Tags
camping, civilization, culture, freedom, progress, public lands, rights, travel, wealth
As soon as I’ve made my first billion, one of the very first things I’ll likely purchase will be a few acres of undeveloped land outside most cities across America. To this checkerboard of national plots I’ll then add numerous campfire rings, teepee structures, and maybe a port-a-potty or two. I’ll call such free-of-charge, roadside stops, Nomad Nooks.
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I drove around the western United States when I was younger. For seven months I saw the sights I’d always wanted to see with no more bills to worry about than gassing the VW Rabbit and feeding myself. I slept—having left behind the passenger and back seats–on a very comfortable foam mattress, often parked in national forests, sometimes on city streets.
It was so nice so many mornings, dozing and listening to the wind rustle the leaves. The solitude–reading books, walking the woods, listening to the radio, the wildlife, occasional long conversations with fellow travelers.
But one thing that really bothered me throughout the trip was all the areas marked as public lands on my road atlas that had since been sold off, or perhaps leased, to private individuals. So many times I drove around for a half-hour or longer in search of any safe, quiet place to park for the night–where my atlas indicated there should have been plenty.
I found out the hard way, as well, that it’s illegal to sleep in your own car in many cities. IN YOUR OWN VEHICLE!!! City ordinances prohibit this form of “camping.” This was first explained to me by an amused Portland policeman who’d been called after a woman had apparently taken great offense to seeing me reclining in my Rabbit reading a book on her street.
I explained to him, of course, that I never could have afforded to drive this far around the West if I were forced to pay for motel rooms, or even campsites, all along the way. Was it outlawed then to set out, like the pioneers of old, to travel the West? Is progress really selling every square foot of public land into private hands, so that no one escapes paying someone for a place to stop for the night?
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That is why, even if it takes all my vast fortune to do so, I’ll establish a little landing spot for all those restless souls like myself who don’t live to work and who still feel, in spite of our fast-advancing “civilization,” that the freedom to travel across the open country, or around the planet in its entirety–without any payments for the privilege–is the first, the most fundamental, and our unalienable right.