Commons

During our time on the bay we watched night after night as people found nowhere available to stay because the sites were booked, but empty.

We talked a good bit with the rangers about it and it turned out they were just implementing a new system where you have to call when you get to your site and confirm that you’re there. No call and a ranger will delete your reservation the next day. How exactly that’s reflected on the website or for first-come, first-serve campers was never really clear to me.

It’s a step in the right direction I suppose, but it still seems like an oddball solution to what’s a pretty well-solved problem in most of the country: you pay $5-10 a night and everything is first-come, first-serve. That’s the way nearly all the forest service and BLM campgrounds are and even some state parks.

The whole idea of a campground that’s free seems odd to me. Campgrounds need maintanence and therefore cost money. I have no problem paying for them. When we camp for free it’s typically because there are no services. But something struck me in the conversation with the rangers, both of them balked when I said you should just charge. They said they talked about it, but wanted to keep it free because “it’s public land after all, the public should be able to use it for free”.

It’s refreshing to hear that in this age of anti-public sentiment.

I happen to think that losing the commons was the beginning of the end of our civilization. I realize that sounds hyperbolic, but read up on British enclosure laws, how that worked, why it was done, and what it did to British social structures to get some idea of why I think that. The same thing happened here, though over a longer period of time and in a less publicly obvious way.

One small park in Florida isn’t going to reverse the tide that’s washing over us, destroying our public lands for the profits of a few men, but it does mean there’s a very nice free place to camp in the Florida panhandle. Just be sure to book a site ahead of time.