How important are public lands to me? 🏞

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You know how much I despise public parks with their highly controlled recreational activities.

Yet, I do enjoy a good night at a little roadside campsite far spread out from anywhere else. I enjoy hiking and biking in places far enough off the beaten path that I will never see another soul for hours on end, places that allow a wide variety of informal recreation without a lot of development or people.

This is the kind of place you would find in the national and state forests outside of the designated recreational areas and wilderness. I’ve learned the best way to avoid crowds is to avoid places with signs, especially the ever so popular wilderness in its name.

But when I finally have a place to call home, will I need such a place to escape to? Won’t a good piece of land, an off-grid cabin and some livestock provide all the recreation and joy I need? Or do I need a place relatively close to home that I can drive to and escape from place of my dreams I’m building?

Viewable from the Pillsbury Mountain Firetower

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Viewable from the Pillsbury Mountain Firetower

Revised map based on some analysis of I've been doing of photos I've taken over the years from the fire tower. Getting the view shed correct is a bit challenging using bare-earth digital elevation models, which do not fully consider the impact of trees blocking part of the viewable landscape.

2016 Berne Land Use

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2016 Berne Land Use

While Berne has quite a bit of farming going on in the valleys, there is less agriculture going on there then to the north in Knox. A lot of the hillsides and upper elevation areas aren't great for farming, and even in the valleys, more of the land is used for pasture and hay production.