This week’s NY Times article Driving: Making Tracks, Making Enemies wonders how off road vehicles and environmentally endangered sites can co-exist. It doesn’t paint a lovely picture of the A.T.V. driver, typified by Loren Shirk, a networking engineer in Duarte, Calif., who drives his Chevy Blazer over the sand dunes near Barstow, California. He said. “I think my right to go where I want should not be hampered by the whims of somebody else that wants to leave the world looking like it was 40,000 years ago,” he said. “If I’m out there just playing around, and I’m not hurting anybody or anything, I don’t care what the sign says.” Of the argument that he should play by the rules, he said, “The way you succeed in life is to go outside the lines.”
What if we all had this attitude? I object to Mr. Shirk’s philosophy, as does the reporter who observed that, “A quick pass through the preserve revealed a hill riddled with beer cans and A.T.V. tracks, the deep ruts digging into the soil and exposing the fragile roots of white and scrub pines. Nearby, a strip of barren land had been cleared with a type of high-powered lawn mower to make a new path.”
I’m planning a dirt bike ride on part of the Trans-America Trail this fall. I’ll be reporting, as always, from the road, and part of the conversation will be about responsible land use. We’ll discuss how Sam Correro negotiated with parks and private land owners to make the trail possible, and his feelings about land use and environmentalism.
Your thoughts and experiences are welcome, as are questions I should ask during this trip.
