A group of young outdoor enthusiasts traveled to Washington, D.C. from across the country after winning an essay contest sponsored by Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development, a coalition of sportsmen and conservation groups led by the National Wildlife Federation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and Trout Unlimited. The contest’s theme was “The Importance of Public Lands to Me,” and the essays highlight the forests, mountains, sagebrush steppe and backcountry waters of our public lands.

Hailing from both the East and West, the winners are Jarred Kay, 17, Flagstaff, Ariz.; Haley Powell, 17, Rock Springs, Wyo.; Matthew Reilly, 18, Palmyra, Va.; Rebecca Brown, 17, Conrad, Mont.; and Noah Davis, 18, Greensburg, Pa.

Read the student’s essays below, and let us know what you think about their passion for public lands in the comments section:

I love my home – By Rebecca Brown

I love my home. I always have, and always will. I’m not talking about the house I live in, the street it’s located on, or even the town. I’m talking about the state of Montana. It’s such a magnificent place, with its diverse terrain and variety of weather. In a relatively short drive, you can go from flat plains to towering peaks; from grassland to forest; over rolling hills, across rushing rivers, alongside rocky mountain walls; it’s an ever-changing, dynamic landscape, begging to be traveled.

I’ve lived here all my life, and will cherish this, my home, in my heart always.

If it weren’t for the protection of public lands, my Montana might be a very different place. The vast majority of my memories and experiences have happened on public lands. I learned to hunt deer, migratory and upland birds on the grassy plains and foothills. I learned to fish in public reservoirs and lakes. I’ve spent my summers swimming and boating in public waters. My love for aquatic recreation inspired me to build my own cedar-strip canoe. I find tremendous enjoyment in hiking mountain trails, encountering the different foliage, watching animal life, listening to the trickle of small creeks running alongside, and finding beautiful waterfalls.

When I take time to slow down from my busy life and stop to look at the land around me, I’m filled with wonder, admiration, and peace. I feel a gratitude for all the experiences I’ve had, very few of which would’ve been possible without the abundance of public lands in Montana.

I know I am not the only person to have stories and memories like these. Many people from all over the United States use and enjoy public lands each day.

It is important to keep an abundance of public lands in this country. They provide places to learn, to explore, and to admire. People learn to truly appreciate nature and the many resources it offers.

The national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, monuments, and wilderness areas that make up the protected public lands of America must continue to be protected for future generations. They make up about 28 percent of United States land, and exemplify the true beauty of our nation.

Even though most people may think of public lands as recreational locations, they also offer valuable natural resources. These include fresh water, fish and game, and other wildlife. Many sportsmen view these lands as simply that – sporting venues. People like my family, however, rely on these lands as a source of food – they are home to the fish and game we hunt for meat. We depend on the hunting season to provide us with meat for the rest of the year. If it weren’t for the ability to harvest game on public lands, we would have to pay outrageous fees to access private lands, and we couldn’t afford to hunt.

Public lands are key in helping with the conservation of our environment. In these areas, fresh water and clean air are abundant, and the plant life that thrives in them refreshes the earth’s biosphere.

It is critical for these lands to be protected and conserved for generations to come. The future inhabitants of this nation deserve to have the same positive experiences I’ve had, to drink the fresh water, breathe the clean air, and take full advantage of the opportunities to use public lands without the huge personal investment into private ownership that so many of us cannot afford.

As I said before, I love my home. I love the fresh air and the wide open spaces. I’ve enjoyed learning tohunt, to fish, to swim, to canoe, to snowboard and waterski. I’ve had so very many amazing experiences and lessons, and they’ve all combined to give me a strong foundation for the rest of my life. I’ve learned skills and behaviors that will assist me in nearly anything I choose to do. The public lands of the United States need to be protected so other members of future generations can learn the same things I have, can have similar experiences and cherished memories. If these lands go unprotected, they could be bought up, locked up, and held ransom by corporations and the elite few that can afford private landholdings, and soon, citizens will have nowhere to go to hunt or to camp without having to spend large sums to do it.

If we don’t take action to protect the public use and conservation of our lands and the natural resources they contain, the future will be a very different place from the home that has made me who I am.

Rebecca Brown, 17, of Conrad, Mont., is a high school senior and the oldest of three sisters. Her father is a schoolteacher and her mother drives the school bus. She is working to obtain her pilot’s license. Rebecca enjoys hunting, fishing, boating, all types of water sports, snowboarding and hiking. She plans to study mechanical engineering at college in the fall. 

A group of young outdoor enthusiasts traveled to Washington, D.C. from across the country after winning an essay contest sponsored by Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development, a coalition of sportsmen and conservation groups led by the National Wildlife Federation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and Trout Unlimited. The contest’s theme was “The Importance of Public Lands to Me,” and the essays highlight the forests, mountains, sagebrush steppe and backcountry waters of our public lands.

Hailing from both the East and West, the winners are Jarred Kay, 17, Flagstaff, Ariz.; Haley Powell, 17, Rock Springs, Wyo.; Matthew Reilly, 18, Palmyra, Va.; Rebecca Brown, 17, Conrad, Mont.; and Noah Davis, 18, Greensburg, Pa.

Read the student’s essays below, and let us know what you think about their passion for public lands in the comments section:

A Day on Bell’s Gap Run in State Game Lands 158 – By Noah Davis

The trees still cling to the morning fog as I drive out of the valley into the mountains along the Allegheny Front, toward a lake of clouds nestled in the ridges. The early summer foliage acts as translucent glass, sending patterns of light down upon the hood of my truck. The pull-offs in the game lands are used mostly as snowplow turnarounds and are seldom occupied, except for the two weeks of rifle season when most Pennsylvanians head out with hopes for a deer.

I park next to a section of flowering raspberry and mind my step over the last remaining colt’s foot whose yellow blossom will turn to seed within the next couple of days. The 2wt. in my right hand was built by my barber this past winter, his name engraved above mine on the handle, a Royal Wulff imprinted above both.

My wading boots are treated more like hiking shoes that are always wet. With 23,000 acres of public land, I need to be able to move freely in order to explore this fine seam through the hollow, the miles of water that crease it. My goal today is to reach the waterfall before drifting my fly a couple of miles downstream.

The narrow gauge railroad that was used to pull timber from this far wilderness during the late 19th century can still be found in the occasional rusted rail. Two miles in, under the cover of ostrich ferns, I find a lamp knocked from an engine. On most of myjourneys here, I discover some artifact, an emblem of our past being reclaimed by the green world.

The farther I walk the older the trees become. Remnant stands of old growth hemlock shade the pools; rhododendrons as large as houses force me to crawl on all fours. Deer and porcupine scat make me wary of where I place my hand, and every grouse or woodcock that bursts into flight leaves my senses buzzing.

The sun has risen to a point in the sky that the dew on the backs of rhododendron leaves warms and begins to evaporate. At a crossing just below the first pool, I see the tracks of a fisher. Crouching behind a boulder, I string my olive line through the guides of my rod, inspect the quality of the tippet, and tie a Royal Wulff to complete the outfit.

I then stand, so my eyes can catch the light reflecting from the water, and wait for a signal near the small waterfall. It doesn’t take long this time of year. Bugs are always on the water: terrestrials all day, caddis at noon, and mayflies as I make my way down the mountain. This time it’s an ant that’s fallen in the water that causes the trout to rise at the tail of the pool. I raise my rod and flip my fly up into the current. Characteristic of brook trout, it doesn’t take long for my fly to be sipped below the foamy film.

The most beautiful aspect of small, remote, trout streams, like this one, is the variegation of colors. Every season possesses a certain brilliance. The spring with its thick-green bleeding into summer. Fall with maple-gold and oak-orange. The gray of late season, when I take to the woods a final time for deer. And the white that winter brings to the deep woods, its silence and space, a place to reconsider and think about what is still to come.

The eight inches of brook trout I hold in my left hand reflect all of these seasons and add still to their splendor. The white of winter confined to anal fins, the fires of autumn caught on the underside, and the dappled back which forces me to look up and see its mirror, light cascading through the canopy of summer in this present tense.

When the fish is again under its sunken log, I gaze up the hollow. Another piece of flat water is twenty yards up and a deep pool ten beyond that. I dip my face into the cool, and let it fall down my front as I stand.

In a world where the façade of ownership blinds and corrupts, public lands are the jewels that keep wildness a part of our lives. When people experience the natural world— where human intervention is minimal at best—there’s the chance to feel connected to something greater than ourselves. Public lands allow for the experience of hunting, fishing, hiking, berry-picking, bird-counting, and simply listening and watching.

It’s these last two acts that will save our forests and rivers: the ability to listen to and watch the earth, to join with its waters and trees and the lives that depend upon them.

Noah Davis, 18, of Tipton, Pa., is a first-year student at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pa., where he studies English and plays for the basketball team. He enjoys hunting and fishing, especially fly fishing for native brook trout on small streams. His own writing has been influenced by some of his favorite authors, including Rick Bass, David James Duncan and Aldo Leopold. 

A group of young outdoor enthusiasts traveled to Washington, D.C. from across the country after winning an essay contest sponsored by Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development, a coalition of sportsmen and conservation groups led by the National Wildlife Federation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and Trout Unlimited. The contest’s theme was “The Importance of Public Lands to Me,” and the essays highlight the forests, mountains, sagebrush steppe and backcountry waters of our public lands.

Hailing from both the East and West, the winners are Jarred Kay, 17, Flagstaff, Ariz.; Haley Powell, 17, Rock Springs, Wyo.; Matthew Reilly, 18, Palmyra, Va.; Rebecca Brown, 17, Conrad, Mont.; and Noah Davis, 18, Greensburg, Pa.

Read the student’s essays below, and let us know what you think about their passion for public lands in the comments section:

A Spiritual Tradition: The Importance of Public Lands to Me – By Matthew Reilly

Modern society has convinced the outdoorsman in me that I was born too late. The rivers that I frequent are suppressed in spirit, their wonder restrained to their actual dimensions by urban sprawl, highways, and water treatment plants. When I take to the field, I thirst for the refreshing experience of new waters; but I lust for those places tucked away, out of sight, lost in nature—where their essence extends for miles through some black hole of the mind, never threatened by development or the idea that they might, in some dimension, end.

Development. My parents know what it means. Their age is told in their memories. There was a time when Charlottesville, Virginia, was not a city, but a town. Before Walmart and Sam’s Club took their anarchical perch above Route 29, farmer Matheny tended to his cows on the grassy pasture behind a blackboard fence and an illusion that things might never change. The Rivanna River, in the gulley behind Walton’s culturally obese babies, coursed higher and stronger through the rolling hills of the Piedmont, its lifeblood not yet stolen by the host of housing developments to come, its finned inhabitants still unrestrained by dams.

I hear these memories as a young child. Fear briefly enters and exits my mind. What will the world look like when I am grown? But at 8 years old, as far as I know, things don’t change.

I eventually learned my lesson.

The woodlot that was destined to be subdivided behind our newly furnished house was just large enough to be reminiscent of Maine’s “Big Woods” that I had learned of in Field & Stream. If I walked along the length of the creek bottom, in the shadows of towering ridges, I could escape with the perception of total isolation.

One spring, I happened upon a stream of moderate girth. I returned countless times in following seasons, slinging spinners and flies to feisty panfish and pickerel.

One day I was startled by the sight of two houses. Both were under construction; and their backyards had torn into the woodland veil protecting my secret gem, revealing it for all to see, eroding the banks, and slowing the current.

Sour and cynical over the soiling of my stream, I retreated into my mind to a place where rivers run free and woods seem endless, where constant human activity does not hamper the wildlife activity, and the flora is ornamental by God’s design, rather than that of a landscaper. It was from this experience that I began to crave wild lands removed from human occupation.By the time I earned my driver’s license I was a passionate fly fisherman, completely lost in the sport; and my search for new water took me to where my childhood fantasies existed in actuality—the Shenandoah National Park, where my dad had taken me to grouse hunt and trout fish at a very young age. Now, with the means to transport myself, I set off into the Blue Ridge when I yearn for the tug of a sprightly brook trout.

I drive west; and as the roads turn from pavement to gravel to dirt to nothing, and the hardwoods close in above my head as I’m intertwined into the deep, meandering hollows where the freestones run, the shackles of society and modern, complicated life disintegrate into the air.

I can fish my way through the gorge that the Rapidan River flows through in consensual ignorance. In my mind, the park does not end, but extends forever in every direction, as does the river; and the fish in its watery depths are virgin natives—refugees, like me.

When a brook trout comes to hand, my suspicion is upheld. The fiery brilliance that adorns its belly and pectorals, the olive river rock along its back, accented by strong blue and red bull’s eyes make me believe that they are a purity in nature, a stronghold of all that has been lost in the world, safeguarded, hidden in the bottom of a mountain stream.

But alas, I know this illusion is false. The trout in my hand is a species endangered by a host of manmade threats; and its range retreats into the mountaintops yearly. However, unlike the Piedmont stream of my childhood, this one is protected, forever sealed from peripheral development by 197,000 acres of federally protected land. To the brook trout, and to me, that thought is full of hope, as it is a symbol of like-minded individuals concerned with the state of the environment doing their best to secure recreational areas and wildlife havens for future generations, to preserve our spiritual haunts. In a word, it is a promise: For as long as I, and my children, live, places like Shenandoah will be protected and cherished by sportsmen.

Matthew Reilly, 18, Palmyra, Va. He is a senior at Fluvanna County High School. His father introduced him early to outdoors activities, which he says “shaped my character and ambitions.” Fly fishing is one of his passions. Matthew is an outdoor writer and photographer who produces a weekly column, http://adventuresafield.blogspot.com.