Trout Unlimited
Youth Essay Contest Winner
Tyker Hubble, Garland, Utah, Seventh grade
Life without public lands would be boring. All the fun activities my family enjoys are in these green spaces. No public lands would mean no camping, fishing, hunting and hiking.
Public lands provide people with access to try new things or do something their family has been doing for generations. Not all people have access to private lands where they might be able to do some of those things and without public lands, they couldn’t do them. This means I would probably not be involved with the outdoors as much as I am if I didn’t have access to these places.
Public lands and green spaces provide a place for me to hunt, camp, fish and hike. They enable me to get outdoors, have fun and make lifelong memories with family and friends. I can’t imagine my life without these special moments.
My grandpa is a great fisherman and is always willing to take me and my cousins fishing. There is nothing like waking up in the morning and heading out to the river and seeing the fish blow up on your fly, especially on a fly you have tied yourself.
Public lands and green spaces are important to go camping. I love camping and just getting out and away from civilization. I like this because it’s peaceful and quiet. I have also made many memories in certain places with my family, like waking up early with my dad to hunt or fish and hearing the birds chirp and everything is just alive.
I have spent many mornings and evenings on public lands sitting in a tree stand waiting for that elk or deer to give you that one opportunity. I will never forget the first time I heard an elk bugle. I’ve been a part of many harvests that have fed my family for the next year. That’s what makes these places fun and exciting for me. There are endless possibilities of places to go and things to do. You can take new roads or trails, you can find new places to fish that no one has ever fished before and that’s what makes it so exciting.
I think public lands represent our freedom to have something that is ours. This means that we have a place that is ours and everybody else’s at the same time. This is the freedom to have access to river banks to fish and mountains to hunt. Public lands like the Bureau of Land Managament, national parks, wilderness and more all serve a purpose, and that this is to allow people like me access to new and wild place to be outdoors.
Public land plays a big role in my life. Like catching my first brook trout in a high mountain stream, a 3-pound brown troutin a stream I can jump across, my first fish on a fly pole with my dad there by my side teaching the tips and tricks, an ugly, but hard fighting 12-pound carp in the muddy Malad River by my house.
Without these places I would probably be inside starring at the wall or playing video games. I would not be able to be outside in the mountains and feel the fresh air on my face, hear the quaking aspen leaves rustling in the wind, smell the sage brush in bloom, hear the water trickling down a stream or listen to the coyotes howling at night. Public lands and green spaces have helped me build my passion for fishing and the great outdoors. That it is why they are important to me.
