I'm either the victim of a pretty spectacular practical joke or a cruel ironic situation.
Let me take you back a few months to explain.
I don't know how I got on this mailing list but I started receiving surveys in the mail from the National Parks Conservation Association, not a group exactly in love with snowmobiling.
The surveys dealt, in part, with snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park. The questions asked if you were for or against snowmobiling in YNP and should sleds be allowed in the Park. Of course you know how I answered. Absolutely yes, we should be allowed to snowmobile in YNP.
I figured after I returned the first survey I would be quickly dropped from the mailing list but no, not hardly. I got three more surveys over the course of a few weeks. I filled them out exactly the same way I did the first one, figuring someone would weed me out. But it never happened. I never filled out the final survey I was sent. Maybe that would get me off the list.
However, not only am I still on the National Parks Conservation Association's mailing list, I'm now getting membership cards in the mail, which, as you can guess, include a request for a donation. I haven't returned any but am now up to my third membership card and request for money.
I really thought they would get the hint. Now I'm beginning to think the National Parks Conservation Association is continuing to hound me in what I consider a cruel turn of irony.
Or, one of my "friends" out there is somehow managing to keep my name on their mailing list.
Either way, it's annoying.
Normally, I just toss the National Parks Conservation Association mailing in the trash (no, I don't recycle them). But the last one I received, I opened and read a couple of statements that I thought I might share.
These "fun" statements include this one:
"You see, the most important aspect of our national parks is that they are open to everyone. All are welcome to visit a national park to restore the spirit, refresh the body and inspire the heart."
Everyone is welcome unless they want to, say, ride a snowmobile in Yellowstone National Park. Fortunately we can still ride in the Park, but we're going on 10 plus years of fighting for that privilege.
Here's another fun one:
"These and other American treasures of wilderness and history are threatened as never before by air and water pollution, commercial development, motorized misuse, and other dangerous threats."
No doubt some of that is probably true. However, the National Parks Conservation Association isn't making any points with me by continuing to send me annoying junk mail.
My suggestion to the National Parks Conservation Association would be to stop sending me junk mail and use that money to help fund the parks that need to hire rangers and repair infrastructure.
Here's another suggestion. Perhaps the association could stop filing lawsuits and instead send that money to any number of national parks which could use it for lots better reasons.
And if this isn't cruel irony but instead a practical joke, whoever out there did this, fess up. I want to kindly repay you. Maybe a week-long trip to a Sierra Club convention. Or tree sitting with the Earth First! crowd. I've got plenty of ideas.