About Outdoor Politics
When I started this newsletter, I wanted to keep my political musings and observations separate from the fishing and guiding stuff I like to write about. What I really hoped to do was add my perspective and insights to the discussion and not just recirculate news. I thought there would be more to write about…
Turns out Congress and the administration are occupied with other things. Not that those things don’t spark outrage, but since I choose to focus my attention on conservation policy, my intent was, and still is, to stick to that.
Given that reality, I have decided to fold this proverbial tent and make camp in a new section of my main newsletter, Dispatches from a Trout Wrangler. Outdoor Politics is now Riding the Thunder. I’ve already moved many of the articles over there.
I haven’t given up on sharing my thoughts on the politics of conservation and that’s what you will see in Riding the Thunder. It will be more commentary and not as many updates on routine goings on on the Hill or with the administration. You can get that stuff in a lot of other places.
I hope to keep things interesting and that you will come along for the ride.
If you are interested in how I came up with Riding the Thunder, it comes from Theodore Roosevelt’s speech, given at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910, entitled “Citizenship in a Republic.” Here is the passage:
Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride or slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of the great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and the valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who “but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier. [emphasis added]
It is my hope to continue to ride the thunder in my conservation work. I hope you will join me.
