In 2013, Simon Tischhart and three friends cycled up to the Almmesse on the Muckenkogel near Vienna, along a gravel road they shared with cars and hikers. At the top, the hunting leaseholder confronted them and took four of them to court: they were to sign an agreement promising never to ride there again. The amount in dispute was 15,000 euros per person, with a corresponding financial risk in the event of a loss. The law was on his side—a 1975 forestry law that prohibits cycling in the forest without the owner’s permission. One might consider this a bizarre isolated case, a dispute between two stubborn individuals. But Tischhart is no isolated case. He stands where others have stood before, in a dispute that predates the mountain bike.

The snowboard was once banned, too

You only have to ask a snowboarder who’s old enough. In the 1980s, the snowboard was considered a troublemaker. Ski resorts banned it on their slopes, and lift operators refused to let riders use the lifts. Snowboarders weren’t allowed on the slopes or on the lifts. So they hiked up on foot and rode down in unsecured terrain, where no one was monitoring them.

What began as rebellion became an Olympic sport in 1998. From lawbreaker to medalist in twenty years. Mountain biking has long been recognized as a sport and has been an Olympic event since 1996. What’s still hotly contested is the right to ride in the forest wherever you want. And this right isn’t equally recognized everywhere: In Austria, a general ban on riding in the forest remains in effect to this day; there, mountain biking is in the same position snowboarding was in the 1980s. In Germany, each federal state decides for itself—sometimes generously, sometimes with the “two-meter rule,” which blocks narrow trails. In Switzerland, mountain biking is often permitted, but some cantons are tightening the restrictions and are once again closing off areas that had long been open. The same struggle, the same pattern, just a national border and a few years in between.

“No” is faster than “yes”

Bans and permits are not equally difficult to enforce. A ban costs almost nothing: a sign, an order—in many cases, no one’s approval is required. It can be implemented quickly. Permission, on the other hand, costs far more: landowners must cooperate, liability and wildlife protection must be clarified, and often the forestry department must be involved as well. Most riders ride on trails that have long existed anyway—forest roads, old hiking trails, singletrack. But even opening these up often takes years, because every meter has an owner, raises liability issues, and passes through wildlife habitats. And where new trails are being built, it takes even longer. So “no” almost always wins out. Not because it’s the more justified answer, but because it’s the cheaper, simpler, and faster one. A ban is the path of least resistance; permission is the most arduous. That’s why every new movement begins with a ban, rarely with an invitation. But the mountain biker is already riding, in this gap between prohibition and permission. To some, he’s a lawbreaker; to others, he’s ahead of his time. He’s probably both. He breaks the law and is still in the right.

Three who are all right

No one is wrong, and that’s exactly the problem. The forest owner is liable as soon as people build or ride on his property, even if he’s not at fault—a financial risk he didn’t choose for himself. The capercaillie, already rare, avoids a strip of forest over a hundred meters wide as soon as a trail runs through it. And wildlife startled at dusk loses the peace and quiet it needs to feed during the cold months. Some in the community continue to build trails secretly even where legal routes have long existed, because the approved trails are “too tame.” Each of these reasons is valid in its own right. Together, they create a dead end: one group cannot back down without facing legal consequences; another cannot wait without disappearing; and a third wants more than will ever be permitted. Such stalemates resolve themselves over time. But never quickly, and usually not to everyone’s satisfaction.

One canton is doing it the other way around

Almost everywhere, the ban comes first and permission eventually follows. The Swiss canton of Thurgau is turning that on its head. Its new fine for off-trail riding applies only where a legal trail has already been built. No trail, no fine. So anyone who has nowhere to ride legally won’t be penalized anywhere. That sounds like an administrative detail, but it’s a small revolution. Usually, the government bans first and builds later. Here, it commits to providing access first and only then imposing penalties. This doesn’t resolve all conflicts. But it removes the arbitrariness from the ban, because no one is penalized for riding on a trail they were never permitted to use in the first place. Here, permission takes precedence over the ban.

But the dispute was never just about the forest.

It’s about the question of who owns a place that no one owns alone. The forest belongs to everyone and no one, and that is precisely why every new use must first be fought for. And none of it is permanent. Trails that people have ridden on for years are closed again—sometimes to protect wildlife, sometimes due to pressure from landowners. Anyone who wants to use the forest must fight to reclaim their place time and again. That’s how it was when the first cars claimed the roads for themselves—roads that until then had belonged to pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages. That’s how it is for cyclists in the forest. Every new way of claiming a shared space initially looks like an encroachment. Yet it becomes a right as soon as enough people insist on it. At Muckenkogel, a year after the lawsuit was filed, over fifty cyclists demonstratively pushed their bikes up the mountain because pushing is allowed but riding is prohibited. An absurd sight—and precisely for that reason, an effective one.

Simon Tischhart isn’t waiting for a lenient judge. There’s no denying that he’s breaking the law. He’s just waiting for the law to prove him right—just as it proved right the snowboarder who was once chased off the slopes and who is now competing for Olympic gold. Not everyone who breaks a ban ends up being proven right. But some do, and it only becomes clear who they are once we’ve long since ridden right past them.