OHV users should be part of solution

I recall, a few years ago, being told by smokers that they “had a right to smoke,” when I objected to their smoke being blown across my breakfast table. I concede that they had a nominal right to smoke; my reasonable objection was that their right to smoke was interfering with my right to breathe without choking.

We have passed rules that allow the minority of people who smoke to smoke without passing their personal pollution on to the rest of us.

Now the OHV users are telling me they have right to tear the countryside to pieces while they enjoy themselves. My reasonable objection is that the countryside belongs to me, too, and I have the right to enjoy it not torn to pieces by those in puerile pursuit of loud heroics in mud puddles.

I do not understand why OHV machines need to be so noisy. I can stand beside a Kenworth highway tractor with a 600-horsepower diesel engine running and barely be able to hear it. But an OHV vehicle with a 30 HP engine can be heard three valleys over. And when they run in packs, as they often do, it is quite disrupting.

The noise must be counterproductive to their stated ambitions of “enjoying nature” while they ride. In my years in the bush I have found the default condition of nature to be quietness. Only when disruptions happen is there noise. Wind in the trees, water running in the streams, birds and critters calling are natural disruptions of the quiet. Those sounds add to the experience of camping out. Raging engines and whining gears do not.

How many generations of people have lived before us without OHVs at all? Now, apparently brave men cannot possibly go out in the trees without taking their house with them and having an engine running under them. I never found it all that perilous out there. Are ya asceered ... ’er what?

I think we might do well to follow the example of smoking to find rules to allow the minority who are OHV users to continue. I think the OHVers must find a way to become part of the solution to how to equitably enjoy the new park, which is meant for all of us.

Earl Stamm

Lethbridge