This is going to sound like a stupid question, but it seems like most of your campsites are literally just in the middle of no where, not like at a legit camping ground. Is that necessarily legal? Asking because I'm real inspired to try something like this myself
This is not a dumb question at all - and perfectly relevant to our current fight to protect our public lands. I can legally camp in the middle of nowhere because I do so on public lands - lands owned by all American Citizens. This is land set aside for public use - be it camping, hunting, fishing, biking, climbing, hiking, etc… Public Lands are owned and supported by tax payers and also sometimes referred to as Federal Land(most research shows public land costs about $4 dollars per tax payer a year). Restrictions depend on the agency that manages the area - most BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land has very few restrictions and allows for camping almost anywhere (without the need for a campground). However, I strongly encourage Leave No Trace ethics when camping in wilderness and if you are going to camp on our public lands please go to the following link and read the 7 Leave No Trace Principles:
https://lnt.org/learn/7-principles
I prefer to camp in the wild - to leave the city behind and experience the outdoors as a refuge from human impact - and in order to continue to experience it as such we need to keep it looking as if we were never there. I am a climber, a hunter, a mountaineer, a fisher, a hiker, a biker, and most importantly I was lucky enough to be born in the USA which gives me access to public wilderness as if I had the money to own a cabin in the mountains. However, I don’t have the money to own a cabin and so when the weekend rolls around I throw a few things in the back of the Land Cruiser and head for public lands… I find a spot that is my own, that feels as if I am one of the few lucky enough to sit on this rock and watch the sun go down - and I am lucky.
Watch the video link below: 4 minute bipartisan history of how the USA came to have so much public federal land, specifically in the west. This video educated me on how almost all federal land has always been federal land - and is not land that was taken from the states:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC_mnRu-4gA
It is my opinion that there is falsehood in state legislator’s desire to want public lands to be taken from the federal government and given to the state for the resident’s interests and stats seem to support this. Federal land is held in a trust for the use of the American people - and that’s it, that’s all, it is there for our future generations - so that I can teach my kid to ethically hunt and camp in the mountains just as my grandfather and father taught me. Some states do a great job with land they manage for public access, but the problem is that the land is no longer explicitly a trust and if the wrong individuals become elected, or are already are elected, that land can now be sold to private entities and will no longer be accessible to the public. In FACT 156 MILLION acres of Federal Public Land has been transferred to states and of that land 70% has been sold to private entities - that is 110 MILLION acres that we don’t have shared access to use anymore. I would rather not risk the possibility of my land being sold off so that I can not use it. Historically this has occurred when a state’s budget isn’t balanced because it is pretty easy to sell of a chunk of land to compensate for debt.
Please read the Field and Stream article in the Link below it is easy and incredibly informative:
http://www.fieldandstream.com/keep-public-lands-in-public-hands#page-3
Please vote to protect our public lands!
Public lands for our use and what agency manages them can be seen in the map below:
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