I was talking to someone the other day about a camping trip I go on each year, and how I camp on “BLM," land. They kind of scowled and pulled back, then went, "What does the land have to do with "Black Lives Matter?”

Well, I tried to be polite as I told them that I was referring to the "Bureau of Land Management,” and that that government agency had been referred to as BLM for quite some time – since its inception in 1946 by President Truman. Of all government agencies, they watch over the most land: 245 million acres of it. There were two takeaways from this conversation: The first being about preservation, and the second about the BLM riots.

In regards to the riots, where did they go? pre-COVID it felt like the nation was reaching a boiling point. BLM rioters, Proud Boys, Antifa… then I remembered COVID hit and everyone was forced inside, and then it seemed that everyone worried over that virus – their attention now diverted. And that takes me to President Trump's slew of executive orders. In his entire first year, President Obama signed 37 Executive orders, George W. Bush’s first year: 52, Clinton: 57.

Trump signed 50 in seven weeks.

As a centrist-writing journalist, there isn’t any good way to approach that number to soothe the ego’s of my readers. I should however merely state that if you feel upset that I point it out, address first in yourself what point you think I am making, and weigh it against your desires, and my position of loving my country.

In that cacophony of Executive Orders that have been raining down from the President north of Richmond: which orders – like the rioters – will be forgotten about and buried behind the next 24 hour Entertainment-News cycle?

Like Trump’s order to “increase lumber production," so that we stop being reliant on other countries while he directly repeals environmental protections. He is allowing clear-cutting forests on Federal land (BLM), except that those lands that remain unpolluted provide more than 60 million people with clean drinking water. Cutting old trees massively increases wildfire risk (data from the Center for Biological Diversity’s Public Lands Policy Director, Randi Spivak).

My father brought me up to love nature, and trees. And though he was conservative in leanings, I believed as a child that after my mother and siblings, it was the trees and the mountains of the earth that my father loved most. He taught me about how important trees are for us to breathe, how they provide shade and the roots protect us from erosion. Of all government agencies, I came to feel those that protected our environment and water supply were the most worthwhile.

Yellowstone Park is a perfect example of an importance of trees and ecological balance: wolves were hunted to extinction in the area, and since they were killed the herbivores in the area over populated and eventually ate the sapling trees that were trying to grow, and then when the old trees died no younger ones were there to replace them, and thus the ground started to dangerously erode and turn to mud.

Then wolves were reintroduced and the grazing animals couldn’t stay around long enough to snack on saplings, and then the saplings grew up and turned the tide of erosion.

It’s like the liberals called the conservatives “Imperialists" and “colonists" enough that the conservatives went, “you know what, I don't want to be a colonist, why take the lumber from other countries when we can destroy our home, and the land for our grandchildren? I will be dead in thirty years, my grandson can drink polluted water and camp on mud-flats, looking at a sky that is also brown–"  – for there are no trees to help clean it up.

Trees are a long – long term investment that do not pay off in one lifetime. To quote my man, Kahlil Gibran once more as he speaks on Children:

“You house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

Which you cannot visit, even in your dreams.”

Is it apathy? Or is it greed that prevents people from caring about the future for children and grandchildren?

I write not because I don’t care about conservatives. Denzel Washington aids my point on why I speak out: “When the Devil Ignores you, you know you’re doing something wrong.” I'm not an enemy. This is my plea to remind those older, those with money, and those with power that this is the only planet in the universe that we know of or can get to that can support human life. And if they believe in God:

-that God made them a garden, and gave them the ability to reproduce, thus also is the garden is intended to be inherited by your children, and grandchildren too.

Thank you, father, for giving me a love of trees, and of mountains, and of this Earth and my fellow man.

Austin Petak is an aspiring novelist and freelance journalist who loves seeking stories and the quiet passions of the soul. If you are interested in reaching out to him to cover a story, you may find him at austinpetak@gmail.com.

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