Dear Sundog,Ìę

Last September, in California’s Malibu Creek State Park, a mountain lion pounced on a five-year-old child. The father managed to save his kid by fighting off the cat, and soon after, officials euthanized the cougar. Isn’t this immoral and outrageous? The lion was behaving just as nature intended.Ìę— People against he Unethical Murder of Animals

Dear PUMA,

This is not the only recent alarming attack on humans by a cougar. In 2023, an eight-year-old boy was while camping with his family in Olympic National Park; his mom chased off the cat, and he escaped with minor injuries. Last April, two brothers were out in looking for shed antlers when they encountered a cougar. It attacked both young men, killing one.

As a professional arbiter of ethics, my job is to see at least two sides of any given issue. However, as the father of a five-year-old who I regularly take to the woods and canyons, I am unable to access the other side here, to find what John Keats might have called the “negative capability” to tolerate the mystery that falls outside of reason. My take is strictly Old Testament: I say smite the beast. If an animal tried to drag off my child, my notions of animal rights and equality among the species would go straight out the window. I would try to kill it even if it escaped, assuming that, if left to live, it would try the same thing again.

I seem to be in line among people in positions of responsibility—at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, as well as wildlife advocacy groups. “We don’t have a mountain lion jail,” Beth Pratt, the California state director of the National Wildlife Federation, told the after the Malibu Creek incident. “As much as it pains me, I think the officials made the right decision here.”

The conundrum is not new. But we might say we’ve had a respite. After a cougar killed a human in California in 1909, the state went more than 80 years without another fatality. In 1990, fearing the lion was going extinct, voters passed a ballot initiative to protect the animal. The past four decades have seen mountain lions acting more aggressively. Even so, it’s still a small number. According to the , there have been 26 verified cougar attacks on humans since 1986, four of them fatal.

These ethical dilemmas about what an animal is “allowed” to do pre-date the United States, of course. During the Middle Ages, animals were put on trial for crimes ranging from caterpillars stealing fruit to pigs who committed murder. “Here were bears formally excommunicated from the Church,” writes Mary Roach in her book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law. “Slugs given three warnings to stop nettling farmers, under penalty of smiting.”

And yet, buried in my psyche, was the belief that killing a cougar for being a cougar was just . . . wrong? I turned to an expert in the field to see what I was missing. Christopher Preston is a professor of environmental ethics at the University of Montana and author of the book . Because mountain lion attacks are still so rare, Preston thought there wasn’t much official protocol. Bears, however, attack more frequently. When a bear kills or eats a human, it will be euthanized. But if a bear attacks a person while demonstrating what authorities consider natural behavior, it will be spared. “If you surprise a bear with cubs or on a kill, and it attacks you, then the bear can be let off,” Preston told me. “It’s not a pattern of behavior that demonstrates unnatural instincts.”

It’s unclear if the behavior of the Malibu Creek cougar was natural.Ìę The event that you refer to, PUMA, involved a young lion approaching a group of humans in a picnic area and dragging off a child, a particularly brazen act. Yes, it’s perfectly natural for a mountain lion to haul off a smaller creature in hopes of dining on it. But, said Preston, this cougar had left its natural environment and entered a human environment: a picnic area in a state park. “Where do you draw the line when natural behavior starts to impact us pretty severely?” he asked. We have no problem cracking down, he adds, when forms of life like bacteria and viruses exhibit their natural behavior of infecting our bodies.

Preston made another point: humans are constantly expressing their dominance over the natural world, and if we just kill anything that makes a problem with us, then we’re not learning anything. But in his opinion, even this line of reasoning doesn’t merit a puma pardon. “Someone can feel sympathy for the lion for doing what lions do, but that probably won’t get you a non-shoot order.”

“We need to dial back our dominance, but this case brings it into sharp contrast,” said Preston. “I don’t know how many environmental ethicists would say, ‘Yes, let’s just let lions keep dragging kids out of picnic areas.’”

Preston and I decided to find out. He sent out a note to a handful of colleagues. The first to respond was Philip Cafaro, a professor of philosophy at Colorado State University:

The way I see it, mountain lions and people have a right to live in California (and elsewhere). But there are way too many people in CA (~ 40 million) and way too few mountain lions (probably less than 5,000). It’s way out of balance, way unjustly tilted toward us hogging most of the habitat and resources. So, speaking strictly to the justice of the situation, mountain lions that attack and even kill people should be left alone. We can spare a few people from our teeming hordes, while there are precious few pumas left.

But even he shied away from cougar clemency:

Pragmatically speaking, people are too selfish and cowardly to act ethically in such cases. So, the next best thing is let them kill some mountain lions in the hope that they will leave the rest alone.

A second Colorado State professor of philosophy, Katie McShane, raised other important questions, which perhaps explain why we no longer drag beasts before a judge and jury:

I’m not sure we blame animals very much at all; but in any case, killing the mountain lion isn’t conceived of as punishment, but rather, keeping people safe.

Maybe there’s an animal ethics question about whether killing the lion is the best way to protect people? Given mountain lion behavior, I can’t imagine that confinement would go well. Are there sanctuaries? I don’t know; they’d need to be huge. Anyway, my guess is that killing the mountain lion is the most humane option as well.

The short answer to that is, mountain lions require too much terrain to be placed in sanctuaries. And relocating an animal that’s attacked a human doesn’t mean it won’t attack again. I find myself agreeing that killing is the best option in this difficult situation.

Before Preston signed off, he also speculated that there might be something in the human psyche that calls for harsher punishments for pumas than for other predators—bears, for example. “There is something singular about the lion,” he said. “You get stalked. You don’t know it’s coming. Bears kind of look like people when they stand up on two legs, so we know what they are about. The lion occupies a different place in our cultural imagination: the stealthy undesirable ghost in the forest that we don’t want to empathize with.”

Mark Sundeen lives in a canyon in Montana where cougar sightings are frequent, yet in his four decades of exploring and guiding in the West, he’s never seen one in the wild. Sundeen’s new book, Ìęcomes out February 18.

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Dear Sundog: Am I a jerk for not owning an electric vehicle yet? I live in a city, commute to work, and like to get outside. I have a decent car that gets decent mileage, but feel like I would be doing better for myself and the planet with an EV. Should I buy one? —Looking for Environmental Alternatives that are Friendly

Dear LEAF,

Let’s say you’re the average American who commutes 42 miles per day round-trip to a job that you find moderately soul-sucking. Maybe your labor serves a corporation that enriches its execs and shareholders while doing ill in the world. Maybe you work for an idealistic school or nonprofit, but are expected to work nights or weekends without additional pay. Or perhaps you simply sense that your one and only life on this gorgeous Earth is slipping past while you compose reports and gaze at Zoom.

In any case, you want to lead a more principled and less wasteful life than your vocation allows—you don’t want to be a jerk—so you upgrade your Corolla for an electric vehicle. Where will you find that $35K or $75K? If you can pull the funds directly from your savings or trust fund, then God bless you. Otherwise, you’ll borrow the money and make a monthly payment. You’ll have to keep doing your job in order to afford your green ride.

You will likely be paying interest to some bank. Will that bank use your hard-earned dollars to manifest a better society? More likely, their profits will go for millions in dividends to stock owners, or they’ll be loaned out again to finance all kinds of hideous adventures, from oil pipelines across to deforesting the .

So by reducing your dependence on the gas station—one tentacle of the fossil fuel industry—you’ve now become a partner to some other tentacle. Also, much of the electrical grid from which you’ll power that EV is still burning coal and gas to make electricity, so unless you’re charging from your own rooftop panels, you haven’t fully escaped even one tentacle.

So, no, LEAF, you’re not a jerk should you choose a different path. And yes, if you’re buying a car—especially to replace a gasoline car—it should probably be an EV. But there are so many variables.

You will no doubt have heard about the of using rare-earth elements like cobalt and lithium for electric batteries. It’s true: mining is bad. But this alone is not a valid reason to pass on buying an EV. The damage required to extract these miracle elements is much smaller than the alternative—drilling for oil and gas, and digging coal to produce electricity. If you can’t stomach the exploitation of nature and humans that is inherent to the industrial economy, let me gently suggest that you make a more radical lifestyle change than getting an EV—and try giving up your car altogether.

Sundog does not give advice he would not heed, so here’s my full disclosure: even I—literally a professor of environmental studies—do not own an EV, not even a hybrid. My family’s fleet consists of a 2005 Toyota Tundra that gets an alarming 15 to 22 miles per gallon, and a 2012 Subaru Outback that does only slightly better at 21 to 28.

As a matter of principle, I don’t think the only way to save the planet is by transferring billions of dollars from regular citizens to the corporations that build cars. As a matter of budget, I have never owned a new car. All my vehicles have cost less than $10K, except the Outback, which was $16K. I’ve actually never even sat in a Tesla, but I imagine driving one to be like having an orgasm while watching a looped clip of Elon Musk declaring: “I’ve done more for the environment for any other single human on earth.”

Let me state on the record that I love cars and trucks. They’ve provided much joy in my life, usually along a lovely lonesome stretch of two-lane blacktop or at the terminus of some rutted old ranch road. But those sort of experiences likely account for less than one percent of overall driving. In the past century, we have built American cities to accommodate people using cars for the most mundane of outings like commuting, shopping, and bar-hopping. The tradeoff is not just carbon emissions and pollution, but also sprawl, isolation and streets unsafe for walking and biking.

Turns out that in cities built before the era of the automobile—from New York to Barcelona to Kathmandu—you can get around without a car. When you remove traffic jams, parking tickets, the endless search for a place to park, the glum designation of a sober driver, and the claustrophobia of being locked in a metal box, city living is just more . . . fun.

When Sundog and Lady Dog set out to design our own lives, it was not to be in some Old World capitol, but rather in a midsized city in the Rockies. We didn’t aspire merely to burn fewer fossil fuels: we wanted to free ourselves from our car. We bought a house less than a mile from the place we work, less than a mile from the center of town. Our kid goes to preschool two blocks from here. Now we get around mostly by foot and bike, and can walk to trails and a creek. Many days go by where our dented guzzlers sit on the street—we drive each vehicle about 5,000 miles per year, about a third of the of 13,500.

The downside is that the houses in this neighborhood are a century old, dilapidated, small, and expensive. It’s a bit of a whack-a-mole game: our heating bills are low because we live in 1,000 square feet, but we can’t afford solar panels or a heat pump. We don’t spend much money on gasoline, but we can’t afford an EV.

Had we decided to live 21 miles from our jobs, we might have had a big new well-designed home and a slick new EV. But we love walking and biking; we want to teach our son that he can do the same, and that his parents are not his chauffeurs.

So why do we bother owning cars at all? For one, Montana is a lovely place to live, but it sure costs a lot to leave. Cheap airfares are not really a thing here. Neither is public transportation. So if you want to take a family vacation within a 1,000-mile radius, you’re likely driving. We bought the Tundra during the pandemic to tow a camp trailer (our “office”) and to haul lumber while we built a permanent office. Now we use the truck for long river trips, which entail carrying heavy loads for hundreds of miles through remote areas and down rutted dirt roads.

I don’t know of any EV that could do this. The Subaru is the town errand runner, and also takes us down bumpy roads to lakes and up icy mountains to ski. If it bites the dust and the cost of used four-wheel-drive EVs drops below twenty grand, I’d be happy to upgrade.

None of this makes Sundog feel particularly righteous. My point is that choosing a car is not a stand-alone decision as you forge an ethical life.

Mark Sundeen teaches environmental writing at the University of Montana. Despite his fleet of internal combustion engines, he refuses to purchase a parking permit and therefore commutes on a 1974 Schwinn Continental, with a ski helmet in winter.

If you have an ethical question for Sundog, send it to sundogsalmanac@hotmail.com

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In the summer of 1991, Mical Garcia was 19 years old, taking classes at a cosmetology school in the farm town of Manteca, California, when she got an alarming call from her stepdad in Las Vegas. Her mother had run off. He came home from work to find her possessions gone, and a note explaining that she’d been leading a double life and did not want to be contacted.

Mical, who helps people pronounce her name by saying “like ‘me call you,’” was surprised but not overly concerned at the time. Her mother, Linda Sue Anderson, was carefree and a bit wild. “We’d play that song ‘Delta Dawn’ really loud, sing at the top of our lungs even though we didn’t have great voices, and dance,” Mical told me recently. Her mom once took her to see the Vegas crooner Engelbert Humperdinck in concert. Linda was beautiful, always had her long blond hair done, her nails and makeup just so. “She was never a Betty Crocker stay-at-home mom.”

The flip side was mood swings, which Mical, who is now a nurse, thinks could have been diagnosed as bipolar disorder. Linda would lock herself in her room, leaving Mical to babysit her sister, Dulcenea, and her brother, Ethan, who everyone called Petey. “I was in first or second grade, and I was cooking for them. My dad was traveling. She wouldn’t open the door.” Other times Linda, who worked as a travel agent, would disappear for days.

The family moved around a lot. When their parents divorced, they were living near Lake Tahoe. Their father won full custody and took the family to Manteca. Linda remarried and settled in Nevada. Her new husband was a pit boss at Caesars Palace with a degree from Stanford University. “He worshipped the ground she walked on,” Mical said. “I never heard they were having problems.”

So when Linda ran off, the Garcia children figured she’d come back eventually—just like she always had.

The post They Were Looking for Endangered Tortoises. They Found Human Bones Instead. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Dear Sundog: We recently went to a wedding in a mountain resort town. We rented a condo online because the wedding hotel was fully booked. I had qualms because I know that people like us are driving up the cost of living for locals, but didn’t have a better option so I swallowed the qualms. After a flight delay we arrived a day late. We saw a beat-up car parked in the driveway. As we approached, two young guys who looked like climbing bums tossed some gear into the car, took a look at us, jumped in and drove off. My husband thought it was suspicious and asked me to jot down their license plate number, which I did. Inside the condo it was clear that these kids had spent the night. We called the host, who came over immediately, did a quick clean and changed the entry codes. He told us he was not the owner but a professional host who managed a dozen rentals in town. The actual owner lived out of state. It sat vacant during the off-season.

Later, the host messaged us to say that the owner had filed a police report and wanted our help to identify the squatters. My husband thinks we should hand over the license plate number. I disagree. I don’t have much sympathy for the absentee landlord. The kids hadn’t actually damaged the condo, and frankly it’s not my job to get them in trouble. Who’s right? —Very Resistant to Bending Over for Real Estate Barons Exploiting Locals

Dear VRBO REBEL: First let me commend you and your husband’s coolheadedness: you did not gun down these trespassers in cold blood, which seems an increasingly common response in our country of stand-your-grounders. It appears you have an ounce or more compassion for these loafers even if they made you uncomfortable.

First, let’s agree that this owner is fully within his rights to press charges against these guys—if he can find them. They committed a crime against his property. Your ethical quandary, VRBO REBEL, is a more interesting one: must you be complicit in this version of criminal justice, especially when you see ethical qualms in the behavior of the victim. Indeed, the American justice system has long skewed to value property more highly than humanity. Here’s an example: in the days of the frontier, out-of-state cattle barons owned herds of cattle numbering in the thousands that they hired cowboys to tend. It’s worth mentioning that the steers and cows could only stay alive by munching off grasses on lands that did not belong to their owners. The herds were too big to manage, and invariably some cattle wandered off. Along comes some hungry cowpoke or Indigenous person who seizes a beef and slices it up for steaks. Now he’s a guilty of a hanging offense.

In today’s West, now that beef and lumber and mining are past their prime, the most precious commodity is real estate, specifically rentable residences near some National Park or other natural wonder. When the pandemic brought historically low interest rates, speculators could snap up these properties for far more than locals could afford, and still rent them short-term for enough to cover their historically low monthly mortgage payment. Fill the place with some blonde-wood Scandinavian furniture and patterned shower curtains from Target and voilà: an investment that not only yields monthly dividends but will also presumably gain value over the years. The speculator wins, the visitors like yourself wins, while the actual town residents are squeezed.

Getting back to the cattle analogy, if an AirbnBaron owns so many rental properties that he can’t keep them properly protected from the scourge of townies, then so be it. I guess I don’t see using police work and courts to punish the interlopers as a particularly ethical use of taxpayer money. Just as the cattle baron should have hired more cowboys to guard his cows, so should the rental baron hire a rent-a-cop to patrol his vacant structure.

As for your own question about ratting out these dirtbags, VRBO REBEL, I say hell no. Collaborating with police was not in the agreement you signed. By paying your nightly fee, you have fulfilled your obligations, both legal and financial, to the condo owner. You are not ethically bound to join his posse and help him rope the rustlers. Burn that license plate number with a clean conscience.

Got a question of your own? Send it toÌęsundogsalmanac@hotmail.com

(Photo: Mark Sundeen)

Mark Sundeen, aka Sundog, has done his fair share of squatting in vacant buildings, such as this cabin near Death Valley, circa 1998. He’s also had his share of strangers squatting in his un-winterized desert trailer. So it all sort of evens out?

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Dear Sundog: Floating down Desolation Canyon in Utah on a private trip, pulling the oars against the upstream wind, we were passed by commercial rafts lashed together buzzing their motors to snag the primo camps. I know it’s bad form for parties to send a boat ahead to steal a camp, but this situation just demanded some sort of justice. Is it OK to break the rules to combat the commercial guide domination? —Perplexed Rower Offended by Boating Ethics

Dear PROBE: As your letter notes, the practice of splitting up a river group to “camp run” downriver is morally murky. It breeds cutthroat competition, with boaters racing each other for a shady beach instead of chilling the F out while floating lazily down the current the way the Creator intended. On many permitted river sections, the practice is explicitly banned, enforced with the threat of a ticket written up by river rangers—what Sundog used to call “paddle pigs.” What’s more, it’s downright foolhardy: if someone in the upstream group has a medical emergency, a blown valve, or simply can’t hack the wind, then some of the group may spend the night separated from food, groovers, and first-aid kits.

Yet ł§łÜČÔ»ćŽÇȔ’s area of expertise is not legality or foolhardiness—it’s ethics—and the fact of some activity being forbidden and stupid doesn’t make it unethical.

PROBE, these are desperate times trying to get to the river. The COVID recreation boom, combined with the online ease of applying for permits, has made it nigh impossible to win the “lottery” and float the big rivers. Perhaps this onerous process before the launch is what ratchets up the battle for the best camps. The behavior you describe by the commercial guides is, though not illegal, extremely irritating. Motoring past hard-working rowers and paddlers all but guarantees that the loudest polluters get the best camp. Ethical guides would cut their goddamn Evinrudes, and call out, “Hey, which camp were you hoping to reach tonight. We’ll be happy to skip that one so you can have it.”

Likely ain’t gonna happen. So we’re left with deciding how we can best behave. On canyons like the Gates of Lodore where sites are limited, boaters are required to sign up for camps and stick to that itinerary. Sundog finds this a Draconian fix, as it takes away from the sense of spontaneity and timeless drift that attracts him to rivers in the first place.

On the Salmon River, all parties are required to talk it out, perhaps hug, and decide who will camp where on which night. It’s a good idea. Sundog is aware of at least one instance in which commercial guides welched on their word and stole a camp from a private party, who made a point—justified, I’d say—of repaying them in kind the following night. However these shenanigans are precisely what motivates the paddle pigs to write more rules and regulations.

In your case, PROBE, the best practice would be to flag down the motor-rig and have a conversation to try to avoid the steal in the first place. If that fails, and your camp is taken, I suppose it is ethical to break the rules in order to fight what is otherwise a losing battle. But it’s a slippery slope, because when you set out to grab a camp from an outfitter, you’re just as likely grabbing it from another private party in front of you, which makes you the jerk.

Your question does raise another issue, which is why are motors allowed on a stretch of river in a designated wilderness that for at least a portion is labeled Wild and Scenic. The most obvious answer is the first 25 miles of windy flatwater. Difficult, sure, but boaters without motors have made their way through for over a century now. The longer answer is that motors allow outfitters to sell the 86-mile canyon as a 5-day trip, while muscle-powered expeditions take a few days longer. There is some rich irony in the well-intentioned leave-no-tracers straining their dishwater to avoid contaminating the river while a few yards from shore outboard motors spew oil and gas directly into the fishes’ living room.

In a column about being a surfing tourist in Mexico, Sundog suggested re-examining our beliefs about globalization. A reader, Stan Weig, responded:

I was intrigued by your recent column on “Yankee Imperialism” and Mexico travel, as I just returned from a five week drive to Cabo San Lucas and back. I have traveled to Baja since the ‘60s, in everything from a pickup camper to a really nice motorhome. And a 747.

While I respect the need to be nice to the subscribers that write in, I suggest your “middle-of-the-road” was too soft on the self-centered Rich White Yankee Surfer guilt trip of your advice seeker.Ìę

Not everybody likes the huge condos, raucous tourist bars and t-shirt shops of Cabo—I don’t—and if your reader doesn’t like it, don’t go. But it’s more about preferences than an ethical quandary about globalization. I don’t particularly care for Miami Beach either. However, San Juan de Cabo is just to the north of Cabo and has a very different vibe and a well preserved old town—go there and rest easy.Ìę

Tourists are a cash crop, and the folks running the sushi restaurant that she deplores, renting the beach chairs, and driving her around in a rental car made in Mexico and owned by Mexicans, are local entrepreneurs raising and harvesting that crop. Indeed, one could argue that in the good old days when we traveled from the high ground of Yankee prosperity down to “unspoiled” poverty of Mexico we were taking advantage as well.

Your advice to research and support local business was right on. If she doesn’t want to support globalist capitalists, she ought to be doing that here at home too. By the way, the reader may not know that while development along the beach may have been built with expat dollars, the ownership is required to be at least 51 percent Mexican. And she may not be aware of the government mandated efforts to ensure that local interests are at least somewhat protected during development. For example, perhaps the nicest beach in the Cabo area for sunning, swimming, and snorkeling is Chileno Beach. Right next to it is a huge new (and expensive!) resort—but access to the beach is free, there are nice restrooms, showers, and a lifeguard; and any of the locals that want to can take their kids and a cooler down to the beach for the day.

When we visited Todos Santos 35 years ago, the fabled Hotel California was shabby and in disrepair and all the side streets were pot holed dirt. Now the hotel is nice, locally run restaurants abound, local artists successfully compete with Made in China souvenir shops, and the streets are paved—so maybe tourism ain’t so bad.

Got a question of your own? Send it toÌęsundogsalmanac@hotmail.com.

Mark Sundeen, aka Sundog, worked as a river guide for 11 years. These days he thinks young guides have a bit of attitude that they own the whole river, and he is happy to poach their campsites if the situation warrants it.

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Dear Sundog: Decades ago I worked with a close friend as a river guide and we were both complete dirtbags, living in our cars during raft season then traveling around during the winter. Since then, I’ve become financially successful and have a garage filled with rafts, kayaks, trailers, oars, paddles, and SUPs to prove it. My friend has worked as a freelancer and has always been candid about how difficult it is to pay his mortgage and make ends meet. At least once a year he asks to borrow a raft for a multi-day river trip (sometimes with me, sometimes not) and I’ve always been happy to lend it to him. He takes good care of my equipment and repairs or replaces anything that gets damaged. I love to see him taking his children out on the river.

Recently after a few beers around the campfire, he revealed to me that for two decades he and his wife had each been socking away $6,000 each year into their IRAs and investing in tech stocks, and now have a portfolio valued at half a million dollars. Now I feel a bit tricked, like he had the cash to buy his own boat years ago but chose instead to save, and I’d be a dupe for continuing to lend him mine. What should I do? —Loaner

Dear Loaner, I fully understand why you feel duped. You thought you were helping a poor relation; turns out he had been hoarding his dollars all along. While your friend’s behavior may have perplexed or even hurt you, I don’t think he was unethical. He was living frugally and within his means. In a country without a safety net, we know that we likely won’t be able to live off of Social Security, and we have to do our own saving and planning. Ditto that if we’d like to send our kids to college. And let’s face it, whitewater boats—and for that matter, all outdoor gear—is expensive. Former dirtbag guides like Sundog and you and your friend came to believe that the rafts, oars, trucks, and trailers sort of grew on trees: they arrived at the ramp each morning ready for us to use all day. It came as a shock to Sundog to learn that, after “retirement” from guiding, he couldn’t even afford to get back on the river! It would seem that your friend did the responsible thing and did not buy things out of his budget.

What’s more, there seems something inherently virtuous about borrowing in our world of over-consumption and ecological crisis. Rafts are manufactured from a toxic cocktail of chemicals; it’s hard to justify purchasing one that is going to sit in a garage 50 weeks out of the year.

Lastly, was your friend obliged to keep you posted on the status of his retirement investments over the year? I think not.

And yet. You not only chose to invest in fun and adventure—you freely lent your toys to someone in need. It doesn’t seem fair. Loaner, you would be perfectly within your rights to simply tell your friend in the future that you’d prefer not to lend your boat anymore. You don’t even need to supply a reason.

Before you do, I’d recommend that you think deeply about why you have been so generous in the past. Was it because you simply wanted your friend to enjoy the river? Or were there murkier waters? For example, did you enjoy the regular reminder that you were more financially successful than your friend? Here’s a useful thought experiment: what if a similar friend who lived close to the bone asked to borrow your gear, and yet you knew that he had a massive trust fund. Would it feel wrong to give to someone who clearly did not need it? Charity is slippery. Sometimes we give out of true empathy, but sometimes we give to feel good about ourselves, or even simply to give others the impression that we are generous. After all what is more benevolent: a tycoon who gives a million dollars which is a small fraction of his fortune, or a homeless person who gives you his last dollar?

I’d say that what’s more important than the boat here is the friendship, and you don’t want the oar frame to become a proxy battleground for unspoken resentments. Probably what’s best—though not easiest—is before the next spring runoff is that you take your friend for a beer or a walk, and talk this through, not so much the specifics of the loaning, but your deeper values around money, spending, and savings. There is a good reason that people are reluctant to talk about money—there’s a lot of shame both in having too much and having too little. Talking about it will likely make the friendship stronger.

In a recent column, Sundog weighed in on collecting rocks on public lands. One experienced reader suggested that we consider what it is that the rocks want, a position so unexpected and delightful that Sundog wishes he’d come up with it first:

As a field biologist who would like to be a geologist in another life, I enjoyed your reflection. Whenever I have traveled—like your wife—I return with a rock. Well, perhaps more than one. And my garden is littered with these rocks. There are flakes from Vegas mixed with flakes from the Rift Valley. Maybe I thought they could have a conversation.

I too covet rocks. So now, before I take, I ask the rock: “Are you doing a job?” ÌęI am always answered. “My job is to be a part of this hillside” or “My job is to make a striking statement for those who will pass by.” Or “I am here to be found by a child and painted.” ÌęBut sometimes they will say, “I am not doing any meaningful work and have no special purpose, in fact I just find myself with nothing to do that is good for any creature, any rock, or rock bank.” I take those to the rock wall I am building. And they are appreciated regularly. Not that they need that. But I am grateful that they are part of my world and there is something to be said for gratitude.

Still, when my husband and I travel we say to each other: just one! Last trip resulted in one very small piece of bubbly chalcedony. —Robbin

Mark Sundeen, aka Sundog, has been borrowing other people’s rafts since as far back as the 90s. When doing so, it’s a good idea to pay forward the generosity.

Got a question of your own? Mad as hell about something Sundog wrote? Send a note to: sundogsalmanac@hotmail.com.

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Dear Sundog: While on a road trip, I reserved a public campsite online which cost $15. When the day arrived, I saw that we weren’t going to make it that far, so I went to cancel. I did not expect a refund, but learned that I would have to pay an additional $10 to cancel. My rule-following partner wanted to pay the fee, but I said forget about it. Who was right? —K

Dear K: Although Sundog is no couples counselor, this is one instance in which I can confidently say: neither of you is right, neither is wrong. Yes, I suppose it’s better to follow the rules. But throwing away any amount of money, even ten dollars, is of dubious benefit. I mean, when you pay a parking ticket do you feel like you’ve improved society?

But your conundrum wades into the murkier waters of what has become a national crisis: virtually all good campsites are booked solid, while many are half-empty, due to folks like you who either forgot to cancel or refused to pay the cancellation fee or simply got defeated by making yet one more online transaction (forgot the password, etc.) in our lives which seem increasingly dominated by dicking around on the internet.

We arrived at this situation, as usual, by believing that technology would make life easier. And I think we can all agree that going to and clicking a few boxes is much simpler than phoning a bunch of ranger stations across the country, being put on hold, having to call back during business hours, etc. But the unintended consequence is a system that greatly benefits laptop warriors with money to burn, and penalizes the people who actually pack up their gear and get offline and into the woods. Any competent iPhone user can secure dozens of campsites in a few minutes, six months in advance, paying a relatively small fee for the privilege. Many won’t bother to cancel, and won’t be able to arrive. Now the actual campers who roll through the loop at dusk are faced with reserved—yet empty—sites, and must travel on, likely to some undesignated sites where they will poop in a hole and leave a bed of charred sticks in a circle of stones.

Basically online reservation systems have created a moral hazard. We are encouraged to behave badly. The ease of reservations creates a false scarcity, so everything gets booked up within hours of becoming available. And as you note, there is a literal cost to do the right thing. The lack of real consequences for no-showing, combined with fees and hassles, encourages us to do what you did, K, and simply pay for an empty site.

So how can we end this? One solution would be to raise the costs exorbitantly. You’re less likely to eat a $100 per night fee than a $15 per night fee. And yet this would again favor people with the means and energy to waste money.

Sundog suggests an easier cancellation policy with more draconian consequences. It should be free to cancel up to the day of arrival. That would have made your decision, K, a no-brainer. After that, no-shows should be banned from rec.gov or whatever state platform they used for a full year. This doesn’t mean they can’t go camping for a year. Just that they have to show up and wait in line for cancellations like the rest of us. This system is already used for some coveted river permits, where no-shows are not allowed to enter the lottery for two full years. Banning the no-shows from rec.gov would not only discourage bad behavior, but it would also reduce the pressure on the platform, as the worst hoarders who make a ton of reservations would be blocked.

ł§łÜČÔ»ćŽÇȔ’s column on ratting out a neighbor’s Airbnb in a resort town sparked some feverish fan/hate mail. Sundog told the writer to go ahead and tattle. Readers replied in droves, even implying that Sundog supports Vladimir Putin (which, for the record, he does not).

You excoriate the speculator purchasing a property at market price, as determined by an unpressured agreement between a willing seller and a willing buyer. The seller is presumably, based on your article, a local person. Yet there is no mention or castigation of the seller in your article? Is there a reason for this discrepancy in assigning blame, or is it just hypocrisy? Presumably, the sellers are friends and neighbors of the people up in arms about the issue who still live in the neighborhood.ÌęÌę

Are you saying some government overlords should determine who can sell what goods and services and at what prices? Sounds rather Putin-like to me. Perhaps they will next seek to monitor and manage communication and various writings done by people, so as to not sully the minds of the population.

Are you saying the government overlords should dictate who can stay in a rental house? Apparently, per your agreement with the questioner, college kids and dirtbags are OK, vacationing families are not?

I didn’t see anything from the person complaining as to how the change in clientele of the house caused him specific harm. Perhaps that was omitted from the article for the sake of brevity?

I see you complaining about Amazon killing off bookstores and streaming services killing record stores, but you are just fine with accepting payment for on-line blogs with no concern for your participation in the death of print media? I guess it is OK as long as you get yours, eh? ‌·.žé.

Invariably, there were a few readers in ł§łÜČÔ»ćŽÇȔ’s camp:

Very refreshing to read a piece that does not genuflect to the predatory investment tools that are so in vogue by people that don’t want to do actual work… The comment about ski towns stood out because I live in one, Rutland, VT, near the Killington skiers’ paradise. Rutland is selling its soul to the highest bidder under the guise of replenishing population, but resulting in a drastic inequity in income. I am incubating a blistering opinion piece that probably will not see print because it will violate the requirement to be patriotic. —J.±Ê.

And this being America, all paths lead quickly to polarizing politics:

I just read your article on Airbnbs. I sit on the planning and zoning board for my quaint town. I appreciate what you have said and agree with you. However, I live in Florida, where local governments are no longer able to regulate tourist homes if it was not already in their code. The state also recently just passed a law that preempts local governments from banning home based businesses like massage parlors and vehicle repair shops. Just wanted to let you know what our POS governor is doing to us in Florida. He is single handedly making lives of every citizen worse off.Ìę

It terms of poetic brevity, this letter wins first prize:

Why does your article have ads for Airbnb? Pretty weird.

Got a question of your own? Mad as hell about something Sundog wrote? Send a note to: sundogsalmanac@hotmail.com

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Dear Sundog: Now that Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service is available all over the world, I’m having this nightmare. In it, I’m floating the Middle Fork of the Salmon—which runs through the largest designated wilderness in the lower 48. I tie up to shore, and just as I’m settling into the riverside warm springs, some hot-pot stranger whips out his phone and announces, “I gotta jump on a Zoom call.” Can we stop this hideous future before it’s too late? —Leave UnDeveloped Dirt In Tranquility Evermore

Dear L.U.D.D.I.T.E.: I share your fears of a Musky future, in which The Henry Ford Of Our Times convinces himself and his lackeys that his genius for manufacturing doo-dads equals a mandate for remaking society. But let’s not allow personality to cloud the discussion.

Starlink is a system of satellites that provide broadband internet virtually anywhere in the world. The portable dish, along with stand, Wi-Fi router and cables weighs around 18 pounds, can be easily installed in a RV, van, cabin, ski hut, fire lookout, backcountry ranger station, and costs about $100 per month. It can be hauled on a raft, sled, or mule. (Meanwhile, the new Starlink Mini is about the size of a laptop and weighs just 2.5 pounds—”easily carried in a backpack,” .)

Starlink arrives with benevolent promises about how it will allow better medicine in African villages, education in Nepali villages, and science in Antarctica, claims which may well be true. But how does it affect the backcountry?

First, some definitions. Backcountry is basically any place you can’t drive to. That includes ski huts, cabins, fire lookouts, and hike-in campgrounds.Ìę Wilderness is another layer of designation that expressly bans certain technologies like cars, bikes, chainsaws, cell towers—but allows others like camp stoves, horses, and GPS. The Wilderness Act of 1964 decrees that: “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain 
 An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions.”

Let me interject, briefly, that the reasoning behind the Act is flawed—all lands in America were “trammelled” for thousands of years, by people who were not visitors, but inhabitants, and while their works did not “dominate the landscape,” Indigenous people managed and cultivated this continent with sophisticated systems of irrigation, fire suppression, and agriculture, and built myriad permanent structures from the Cahokia Mounds to the Pueblo cliff dwellings to the Mayan pyramids. White people’s ability to view these lands as “primeval” is a result of the killing and forced relocation of Natives.

That said, the Wilderness Act may be an example—like Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap Supreme—of flawed thinking that yields sublime results. Without the Act, iconic wilderness areas such as the Bob Marshall in Montana, the John Muir in California, and the Boundary Waters in Minnesota would likely be overrun with roads, helicopters, and motorboats. Just look what “accessibility” wrought in Yosemite Valley, Old Faithful, and the south rim of the Grand Canyon. If you can’t stand hikers cranking tunes on trails, imagine the band itself jamming in your campsite, live streaming, flash mobbing, geotagging, crowdfunding.

To be clear, the Wilderness Act was not about protecting animals, plants, soil, or water: that was left to the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and others. The Wilderness Act is about the human experience: maintaining a place where all souls can pursue “outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive or unconfined type of recreation.” (The fact that such opportunities have statistically been skewed in favor of able-bodied straight white dudes is perhaps fodder for a column all its own.)

By this standard, broadband internet certainly violates the letter—and spirit—of the Wilderness Act. I imagine influencers leading “virtual tours” of Paria Canyon, and TEDtalks webcast from atop 14ers, but really, ł§łÜČÔ»ćŽÇȔ’s middle-aged imagination is so very limited. To fully predict how internet access would desecrate the wilderness, we’ll have to look to the visionaries who spent billions in venture capital to create a new subclass of working poor to deliver Whoppers to your doorstep, and build free publishing platforms for Holocaust deniers and the Sandy-Hook-was-a-hoax crowd. Really: what could go wrong?

Of course Starlink could be used for perfectly benign ends: checking in with loved ones, sending pix to friends, consulting maps and weather reports. It will simply render obsolete existing technologies like sat phones, SPOT, GPS units, guidebooks, and mule-carried letters. I spoke with a wizened avalanche forecaster who was not too worried about the future: “It’s like the afterlife,” he said. “Whatever you believe—it will likely come to pass.” He added that if he were in a backcountry ski hut, he’d love to be able to check conditions in the next valley over.

But perhaps paramount to the question of what should be, is the question of what will be. There is simply no feasible means of enforcing a ban on Starlink or any other service provider. Would the rangers somehow demand to see evidence that you are NOT a subscriber? Would they ban smartphones altogether? What’s more, a ban might literally require an act of Congress—at a time when this rogue nation is legislated by a hapless body of do-nothings run by a ruthless flank of know-nothings who don’t even accept that human-caused climate change is a real thing.

In other words, this world-changing technology likely cannot be stopped. And why is it being foisted upon us? Did we vote for it? As with the other technologies that have redefined our economy and relationships in the past two decades, Starlink is a business financed by venture capital from the wealthiest class, bound by corporate by-laws to earn a return for those investors. It’s not that capitalists can’t do good, it’s that when we accept any technology as inevitable we must acknowledge that what makes it inevitable isn’t societal consensus or even democratic majority, but the sheer will of the 1 percent.

Starlink now has two million subscribers worldwide, an infinitesimal sliver of the world’s population. It’s worth noting that the number of people who actively explore wilderness is likely even smaller than that. Will the benefits of connecting rural people to the internet outweigh harms done to wilderness? In the end I’ll have to concur with my friend, that when it comes to predicting this future, what you believe in is what will likely occur.

Readers respond: Should IÌęclear a homeless camp on public land?

The bourgeoisie don’t accept everyone that is a fact, having compassion and patience for people disregarded from society is a spiritual endeavor not suitable for everyone.ÌęHaving experienced homelessness violence inflicted and initiated by a local newspaper article in New Orleans declaring a war on homeless tents and having immediately my home of six months destroyed and stolen within one day, I understand the trauma inflicted by societal norms.Ìę My camp was clean and tidy yet was gone nonetheless because of a front page headline that enabled any citizen to destroy my camp and tent.ÌęThat is all. —Sean

I would definitely work with the Forest Service/BLM and local police to alert them to the presence of a camp and schedule it to be cleared after fair warning. These are much like graffiti, they spread if left unmitigated.ÌęIt’s not OK and violates local and federal laws. We live near Alpine, Wyoming, on the Palisades reservoir where seasonal construction workers live in camp way past the maximum permitted stay. Even if left clean in the fall/winter, the continuous occupancy damages the site. Cat holes with human excrement from months of use don’t go away and leach into the reservoir. Many camps aren’t left clean and they are scary as heck to walk/run/bike near, ruining the coexistence with local home owners and family weekend campers. So yes, you are entirely justified and, in my option, compelled to report illegal camping. Leave a note, then call the authorities.

-David

Got a question of your own? Mad as hell about something Sundog wrote? Send a note to: sundogsalmanac@hotmail.com

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Dear Sundog,

I was looping through a campground looking for a spot, and found them not only full (no big surprise) but filled with Mercedes vans whose occupants were typing at laptops, buds in ears, even a few satellite thingies mounted on roofs. In other words, they were working. It felt so unfair that the very limited number of sites, which are maintained with our tax money for people on vacation, were now subsidizing cheap rent for #vanlife. Shouldn’t telecommuters be banned from public campgrounds?

—Mom Against Douchey Drivers

Dear MADD,

I suspect that “work” is not the specific problem. Would you be upset if some geezer camped next to you was whittling walking sticks to peddle from his tailgate? I doubt that the technology is the exact issue, either: I bet you’d be less irritated by a large family streaming Finding Nemo in a campground, or a tourist FaceTiming a friend to rhapsodize about the day’s hike. And lastly it’s not precisely a problem of the expensive rig: six-figure motorhomes have been traveling our landscapes for ages, but when captained by retired Cal and Marge from Kalamazoo, they don’t inspire the same revulsion.

You see, MADD, your query is notable less for the offense but for the offender. In a mere decade, “vanlifer” has won a spot among epithets like “yuppie,” “gentrifier,” and “Californian” that signify the easy-to-hate villain in any story of rapid social change. I thus want to articulate the unspoken emotional thrust of your question:

Why Are #Vanlifers So Insufferable?

The answer lies in a sprawling Venn diagram of wealth, demographics, access to technology, privilege, and self-congratulation, at whose very center sits the digital nomad. Let’s quickly acknowledge the obvious elephant in the room: our own jealousy. Wouldn’t it be cool to work only a few hours a week, but get paid real wages that materialize in the bank account as quickly and silently as a meteor crossing the sky, to live among creation’s most spectacular landscapes, not in the mildewy, leaky tent of yore; but in luxury, with a tiny efficient fridge and stove and heater, and a queen bed with a down duvet? Of course it would. But back to that Venn diagram.

First let’s talk about money. If these folks were boondocked in VW campers or old Econolines we’d think they were cool. But the $100,000 Sprinters show immense wealth. Of course, living under late capitalism in which the richest pay half the tax rate they did in 1981, the rest of us are accustomed to gazing slack-jawed, envious or resentful, at the obscene conspicuous consumption—from private rocket ships to battleship SUVs—while we struggle to pay the rent.

But in the past, when we went camping, we could look away from it, at least for a moment. The outdoors were a place for cheap fun, where low- and middle-income people could plunk down a tent for a week and experience the splendid democracy of nature, where class distinctions dissolved, a far leap from such aristocratic playgrounds as country clubs and yacht docks. The Mercedes parked at the trailhead, festooned with solar panels and $8,000 mountain bikes, brutally reminds us of how our economy rapaciously rewards a sliver of winners while punishing the rest as losers.

Next, let’s address work. The reason we might hold some admiration for the old-school dirtbag living in the back of a pickup is that she has sacrificed career and opportunity in exchange for the privilege of climbing or paddling year-round. Leaving the city for the hinterlands required a certain vow of poverty. The van-lifer has made no such sacrifice, and continues to make a bundle on the “information economy” of coding, consulting, or marketing; tasks perhaps not essential to the survival of civilization. They are not doctors, nurses, policemen, firefighters, plumbers, carpenters, repairmen, schoolteachers, cooks, farmers, or daycare workers.

Is it safe to say that work performed from a camper van does not spread justice, peace, and equity as much as it aids in consolidating wealth and power for billionaires? MADD, you’ll have to decide that one on your own. We suspect that those van dwellers are Bezos’ henchmen and Zuckerberg’s handmaidens who seem to have exploited a loophole in the social fabric. Maybe the police and the county commission had agreed not to enforce vagrancy laws at that spot down by the river because, well, we didn’t really have anywhere else for the disenfranchised to live, and now there’s a fleet of Sprinters with Texas plates parked there six months a year.

And who are they, precisely? The stereotypical digital nomad is white, hetero, college-educated, and child-free. For this they need not be punished, or scorned. My point is that vanlifers generally do not represent racial or economic diversity. They may even represent its opposite, as they not only come from the demographic groups that have always had first dibs on nature, but they also have the money, privilege, and freedom to go wherever they want. When they overstay or crowd public lands, it gives the sense that the commons are being hogged by an elite swath.

Moving on to tech, obviously, the invention of the internet and satellites allows them to work from the edge of wilderness. But we must also consider the fabulous advances in vehicle technology. In the past, six-figure motorhomes were confined to pavement, front-country campsites, and Wal-Mart lots, which is to say, out of sight and out of mind to those of us drawn to backroads. Now theÌęcombination of high clearance, four-wheel drive, and GPS means there’s no place a vanlifer can’t get to. With huge water tanks and solar panels on their vehicles, they can stay as long as they damn well please, absolutely dominating the rivers, beaches, crags, and hot springs; winter, spring, summer, and fall.

Finally: the narcissism. It is unfair to assume that every couple inhabiting an upscale sportstruck is also writing a self-congratulatory blog about it, but it sure seems that way. The Instagram feeds with the paid sponsorships and product links are especially egregious, combining the worst elements of the American hustle: they drape their prosperity with the language of religion (bliss, awakening, pilgrimage) while at the same time capitalizing off of something—nature—that is actually sacred.

But Couldn’t We Just Ban Remote-Working Vanlifers Entirely?

So, MADD, there’s plenty to dislike about campground telecommuters. As to your question of banning them: I don’t see an ethical or feasible path to do it. Everyone is subject to the same limits on how long they can camp, and rangers and hosts don’t have the bandwidth to poke around every site looking for evidence of work occurring, nor to tally the sales price of each vehicle that rolls through the gate, nor to estimate the net worth of its driver—and of course we don’t want them to. What’s more, just because vanlifers are annoying doesn’t make them unethical. They are simply working a system that already favors them to their full advantage, for which I can’t blame them.

Trying to stop the rich from overrunning these precious parts of the natural world is a game of whack-a-mole, as they simply have more money, wits, and free time than the local governments that try to regulate them. The solution lies with the Feds, but for decades Congress has cut taxes on the wealthiest while slashing the budget of land managers at the Park Service, Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management. The result: fewer campsites, higher fees, and more traffic jams in parks, which leaves your average weekender out of luck, while handing over the jewels of nature—more remote, less regulated—to Broseph, Brosephine, and their magnificent machines.

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May 1, 2022, sunny. Seventy degrees at dawn, heading to the mid-eighties. Perfect Lake Mead weather. Out on the water, @onechickentaco hits the throttle and his boat rises up on a plane, gliding over smooth Lake Mead glass. Real name: Nathan Hollister. His wife, Shawna, is beside him, wearing her usual boat attire: bikini and sunglasses. Damn gurl, he writes on Instagram. Green lake, blue sky, tan cliffs, jagged brown mountains—just right. “My goal is to have more fun than everyone around me at any given time,” his site bio says.

Slight hassle getting out there today. The boat ramp had to be extended a quarter-mile across the sand. Climate change, megadrought. A sign warned:

DANGER
LAUNCH AT
YOUR OWN RISK
LOW WATER LEVELS

After cruising around for a bit, Hollister beaches on a spit of sand that was underwater a few weeks ago. Posts a shot of the boat to his 412 followers. No one on board. Towel draped over the seats. My boat is running like a raped ape, he writes. #boat #fun #lake #float #pretty.

He wades in up to his knees and casts a lure. The good life. He was in Afghanistan, in the Air Force, and now he lives in Las Vegas, spends weekends riding boats and dirt bikes and shooting guns for fun. He posts a pic of the rod and reel, his feet immersed in clear turquoise.

By 3 P.M., it’s around 86. Nathan and Shawna are getting baked by sun and dried by wind as he cruises back into Hemenway Harbor, a big marina in Lake Mead National Recreation Area, to the west of Hoover Dam. That’s when it happens. Later Shawna will describe the moment to a TV reporter: “We heard a woman scream from the side of the beach, and then my husband went over to obviously see what was wrong. And then he realized there was a body there in a barrel.”

The barrel was on its side in the sand. A week earlier, it had been submerged. A few years ago, 40 feet under. Decades ago, 200 feet. It’s rusted out, so you can see a pelvis and femurs scrunched up in there. Holy shit. Shawna takes a picture.

“It’s heartbreaking to see that it’s someone’s loved one out there,” she tells the reporter. “So I hope they get justice, or at least somebody finds out who it is.”

She posts a picture on Insta. “We found a body at Lake Mead today ,” she says. By that night, the photo is all over the . All over the internet. Some outlets blur the bones—what, to protect the children? Others run it as is. Shawna writes on Facebook: “Well shit they put my name out there!”

Her husband writes: “Snitch!!”

Neither of them returns multiple phone calls and messages from me, inviting them to talk about it. Guess I’ll have to ask somebody else.

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