Spirit Moves Some to Pass on Pass

There was never a real need for theologians in the Forest Service.

The rangers had their hands full. There were plenty of hikers who needed rescuing, and trails that needed clearing, and outhouses that needed tending.

But that was a long while back.

Starting next week, rangers in the Los Padres National Forest also will have to settle the kind of cosmic questions that could keep a lamasery humming for centuries:

Can an individual encounter nature and not undergo a sacred awakening? How can you tell whether a camper is experiencing what St. Augustine called “the long, dark night of the soul,” or merely suffering intense gas pains from the dinner of trail mix and freeze-dried beef stroganoff?

And if you conclude that certain wanderers in the woods are merely having fun instead of enjoying an internal renewal, then what is the sound of one citation slapping?

Before the Adventure Pass, rangers weren’t burdened by such concerns. But the fight against the widely loathed fees for forest access has turned downright spiritual.

Next week, an anti-Adventure Pass group called the National Forest Defense Alliance will start to distribute a document suitable for display on the dashboard of cars parked near a trail head. It will be available on the Web site of a group called Free Our Forests, and at selected stores in the Ojai area, according to a spokesman for the alliance.

“NOTICE TO FOREST OFFICER,” it will read. “The occupants of this vehicle are not engaged in a recreational activity. The occupants are here in protest or are otherwise exempt from the Adventure Pass program . . . “

You may then check boxes next to the categories that you feel exempt you from payment, like: “Religious or spiritual reasons . . . Educational purposes, work-related purposes, health reasons, any purpose other than a recreational activity.”

The Adventure Pass costs $5 a day or $30 a year. Because it was designated a “recreation fee,” people doing anything other than that in the forest can’t be charged, said Greg Kappos, a Santa Barbara painter who is a leader of the National Forest Defense Alliance.

“If I decide to go on a three-day hike to a favorite spot of mine for praying and meditating, then the fact that I’m camping is irrelevant,” he said. “The purpose of my trip isn’t recreational at all.”

Kappos said he never goes into the woods just for fun. In the Bible, he pointed out, God appears in the mountains and the desert.

So can’t any walk in the woods be a spiritual experience? I asked.

Of course, Kappos answered. And you don’t have to walk for it; even a mountain biker on his way to witness some gorgeous sunset could be celebrating his place in the cycle of life.

Predictably, that isn’t the way the Forest Service sees it.

Spokeswoman Kathy Good said the agency provides spiritual exemptions from the Adventure Pass for Native Americans. But others would be heavily scrutinized.

“For the rest of us, I’d say spiritual renewal in the forest would be considered a form of recreating,” she said. “We’d ask those people to consider participating in the program.”

In other words: Pay up. Good said 40,000 warnings have been issued throughout Southern California. Tickets that carry $100 fines will start flying soon, she said.

“If they’re hiking or picnicking or fishing or riding a mountain bike, they’re recreating,” Good said. “And if a forest officer saw someone who appeared to be recreating and did not have an Adventure Pass, they’d write them a certificate of noncompliance.”

In other words: Don’t do it again. And don’t get all spiritual on us either.

The shame of it is that the debate seems so needless. The Forest Service has been dramatically underfunded for years, as people on both sides of the Adventure Pass debate agree.

Meanwhile, Congress bitterly argues about the proper use of billions of surplus dollars.

Maybe we’ll wake up one morning to read that our representatives decided to devote a sliver of the surplus to letting the people walk in the woods their tax dollars support--for free.

Would that be a religious experience, or what?

Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer. His e-mail address is: steve.chawkins@latimes.com