And wipe that smirk off yer face!

Yankee Boy Basin. Click image to enlarge.

What's in a name?

I've lately noticed an interesting trend: several people I know have asked to be called something different. Often those new names are comprised of nouns, and sometimes adjective-noun combinations, that aren't, shall we say, generally aligned with traditional naming practices.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. So, being an open-minded and polite sort, I have endeavored to acknowledge and adhere to their requested new self-monikers, while at the same time working to stifle any snickers that might try to burp up unbidden.

The funny thing is, even though I can't seem to help smirking, I don't really think people giving themselves new names is funny. Or bad. In fact, in a theoretical way I fully support, and even embrace, the concept. Yet when it actually occurs, when someone I've known and engaged with for a long time under one name suddenly, willingly, deliberately decides to change their name to some plant or animal or celestial event, well, I still can't help but find it somewhat ... peculiar.

But, I get it. Totally. And I am self-aware enough to recognize that my upwellings of cynicism arise not from what I feel, but from what I think -- those reflexive responses conditioned by our social and cultural upbringings. Because in our culture, this is obviously a different process from the accepted ways we usually get our names:

1. Birth, given by parents and family lineage.
2. Nickname, given by others.
3. Marriage, last name only.
4. Earned and bestowed honorific.

Beyond that, cultural conditioning teaches us to distrust and resist self-imposed re-identifying of ourselves.

Of course, despite these norms and conventions, renaming ourselves is actually quite normal and common -- if we define "normal" as including full variety of human culture, and see what is "common" across the full multi-million-year historic range of human society and culture. In those terms, there's strong evidence that what is "normal" for people -- what transcends our present-day accepted acculturation, and instead arises from our very source, our being, our human being -- is something quite different.

In that broader context we can see that the act of finding and adopting new self-chosen names, often several times in the course of one's life, is actually normal, expected, anticipated, sought out and celebrated.

Yet while this might be common and consistent among tribal peoples worldwide, we think that a singer changing her name to "Pink" is somehow silly and juvenile, different from a Native warrior who has a pwerful vision and so changes his name to "Crazy Horse."

But is it, really, that different?

And we still do it, anyways, don't we? In the business world, it's called "Rebranding." The idea is, essentially, if you rename it, they will come around -- around to seeing your product in a new way, they way you want it to be seen. Think of "Gatorade" now just becoming "G."

Another interesting and new place where people are now renaming and reinventing themselves themselves is online -- emails, discussion groups, chat rooms, social networking sites. And, importantly, and more pervasively, in online gaming, where a participant can create a whole new persona, from name to completely new identity, personal history, and personal story -- a completely new who-you-are. These new identities are called "Avatars," and they can represent, I believe, not just a fantasy, or even an escape, but one of our deepest and most natural human desires: To start over. To be re-invented. To look ahead to believe who we can be, not just who we have been.

And it all begins with our name.

The point being -- it's something many of us want to do. And I think it's something that would be good for most, if not all, of us in our ongoing personal development. Because when you think about it, being stuck with only one name throughout your entire life really only benefits bureaucracy and organizations and those who want you to be permanently attached to your past and your assigned designations. And the result is just that: We are anchored to our past instead of liberated to move to new ways of being.

Seen that way, then, name changing is a sort of spiritual rebranding, with the purpose of recasting ourselves not as histories, but as fresh stories -- from who-we-were to avatar. A new name drops the old storehouse of history and past, and instead works as a compass bearing, a guide, a reference point. It becomes an intention.The idea is, if you rename it, you yourself will come around -- you will live up to that, work toward that, make it so ...

Well, I've been thinking about this since my recent encounters with my friends-formerly-known-as-whatever, and although I can't yet bring myself to rename myself (What would it be? "MoneyMaker"? That would be a welcome change, for sure. "Pulitzer"? It'd take more than a name ... "UpWright," on the other hand, might help my boating ... ), I do see some places where some renaming-towards-revisioning some things might be a real asset right here in our American West. Here are a few ideas:

• "Public Lands" could be renamed "Grandkids Lands."
  
• "Recreation" could be phrased "re-creation."
  
• The term "lake" could be applied only to acts of God rather than acts of engineers.
  
• "Wilderness" could be called "Homelands" (retrieving the name from the agency of that name), and urban/suburban blights could be labeled "wilderness" -- then we could get back to taming the "wilds" and forging them back into "homelands" again.
  

Well, it's only a thought. Only a start.

How about you? What would you like to rebrand, and why?

******

This post also appears on InsideOutsideMag.com. Check it out!

Congress protects public lands

This just in from the National Wildlife Federation and Ourpubliclands.org:

Today Congress passed the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act. This historic plan to protect America's public lands provides the largest expansion of wilderness in fifteen years.

The Omnibus Public Lands Management Act will conserve critical public lands and waters, which provide important wildlife habitat, natural resources and recreation opportunities to continue America's great conservation traditions for generations to come.

Specifically, the Act will secure wilderness designation for more than two million acres of public lands, protect thousands of miles of rushing rivers and establish a 26 million acre conservation system-- the first new system of conservation lands in the United States in more than 50 years.

Yea!

More news stories about it here and here and here.

More from the science of appearances file...

[photo: Arizona Game and Fish Dept.]

Sometimes you're looking for lions, and catch a jaguar instead. Having considered this possibility, the research team attached a collar, and released the 118 pound male to continue roaming a landscape that trumps the concept of national borders. This may be the jaguar known as Macho B, appearing only as an image on motion-triggered cameras for the last thirteen years, or it may be another male migrating toward the northern portions of ancestral jaguar range; but the knowledge gleaned from this accidental trapping will further complicate the politics of fencing the empire.

So far the satellite-uplinked jaguar has stayed south of Tucson, but his ancestors once hunted the rims of the Grand Canyon. A quick glance at the habitat map I posted here last week should encourage you to consider adding jaguars to your phenological "watch for" list, and might give further incentive to teach your poodles and chihuahuas to heel.

Utah's land lease fire sale grinds to a screeching halt

Victory resounds for enviro-lovers: the Utah land lease wildfire has been halted. Read all about it here on my blog post. Pretty. Freakin'. Sweet.

Hooray for the little folks with the big mouths, the big stars who put their own mouths where their money is (thank you, Mr. Redford), and a country just fed up with rampant, mindless greed.

Now I need to get out and enjoy my newly undrilled public southern Utah lands....

Change - "...we are the ones we have been waiting for."

Last Friday, as George W. Bush sought desperately to defer reckonings for eight years of foreign policy, economic, and environmental blundering onto the next administration, - Tim DeChristopher took a final exam on economics, walked into a BLM auction in downtown Salt Lake City, took a bidding number, and threw a wrench into one of the outgoing administration's machinations to deliver lasting gifts to extraction industries all over our map.




Patrick Shea, a Clinton-era head of the Bureau of Land Management, has offered to represent DeChristopher in any legal actions, and though at this point he lacks the $1,700,000 it would take to claim his winning bids on 22,000 acres, this act of very civil disobedience will delay any re-auctioning of a few pieces of Utah's canyon country until after January 20th. DeChristopher further explains his action on the One Utah blog, where you can thank him, and donate to a legal fund.

Backcoutry skiing access above Silverton threatened

An alert from the 4cornersbackcountryskiers listserv reports that Aaron Brill, the owner of Silverton Mountain Ski Area is requesting the county cut winter access to the popular backcountry skiing terrain in and around upper Cement Creek, in the San Juans above Silverton. The alert says:

Aaron Brill has asked the San Juan County Commissioners to not plow Cement Creek road past his lift. He doesn’t want to run the shuttles anymore [don't know any more motivation beyond that]. This would make the approaches to Bonita Peak/Gold King (Minnehaha), Corkscrew/Hurricane, Gwendaland, etc excessively long. The San Juan County Commissioners are meeting at 8am on the 15th and this topic is on the agenda. If you have an opinion on this, please contact the commissioners at the following by tomorrow, Friday at noon!

View Larger Map

Those concerned are urged to contact the San Juan County to ask the county to continue to plowing the and maintaining access public trailhead and ski access at the top of the Cement Creek road.

Email sanjuancounty@frontier.net or call the San Juan County Administrator, William Tookey, at 970.387.5766

The alert suggests points to make:

1) The parking area/trailhead at the end of Cement Creek Road has been kept open by the state or county plows for many decades. It leads to many backcountry areas used from October to May. Backcountry access is important for the county to maintain as it is what makes the Silverton area so popular with backcountry enthusiasts.

2) Those who use this particular trailhead do not wish to ski at Silverton nor do they do want to park along the already crowded road near the ski area, which is a half-mile from the current Cement Creek trailhead.

3) Backcountry skiers from Ouray and Durango help support and "grow" the local San Juan economy, by buying gas, supplies, and other sundries in town.

4) The decisions to purchase many homes and properties in San Juan County have been spurred by the county-supported plowed access to higher elevation trailheads.

You can also contact Silverton Mountain at info@silvertonmountain.com.

Sell public lands to pay off the national debt? Some think so ...

Ed Quillen, writing on High Country News' Goat Blog, says that the idea of selling public lands to help pay off the nation's bloating national debt -- now at more than $10.5 trillion -- is, like chronic heartburn, bubbling up again.

Quillen cites in particular a blog post on Marginal Revolution, in which economist Tyler Cowen argues:

The Federal Government owns more than half of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska and it owns nearly half of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming … It is time for a sale. Selling even some western land could raise hundreds of billions of dollars — perhaps trillions of dollars — for the Federal government at a time when the funds are badly needed and no one want to raise taxes. At the same time, a sale of western land would improve the efficiency of land allocation.

Does a sale of western lands mean reducing national parkland? No, first much of the land isn’t parkland. Second, I propose a deal. The government should sell some of its most valuable land in the west and use some of the proceeds to buy low-price land in the Great Plains.

The western Great Plains are emptying of people. Some 322 of the 443 Plains counties have lost population since 1930 and a majority have lost population since 1990.

Now is the time for the Federal government to sell high-priced land in the West, use some of the proceeds to deal with current problems and use some of the proceeds to buy low-priced land in the Plains creating the world’s largest nature park, The Buffalo Commons.

The idea of whoring -- um, liquidating -- public land comes around whenever the Treasury seems in need of a quick and easy infusion of class. And there is some historical precedent for this, Quillen writes. "The only time in American history that the federal government was totally out of debt came on Jan. 1, 1835, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, and it was land sales that provided much of the federal income that made this possible."

In another interesting instance, Quillen explains why Texas has so little public land:

Texas has very little federal land. That's a result of the Compromise of 1850. Recall that Texas was an independent republic from 1836 to 1844, and ran up some bills. It also claimed half of New Mexico and a strip that extended north through Colorado into Wyoming. In the Compromise, Texas agreed to its current boundaries. In return, the federal government agreed to pay off the old republic's debts, and the public lands inside the Lone Star State were turned over to the state government instead of being retained by the federal government. Texas managed to get someone else to pay off its "national debt," and got title to its public lands -- that's a better deal than we're likely to see if the federal government starts offering land for sale.

And in recent years, there have been similar, very serious (regardless of how preposterous) proposals. For example: The Forest Service planning to sell some 300,000 acres of public land to pay for a federal program; Sen. Richard Pombo’s proposal to sell some national parks to help pay off the national debt; and the Cato Institute, the highly influential free-market think tank, arguing in favor of selling the Grand Canyon to the Disney Corporation.

The reason this can happen today, Quillen argues, is that most people don't understand what public lands are or are for. And one of the reasons for that is that so much of the nation's federal public lands are in the West.

States with highest percentage of state area that is federal land:

1. Nevada 84.5%
2. Alaska 69.1%
3. Utah 57.4%
4. Oregon 53.1%
5. Idaho 50.2%
6. Arizona 48.1%
7. California 45.3%
8. Wyoming 42.3%
9. New Mexico 41.8%
10. Colorado 36.6%

While most of the states with the least federal public lands are in the East:

1. Connecticut 0.4%
2. Rhode Island 0.4%
3. Iowa 0.8%
4. New York 0.8%
5. Maine 1.1%
6. Kansas 1.2%
7. Nebraska 1.4%
8. Alabama 1.6%
9. Ohio 1.7%
10. Illinois 1.8%

(Stats from Strangemaps)

This, in my mind, is one of the greatest challenges to the long-term protection of our public lands: Not just fighting the legal and legislative battles, but also giving people -- everyone -- the whys to go along with the whats and hows. We need a re-engagement with the idea of The Commons, and a re-enchantment with the future generations that those Commons are held in common for.

We need to put the public back in our public lands!

More to come on this ...

Utes to hunt under 19th century treaty right

A good article in the L.A. Times yesterday about the Southern Utes asserting its right to hunt on southwestern Colorado public lands under the 1874 Brunot agreement.

Under the agreement, the article says, "the Utes relinquished 4 million acres to the United States but retained the right to hunt on the land for 'so long as the game lasts and the Indians are at peace with the white people'."

The article explains:

Under the agreement, tribal members don't have to acquire a state permit to hunt on public lands, but the tribe will regulate its members and require them to obtain tribal permits. Although the tribe hasn't established its exact hunting seasons, [the tribe's wildlife management director, Steve] Whiteman said, it will stick to the same general time frame of the state hunting seasons, and its rules will mirror state regulations. Nor will tribal members hunt on private land without the owner's permission.

Read more about the Utes and the Brunot agreement here.

Read more about the recent decision to apply the agreement in the Mineral County Miner (Creede, Colo.).