To answer your question, in five years you will see more of the same. You will see it here, and wherever you go.

To extrapolate, this is a subject dear to my heart. Sorry it is long winded. Following is my personal opinion, based upon personal experience and my perceptions of that experience, as well as the many people I’ve met.

Every place where you find people was once a better place before those people started showing up. That is the reason they showed up. It was a better place.

There are two types of people who show up.

1. Those who are running to the place;
2. Those who are running from some other place.

The former tend to be liberal, social, and, ironically, concerned more with the environment than they are with the people around them. When they show up, they tend to take steps to protect the place by keeping other people out, or by limiting free use of property. They try to keep the new environment from becoming the old environment. They are thus subject to the false and lazy charge of hypocrisy. While they tend to have more social tendencies, they subordinate those tendencies to the welfare of the land.

The latter tend to be conservative, less social, and concerned more with property rights than they are with the land. When they show up, they seem hell bent on doing to the new environment everything that was done to the old environment. They clear cut, mine, farm, overgraze, subdivide, pave, develop, shoot the local predators, etc. They are thus subject to the false and lazy charge of hypocrisy. While they tend to have less social tendencies, they subordinate these feelings to the right of others to do as they wish with their own land.

The irony in both is multifaceted. Those who admit to, or even embrace their social tendencies, care more about the environment than people, and they end up loving it to death. Those who fancy themselves rugged individualist loners tend to be even more dependent on other people, and they care more about people’s rights, and they end up encouraging and profiting from population growth.

Again, some folks are running to, while others are running from. An analogy would be those who fall in love with someone because of who that person is, on the one hand, and someone who is on the rebound and looking for someone better than the last person they were with. The former doesn’t always appreciate the fact that their new lover might grow and change. The later doesn’t always appreciate the new lover in their own right, and tends to mold them to their own selfish wishes. Both can adversely affect the new lover because both are thinking about themselves. The new lover is secondary.

While there are gradients and combinations of these traits found in both ends of the spectrum, most people are more of one than the other. I tend to be more liberal and environmentally oriented. On the other hand, I’m not a big people person and fancy myself a loner. I will, however, confess my dependence on society.

I was born and raised in Colorado, in the sticks. I left to serve, and travel the world. When I returned, those sticks were deep in the heart of suburbia. So I left for the sticks of Idaho and lived there for fourteen years. I saw Idaho going the way of Colorado because of people like those above. I was one of them. However, there was more of the latter than the former, and I hated watching them ruin the place. I fought it the whole time I was there. But it was a losing battle and it was too sad watching the death of what I loved.

I came home to Colorado and found myself another place in the sticks. I try to console myself with the fact that my place in the sticks was already developed (1860s) when I got here, but I can’t help but believe it would be better off without me. Like everyone else though, I’m not going to shoot myself because of it. Nor am I going to move to New York City. I just try to reduce my foot print on the land where I can conveniently do so.

I would do some soul searching before packing my bags. I used to covet elk antlers, buffalo skulls, wolves and grizzly bears to the point that I wanted to own them. Then I realized: I do own them. I just keep them in Yellowstone.

The point here is to try and be satisfied with what you have, and realize that public lands are just as important to America as any other aspect of it. The people in New York City may have all the same legal freedoms that we have out west, but you can’t honestly tell me they are as free as we are. All the freedoms in the world aren’t worth much if you don’t have a place to be free in. Or, as Aldo Leopold said: “Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”

In short, before you move, think about your foot print on what you love. Actually owning a piece of heaven can also be an expensive and time consuming pain in the ass. The liberal in me thinks the government does a pretty good job, considering all those people, discussed above, that they have to deal with. Defend and protect your public lands from those who would make them more like what they are not.

My ten cents.