Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Steve Farnham.
The recent skirmish over Governor Shumlin’s prohibiting ATVs from public land reminds me of when I was a kid, working on our family dairy farm, and there was a snowmobile trail across our land. Every winter, we were serenaded daily by their racket, stink, and pollution, and every spring, we needed to spend a couple days repairing the damage they did to our fences — not to mention, pick up their trash. My father always claimed that nothing could be done about it.
I do not know if “nothing could be done” because there were some sort of laws protecting “riders’ rights” in those days, or whether “nothing could be done” because it was politically unattractive for my father to be the only landowner in the neighborhood blocking a trails’ connection between two points. It may well have been in my father’s power to refuse the riders access to the property, but he may have feared retribution in the form of theft, vandalism and other abuse that often befalls those who get in the way of what the good ol’ boys want.
Either way, it came to pass that the use of that particular passage dried up, and snowmobile traffic no longer coursed through (or anywhere near) our neighborhood. Part of the reason for that may have been a string of winters with little or no snow, and the fact that the now ubiquitous, soft-tired, three and four-wheeled ATV’s had not yet been invented.
For whatever reason, at some point, pressure mounted once again to establish a trail near (what is now) my property to accommodate the snowmobilers—and it has been done. The trail is about a mile, as the crow flies, over (and down the other side of) a hill from my house. While its presence is nowhere nearly as intrusive as the one I remember from my youth, it is intrusive enough, nevertheless.
Once there is enough snow, and the trail is packed, I need to rise pretty early on a weekday (even earlier on the weekend) to enjoy a few peaceful hours outdoors. During weekday afternoons and evenings, and nearly all day on weekends, the roaring and grinding from that distant trail is nearly constant. It’s as if my neighbors had hired a hundred loggers to come with chainsaws and grind up all the trees on the entire hill.
If my neighbors don’t mind trash being thrown on their land; if my neighbors don’t mind the noise when they’re out hiking and cross-country skiing; if my neighbors don’t mind their windows being rattled by the noise while trying to sleep; then I guess I’m not going to fuss because for the most part, it’s far enough from my property to be mostly a minor nuisance, but I absolutely don’t want it one inch closer.
It is a simple fact that when you equip a human, or a group of humans with skis, snowshoes, or other outdoor footwear, they don’t tend to be noisy, nor do they tend to act irresponsibly. The most irresponsible human on snowshoes isn’t going to do much damage. However, mix humans with internal combustion, and you have an entirely different phenomenon.
First, try as he might, the most polite and respectful person on a snowmobile or ATV, is fouling the air with copious pollution, stink, and noise. Second, the most irresponsible person on an ATV is equipped with a machine which multiplies his ability to be destructive and injurious to the rest of us. It’s difficult enough to police such people on the highway; it’s nearly impossible to police them in the woods.
There isn’t much of the planet left where humans can exist but don’t. We occupy all of the warm parts, and much of the cold parts that would be uninhabitable to us without clothes and petroleum. Must these atrocious “machanations” of the devil be regularly driven into every last mile of inhabitable space on the planet? We’re supposed to be an intelligent species. Are we intelligent enough to entertain ourselves without burning gasoline and being a pest and a menace to all of our neighbors? Indeed, in this day of peak oil prices, I hope so.
