"I can do okay, in short doses, living in the circus of rules that is New York City—but I would hate to live in a country where getting out on the land meant having to be in a space as heavily regulated as a national park. I don't currently plan on becoming a wild-bearded old miner working a placer claim on some lonely creek, but I would hate to live in a country where that wasn't an option if I fuck everything else up. My arsenal of firearms right now is nothing very warlike, but I would hate to live in [a] country without wild mountain fastnesses 'to function as bases for guerilla warfare against tyranny,' as Ed Abbey put it long ago. Environmentalists can think these kinds of thoughts too. Sharing a part of these lands shaped my conception of myself long before I ever set foot on the lands themselves. They gave me a sense of possibility far beyond the bounds of my immediate existence."
~~ from Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West by James Pogue
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