This letter was originally featured in our Spring 2025 Trail Break issue, before the folks in Washington DC began giving away the farm in earnest.

YOU KNOW THE FEELING. You catch an edge, or your tire snags a rut. Where previously you were cruising along in a deep flow state, you’re now floating through the air, out of control, with all eternity to contemplate the angle of the sun, the shape of that cloud, the way the cliff drops away to your left, the precise way your body will eventually collide with that tree.

This heightened sense of perception—the dilation or slowing-down of time—is an ancient evolutionary adaptation, giving us humans a chance to react in catastrophic situations, to make essential last-second decisions. Tuck head. Shield ribs. Brace for impact.

One hundred and twenty years ago, in the opening weeks of his second term, Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, signed an Act of Congress creating the United States Forest Service. It had become clear that without thoughtful, long-range conservation, what was left of the public domain—the last remaining forests and watersheds and mountainsides across the West— would soon be devoured by the insatiable appetites of commerce and development.

“The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life,” said Roosevelt. “Unless we maintain an adequate material basis for our civilization, we cannot maintain the institutions in which we take so great and so just a pride; and to waste and destroy our natural resources means to undermine this material basis.”

The new Forest Service had a complicated and difficult mission, with many competing—and often opposing— interests to balance. It was not about locking away lands from the public; it was about managing them sustainably, conservatively, stewarding “the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of [both] present and future generations,” rather than squandering them for short-term individual (or corporate) profit.

But from the moment the nation’s first Chief Forester and his cadre of idealistic forest rangers rode out to take stock of the public’s resources—earning $50 a month and providing their own equipment, horses and pack animals— the millionaire robber barons and their hired lackeys in Congress set about undermining the project. For decades, they made sure the agency focused on building roads, clear-cutting forests, putting out fires that should’ve burned, and issuing commercial ski resort permits for pennies on the dollar.

There were bright spots in the 1970’s and ‘80’s. But starting in the 1990’s, as outdoor recreation grew steadily year over year, and as climate change became increasingly obvious, Congress sat back and whittled away at annual budgets for land management. By 2021 the Forest Service was a shell of its former self, with half the staff to do twice the work. Nonprofit organizations like Winter Wildlands Alliance, with its growing network of allies and grassroots groups, became crucial partners in stewardship and vital conduits of institutional knowledge that would otherwise have disappeared.

Then came the already infamous Valentine’s Day Massacre of 2025.

It’s a strange and unsettled time to be considering the 25th anniversary of Winter Wildlands Alliance. We can’t yet gauge the depth and extent of the impacts we’ll feel from this latest impetuous deconstruction of the federal government. But we’ve seen it coming. Time has dilated, perception is heightened, and the landing zone is coming into focus.

What is certain is that it will be up to us—the people—to protect and steward the places and experiences we all care about for the next quarter century and beyond. And the role of Winter Wildlands Alliance—in inspiring, organizing, and empowering people and coalitions for the common good— will be as critical as it has ever been.

The rebuilding begins now. Thanks for being part of it.

David Page, Executive Director Winter Wildlands Alliance