This winter a woman in Steamboat Springs spotted an elk on her property. When she went out to take a picture, the animal startled and ran into a gully where it got stuck in snow up to its neck. Convinced the , she called game wardens, who told her to leave the animal alone. By morning, sheā€™d gathered friends to dig it out, but it died before they could help.

The story illustrates a longstanding ethical dilemma. Many people, guided by truly good intentions, canā€™t stand to see an animal die, especially if their own actionsā€”like approaching the elk to take a pictureā€”are what led to its predicament.Ģż Even land managers will occasionally try to rehabilitate an animal thatā€™s been hit by a car. However, this way of thinking is a slippery slope. A reasonable person could make the case that most frontcountry animal injuries are in some way caused by humansā€”whether thatā€™s due to our encroachment on habitat, or climate change applying new and deadly pressure. But regardless of the cause of injury, wildlife professionalsā€”including rangers and wardensā€”are pretty firm about letting nature take its course, even if that means the animal dies. After all, when one beast falls, another is fed.

Itā€™s tempting to set such a black-and-white rule. Itā€™s even more tempting to Monday-morning quarterback. Take one infamous case in which a do-gooder came across a lone shivering baby bison in Yellowstone. He loaded it into the back of his SUV and brought it to the rangers. As it turned out, the baby wasnā€™t actually abandoned. But now that it had taken a joyride in a Toyota Sequoia, its mother wouldnā€™t take it back, and given the near certainty of its violent death in the jaws of a predator, rangers instead chose to euthanize it. The good Samaritan was fined $119 for his efforts, and his empathy got the bison killed. Critics decried the driver. They also called the case clear-cut, even though it may not have been to the do-gooder at the time.

Other cases are much murkier. My wife worked for years as a field biologist. On one gig, her team was installing small sections of fence around young aspen trees in the backcountry of a national park to cage them off and test how much elk were browsing. But one day a rutting elk scooped up the metal fencing with its antlers where it got entangled. When the cage then flopped onto the elkā€™s back, it started, and sprinted out, thinking it was being attacked by some beast it could not see.

What to do? Obviously this was a case where human activity had put the elk in danger. It had no hope of removing the cage from its antlers. The researchers dropped their work and ran after the elk, also radioing game wardens to explain the situation. By the time the wardens arrived with their tranquilizer darts, the elk had wisely waded into the middle of the riverā€”this is how the animals escape predators. To tranquilize the elk in the river would cause it to drown. So everyone sat down and waited an hour or so. Finally when the elk emerged, they tranquilized it, and were able to remove the metal cage and let the elk go on its merry way. A successful outcome. And yet one might wonder how many federal dollars were spent on this single mission, and astutely note that this kind of treatment must be the exception, not the rule.

So hereā€™s another case from my wifeā€™s annals of animal rescue. She and her partner were live-trapping mice for another experiment. But somehow two ground squirrels found their way into the traps. In the cold Montana summer night, theyā€™d gone into torpor, a sort of short-term hibernation from hypothermia and dehydration. Left to the elements, the squirrels would probably have died. So these young wildlife-lovers took action: They unzipped parkas and each placed a squirrel against their belly to warm them up. It seemed sensible enough. But as they hiked on to the next trap her friend began to wonder aloud. ā€œI think thereā€™s something dangerous about squirrels, but I canā€™t quite recall what it is.ā€ He snapped his fingers. ā€œNow I remember: They carry bubonic plague!ā€

The thought of a sharp-fanged and sharp-clawed rodent coming back to life in immediate proximity to their internal organs made the two rethink their plan. So they returned to their truck, and lay the two squirrels on the driverā€™s seat where the early morning sunlight through the windshield heated the torpored furballs. They shut the door and went back to work. Returning a few hours later, the creatures were. . . gone? Later when they returned the truck to the yard, the mechanics discovered the squirrels had somehow found their way out of the cab and into the undercarriage. While the mechanic was able to dislodge the animals, itā€™s safe to say that this intervention may not have served the squirrels well.

I think itā€™s worth discussing how these rescue attempts affect humans, too. Compared with a century or two ago, humans now have virtually no contact with non-domesticated animals. (We have very little contact with farm animals, either.) And I think if we believe that other species have a right to exist, then it might be usefulā€”even profoundā€”to once in a while brush up against them. I donā€™t accept the view that ā€œthe environmentā€ is entirely separate from civilization, or that humans should never disturb or visit it. I tend to think humans canā€”and shouldā€”have some sort of connection to other species besides donating money to some group that will protect them. Practicing kindness to another species is important. And while I get that itā€™s possible that our kindness may actually harm that species, itā€™s important to try (within reason), nonetheless. It reminds us that we, too, are part of creation.

Hereā€™s an analogy. In the modern welfare state, citizens basically agree to pay taxes in order to distribute their wealth to those who need it. This approach has in many European nations. But it also relieves many individuals from the ancient act of charityā€”of offering an actual hand to the poor, tired, and downtrodden. So while this technocratic approach produces better results (look at the in the United States compared to Europe) something immeasurable is lost when so many people no longer feel the need to give personally to those in need. When such contributions are just deducted from your paycheck, we become disconnected from the act of charity. We lose the opportunity to give back in the way that that is taught by most world religions, as well as the sort of social-class intermingling that might, in theory, make for better democracies.

To bring the analogy back to animals: wildlife professionals have determined that regular humans should leave nature alone. Let the rangers and wardens figure it out, they say. And yet, some basic part of our humanity is lost if, coming upon a bird with a broken wing, we just walk past, thinking, I must not meddle with the environment. But always deferring to the government professionals can place us in an ethically dubious position. We may end up feeling powerless, unable to perform an instinctual act of kindness. At some level, training ourselves to turn a blind eye to pain has to be bad for the soul.

As for the woman who watched the elk die in the snowdrift near her house: I understand why the warden advised her to leave the animal alone. Elk can be dangerous if they feel they are in danger, striking with their huge hooves and potentially endangering their human rescuers. In any case, the agencies decided to let the elk die, and it did. My point isnā€™t to say the agencies made the wrong decision, just that their decision doesnā€™t appear to be ethically superior to that of the woman who eventually (and unsuccessfully) attempted to save it.

I also feel that her instinct to try to gather her neighbors to dig out the elk would likely have forged a connection to the nonhuman world that is rare and precious. Remember that humans lived for millennia in intimacy with wild animals, both as hunters and as prey. Maybe we are safer if we stay away from injured animals. But surely something has been lost by rupturing that connection.

Finally, most people whoā€™ve been watching the state of the planet for the past decades are feeling a strong sense of guilt. Humans are causing the extinction of hundreds of other species. It may be easy to ridicule the man who packed a baby bison into his car. It may not have been an educated decision, or even necessarily the right one. But letā€™s not belittle his motives.

Mark Sundeen teaches environmental writing at the University of Montana. Got an ethical question of quandary of your own? Send it to sundogsalmanac@hotmail.com.

The post When Is It OK to Rescue a Wild Animal? appeared first on ¹ś²ś³Ō¹ĻŗŚĮĻ Online.

Dear Sundog,

Iā€™m a biologist and land conservationist who has spent the last two decades working with farmers and ranchers to keep their land and way of life intact. I walk their property looking for habitats that might harbor rare plants and threatened wildlife. If the property meets certain ecological criteria, the owner can place the land under ā€œconservation easement,ā€ basically a legal agreement ensuring they will not develop or subdivide the land.

This makes their ranch or farm less valuable on the real estate market; in exchange they get a considerable break on property taxes. Iā€™ve always thought that : habitat for the more-than-human organisms is legally protected into perpetuity, the community retains the working landscapes that give it character and beauty (ā€œcows not condosā€), and families are able to continue ranching and farming, rather than having to sell to developers.

But lately the dynamics have changed. Iā€™m starting to doubt the ethics of conservationā€”and my own role in making it happen. Nowadays many of the landowners making easements are not multi-generational working families, but extremely wealthy out-of-staters with vacation homes and hobby farms. My work still protects critical habitat for plants and animals, but now I no longer feel like I am preserving a traditional way of life and culture of the westā€”but bringing about its demise. What should I do? ā€”Conserving Our Ground

Dear COG,

Youā€™ve tapped into such a timely and widespread issue. As the economy appears to be more controlled by a select few than ever, the rest of us face the hard ethical choice between participatingā€”which makes us feel complicitā€”and opting out, for which the financial sacrifice is significant. For decades ; now it feels like collaborating with the dark side. And what an astonishing turn of events: to sense that the movement to preserve a healthy natural world for all of us has morphed into a cynical ploy by the elite.

Yale professor Justin Farrell astutely studies this phenomenon in Jackson, Wyoming and at the Yellowstone Club in Montana, in his alarming book

Farrell notes that for the investor class, conserving land isnā€™t simple philanthropy, it also allows them to increase their wealth. First, they get a hefty tax break by placing easements on the vast tracts of land of their trophy homes; next, the easement prevents the construction of more homes, exacerbating a housing scarcity which inflates their own property value; and lastly, as the pandemic and climate change incited a real estate bonanza in places with solitude and plentiful clean water, investments in land have appreciated even more sharply than most stocks, funds, or bonds.

To add insult to locals, these hedge fund dweebs cosplaying Yellowstone’s John Dutton in Wranglers and Carhartt coats on their private movie sets can now claimā€”with some truthā€”to be saviors of the grizzly bear and the peregrine falcon.

But hereā€™s the hard part: the work of conservation easements is supremely important. Study after study shows that . Threatened species from bears to wolverines to wolves need large continuous stretches of land, free from roads, houses and people. These animals donā€™t care if they are roaming through national parks or family ranches. As much as we may dislike massive private landholdings, they are scientifically better for other species than subdivided (affordable) ranchettes.

All political successes lay in the ability to build alliances. The beauty of conservation easements, COG, is that they allow a nature-lover such as yourself into partnership with old-time ranchers who might not give a hoot about the spotted owl, but simply want to keep the family land intact. But as you say, those roles and alliances are shifting. As just one example, look at the case chronicled in the new nonfiction book The Crazies: The Cattlemen, the Wind Prospector, and a War Out West by Amy Gamerman, in which a cash-poor Montana rancher who doesnā€™t believe in climate change sets out to build a wind farm on his property, only to be sued for marring the view by his billionaire neighborsā€”one of whom made his fortune in fracking in less pristine places, all of whom claim the mantle of protecting the environment.

Hereā€™s another case: for years, green liberals bought Teslas, likely not because they admired company co-founder Elon Musk, but because in an electric vehicle they saw the chance to do good for the planet. Musk played the savior, claiming at one point that heā€™d done more for the environment than any other human in history.

It turned out to be a deal with the devil. Once EVs made him the worldā€™s richest man, Musk used his treasure to dive into American politics, and has now helped to gut the Environmental Protection Agency, end climate research, and eradicate programs that include the phrase ā€œenvironmental justice.ā€ He has crippled the agencies that might regulate his own businessesā€™ ecological practices. The one-time green hero instead joins an environmental rogueā€™s gallery of fellow easy-to-hate villains: the skipper of the Exxon Valdez, James Watt, and Kelcy Warren, who built the Dakota Access Pipeline over the objections of the Standing Rock Sioux.

The takeaway here is not something simple like ā€œdonā€™t trust the rich.ā€ Rather itā€™s that saving the planet is most likely to happen in a democracy than any other form of government, and consolidating more wealth among the one percent is bad for democracy. When we see the laudable conservation effort of tycoons like Ted Turner, itā€™s tempting to cede the movement to the oligarchs; after all they can conserve more land more quickly than the impossibly complex process of government managing its holdings. But if these oligarchsā€”or their heirsā€”should like Musk gain enough power to be above the law, their green veneers may quickly erode.

As for your own complicity, COG, I wouldnā€™t advise quitting your job over it. The work youā€™re doing is important for saving wildlife, and to put it bluntly, these societal economic changes are not your fault, and reversing them is simply above your pay grade. Wresting power from corrupt and entrenched barons will takeā€”now just as every other time it has been attemptedā€”a national grassroots political movement rising in concert with some elected trustbusting brawler in the mold of a Roosevelt: take your pick between the Republican Teddy or the Democrat Franklin. Keep doing the good work.

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

(Photo: Mark Sundeen)

The post Is Conservation Only for the One Percent? appeared first on ¹ś²ś³Ō¹ĻŗŚĮĻ Online.

Dear Sundog: My buddies and I have been mountain biking together for more than 20 years. Weā€™re not racers, but we ride hard and push each other. A few years back, one of the guys had a hip replacement and could no longer keep up, so he got an e-mountain bike. It was the right call to keep the gang together, even though it limited our access to trails that allow e-bikes. So we started poaching some trails that were off-limits to e-bikes: no one really noticed one electric bicycle in the middle of our pack, and besides, thereā€™s not much enforcement.

Then, as Mr. Hip began to recover, he started leaving us in the dust. This prompted two of the fully healthy guys to switch over to e-bikes so they could stay out front with him. Now these rides are no longer fun for me, partly because I canā€™t keep up, and partly because I feel bad about taking e-bike riders on trails where theyā€™re not allowed. Iā€™m not sure how to change it without either being a dick and telling my friends how to act, or being a poor sport and dropping out. ā€”Slippery Slope

Dear SLOPE,

There are two separate ethical questions here. The first is whether itā€™s okay to poach trails that are closed to e-bikes. Of course itā€™s illegal, but Sundog doesnā€™t always consider an act unethical merely because the state forbids it. You indeed make a good point that Mr. Hip, with his partial disability, is doing no real harm, and I accept that the good of allowing him to regain his health with his friends is of real value. It would be more ethical, of course, if your group chose to ride only on trails open to e-bikes; especially as e-bikes get bigger, heavier, fasterā€”and begin to resemble what they literally are, which is motorcyclesā€”they should not go on a non-motorized biking trail. But the occasional poach is perhaps no great sin, more akin to driving over the speed limit than, say, starting a forest fire. If Sundog chanced upon a middle-aged dude recovering from surgery riding his e-bike in the wrong place, I might be more inclined to applaud him than scorn him.

But as your name implies, itā€™s a slippery slope! Mr. Hipā€™s decision has enabled your friends to also break the rules. They of course are weenies, for whom there will be no sympathy from Sundogā€”much less the community of riders who are likely to bite their heads off.

The second and deeper question, which applies to Mr. Hip and your other friendsā€”and to all mountain bikersā€”is this sense of entitlement, which comes across like this: I should be free to do what I want to do on public lands. Naturally this freedom has been enabled by the lack of law enforcement that you mention. Mr. Hip might say that he used to be able to ride this trail when he was younger and healthier, so isnā€™t it fine to use a small assist to stay in shape? Fair enough. But then the other friends might say that they used to be the fastest in their group, and if Mr. Hip has a motor, then why not them, too?

It echoes the debate that upended sport climbing a generation ago. Some bold and brilliant climber established a route on lead in pure style with minimal protection. Now nobody else could repeat the route because it was too dangerous. Well, reasoned the sport climbers, if we rappelled down and placed a few solid bolts, then a lot more people could enjoy this climb! Now those trad climbers who value pure form feel a bit like the Amish, clip-clopping around town in their horse-drawn buggies, the rest of the world scratching their heads at their ethical decisions from another century.

It’s true that, on some trailsā€”specifically those that get wet and muddyā€”e-bikes can cause more erosion than a regular bike, particularly heavier e-bikes with a throttle. But in other places, thatā€™s not a major concern, and I think those who oppose e-bikes on trails should admit that our chief complaint isnā€™t that the bikes are bad for the land, itā€™s just that they are annoying to those of us who choose to ride in ā€œpureā€ form.

In the future, non-motorized mountain bikes may seem quaint and obsolete. But for now, Slippery Slope, I think you need to tell your healthy friends to stop riding e-bikes where they donā€™t belong. If they agree, then your rides will once again be fun for you. If they refuse, and this breaks up the old gang, then at least youā€™ll know it wasnā€™t because of your being too afraid to state your beliefs.

³§³Ü²Ō»å“Ē²µā€™s about people who leave dog poops in plastic bags on the trail elicited all sorts of passionate opinions. Sundog suggested that once you get a quarter of a mile from the trailhead, you could just kick the poop or nudge it off the trail with a stick. One reader disagreed strongly:

Let me relate to you why all dog poop needs to be removed, not just kicked off the trail. I was riding my bike on a recreation/bike trail. I got nailed by a hornet. Thinking there might be a nest near the spot I got stung, I returned with a can of spray, to take care of the nest. There was no nest, it was a pile of dog poop with hornets on it. The next day I had to take off work and go to the doctor’s office. My leg around the sting was an angry red color. It was very infected, from the dog-pooped hornet sting. Cost me a round of antibiotics, missed work, expense of doctor and prescription, all because of dog poop a few feet from the trail. I say all dog poop needs to be removed.

Others suggested practical alternatives:

I live in Summit County, Colorado, where dog shit bags are an epic problem. When I first moved here, I was one of those kick-it-off-the trail-in-the-leaves guys. Iā€™ve spent most of my life in Arkansas and Missouri, where poop in the leaves degrades pretty quickly. That’s not the case at high altitude in dry Colorado. So I started bringing along bags, and I’d leave them by the trail, then pick them up on my way out. Well, most of the time I didā€”I might have forgotten one. Then reading social media here, I became aware of how seeing and smelling a fresh poop bag ruined the hiking experience for others. And then it ruined it for me, where at times within the first 400 yards of a trailhead, you’ll come across dozens of bags. So then I read a handy ¹ś²ś³Ō¹ĻŗŚĮĻ magazine gear blurb about the Turdle Bag, which was supposed to hold in the smell so you could pack out your poop. Only it didn’t quite work. My point is: me and my Labrador retrievers Copper and Elbert wrestled with this issue for months, if not years.

Finally, I figured it out: an empty plastic jar will hold the poop smell in 100 percent until you get home. I mean, after you bag it and jar it, you can put your nose right up to the lid and smell…nothing. The small Talenti gelato jar (473ml) will hold about two Labrador or human poops. The large jar will hold more like five. Bonus: it comes filled with gelato you get to eat before your first use! Another option is the Skippy peanut butter jarā€”but it takes a lot longer to empty!

My family even went so far as to take five jars with us on a two-night, three-day camping trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. You should have seen how delighted the ranger was when I told her we were going to ā€œPoop it out, Pack it out.ā€

Mark Sundeen teaches environmental writing at the University of Montana. He does not own an e-bike, but he might consider one in a few years. Got a question of your own? Send it to sundogsalmanac@hotmail.com

The post My Cycling Buddies Bought E-Bikes. Now I Canā€™t Keep Up. appeared first on ¹ś²ś³Ō¹ĻŗŚĮĻ Online.

Dear Sundog: Iā€™ve always been an environmentalist and lived as close to nature as possible. Years ago I was lucky enough to buy a parcel that borders on public land near a river. Iā€™ve designed and built a dream house that allows me to feel like Iā€™m a part of the natural surroundings. The house is not visible from the river; I intentionally left the bottomlands untouched. My house fits the landscape and accentuates the natural features, and is honestly nicer to look at than the junk cars and trashed mobile home that I hauled away years ago.

People have historically crossed this land to reach the river. They park at a dead end which is technically my land and walk through the floodplain. When I first bought the land, which used to be part of a ranch, local kids would ride dirt bikes and shoot paintballs down there, and I spent a lot of time and money cleaning up after them and blocking the unofficial roads. Iā€™ve restored ecological systems and habitat for wild animals. Iā€™ve put up signs making it clear that itā€™s OK for fishermen to walk through my land to reach the river and for mountain bikers to connect to the larger trail system. And yet people keep tearing down the signs, and driving four-wheelers into my woods, and destroying the place Iā€™m trying to restore and protect. They complained to my face and in letters to the newspaper that I was ruining a public placeā€”even though I own it.

Theyā€™ve gone to the zoning board to complain about me, accusing me of technicalities over parking spaces, setbacks, even water quality of the nearby stream. Iā€™ve done everything by the book to protect nature, and still people treat me like Iā€™m trying to sink the Exxon Valdez here. I feel my next step will be to block access completely: build a fence and put up No Parking signs. My vision for this place did not include a damn parking lot! I feel my next option is to start having cars towed, which I think will be the beginning of a long war with strangers that Iā€™m not sure I can win. Am I the asshole?
ā€”Nature Is My Back Yard (NIMBY)

Dear NIMBY,

Iā€™m sorry people arenā€™t respecting your property, especially when you think you all share values, that you should be on the same team. I also appreciate you building something that will blend into the landscape, instead of plunking down a scale-model Parthenon with marble columns and double-decker five-car garage to house your collection of off-road motorhomes.

Iā€™m not the type of purist who wants no manmade structures in nature. From the adobe pueblos of New Mexico, to the whitewashed villages of Andalusia, to the mountain-top temples of Nepal, civilizations have long created architectural styles that donā€™t merely complement nature but, as Sundog would say, enhance it, by demonstrating the potential for humans and non-humans to live in harmony.

But, NIMBY, Iā€™m going to venture that the kids racing their Razrs across your floodplain give zero shits about the temples of Nepal.

The first issue, I suppose, is legality, and you seem to be aware that the law is on your side. You can fence it all off, or even hire an armed militia to patrol your personal border. This nationā€™s legal system protects property rightsā€”and you will be breaking no law.

However, the deeper issue may not be trespassing: itā€™s that you want peopleā€™s approval for the architecturally and ecologically sound decisions youā€™ve made. The bad news, NIMBY, is that youā€™re not going to get it. Based on your letter, Iā€™ve made a few assumptions about your socio-economic status. Although you bought a ranch, youā€™re not running cattle on it, nor earning a living by extracting some resource like timber or minerals from it. Second, even if your new house is modest and small, it surely cost a lot more money to build than the existing mobile home that you hauled to the dump.

Iā€™m going to also assumeā€”merely because your land is near a river where people come to fishā€”that itā€™s shared something with the large swaths of the rural U.S. that abut recreational activities: in the past 20 years itā€™s become more crowded, popular, expensive, and filled with wealthy newcomers who donā€™t work in the traditional industries of mining, logging, farming and ranching.

I would invite you to interrogate your own belief that the work youā€™re doing on your property is for the benefit of nature. Nature may be somewhat indifferent. You are doing this for yourself, for your own sense of belonging on the land, and also for other humans, so that they might share and understand your vision. But how is preserving nature (from other people) all that different than locking up the land to build your own private paradise? These days, land conservation can feel a bit like feudalism, in which the wealthy hoard land for themselves. Of course, in old Europe the lord earned income by stealing the labor of his serfs who farmed his land. These days the lord doesnā€™t bother trying to make a buck on the earth; he earns his income in some distant industryā€”finance, technology, medicine, media, consulting (whatever that is)ā€”while keeping the land ā€œpristine.ā€

Are you the asshole? That depends on who you ask. Protecting trees and animals will make you a hero to a certain slice of the population. But if you block local people from the paths theyā€™ve walked for generations before you arrived, well, yes, theyā€™ll think youā€™re just another rich outsider locking up the land.

There is no easy decision. You believe that by cleaning up and protecting the natural world, you are implementing a more enlightened land ethic than the Genesis story in which Man holds dominion over all other species, and is free to use or misuse the land for whatever purpose suits him. But may I suggest that the land ethic of cultivating your own private garden is equally colonial, rooted perhaps in another Old Testament idea that Man is sinful but the Garden is perfect without him. Your house indicates that you are able to see beauty in nature not despite humankind, but because of it. I wonder if you can apply the same philosophy to the humans wandering through the woods that you now call your own.

Mark Sundeen once built a handsome shed that integrated with the natural landscape. Thus far it has attracted no trespassers or looky-loos.

The post I Built My Dream House in the Woods. My Neighbors Hate It. appeared first on ¹ś²ś³Ō¹ĻŗŚĮĻ Online.

Dear Sundog,Ģż

Last September, in Californiaā€™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. Isnā€™t this immoral and outrageous? The lion was behaving just as nature intended.Ģżā€” 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 ā€œnegative capabilityā€ 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 responsibilityā€”at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, as well as wildlife advocacy groups. ā€œWe donā€™t have a mountain lion jail,ā€ Beth Pratt, the California state director of the National Wildlife Federation, told the after the Malibu Creek incident. ā€œAs much as it pains me, I think the officials made the right decision here.ā€

The conundrum is not new. But we might say weā€™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, itā€™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 ā€œallowedā€ 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. ā€œHere were bears formally excommunicated from the Church,ā€ writes Mary Roach in her book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law. ā€œSlugs given three warnings to stop nettling farmers, under penalty of smiting.ā€

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 wasnā€™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. ā€œIf you surprise a bear with cubs or on a kill, and it attacks you, then the bear can be let off,ā€ Preston told me. ā€œItā€™s not a pattern of behavior that demonstrates unnatural instincts.ā€

Itā€™s unclear if the behavior of the Malibu Creek cougar was natural.Ģż 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, itā€™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. ā€œWhere do you draw the line when natural behavior starts to impact us pretty severely?ā€ 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 weā€™re not learning anything. But in his opinion, even this line of reasoning doesnā€™t merit a puma pardon. ā€œSomeone can feel sympathy for the lion for doing what lions do, but that probably wonā€™t get you a non-shoot order.ā€

ā€œWe need to dial back our dominance, but this case brings it into sharp contrast,ā€ said Preston. ā€œI donā€™t know how many environmental ethicists would say, ā€˜Yes, letā€™s just let lions keep dragging kids out of picnic areas.ā€™ā€

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). Itā€™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:

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

Maybe thereā€™s an animal ethics question about whether killing the lion is the best way to protect people? Given mountain lion behavior, I canā€™t imagine that confinement would go well. Are there sanctuaries? I donā€™t know; theyā€™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 thatā€™s attacked a human doesnā€™t mean it wonā€™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 predatorsā€”bears, for example. ā€œThere is something singular about the lion,ā€ he said. ā€œYou get stalked. You donā€™t know itā€™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 donā€™t want to empathize with.ā€

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, heā€™s never seen one in the wild. Sundeen’s new book, Ģżcomes out February 18.

The post Should We Spare a Cougar That Attacked a Child? appeared first on ¹ś²ś³Ō¹ĻŗŚĮĻ Online.

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? ā€”Looking for Environmental Alternatives that are Friendly

Dear LEAF,

Letā€™s say youā€™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 allowsā€”you donā€™t want to be a jerkā€”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, youā€™ll borrow the money and make a monthly payment. Youā€™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 theyā€™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 stationā€”one tentacle of the fossil fuel industryā€”youā€™ve now become a partner to some other tentacle. Also, much of the electrical grid from which youā€™ll power that EV is still burning coal and gas to make electricity, so unless youā€™re charging from your own rooftop panels, you havenā€™t fully escaped even one tentacle.

So, no, LEAF, youā€™re not a jerk should you choose a different path. And yes, if youā€™re buying a carā€”especially to replace a gasoline carā€”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. Itā€™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 alternativeā€”drilling for oil and gas, and digging coal to produce electricity. If you canā€™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 EVā€”and try giving up your car altogether.

Sundog does not give advice he would not heed, so hereā€™s my full disclosure: even Iā€”literally a professor of environmental studiesā€”do not own an EV, not even a hybrid. My familyā€™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 donā€™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. Iā€™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: ā€œIā€™ve done more for the environment for any other single human on earth.ā€

Let me state on the record that I love cars and trucks. Theyā€™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 automobileā€”from New York to Barcelona to Kathmanduā€”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 didnā€™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 streetā€”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. Itā€™s a bit of a whack-a-mole game: our heating bills are low because we live in 1,000 square feet, but we canā€™t afford solar panels or a heat pump. We donā€™t spend much money on gasoline, but we canā€™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, youā€™re likely driving. We bought the Tundra during the pandemic to tow a camp trailer (our ā€œofficeā€) 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 donā€™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, Iā€™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

The post Am I a Jerk for Not Owning an Electric Car? appeared first on ¹ś²ś³Ō¹ĻŗŚĮĻ Online.

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 sheā€™d been leading a double life and did not want to be contacted.

Mical, who helps people pronounce her name by saying ā€œlike ā€˜me call you,ā€™ā€ was surprised but not overly concerned at the time. Her mother, Linda Sue Anderson, was carefree and a bit wild. ā€œWeā€™d play that song ā€˜Delta Dawnā€™ really loud, sing at the top of our lungs even though we didnā€™t have great voices, and dance,ā€ 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. ā€œShe was never a Betty Crocker stay-at-home mom.ā€

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. ā€œI was in first or second grade, and I was cooking for them. My dad was traveling. She wouldnā€™t open the door.ā€ 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. ā€œHe worshipped the ground she walked on,ā€ Mical said. ā€œI never heard they were having problems.ā€

So when Linda ran off, the Garcia children figured sheā€™d come back eventuallyā€”just like she always had.

The post They Were Looking for Endangered Tortoises. They Found Human Bones Instead. appeared first on ¹ś²ś³Ō¹ĻŗŚĮĻ 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 didnā€™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 donā€™t have much sympathy for the absentee landlord. The kids hadnā€™t actually damaged the condo, and frankly itā€™s not my job to get them in trouble. Whoā€™s right? ā€”Very Resistant to Bending Over for Real Estate Barons Exploiting Locals

Dear VRBO REBEL: First let me commend you and your husbandā€™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, letā€™s agree that this owner is fully within his rights to press charges against these guysā€”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. Hereā€™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. Itā€™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 heā€™s a guilty of a hanging offense.

In todayā€™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 voilĆ : 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 canā€™t keep them properly protected from the scourge of townies, then so be it. I guess I donā€™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 toĢżsundogsalmanac@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. Heā€™s also had his share of strangers squatting in his un-winterized desert trailer. So it all sort of evens out?

The post Should I Help an Airbnb Owner Bust His Squatters? appeared first on ¹ś²ś³Ō¹ĻŗŚĮĻ Online.

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 itā€™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? ā€”Perplexed Rower Offended by Boating Ethics

Dear PROBE: As your letter notes, the practice of splitting up a river group to ā€œcamp runā€ 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 rangersā€”what Sundog used to call ā€œpaddle pigs.ā€ Whatā€™s more, itā€™s downright foolhardy: if someone in the upstream group has a medical emergency, a blown valve, or simply canā€™t hack the wind, then some of the group may spend the night separated from food, groovers, and first-aid kits.

Yet ³§³Ü²Ō»å“Ē²µā€™s area of expertise is not legality or foolhardinessā€”itā€™s ethicsā€”and the fact of some activity being forbidden and stupid doesnā€™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 ā€œlotteryā€ 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, ā€œHey, which camp were you hoping to reach tonight. Weā€™ll be happy to skip that one so you can have it.ā€

Likely ainā€™t gonna happen. So weā€™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. Itā€™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 pointā€”justified, Iā€™d sayā€”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 itā€™s a slippery slope, because when you set out to grab a camp from an outfitter, youā€™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 fishesā€™ 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 ā€œYankee Imperialismā€ 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 ā€˜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 ā€œmiddle-of-the-roadā€ was too soft on the self-centered Rich White Yankee Surfer guilt trip of your advice seeker.Ģż

Not everybody likes the huge condos, raucous tourist bars and t-shirt shops of Caboā€”I donā€™tā€”and if your reader doesnā€™t like it, donā€™t go. But itā€™s more about preferences than an ethical quandary about globalization. I donā€™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 townā€”go there and rest easy.Ģż

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 ā€œunspoiledā€ poverty of Mexico we were taking advantage as well.

Your advice to research and support local business was right on. If she doesnā€™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!) resortā€”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 pavedā€”so maybe tourism ainā€™t so bad.

Got a question of your own? Send it toĢżsundogsalmanac@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, Iā€™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 Iā€™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 Iā€™d be a dupe for continuing to lend him mine. What should I do? ā€”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 friendā€™s behavior may have perplexed or even hurt you, I donā€™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 wonā€™t be able to live off of Social Security, and we have to do our own saving and planning. Ditto that if weā€™d like to send our kids to college. And letā€™s face it, whitewater boatsā€”and for that matter, all outdoor gearā€”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 ā€œretirementā€ from guiding, he couldnā€™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.

Whatā€™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 adventureā€”you freely lent your toys to someone in need. It doesnā€™t seem fair. Loaner, you would be perfectly within your rights to simply tell your friend in the future that youā€™d prefer not to lend your boat anymore. You donā€™t even need to supply a reason.

Before you do, Iā€™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? Hereā€™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?

Iā€™d say that whatā€™s more important than the boat here is the friendship, and you donā€™t want the oar frame to become a proxy battleground for unspoken resentments. Probably whatā€™s bestā€”though not easiestā€”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 moneyā€”thereā€™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 heā€™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 traveledā€”like your wifeā€”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: ā€œAre you doing a job?ā€ ĢżI am always answered. ā€œMy job is to be a part of this hillsideā€ or ā€œMy job is to make a striking statement for those who will pass by.ā€ Or ā€œI am here to be found by a child and painted.ā€ ĢżBut sometimes they will say, ā€œI 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.ā€ 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. ā€”Robbin

Mark Sundeen, aka Sundog, has been borrowing other peopleā€™s rafts since as far back as the 90s. When doing so, itā€™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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