Border Transgressions

Reading the newspaper over breakfast sometimes gives me indigestion and raises my blood pressure. Earlier this week, I read that there is legislation proposed in Congress to allow the border patrol to bypass environmental regulations on federal park land along the Canada border. I almost choked on my English muffin. After I cooled down a bit, I began to imagine what it might mean.

Have any of these legislators ever been to Glacier National Park? Or driven on the engineering marvel named Going-to-the-Sun Road took years to build? The road crosses the park parallel to the Canadian border and is open only during the summer months. The rest of the year it is buried under tons of snow. Now the border patrol wants to consider other roads nearer the border to better enable catching terrorists illegally crossing the border.

Have these folks ever hiked trails through magnificent passes in Glacier Park and then set out on foot across country? This land is not casual landscape that is easily transversed. The idea of a fence is ludicrous beyond words, given the terrain, or even finding someone who tripped a sensor. If I wanted to illegally enter the country, I'd pick a place in eastern Montana where the land is flat and access to existing roads is far easier. This national park is remote land, land I love, where I go so that I can breathe, thanking the foresight of people before me, who fought to have this land preserved for public use.

Nor do I think Canadians would be thrilled at the prospect of such roads - or proposed electronic sensors or fences patterned after attempts to stem illegal immigration across the Mexican border. Glacier Park is contiguous with Waterton Provincial Park in Canada, with the two parks designated as Waterton Glacier Peace Park. Anyone ask Canadians how they would consider such "border control?"

Further west, North Cascades National Park and the Okanogan National Forest lie on our border and join several provincial parks in Canada. The same international issues apply here. Access to the US would demand a person have specialized mountaineering skills and be equipped to hike through the Cascades massive terrain. It is wilderness beyond my skill level to manage, even in the prime of my life.!Again, this beautiful land is buried most of the year in snow, with the only highway far to the south, a road often closed in the winter due to avalanche danger.

Then, there is Pictured Rock National Seashore in Upper Michigan.  We were just there this fall as we circled Lake Superior and are well aware of how far it is from the province of Ontario. To slip across the border here would necessitate swimming across Lake Superior from Canada. Now I swam once in Lake Superior - just to say I had done it. I doubt I was in the water more than five minutes. The Lake's frigid waters would effectively prevent anyone from spending more than 15-20 minutes in the water before hypothermia would permanently end any possibility of entering the country.  A boat would be more feasible, but does patrolling the border for illegal boats need roads, fences, and electronic sensors? I believe boating is done on the water . . .

Closer to home, who in their right mind would cross the border from Canada's Quetico Provincial Park wilderness into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (Minnesota's beloved BWCA) with mischief in mind?
I am sure there are any number of outfitters who would  be glad to take these legislators on a little trip into the wilderness. And help them portage across the Quetico, where the portages aren't nice trails connecting one lake with another.

The idea of a road along the the Minnesota-Canada border is ridiculous and should send a person into spasmodic gut-retching laughter!  How could be it would be possible to construct a barrier here between us and Canada. Most of the border here and at Voyageurs National Park (to to the west of the BWCA) is water, a chain of many lake that eventually empties into Lake Superior. Would building a bridge along these miles of lake water that separate us from Canada do the job? It certainly has the potential of being a tourist attraction rivaling  the Keys in Florida or the bridge system that connect the Eastern Shore of Virginia with Norfolk. However I don't think the purpose of this legislation is to attract tourists to the border.

And while we are at it, what about the Great Lakes as avenues for illegal entry into the US? This great chain of inland sea is about as permeable as a border can be. And since water boundaries aren't conducive to roads or fences, electronic sensors would be the only possibility of monitoring the border.

We used to go to Texas occasionally in the winter to bird-watch along the border. Birds seem ignorant of national boundaries and there was always the possibility of seeing birds that have wandered north from Mexico. We don't go any longer. The last time we were there, we were warned to stay well away from the Rio Grande River. There are so many monitoring devices planted in park land along the Mexican-US border that we would be liable to have an little encounter with the border patrol.

Is this what we can look forward to along the Canadian border? Roads? Fences? Monitoring Devices? Or is this legislation just one more attempt to whittle away environmental protection policies? A smoke screen to hobble environmental protection of land set aside for people to enjoy - both Canadian and US citizens. Or is over-ruling policies that preserve our great national parks a way to set a precedent to make it easier for logging and oil drilling occur?

I'd call the whole thing border transgressions.