It might seem strange to find public policy in a Country / Western song, but the late Toby Keith pulled it off with his hit, “I love this bar.” Here are a few lines if you don’t know the song.
We got cowboys, we got truckers
Broken-hearted fools and suckers
And we got hustlers, we got fighters
Early-birds and all-nighters
Toby must have been to the east side of Lander’s Main Street during his life. He describes my favorite Fremont County bar perfectly. There is something magical about the Lander Bar, adjacent to the Gannett Grill.
On any given afternoon you can walk up to the bar, take a seat on one of the stools and order a Rock Chuck Rye or my favorite, an Atlantic City Gold, both 12 ounces of ambrosia in a glass created by the Lander Brewing Company.
Look to your left and you might spot a guy in bike shorts with a prominent “man bun” or maybe a couple of climbers just in from the rocks in Sinks Canyon. On your right you might see a couple of “redneck boys” (a favorite Toby Keith line) ponied up to the same bar.
In some locales, the redneck boys, the climbers and the guy with the man bun might be at odds, but not at the Lander Bar.
Whether it’s mutually assured destruction (MAD in Reagan’s Cold War vocabulary,) simple respect or just tolerance in action, it doesn’t matter. There aren’t many problems in the Lander Bar.
Take a run above Sinks Canyon and you’ll find the same process, only in land usage in the Shoshoni National Forest.
When Gifford Pinchot, President Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell witnessed the carnage that private industry was wreaking on the American wilderness they went into action. Pinchot and Grinnell were the driving force. Roosevelt was the punch.
During his eight-year term as president, Roosevelt set aside 230,000,000 acres of land for public use. National Forests, Parks, Grasslands and Monuments were all created so future generations could enjoy the uniquely spectacular American wilderness.
He had his detractors. They’re still around today. Wyoming representative Harriet Hageman is one of the most prominent.
The Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation and National Forests are all vital to the Wyoming economy.
Those good ol’ boys at the Lander Bar hike, hunt and fish, climb and chase cattle over these public lands.
Energy, especially coal, get all the hot air from the far-right politicians. Just listen to the Republican candidates for House and Senate and their toadies in the Free Dumb Caucus. You’d never think that agriculture and tourism rely on public access to forests and parks if you only listened to their extreme rhetoric.
I caught trout at Louis Lake back in 1973. It’s not one of our “go to” spots but it is a beautiful, pristine, alpine lake with outstanding sunrises, moose, elk, deer, black bear and tons of non-Fremont County license plates.
My son Brian, son-in-law Adam and I fished there last Sunday from Brian’s boat. We were the only ones on the lake, but there were plenty of campers, cars, pickups and SUVs at the Louis Lake Lodge and in the surrounding campsites.
A quick perusal saw Wyoming plates with counties 1, 2, 7, 8 and 13. If you don’t remember fourth grade Wyoming geography, those plates mean Casper, Cheyenne, Torrington, Wheatland and Douglas, along with surrounding towns within their respective counties.
Why would anyone drive from Torrington to a small lake above South Pass 300 miles away for the Fourth of July weekend? Why not?
You can fish and hunt around Glendo and Guernsey Reservoirs but they’re packed with those same people willing to drive across the state to Louis Lake.
The reason is that public land is limited, east of Casper. There is the Snowy Range and Curt Gowdy around Laramie and Cheyenne, but the license plates take on a different color in the parking lots. They’re not the bright green that gave Colorado it’s negative Wyoming nickname, “Greenies,” but they’re still from the Denver Metro.
They have plenty of public land of their own. Why do they come here? Just look around you, you’ll see why. It might seem to us that the place is crowded but for someone trying to escape Arvada, Boulder or Denver even a full parking lot seems like pristine isolation on a Wyoming mountain or lake.
The boys and I had an awesome day on the water, catching and releasing over 70 trout. We kept a half dozen larger Kokanee salmon. As we fished we watched a gal swim across the middle of the lake. The water temperature was 59 degrees on Brian’s fish finder. On the east end families were paddle boarding in the chilly water and having a great time.
Above us, we watched an osprey circling the lake before it hit the water. The fish hawk flew off with an eight-inch trout in its talons. I caught it on my camera.
You can’t buy that type of drama. You can only experience it on public land.
If Harriet has her way, none of this will exist in a few years. Eventually you’ll begin to see locked gates, 24/7 satellite and drone surveillance and heavy fines for trespassers.
As a 20-something we hated to see the signs along the Laramie River and the mountains roads to Fox Park and above Centennial. They were for hunting and fishing clubs from Longmont, Northglenn, Thornton, and Westminster. There was a chained, locked gate behind each sign, or what was left of the sign after they received a hearty Wyoming hello of rifle and shotgun blasts.
We don’t want that in our mountains.
We all have friends who rely on public land grazing for their cattle operations to survive. We all enjoy the mountains, no matter whether you’re just driving through or on a seven-day hike over the top. These are set aside for all of us.
Watching that osprey, the kids on paddle boards and the woman swimming across the lake made me think about what could someday be lost. It made me angry. Not at them, but at the thought that someday, possibly in the very near future that none of this will be allowed.
Some fat cats will buy the mountain, chain it off and our heritage will be chained with it.
I want this experience for my grandchildren, and for their grandchildren.
Roosevelt was on to something 120 years ago.
We can stop it. It comes at the ballot box. Don’t vote for anyone who wants to sell our heritage to the highest bidder.
Politicians are all too familiar with the bidding process. They’ve become a commodity to be bought and sold by corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
For now, only the vote can stop it.
Robin Hood didn’t start by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, he started as an angry hunter denied access to feed his family by greedy land barons.
Not much has changed.