A month ago, I would have told you that opening federal land on the periphery of the Boundary Waters to mining was a terrible idea.

Since this article was published, I’ve been there. Some of me still is (not just the 5 lbs I lost rowing, portaging, and camping). I can’t put into words what this place is like. And the Big Beautiful Bill puts one of America’s most important and impressive natural resources at risk.

From the linked article, published by the Guardian and the Public Domain:

Earlier this month, conservationists cheered when Congress withdrew from the reconciliation bill several provisions that would have sold off hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land in Nevada and Utah. Those provisions had sparked fury among public land advocates and staunch opposition even from some Republicans, including the representative Ryan Zinke of Montana, who vowed to oppose the bill if the land sell-off provisions were retained.

Despite that fury, a lesser-known public lands giveaway remained in the reconciliation bill. If approved as currently written, the provision could lease in perpetuity land near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters wilderness, an enormous complex of pristine lakes and untrammeled forests, to Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta PLC.

Becky Rom, the national chair of Save the Boundary Waters, a campaign to protect the wilderness area from mining, described the provision as “a giveaway of critical and sensitive federal public land forever to a single mining company”.

“It is a giveaway,” Rom added. “This is forever.”

The “Big Beautiful Bill” has been passed. The Boundary Waters might seem inconsequential in light of the real human damage cuts to Medicaid will cause. But we need to be doing more large-scale environmental protection, not less. It’s not about securing scenic vistas for would-be poets; it’s about the things that can happen when people and polities (in this case, the US, Canada, the Ojibwe, Minnesota, Ontario, Manitoba, and more) work together to preserve a natural heritage that’s every bit the right that life and liberty (and in some jurisdictions, healthcare), are.

Part of me wishes I were still on the water. All of me wishes there were a line item in the federal budget for every American to make the trip. You can’t really appreciate what’s at stake until you’ve been there.

We’ve gone to great lengths to remove ourselves from the severities of nature; I get it, that’s what humans do. We move, we learn, we grow. But we’re also inextricably connected to places far less hospitable than the houses, neighborhoods, or cities we call home. Spend a few hours in the ocean. On the lake. Do it wisely, but open yourself up to pristine settings, natural beauty, spend a week without plumbing or TV. Go someplace where you can really see the stars.

Take a hike. Grow a plant. Consider the supply chains and the net strain of most convenience.

This is what I was getting at with this poem, a relatively small example. There’s so much more at stake.