Nature Is Not a Museum
Art by Tanzanian Wojak
Author’s note: The purpose of this article is to protest restrictive regulations on traditional use of public lands. It is not to encourage trespassing, poaching, and hunting out-of-season without respect for licensing, safety, and other reasonable regulations. Please read my guide to deer hunting for information on responsible and ethical hunting.
According to the “experts,” the primary threat to mother nature lies squarely on carbon emissions. While this claim has some validity, there is a more dangerous threat to nature that is emerging, one that is far worse because it threatens the ability of Man to concern himself or interact with nature in any real way. This threat is the museum-ification of our open spaces.
Virtually every county in America owns open spaces, including at least a few that have been preserved explicitly with wildlife and ecosystem health in mind. I could go on about myriad threats to these lands: encroaching development, invasive species, trash pollution, microplastics, and so on. These are all worthy topics to address, and most, unlike climate change, have local or national solutions, not solutions dependent upon international, globalist financiers, bureaucrats, and NGOs. But this does not address the increasing estrangement from the land that many Americans are experiencing. For too many, nature is distant, unused, and filled with signs about what and what not to touch. This is similar to…the local museum!
Ask many Americans, especially in the Midwest and South, about how common activities such as hunting, fishing, and foraging were mere decades ago. There was plenty of open land, even near suburbs. Young men would sit in the woods for hours, awaiting deer and squirrel, while their grandmothers fetched greens nearby. My great-grandfather once hunted pheasants on the outskirts of Chicago in an area where there is now a mall. Hunting and foraging were common activities. Crucially, they were accessible. Land existed near people’s homes that could be accessed without first reading a long series of regulations.
In the past few decades, perhaps as a result of a growing population, increased development of private lands, and strict trespassing rules, a new “nature ethic” has emerged regarding the land. In many states, harsher penalties and even possible jail time await a person foraging mushrooms in their local woods, more so than a jogger leaving plastic trash behind. If public lands do allow hunters, regulations involving special drawings, odd seasons, and strange rules on everything from weapons to hunting methods are heaped upon them. The “accepted” use of our public lands has become non-consumption: watching, never touching.
This is a rather odd time for such an ethic to develop. Coyotes have invaded the eastern states. Deer populations have exploded. Geese are virtually everywhere and are seemingly unstoppable. Even the turkey, declining in some states, has returned to our open spaces with a vengeance. Short of introducing wolves to Glenview, IL, or Larchmont, NY, there is little that can be done except to hunt.
I struggle to understand the mind of nature bureaucrats, who would rather spend thousands of taxpayer dollars on sharpshooters to “manage” the deer population, instead of allowing locals to enjoy a day of hunting and venison for dinner. Every year, I see paths increasingly degraded by “nature lovers” who seem to love nature only at the arms-distance that gravel can provide, doubly so if it can get them Instagram followers. The never-ending supply of birdwatchers in places like Central Park seems to confirm my worst suspicions, which is that our technology—TV, the internet, smartphones—has reprogrammed us from assertive doers in nature to people who would rather be just as passive outside as they are at their mind-numbing desk jobs. Instead of interaction with the environment—foraging mushrooms, crossing a river, tracking a wild goat over three days—nature is reduced to a spectacle, something that is not dynamic, free, or present. In short, a museum.
Museumification is a mindset, but it also is a political movement. The amount of money and time spent by various “animal rights” groups on keeping hunting and fishing out of open spaces is astounding. Likewise, the so-called “environmental movement” makes insane claims about what would happen if granny took home a ramp (a type of wild onion) from the local ravine park. They make claims about “trampling” of native plants—because, as we know, no other species exist in these parks that could possibly trample, or, heaven forbid, eat those same plants. And that’s just the environmental movements that haven’t yet seemingly devoted themselves to shaming the West for climate change and demanding enactment of a whole litany of progressive ideas that have little to do with saving the environment.
If this is indeed the future of nature, then our open spaces are doomed. Nobody is willing to make sacrifices for something they can just as easily see in a picture. People can look at a stream and see something “pretty.” A pretty thing vanishing is sad but endurable so long as the Prozac is flowing. A fisherman looks at a stream and sees dancing spirits of fish in every ripple and wave. He sees nourishment, a way of life, a connection to his heritage and ancestors. Streams are sacred halls to the fisherman, but mere pleasantries to the yuppie who camps once a year.
Some of us dissent. I proudly forage my local parks, walking right past the “No Foraging” signs to pick the nearest chicken-of-the-woods hanging from an oak log. I would, if I could get away with it, hunt on these lands. There is little reason I shouldn’t; I see far too many deer to possibly deem these places well-managed. A several hundred-acre tract is more than capable of being a safe place to discharge a smoothbore gun or bow. I also fish these lands, fishing being something still allowed (for now), although keeping your catch is frowned upon or even banned in many places (despite the absolute deliciousness of a spring crappy or fall walleye.)
Some of us are tired of living in fear of “forest cops” coming to take away our bags of mushrooms, our purses, our backpacks, and our fishing gear. If I have any advice to the youth, it is to buy a gun, a bow, and a hunting knife. Go forage or hunt under their noses, and curse them when they slap you with big fines. If you have the balls, take them to court and argue there was inadequate signage. These people are weak in will, spirit, and values. They hate nature and love parking lots. Like the museum-keeper, they prefer the world as static and untouched rather than loved and venerated. Pick up trash where you see it; there will only be more of it.
Nature is not a museum. It is not a selfie studio. It is a place where humans can interact with life and death in an honest and direct fashion and immerse themselves in mysteries that hide beneath every fold of land. Organizing a serious environmental movement that actually fights on this basis is necessary. Nature belongs to us. Take it back!