Forest visiting restrictions and time to stop and think

I think a lot about it and the opinion I formed looked surprising even to me so I decided to write about it.

We have a forest visiting resrtictions in Belarus (whole country actually) for a week already. The reason is fire hazard period. I don’t want to discuss danger now. I want to speak about personal attitude to this fact.

May-O-Days was shifted. One stage of city competitions was already cancelled. But many participants say: “We want to compete! Let’s make more competitions! Even if they are inside the city! Please!”. We moved one stage to the city forest from actual forest. Many people came to do orienteering. That’s nice and I’m happy!

But do I really want to break the restrictions? If saying personally – I don’t know. I have forests near the place in the city where I live, I won’t suffer. But what if saying in general? From organizing commitee point of view? If we’ll organize the next stage, many people will come.

I think, I don’t want to break the restrictions. Not because I’m afraid. And not even because I’m afraid to be punished. The reason is that I don’t see the sence of making an event “despite of everything”. I have a solid belief that you can’t make a positive event “despite of everything”. If the event was cancelled due some objective reason and you insist it should be organized because you want to compete – then my main advice to such sportsman is to go and train instead! Nobody is preventing you from visiting your neighbouhoods, even if the forests are closed. Why you are so crazy eager to go to the forest to compete? Yes, forest is important. It is very important, for sure. But sometimes not going to forest means care for it. Forest gives us a lot of happiness, I don’t want to stole any part of this happiness by breaking this rule. I won’t be calm if I understand that the forest is tired and doesn’t want to see the people while those people say to him “hey, forest, we’ll come and make an event for 500 people because we are eager to COMPETE!”

So this is what I wanted to say. A bit messy, but I hope that main idead is transferred to you. Thank you for your time and attention!

After I finished this hard work, I think, I’d write better if writing from scratch on a given topic and not trying to just translate the original Russian text. I’ll try next time.