Politics & Power Quote by Ric Keller

The line reads like a brochure, and that is precisely the point. Ric Keller isn’t trying to sound lyrical about wilderness; he’s trying to make public land feel legible, practical, and broadly claimed. The long, unadorned list of activities is a politician’s version of a wide-angle shot: hiking through canoeing, it sweeps in different regions, cultures, and voting blocs. Hunters and anglers hear their traditions affirmed; hikers and campers hear lifestyle and wellness; families hear vacation. No one has to argue about “conservation” as an abstraction because the forests are framed as something you do, not something you debate.

The subtext is ownership-by-use. “Our national forests” plants a flag of collective entitlement, a quiet rebuttal to the idea that these lands are niche playgrounds for environmentalists or, conversely, commodities best “opened up” for private extraction. Keller’s rhetorical move is to turn access into consensus: if millions already rely on these places for ordinary recreation, then protecting, funding, and managing them becomes less an ideological choice than basic stewardship of shared infrastructure.

Contextually, this kind of sentence typically shows up when a lawmaker is defending budgets, opposing land transfers, or arguing for a particular management regime. It’s a soft-power argument: not “save the trees,” but “don’t take away what people already count on.” The genius is its modesty. By refusing moral grandstanding, it makes public land protection sound like common sense, and common sense is a powerful electoral language.