Vast tracts of land in the US are explicitly open for people to wander around or camp-out wherever they want. On BLM land (much of the western US), you can stay

Vast tracts of land in the US are explicitly open for people to wander around or camp-out wherever they want. On BLM land (much of the western US), you can stay at any particular site you choose for up to two weeks before you have to move on. National Parks are completely over-run with millions of people from all over the world, it would utterly destroy the environment to not limit the number of people that access it and how they access it. They have to keep ratcheting up the restrictions because of extreme levels of demand that cannot be reasonably met. National Forests and wilderness areas are somewhere in the middle. You can buy a general pass to use them but there are local restrictions on what you can do and some popular areas require additional limited-availability permits for backcountry camping and similar to manage the number of people occupying the land at any one time. In this case, it seems like the ranger is being a bit of a dick. I’ve never been hassled in the National Forest backcountry of the Cascades in regions that require no special permit, just a cheap general pass that I buy every year that technically permits that usage. I did once get a ticket from a rural sheriff for not parking far enough off the shoulder on a forestry road when I went camping.