this one through. Environmentalists are not going to be down with this suggestion.

Rory said...

If this practice were created here, our government nannies would have cut off the right along with everything else. I'd be happy just not to be a trespasser twice a day in the park behind my house.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Plus there’s no way Bezos wants us wandering his acres.

Josephbleau said...

Even for the WaPo this is completely mindless. A 25 year old journalistic idiot reads about a Swedish word and has a brilliant revelation. If you can build a camp fire in my corn field, then I can sleep in your upper west side apartment.

Bill Peschel said...

In Pennsylvania, they put trackers on hunters, and discovered that they penetrate about a half-mile into the game lands.

That leaves a lot of space for hikers to roam.

America's pretty big country, but you wouldn't know that from NYC and DC.

Jaq said...

You can thank “activists” who would go on people’s land looking for any reason whatsoever to close the land for development for all of those posted signs. When I was a boy, there was lots of roamable land near cities.

I don’t know who that guy in Howard’s avatar is, but I know he didn’t die of a Vitamin D deficiency.

Greg Hlatky said...

A crisis gives us an opportunity to rethink how we normally do things

From an editorial in the Völkischer Beobachter, 28 February 1933

Tommy Duncan said...

I have personally been able to feel the change in population in the US over the last 60 years. In reality, when there were fewer of us there was a "more evolved understanding of private property". Farmers would graciously allow hunters and fishermen who respected their property. There were no fences in many city backyards, allowing kids room to range and play, assuming they did so in a responsible and respectful way. As the population increased and coarsened the relationship between land owners and the public soured.

JaimeRoberto said...

There would be more room to roam if our betters who are following "science!" hadn't shut down so many parks during this panic.

It's my understanding that in the UK you can wander across people's farmland. It's a nice idea, but I sure wouldn't want it if I were a landowner. Too much risk from a lawsuit and too likely that the land would be interested with environmentalists looking for a reason to shut down economic activity.

gilbar said...

Everyone assumes this. Why? Covid-19 is harmless to healthy people under 65

serious question
if we'd just taken All the at risk people, and put them up in 5 star hotels; and then encouraged everyone else to go out and get infected; and then 14 days later (once we all got over the covid), let the oldsters go home....
Would it have been Cheaper,than what we did?
Would the death rate have been Lower, than what we did?

Instead, we (well, Dem Govs) took people that were INFECTED, and placed them WITH the most at-risk people.... Hmmmm

Ficta said...

What. The. Hell? There are miles and miles and miles of State Park (and National Forest) trails in Maryland (and even more in Virginia) within easy driving distance of DC. What is this idiot talking about? Did he go to Shenandoah NP once during fall season and walk less than a mile from the road? That might be a little crowded...

JackWayne said...

If you’re worried about land use, explain why the east coast states have very little federal land and western states have very little state land. It’s a travesty that the later states do not control their own land.

Matthew Heintz said...

I'm a wild mushroom Hunter here in Maine. The only places I can't go picking are surrounded by chain link fence and barbed wire. I wear camo when I trespass. No one,in 50 years of pikkin has ever tossed me offen a property!

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

a collective

..."NIMBY !!!" splurted the Limousine Libs

tommyesq said...

Josephbleau said A 25 year old journalistic idiot reads about a Swedish word and has a brilliant revelation. If you can build a camp fire in my corn field, then I can sleep in your upper west side apartment.

Not true - not a single 25 year old journalistic idiot lives in, or anywhere near, a cornfield!

Ignorance is Bliss said...

A crisis gives us an opportunity to rethink how we normally do things....

I normally don't shoot trespassers and bury their bodies in unmarked graves, but I'm willing to rethink this, given the opportunity...

Ignorance is Bliss said...

As others have said, national parks are only crowded if you're going to the sight-seeing parts. If you're willing to wander off-trail, there's plenty of open space.

ColoComment said...

https://bit.ly/2XpJGfH

So. When is it enough?

I suspect that the people who write this stuff never get out of their own neighborhoods.

ColoComment said...

Even if you just read the Summary....

How much is enough?

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42346.pdf

RigelDog said...

I can't relate to it either. I live in the city boundaries of Philadelphia and there are 9200 acres of public park within the city (the bulk of it wild forest and creeks).

Balfegor said...

There's plenty of space to ramble in DC. Rock Creek Park is quite large (~2,000 acres, twice the size of Central Park). Generally not particularly crowded either, so it should be safe despite the plague.

Lurker21 said...

Britain has its "right to roam" laws which allow for passage through "open country" even if it is in private hands. Cultivated land can be excluded. Long established public paths are also considered open to walkers and hikers.

We probably aren't going to see any comprehensive change in the laws. The US is too different from Britain or Sweden. There's plenty of public land for hiking and recreational organizations can work out their own arrangements with owners and local governments if they want more access.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

So Sweden is off the liberal shit list now? They were models for us all because of healthcare and socialism until they refused to lockdown their country. Then they became irrelevant and stupid. I guess now they're good again.

jimbino said...

And, as I've pointed out some 50 times on this blog, national parks and forests are White Amerikan Country clubs in which you hardly ever see a face of color, black, brown or red whether in person or in National Geographic's or Ken Burns's documentaries. They shouldn't be forced to visit, but then, they shouldn't be taxed to purchase or maintain country clubs they have no use for.

Tom T. said...

It's time to open up Area 51.

Steven said...

What an idiot.

Most land in Sweden is basically worthless (cold, mountainous/hilly, with poor soil), so it isn't used, so it's available for recreation. That has nothing to do with any property rights regime and everything to do with the fact that there's nothing else the land is any good for. If it was worthwhile land, it'd have been converted to agricultural use over a thousand years ago.

I mean, seriously, Sweden's latitude is the same as Alaska. So it's got a lot of unused land, like Alaska. It's a matter of geography, not law or culture.

MartyH said...

Speaking of people visiting the popular spots:

Robbs Hut is a retired forest service fire lookout in the Sierras. It is an easy three mile hike to a panoramic view of the mountains. We hiked it today. To get there you drive twenty miles back on a paved road.

About halfway up there were a hundred cars parked at a little stream. We were sure that there’d be no parking at the little turnout. But there were only two cars; we saw nine people on our three hour hike-three of them USFS employees. We also saw two bald eagles!

ken in tx said...

What Tommy Duncan said above, plus this--When people started suing land owners for the stupid things that they themselves did on the owners property, more rural property became posted for No Trespassing. We have a private dock on a lake that we would be glad for kids to swim or fish from it but we can't afford it. It's posted, Keep Out.

Kirk Parker said...

Nichevo,

Easy, dude; you're getting kind of sporty there.

M said...

“More evolved understanding of private property”=Fascism. Privately owned but publicly controlled.

stlcdr said...

How would Obama have shut down the people’s parks if they truly belonged to the people?

Nichevo said...

Sure Kirk, thanks, plead stress. Seriously though, this is literally what you call begging for it.

If I told Althouse or Inga, Hey, that's a nice pussy you're not using there, you should share it, I suppose they'd just spread 'em? For society's sake?

(It's as if they don't realize that every one of these roads to collectivist statist hell they want to meander along, passes directly by free live, which means, drafting pussy, both in the recreational and reproductive sense. Your body belongs to the State. You'll screw or not screw, breed or not breed, as ordered.)

But people don't see that far ahead.

KellyM said...

It is true that finding open space in the east is a challenge. Even deep in the wilds of Maine or New Hampshire you're going to come across people. But there is plenty out there.

When my husband and I moved cross country, we were able to camp on BLM land just about anywhere in the west. We used a book called "Backcountry Byways" to guide us. We set up camp on rolling grasslands in eastern Wyoming where the only people we saw were groups of elk hunters out on ATVs, to a spot in Nevada just north of Lake Mead filled with offroad trails.

National Parks are a pain unless you're willing to get off the beaten path. Places like Yosemite or Arches have too much foot traffic, with people arriving by the busload.