The Value of Public Lands  

The following reflection was written and delivered by Post Falls resident, Jamie Esler, as part of Boise State University’s “Idaho Listens” event held at the Hagadone Event Center this past October. To learn more about Idaho Listens, or to watch all of the local speakers from the Coeur d’Alene Event, visit https://www.boisestate.edu/americanvalues/idaho-listens/ 

What I Value and Why

The two of us sat on the ground within a few feet of each other but the berries were so thick we could barely see the other person. 

Purple fingers, purple lips, purple stains on the seats of our pants, and smiles as wide as the valley we looked down upon. 

My teenage daughter was just an infant then; but the look in her eyes showed we were sharing the same sense of wonder that can only come from exploring new places; and in our case, new tastes. 

We had driven up a forest service road for the day to cut some firewood and get our first bit of ink (and sweat…) smeared on our very first Firewood Permit. Bumping down the road in our old ‘88 Ford Ranger looking for dead trees soon turned into our very first, and unexpected, huckleberry buffet.

On the brink of giddy laughter my wife called out  “If you look from the bottom-up you can see them easier!”

We laid there on our backs in the afternoon sun gorging ourselves on the purple treasure of the mountain, still unsure of what it actually was. The breeze was just right through the larch and douglas fir, the beargrass was smooth across our backs. 

And at just that moment, somewhere in the near distance, a lone wolf howled across the ridgeline. 

Eyebrows raised, we looked at each other through small pockets in the bushes.  We both knew what the other was thinking.

“We made the right move.”

When we arrived in Coeur d’Alene in the summer of 2008, it wasn’t just the huckleberries we didn’t know about. 

We didn’t know a single person, either.  And we were oblivious to all that this place has to offer folks like us.

I’ll never forget the first time I rode my mountain bike on Trail 257 on Mt. Coeur d’Alene. A colleague of mine (and fellow Midwest transplant) heard I was new in town and took me up there for a ride. At one point he abruptly stopped his bike in front of me, smirked,and nodded over his shoulder, “You know, back home this would be a National Park, right?” 

It’s memories like these that have shown me there is a single thread that has woven itself through the fabric of happiness I have been blessed to find while living here.

Abundant, accessible, and healthy public lands and waters.

They have opened my eyes to the compelling natural history of the Inland Northwest and they have connected me with some of the most inspiring friends and cherished mentors I have ever known.  They have sculpted me into a more loving husband and father, a more creative professional, and a more hardened outdoorsman.

I was lucky enough in my youth to grow up hunting on our family’s 100 acre woodlot in Missouri. Needless to say, hunting on public land was a completely foreign concept to me when I got out here. 

I've learned over the years that pursuing big game through the steep and endless nooks and crannies of Idaho’s National Forests won’t always end with notches on my tags like when I was a kid.

I’ve found instead that the real bounty lies in every mile I put in and every challenge I learn to overcome. Idaho’s public lands have become my spiritual sanctuary for the deepest of self reflection. 

As an environmental science teacher in a public high school, they have also become my classroom. 

Some of my students have lived here their whole lives, but many, like most of us, have moved here from somewhere else. 

From Farragut to English Point and even Yellowstone, public lands provide my students with learning experiences that will last a lifetime.

The large map of all US public lands that I bring up on the projector screen usually yields outbursts from students like “Esler, what do you mean I own 640 million acres? I live in the Hawks Nest development!”.

We read Aldo Leopold and Sherman Alexie. We read Scott Reed and Cecil Andrus.

While their responses give me hope that the TikTok Generation is indeed capable of finding its bearings within the North American Conservation Model, it remains a fragile and delicate moment for me to teach through when they draw the connection between the public lands we enjoy today and the context in which those same lands were acquired from Indigenous Peoples. 

Believe it or not, the modern teenager tends to struggle with the concept of Time Immemorial. 

I have determined, though, that there is no better way for me to teach them that with new knowledge comes new responsibility.

It used to be hard for me to imagine a world where public lands in Idaho could be vulnerable to the divisiveness within the current state of American politics. They have always been the great unifier with nearly everyone I have ever met here.

But it was a particularly frosty, early July morning while soaking in a Salmon River hotsprings with my wife a few years ago that showed me just how naive I was. 

We met a nice man from McCall. Our stories of time spent in the Sawtooths passed between us like the steam swirling up off the warm mineral water. 

He was scouting some new elk hunting ground for his family because a drainage they had been hunting for generations had recently become inaccessible. 

A new gate had been installed where the forest service road travels through some private property that had recently changed ownership. 

Apparently the new owners have a different view on accessing the national forest adjacent to their land than the hunters and recreationists who had traveled that road without incident for decades.

It turns out, this is a smaller symptom of a much larger movement advocating for Idaho’s federal public lands to be changed to state ownership and promptly sold for profit and private development. 

With roughly 62% of Idaho’s land surface currently under federal management, the consequences of that kind of change would impact nearly every huckleberry buffet, every mountain bike trail, every elk hunt, and every hot spring that all of us know and love. 

We always have, and always will, come from the lands and waters that sustain us. They offer us a mirror into ourselves and how we care for one another. 

When we walk along trails on public lands we stand on the shoulders of the giants who helped ensure those trails would be there for us. We must, in return, be tireless and fearless in our efforts to do the same for those that come after us. 

What would Idaho be, after all, without its mountains to roam free in or its lakes and rivers to cleanse our spirits in?