The fact that the Burns Paiute and Bannock Shoshone tribes are still battling our government and politicians for protection of the sagebrush steppe habitat and our native sage grouse isn't spiritually uplifting.
I'm not so sure that I've changed. I do not believe that we're going to go out and wholesale land from the federal government. Federal law says that we can't do that from the BLM itself.
By midwinter, Los Angeles is defined less by cold than by light. Cool, clear mornings give way to afternoons shaped by the low winter arc of the sun, painting the mountains in long shadows and the sky in improbable color. And as that low light settles in, my whole body shifts in spirit. Somewhere deep in the limbic system, a synapse fires like a flare, tracing the old circuitry of migration and memory - that annual pull toward the wide-open deserts of the American Southwest.
In the latter part of the 19th century, prospectors flocked to the Red Mountain Mining District in southwestern Colorado, staking hundreds of 10-acre claims alongside streambeds, on aspen-covered slopes and just about anywhere else in the "public domain" they thought might hold gold or silver. After five years, federal mining laws would allow them to patent, or take title to, the claims they wanted.
Keep Big Sur Wild maintains 'all capacity has already been exhausted' according to the land use plan. It allowed for a maximum of 300 units to be built. By our count, the cap has been exceeded by at least 5 units.'
'If approved as currently written, the provision could lease in perpetuity land near Minnesota's Boundary Waters wilderness, an enormous complex of pristine lakes and untrammeled forests, to Twin Metals Minnesota.'
I think it was just a combination of how powerless you feel in the sense when you're met with natural disasters. There's a lot of resilience, both in the natural world and in human communities, that comes together after natural disasters.