The Wilderness Ideal

There was no discernible difference between the trail I had been riding and the trail that stretched ahead of me. There was a sign, though, hanging from a thin wire fence, and a wooden ladder for hikers to climb over. The small yellow-and-black sign read “Wilderness Boundary.” This was somewhere along the Pacific Crest Trail in California’s southern Sierra Nevada, south of Mammoth, north of Mexico, on a clear alpine summer day in 1994. I glanced around to check for hikers or horses, quickly lifted my bike over the fence, and kept riding.

I’d be lying if I said that was a one-time deal. Twenty-five years ago, I used to poach wilderness areas often and self-righteously. Sometimes the trails would be really, really good. Sometimes the poach would result in a long, difficult hike made slower and much more awkward by the bike I was forced to carry. Didn’t stop me. I felt like it was my right, my social entitlement, to access this public