We should all be relieved to hear that Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti has determined chess is forbidden in Islam. The game is a waste of time apparently, and leads to gambling. So don’t expect speed chess tournaments in Mecca anytime soon.
No word on if will actually become law, but these are crazy times in the Middle East.
Chess, of course, is played on a board divided up into 64 squares — I know there are math nerds out there who’ll insist the number of squares is really 204, but we’re not going there. Pawns are the lowliest piece on the board, able only to move dead ahead. Pawns are so wimpy their primary value is that they can become something else. When a pawn makes it all the way across the board they can be traded in for more valuable pieces that have already been captured.
There’s another thing they can do. Pawns are allowed to move diagonally, across the corners, if the move captures an opponent’s piece.
Pawns moving across corners. That’s something many of us would like to see here in the West, especially on the plains where a lot of land is inaccessible because states have not passed appropriate laws allowing citizens walk to their property. You’ve seen the chessboards on the maps, usually yellow for BLM land and white for private. In many cases the land might as well be all white as far as the pawns who own it — that’s you and me — are concerned.
BLM land is public, despite what the nut job Bundy clan keeps insisting in their tragicomic occupation in Oregon. And for the life of me, I cannot fathom the idea that someone who owns that land can’t simply walk from one square to the next, avoiding the white squares just like a pawn flexing it’s one bit of board game muscle.
I get that a vehicle is different, as is dragging out an elk. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about walking. Corners are often marked by fence lines, and when they’re not, GPS units can find them. But in Montana, where reports indicate more than 800,000 acres are locked up by the lack of a decent corner crossing law, or in Wyoming where the number is around 400,000, lawmakers haven’t seen fit to write new rules allowing access.
That doesn’t seem to be the case in every state. I haven’t tested the law in Washington (nor anywhere for that matter), but I’ve read that apple pickers cross corners freely. I’m not suggesting you go try it without doing your own research, but the fact that there is variation from state to state reminds us this remains unsettled law.
What we could really use is either a wealthy deep-pocketed access activist, or a group of rabble-rousers like the ones who challenged trespassing signs on the Bitterroot River a couple decades ago. You’ll need deep pockets because you may very well end up in court with some wealthy dude from back East on the other side. That’s what happened in the Bitterroot, but the trespassing charges didn’t stick when the rabble-rousers appeared before the local justice of the peace.
I’m not sure where a corner trespass challenge would lead. A 1979 Supreme Court ruling determined that the government did not have a right to build a road across private land to access landlocked public land, so that’s the law. But expanding that ruling to cover stepping over a corner pin seems a dangerous infringement on public property rights.
Since 1979 technology such as GPS now makes reasonable identification of corners possible. GPS will also show that a lot of the fences out there aren’t where they belong and encroach significantly on public land, but that’s another matter.
Corner crossing reform is a doable thing. It’s our land. Pawns or not, we should be able to enjoy it.
Rob Breeding writes and teaches when he’s not fishing or hunting.