PREFACE
Someone once said that a good book needs no preface. The statesman failed to acknowledge that a preface is quite often an after-word. Writing is an art form. A writer is an artist. What he portrays is sometimes done in a fervor and there is not always time beforehand to fully consider the objective. Therefore, an after-word becomes a prerequisite.
Justice is swift for the writer. He never determines the literary value of his product. That decision is left, so viscerally, to the audience. It is this allocation of value that should preside over his every chain of thought. Still, no matter how conscientious a pen-wielder might be in catering to his audience, the writer should speak his mind, and not everyone is going to like what he has to say.
Like a sly priest, a writer can remove himself from radicalism, dogmas, and bigoted assumptions. Yet, there is no infallible writer, in this fact rest assured. And this word of caution to the literary critics: No one is pretending that the actual composition of this manifesto was a fervid or grueling task. I jotted it down while I was out taking orders for the original printing. This little book was not intended to be a dramatic, Pulitzer Prize winning, literary masterpiece. It was intended to be exactly what it is. An honest, straightforward communication that will entertain readers and stimulate thought. Over 60,000 sold copies of a homespun, backyard production defy the critics to blast away at the content or character of the story. You can have the most sophisticated, Ph.D.’ed, documented, bibliographied, indexed book in the world — and the audience may refuse it even an audition.
The Wilderness Rape has had its audition. People from the grassroots of the Western United States have born its completion; and if the Wilderness issue had been properly resolved, this manifesto might not have had an audience.
The Wilderness Act, when combined with the Endangered Species Act, the Wetlands Act, and a host of other radical federal land management policies, has become an economy-killing nightmare that has poisoned the dreams of too many thousands of families to count. People who are naive about the natural environment and the current ‘save the planet’ philosophy need to see the Wilderness Act for what it truly is, hence the need for more and more declarations of protest.
The success of this story was determined by people who bought orders on a prepaid basis, many of whom did not receive their books as promptly as they should have (putting it mildly). I offer my apologies for the incredible delays, along with a brief explanation.
The book suffered atrocious setbacks. The first fifteen thousand were published and delivered on time. The next ten thousand were contracted to a printer that took bankruptcy and defaulted on the deal. New orders had to be taken to offset the loss, and rebuilding the program took manifold more effort than the fledgling publisher had ever imagined.
Two benefactors helped sponsor the next twenty thousand copies, but there were still outstanding orders left unfilled. In order to go national with a title, a publisher should be capable of running fifty thousand copies or more. Hoping to achieve this, we incorporated and began searching for investors. This has proven to be an arduous and time-consuming task.
I trust that in the end, perseverance will pay, as it normally does, when an idea is on solid ground. That avowal provided, one may also be sure that without the support, patience, and fortitude of the people whose lives and heritage depend on proper management of public lands, this message would never have flourished. To the people that paid and waited patiently, I need to express my warmest, deepest thanks. Success is assured. The extent of our impact is the only determination that floats on the wing. We can come together on the Wilderness dilemma — not in the form of any more ‘compromise’, but rather, in a sensible agreement.
In reality we are again faced with an allocation of value. The federal government has determined that existing Designated Wilderness Areas have more value as such than they would if managed under multiple-use proviso. An interesting determination — as simple — and at once as complex — as any other allocation of value.
It is simple stuff. Vital stuff. Like a pristine stand of North Idaho cedar at the five thousand foot level, and a grey forest of bug-killed lodgepole at the four thousand foot level. When lightning strikes the grey forest in the dead of August and the grey forest goes up in smoke, you can kiss the resources that could have been harvested and the pristine forest good-bye. Simple stuff like that.
It is as simple as a band of backpackers who lament and wail about the abuses of public lands by ignorant visitors; and so called ‘environmental’ groups who spend millions lobbying in favor of the lock up of public lands by the federal government, when if they had spent a fraction of their time and money organizing cleanup clubs and reclamation programs, the problems would have been solved before they began. Simple stuff like that. The kind of stuff that equates to really caring.
The fear is that the cybernetic world will gobble up the remnants of the natural world, and obviously, the fear is justified. But the solution that the ‘environmental’ groups propose is the carte blanche takeover of public lands by federal authoritarians and the transfer of private lands into the hands of the federal bureaucracies.The solutions that these ‘environmental’ groups have proposed, and are proposing, is failure. Failure to communicate, failure to agree, failure to respect the lives and liberties of the inhabitants of the Western States, and failure to separate the fallacies from the realities.
It is not the trademark of a highly evolved society that they should be at each other’s throats in a desperate struggle for existential needs, and it is not a feather in the cap of the oncoming generation that they become expert at control through coercion and propaganda. If this simple story does not give you other areas of thought to roam — areas outside of the Wilderness issue — then it will not have been for lack of intent.
The Wilderness Rape was originally published in 1985, quite sometime before the Rush Limbaugh crowd became a national phenomenon. Several books, Trashing the Planet, Ecology Wars, and Trashing the Economy, among them, came out while The Wilderness Rape was strolling along as a grassroots package that needed revision, editing, and proper backing. Since the original publication, scores of coalitions have been organized to work toward slaying the elusive environmental dragons and it seems to have become more popular to throw dirt at the so-called ‘environmentalists’.
There should be a way to join the fracas with a minimum of mud slinging, but I’m not ashamed to be throwing dirt where the dirt is due. The ‘silent majority’ seems to be reluctant to join either one camp or the other. Obviously mainstream America is hoping for an intelligent compromise, but that’s not going to happen in the foreseeable future. There are too many war zones in the way of intelligent solutions. The intent of the revised/amended edition of Wilderness Rape is to shed some practical light on these and many other dilemmas.
This book has been around the Intermountain West with limited availability and in relative obscurity, but is still waltzing along and may continue to waltz for many more years. Hopefully, the band will strike up a two-step that will dance us into the national markets. The passage titled A Slight Sojourn should cast a little light on some of the ominous moral and financial battles an individual may expect to encounter when going up against the publishing industry’s big guns. I do my best to make counter measures against the barrage of environmental propaganda that has saturated the media markets, and hope you enjoy the story.
One more note on the side might be warranted. Various buyers questioned the wisdom of using a nude woman as a carriage for the narratives, and voiced mild objection to the use of sexual symbolism on the back cover. The female protagonist symbolizes Mother Nature. She is there to entice readers who might be bored with facts, figures, statistics and political opinions. Though more sophisticated minds might reject such trickery, in this case, Mother Nature may be given credit for Her share of the success. The Western States have made a lot of progress since the original publication. Perhaps Mother Nature had something to do with that as well.
So, as I close this preface, which is really an afterthought, I want to tip my hat to you, the reader, and offer my appreciation for your patronage. May life grant you courage, wisdom, goodness and plenty. May we all live, love, and prosper in a free society.
Jack Wayne Chappell Spring, 2002
And now . . . A word from our sponsors . . .
Under the heading of coming attractions, Futurity Arts West Company would like to take this opportunity to chuckle heartily at the boys on Madison Avenue who have apparently been assigned their political tasks by the principals of the multinational media companies who employ them. If so, then no matter how wonderful or meritorious a literary work might be, if it doesn’t fit the political agenda that is being actively promoted from the top, it’s dead on arrival in New York. The job of the so-called ‘literary establishment’ could more often be to bury a wonderful manuscript than to see that the work is nationally published. With the advent of the Internet, they no longer have a strangle hold on the markets and from here on out, may the freedom of the press win the day.
The Bridleman is an enchanting story of Western life, with the violent reality of sudden death; the miracle and the iron passion that love fuses together. Composed of the higher quality literature that audiences of this age are seeking out, publication day will be the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.
The first lines of this novel were laid down in 1972. Employed as a buckaroo in Nevada, and living in a teepee while ranging with a chuck wagon crew from early spring until late fall of each year, Jack Wayne Chappell began this classic tale with pen and ink, under the light from a Coleman lantern. Sixteen years later, the first rough draft was completed; seven hundred typewritten pages taken from many thousands of sheets of hand written copy. Over thirty years have slipped by. Everything has changed, including the markets. If a great novel ages like a great wine, ours should be one of the best around.
Critics have called The Bridleman a monumental portrayal of a way of life that most people don’t even know exists. Exciting, powerful, masterfully written and of timeless value, this novel will take its audience to a world of beauty, danger, romance, and reality. The Bridleman is not an escape; it is an explosive adventure, from the pen of a guardian of the art.
Another novel, entitled Angels Don’t Sleep, is a lovable, huggable, odyssey — an excursion into a philosophical wonderland. The First Edition will be collector’s copies, signed in the order they are sold. Standard trade hardcover copies should have been available in bookstores during the late 80’s. Back then the boys on Madison Avenue were blocking the road. But now the Internet has given everyone access to the markets, so we hope to become a popular site. We also hope that Angels Don’t Sleep will be coming soon. How soon depends upon how many people are willing to fight the war. (Praise the Lord, pass the ammunition, and visit our Home Page on the Internet.)
Soon you may join the introverted, extroverted, psyched-up and spaced-out villainous hero in a journey that gallops through the galaxies of the human mind, then be ready to plant your feet on solid ground. This novel is a grand exploration of the world’s most tangled emotional and intellectual traps and escapes, written with a simplicity that hooks you from the first page, then leads you through a land of romantic wilderness heretofore un-trod. Angels Don’t Sleep breaks all the rules while daring to tell the untellable story of a heretic’s search for an eternal love. Fun. Bold. Naked. Unafraid.
The good people at Futurity Arts West Company wish to provide you with the highest quality of literature at the most reasonable price. And here to be honest, we add this bit of information: When The Wilderness Rape was first published, The Editors consisted of the author, an apprentice editor, and a PC. Not much attention was paid to details until after 40,000 copies had been printed and sold. But between printing there is time for retrospection, so this amended edition has been handled more carefully. Time was taken to correct mistakes, to make semantic breastworks, and, weeeeell, the original copy editing was practically non-existent. Even now, help is scarce, so we have done our best and will be improving if we are so fortunate as to step into the national markets.
It has been intimated that yesterday’s publishing industry was abandoning the art. Here, unashamed of our grassroots beginning, we put the art of literature on a pedestal. If you appreciate what we have tried to do for you, the customer, then please compliment our effort by encouraging your children to master the art of experiencing quality literature. Literature without a well-educated audience is not literature at all, for the art is only in the mind of the audience.
To master any art, we must first learn to serve the art. At Futurity Arts West Company, serving the art is more than a grand intention. It is an uncompromising promise. That vow proclaimed, ending comments about coming attractions is nearly complete. There are a couple of more surprising novels we have on our shelf. A political satire entitled ‘The Day The Toilet Paper Died’ and another ‘The Freedom Between Your Ears’. We are working full time to make these good books available over the Net. Enter the next phase of the telling. With appreciation,
THE EDITORS
The Wilderness Rape
a story
Sheets of dust in an evening storm moved like eerie shadows, casting a glowing red aura over the eternal desert. The splendid glow of the crimson sun was drowned in a sea of sand; not a howling, raging wind, but a quick, strong shift of sky. Horses on a distant slope abandoned their feed to run for the shelter of the creek bank, manes and tails flying.
A spray of thick, brown raindrops go before the storm and pelt against the wall of an old log cabin in the valley of the long grass, then the valley is engulfed by the aura, and the raindrops die. Winds whisper like spirits of ancient times as the sand sifts along the grooves between the logs of the cabin; a pulsating rain of powdered earth drifts against the window pane; willows by the stream bow low in the waning light, and fade into oblivion.
In the cabin, the light is a flow of golden rays that cannot cut the solitude. The fireplace murmurs back at the wind with its wavering flames and dull red glowing coals. The sheepskin rug before the fireplace affords a soft retreat for the pensive young woman who stretches herself, catlike, before the fire. There is an almost inaudible hum from the recorder as the long-playing reels trace the sounds inside the room. When she speaks, the machine listens . . . .
‘An ocean of environmental propaganda has come and gone this century past. Doomsday soothsayers, free enterprise optimists, deep ecology priests and aging James Watt supporters bantering, arguing, legislating, and hawking their wares to a paying public. Perhaps America was naive and unsuspecting at first. These days the public is suspicious — of everything. Time is short for the individual but indefinite for the human race. And there are more than a few “deep ecologists” who are quite surprised, perhaps even disappointed, that human beings have survived to drink a toast to the coming of the twenty-first century.’
The young woman waited out the passing of a musical onset of wind, rain, and sand, all playing parts to a ballad-like operetta on the roof of the cabin. The storm gave her comfort and courage as well as brief respites, during which intervals she was able to better shape her thesis. When the stormy ballad was over, she commenced her announcements to the recording machine, a solo actress upon a familiar stage . . .
‘There is much to be said about the way our lives have changed in the last hundred years. So much, in fact, that one little recording shall hardly pose a summary. A century ago not many individuals were stressed about the environment, not many were concerned about pollutants. Scarcely a white man’s soul might have lamented the passing of thirty million buffalo that once roamed the plains from Canada to Texas.
A century later one can easily nod to Alvin Toffler’s predictions in his dissertation titled Future Shock. (*Cf. your local library.) Humanity has progressed from the horse and buggy era to the historical landing on the moon. And time, as we understand it, races away like The Starship Enterprise, showing us events and places “where no man has gone before.”
‘How many of you who give audience to this humble recording can remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and the days when people were frantically storing food and water in their basements, millions convinced that the end of the world was at hand? And yet, here we all are, still alive, still in debt, and waiting with eyes that sparkle at the stars, confident that the fragile Homo Sapiens will live to drink that toast to the coming miraculous world . . . And speaking of toasting, let me pour one for myself and raise my glass to your thoughtfulness, in hopes that my efforts here will have an enduring effect.’
She shed her clothing, for the fire was warm, the sheepskin against her body a precious luxury. Bourbon on ice made it perfect for her. She mixed her drink tall and strong, for the sake of robust longevity. She was alone in the wilderness. She feared no one. She needed no one. The bourbon warmed her inside as the fire without.
‘I want to tell you some stories,’ she said, ‘and I hope that you can make the pieces fit together by the time my presentation is concluded . . . I don’t want to bore you with heavy rhetoric and tedious inquisition. I just want to keep you awake throughout my dissertation, and I hope to bait you somewhat, with my stories. They are my testimony to a way of life that I can’t forsake, and hope to leave as my legacy.
Bear with me through stories that you don’t immediately correlate. And, when considering facts and figures, remember that there are plenty of generalities, because percentages and statistics can easily be manipulated to favor one side or the other, so please keep that in mind. Relevance is what counts. My stories are all tied to a specific point in this protest. I want to tell you real life stories, but I also need to lay a foundation for a structure that can only be built in the heart. This is one conservationist’s manifesto in protest of legislation that has been sponsored by people who claim to be ‘environmentalists’ when the truth is quite a little more raw.
‘Here’s a little adventure story about wild horses,’ she drew back the bolt to a door in her mind that held adventures untold, ‘wild horses, and a man named John . . .’
‘John and Pete were Oregon buckaroos, ragged, rowdy, and always hunting sport. I rode with them one spring on a trip I made through southeastern Oregon, and it was one of the happiest times that I can recall. We were moving cattle to the mountains for the summer, and as we gathered the Catlow Basin, we were always on the lookout for wild horses to run.
A twenty-mile-long rim rose on the eastern border of the valley, and breaks came down the rim from the mesa high above. Though the rim was sheer, it ran a shifting, broken line, and wherever a break came down, many game trails cut through and stretched to the valley floor. Deer, antelope, and mustangs that wintered on top of the mesa liked to come down the breaks to feed on the early growth of forbs and cheat grass on the slope below the rim.
If it happened that a couple of buckaroos could cut off a little bunch of mustangs by blocking their flight back up the break, then they’d be hemmed under the sheer rimrock, and, not knowing the way the land lay in the valley, they’d be easy picking. Of course, we looked sharp for this type of deal, and one morning as we set out for our day’s ride, we ran into a chance worth taking.
When we saw the wild horses on the slope below Dry Creek Draw, nobody said a word. Old man Miller’s thoroughbred stud had sired wild horses in this country, and some of them made good saddle horses. This bunch we knew, and the big brown stud was sure a decent type, not inbred at all. His colts were what we wanted, for the young ones would tame right down. We had the jump on this bunch, and the three of us shook down our lass-ropes* as we quirted our horses into a high lope, making to cut the wild bunch off from the draw. If they made the top, they’d be on a rocky flat where we wouldn’t have a chance at catching them. The wild bunch spotted us then, and they bolted for the draw. (*In southeastern Oregon, northern Nevada, and southwestern Idaho, buckaroo lingo makes use of the term “lass” rather than “lasso”.)
John was up on Easter, his favorite outside horse, one that had been a wild horse as well when he was a colt. They left Pete and I behind as they whipped up the trail to cut the mustangs back into the rimrock. Being behind, we fell past the drag of the mustangs, and blocked two game trails that went out over the breaks in the rim. We’d all had our pick of that bunch of horses, and a two-year-old pinto looked like the best one.
John got his job done, and when the mustangs turned, we had them cold. With all trails blocked, they ran back down the draw, and John disappeared in a stand of juniper trees while Pete and I fell in ahead of the mustangs to head them off again. A twenty-foot cutbank kept them from crossing the dry creekbed, and it ran for a quarter of a mile, forcing the mustangs right at Pete and me. The brown stud had his lead mare flat out in front, but she smelled out the trap, and broke back too soon.
We could have lassed the brown stallion right then, as he stalled, trying to fight the lead mare back. But we knew he’d be rank, and would never be trustworthy. We wanted young stuff to trade off as saddle horses, and not the broom-tailed types, either; we wanted the fleet-hoofed pinto with the streak of thoroughbred in him from his ranch-raised grandsire.
The mustangs wheeled, then split up and took through the rocks, making toward the mesa, trails or no trails. It was all Pete and I could do to haze the pinto back against the cutbank. He panicked, and turned up the trail. We scrambled like hellions to beat him back the other way, but when he turned again, he had us beat, and he knew it. He stretched out down that dry creek bank, sailing like a leaf in a gale.
Pete and I were out of the race, but John, crafty as a cougar, had spurred his horse through the junipers, and into the creekbed. With Easter scattering sand in the air behind them, they tore down the draw. Totally unaware of the danger below him, the pinto mustang was running neck and neck on the creek bank twenty feet above. When a wide trail came up out of the sandy bottom, Easter bounded to the top, and a rawhide lass-rope whirled in the air.
The pinto saw the trap, and he veered fast away, but the loop sailed out, and the slack sang tight. Dust ripped up from the ground in puffs where the pinto struck as he pitched into the sky, and back to the ground. His jaws flew open, and he let out a scream! With ears pinned flat back, with his long mane flying, he was lassed at the end of a rawhide reata, and his front feet flailed out, punching holes in the Oregon wind!’
* * *
“The adventure in the breaks of the Oregon wilderness is a treasure that can never be stolen. I’ll have that moment until I die, and maybe longer — no man can take it from me. But what we did back then is a serious crime today. Today, if we were caught running wild horses, we would be fined and imprisoned. We would be evil, you see, for our cruelty to animals, and we would be displayed in the papers as criminals against society. Criminals and outcasts, locked away behind a concrete wall. We would be labeled: heartless cowboys who can’t care about animals unless they can be ridden on top of, put on as attire, or eaten for dinner. Were that the case, I suppose you could call us criminally insane.
* * * *
‘Pantheism seems to have broken out on quite a large scale. The propaganda that goes out makes the Western people ruthless exploiters with no conscience and no remorse. Despoilers of ranges, and levelers of forests.
Considering that our livelihoods depend on the quality and volume of our resources, why would we want to “exploit” the resources that our future depends on? Wise resource management and conservation are the Westerner’s chief concerns. For generations our lives have revolved around conservation of natural resources. And there are none more competent or more capable of preserving the Western way of life than the people who make the West their home.
But what the enviro-cults preach is the opposite. And they broadcast their propaganda very effectively. They’ve had a stack of New York Times bestsellers as high as your cabin roof. Major motion pictures with preservationist themes too numerous to count. (The Bear, Free Willy, Star Trek The Motion Picture, Dances With Wolves, the list goes on and on.) Gold records on the wall like John Denver’s Colorado Rocky Mountain High which sold millions of people into sympathy with the Sierra Club and put millions of dollars in the bank. Hollywood is overrun with enviro-nuts, most of them plugging their occult philosophies in all forms of mainstream entertainment. If you cut down a tree, you’re a murderer. If you graze cattle on the range, you’re a destroyer.
Disregarding the fact that loggers and stockmen depend on the quality, volume, and renewal of resources to provide for their families generation after generation, the environmental sludge comes oozing into the communications pipelines like pollution into the Boston Harbor. (The Audubon Society hasn’t cleaned up the Boston Harbor yet, but here they come telling us how to “save” the Western United States.)
Yes, some of our sainted industrialists have abused the land. Of this there is no doubt. Yes, a lot of land is being gobbled up for development, mostly farmland, a circumstance worthy of lament. Not too long ago I had dinner in Elkhorn Valley, Idaho. The restaurant was in the middle of a condo-infested resort area; the condos, shopping mall and hotels that surrounded the restaurant were located in what once was a beautiful meadow where I had wrangled horses when I was a child. How many more beautiful meadows are going to be bulldozed and converted to resorts with golf courses and parking lots? Quite a few. You can put that in the bank.
I mused at the hypocrisy of a certain computer corporation, which aligns itself firmly with the preservationist crowd. Not far out of Santa Cruz, California, they were building their gigantic corporate headquarters squarely on top of the best agricultural ground in the area.
Farmers have been selling out to developers by the droves. Environmentalists are building redwood houses and parking their BMWs in their twin garages right next to their cross-country skiing gear and their backpacks filled with granola bars. The message is very clear:
“Give us your land, give us your grazing rights, give us your farm ground, give us your unceasing labor, and surrender your entire resource base to our whims, but make sure you keep the shelves in the grocery stores full and running over. Don’t fell any timber, but supply us with all the lumber we need. Shut down your mines, but keep building BMWs. Don’t develop Elkhorn valley, but give us a time share condo close to a Designated Wilderness Area. Shut down those dirty pulp mills, and make damned sure there’s enough paper to print up another million copies of Backpacker Magazine.”
‘I hate to laugh about so stern a subject as saving the planet, but something is a little screwy here, and Dixie Lee Ray’s question, “Who speaks for science?” (*Cf. Trashing The Planet, your local library) has never been more applicable than it is today. If you’ll read a few scientifically accurate books, you’ll discover that some of the world’s most learned economists and sociologists have stressed the need for reasonable autonomy in regionally based governments, and you’ll be able to critique the reasons why.
Do you need more proof of the injustice of centralized authority than the historic events of this century past? The Third Reich and the destruction of Europe, the War in Vietnam with all its ignominious atrocities, the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath. Stalin’s reign of terror. Mussolini, the despot. Dozens of others could be evaluated and their sources traced. If you study the great calamities of nations past and present, you’ll find a common evil — centralized authoritarian government.
So this recording hopes to be more than just another environmental manifesto. There should be a common man’s guide to conquering authoritarianism as well as creating a real and lasting ecological balance. How are men to accomplish this without a carefully cultivated and reality based field of literature?
The task brings many questions to the fore, even a discussion of reality itself must be brought to bear as there are so many incredible arguments about man’s very presence on Earth; where he came from, what his role is, what purpose nature has intended him to serve.
But not here and not now. Before we question the stately modern theories of man’s significance or non-significance, before we discuss at length the proposition that reality is definable or indefinable, I should throw in a small anecdote to lighten the mood.’
She stretched herself, unwinding a bit before she resumed her communiqué . . . ‘I’ll tell you a story about a hardpan knoll in the Utah desert.
* * *
‘There was a hardpan knoll, which, with the passing of a windstorm, had collected a cover of sand. As the knoll aged, pioneer grasses grew out of the sand and covered up the knoll, building humus over quite a period of time. Perennial grasses, seeded by more wind and a few grazing animals, took over the humus soil for many years until a plague of Mormon Crickets reduced the perennials to ground level two years running.
The next year was very dry, and when lightning struck the hardpan knoll, the perennial grass burnt out before photosynthesis could refurbish the plants. A three-day wind blew away ashes and sand. A few stems of rabbit brush came up on the knoll, and these, along with a weak sprinkling of pioneer grasses, held on to the sparse covering of the hardpan knoll. After a few years, the humus built up, and the plants began to prosper once again. Seeds of bouteloua gracilis (which is a fancy name for blue grama grass) came in on the wind, and soon there was a stand. Buffalo came along next, and drove the grama grass out. Annuals took over once more, and a few perennial plants, like sage and rye grass, germinated and grew.
A hundred years later, a cowboy came by, driving a small bunch of cattle. Seeing a black storm brewing on the skyline, he herded his cattle into a brush patch fifty yards away from the hardpan knoll. When the storm came in, there were hailstones the size of golf balls pounding the struggling soils on the hardpan knoll for more than an hour.
When the storm went away, the hardpan knoll was a pulverized shambles, and the soils went washing off the knoll to the toe of the slope, where they lodged, creating a long, deep bed of organic matter and sand.
The cowboy mused at the hardpan knoll, and went his way. The next spring he returned with a load of salt on his packhorse, and to his surprise, a wild-eyed environmentalist was conducting a tour of the hardpan knoll. There was a botanist from Lansing, a paleontologist from Boston, and a journalist from New York.
“What we have here,” said the botanist, “is the literal evidence of the devastating effect of overgrazing on the environment.”
“This is what we call desert pavement,” said the paleontologist. “You can see that the damage was recently inflicted. A classic case of overgrazing, followed by a severe rainstorm. Nature will need a century of preservation to repair this unholy mess!”
I reckon it’s a hardpan knoll, not pavement, thought the cowboy, and it weren’t overgrazed, and it weren’t a rainstorm. It were a hailstorm, and I seen it, fer I was hunkered under my saddle blankets, only fifty yards away.
But the botanist was talking about the lecture he was planning for the esoteric club in Lansing, the paleontologist was talking about his doctorate degree, and the journalist was taking pictures of the hardpan knoll for the paper in New York.
So the cowboy kept his peace, and when the city slickers were gone, he set his salt blocks out on top of the hardpan knoll.
Every deer, every cow, every antelope, desert bighorn, and wild horse in the area began to laze for salt on top of the hardpan knoll, and soon there built up a considerable layer of manure. When the salt blocks were gone, the cowboy put out new ones, on a different section of the knoll. Soon the knoll had collected many, many feces, and the cowboy changed his salt ground.
The next year, a crop of hardy pioneer grasses covered the hardpan knoll from one end to the other, and humus was rapidly collecting. When the cowboy rode by, he smiled as he looked at the country, and admired the view. Along the trail home, he happened again onto the botanist, the paleontologist, and the journalist. They were talking about the devastating effect of dirt biking on the fragile desert floor. The scientists were making calculations and talking about their federal grant for more studies. The journalist was taking pictures as fast as she could snap them.
As the cowboy unsaddled his horse that evening, he thought about his experience, and spoke to the animal. “You know, Old Red,” he said to his horse, “you buy them people books and you send them to school. And what the hell do they do? They eat the covers.”’
‘Now of course, this anecdote was a product of my imagination,’ she smiled as she lazed on the rug, ‘and I don’t mean to try and tell you if anything of this nature has ever actually happened. But the next time you hear some city-bred environmentalist raving about the devastation of the ranges, perhaps you should take it with a grain of salt . . .
* * *
‘Yes, that story was for your amusement, but I’m going to tell you some stories that are for real, so stay with me. Fun we may have, but the Wilderness Rape is a serious matter.
So much depends on what kind of information is distributed across our nation and around the world, that even if the story about the hardpan knoll was anecdotal, I can assure you that the predicament of the American cowboy is just as real as the predicament of every small business in America.
Although this domestic breed of environmental socialism has been gaining by leaps and bounds, the problem is not restricted to America the beautiful. In fact, the ideology was spawned, by and large, on foreign shores. The cancer is spreading.
And how does anyone expect the cowboy ¾ whose knowledge of grasslands is great, but whose communications skills are trifling — how could anyone expect him to defend himself against the wild-eyed environmentalist, the botanist, and the paleontologist whose tidings are heralded by the mega-media?
America is alleged to be a capitalistic nation but the bureaucracies control over a third of the land on this continent. There is not one, single, solitary elected representative in the Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. Forest Service, and they have power over regions that make up over a third of the land mass of our country. This is democracy? This is capitalism? I was confused about what type of rodeo we are running here, so I turned to the dictionary for help.
‘In Webster’s Dictionary where the word capitalism means: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decisions rather than by state control, and by prices, production and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
The same dictionary describes socialism as: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods; a system of society or group-living in which there is no private property.
And, as an aside, the definition of social democracy: a political movement advocating a gradual and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism by democratic means.
Still a further note, the definition of democratic centralism: a principle of communist party organization in which party members participate in policy discussions and elections at all levels but are required to follow decisions made ultimately at higher levels.
America is also alleged to be a republic, so to investigate that meaning, republic equals: a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote, and is exercised by a body of officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.
‘When the law is so powerfully influenced by propaganda that the truth is suppressed, when the law becomes so corrupt that it is used as a justification of authoritarian control, what good can come from the republic?
When Ben Franklin left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, a reporter asked him what type of system the founders had brought forth. He replied, “We have given you a constitutional republic. Let us hope that you can keep it.” (*Cf. The autobiography of Ben Franklin, your local library.)
A short two hundred years later, can you tell me which definition fits America best? The Federalist Papers were published in the late 1770s with the aim of promoting the ratification of the American Constitution. But there is a clearly intended separation of powers between federal and state government, to wit:
THE POWERS NOT DELEGATED TO THE UNITED STATES BY THE CONSTITUTION, NOR PROHIBITED BY IT TO THE STATES, ARE RESERVED TO THE STATES RESPECTIVELY, OR TO THE PEOPLE.
(*Article X, U.S. Constitution)
‘Under Article Ten, the states are to retain certain autonomy. The actual question of ‘ownership’ of public lands is assuredly open, yet, at the whim of the plethora of bureaucracies that are entrenched in America’s government today, the guaranteed autonomy of the respective states is being swept away. If Al Gore (More popularly known as “The O-zone Man” out here) had been elected in the year 2000, it is altogether likely that the radical environmentalists would have put a sudden end to this western way of life. The politics of self-ingratiating characters in power typify the big government mentality that has been robbing the majority of their capacity to think and act as free Individuals. Thank God and George W. Bush, we dodged a bullet. Yet, the bureaucracies are bloated as ever, and the movement toward a limited government must certainly gather much more steam. Make hay while the sun shines, girls, we might not get another chance. The further we can push back the Feds the brighter the future will look.
Very often I’ll be making reference to “the Feds”. Since some people are confused by this reference, allow me to clarify. When I talk about the “Feds” herein, I am not referring to the Federal Reserve System (often called “The Fed”) nor am I attempting to mock the good intentions of the creators of the Constitution (who were in favor of federalist government that recognizes states’ rights). When I mention the Feds in a derogatory manner, I am NOT talking about the good men and women in government who have fought the good fight to uphold the Constitution. I am talking about bureaucratic authoritarianism — people in power who have apparently become obsessed with destroying the American Constitution and have promoted a socialist agenda at the federal level that eliminates the rights of individuals.
One bright observer noted that the problem with democracy is that certain factions perceive that they can make themselves rich and powerful by voting themselves funds from the public coffers.
And baby, what I mean to tell you, there is a thundering herd of rich and powerful “environmentalists” in our midst who have been voting you and I right into bankruptcy. According to the calculations of Ron Arnold and Alan Gotlieb of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise in Bellevue, Washington, the top twenty environmental groups have over two billion dollars at their disposal. They are poised to lock up seven hundred forty million acres of public land!
Will that be the end of their takings? Not hardly. They’re coming right in after the deeded land. They’ve been doing so for decades, only on a much smaller scale than their taking over the public lands. I’ll cite some prominent examples later in my talk. But for now, think about (if you can stretch your imagination that far) the incredible amount of waste that goes on out here. Karl Marx would eat his heart out trying to compete with the onslaught of American socialism that we’re seeing out west today. The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution it speaks quite literally and does not speak to the question of actual “ownership” of so-called ‘federal lands’. Who holds the government accountable, and who can bend their iron will? Bureaucratism in both state and federal government will trample on the Constitution every day if you and I will sit idly by and allow this to happen.
What is needed is a philosophy that rejects both socialism and capitalism as viable “forms of government”. In reality, neither “form of government” has ever worked. Both forms employ capital, but look who has control of the capital. The international royal families monopolize the capital in both (so-called) socialist nations and (so-called) capitalist nations. True capitalism is not a “form of government”. In fact, true capitalism has never been realized and is purely idealistic. What pro-free enterprise philosophers hope for is laissez faire capitalism, which means:
the theory or system of government that upholds the autonomous character of the economic order, believing that government should intervene as little as possible in the direction of economic affairs.
‘We are a far cry from experiencing laissez faire capitalism in America today. The trend, in fact, has veered radically toward socialism, and the division of rights on public lands makes great arguments for both political philosophies. On the left, the aim is to socialize all private property, on the right the aim is to privatize all public property. Both ideologies leave much to be desired.
The idea that the Federal Government should auction off the public lands is an idea whose time will probably never come. For a lot of good reasons. I have a pet reason for opposing that particular idea, but before I spring my pet from its cage, maybe a little background on the subject will make my pet more cuddly.
Many people don’t realize that public lands total somewhere near 740,000,000 (seven hundred forty million) acres, which amounts to over a third of the land mass of the U.S. But in actual surface area, public land totals much more than 740 million acres, because the current surveys are measured in aerial square miles. Photographed from the air, one section of mountain land is mapped as if the land was flat and is therefore calculated at the standard 640 acres per square mile. Problem being, the mountains are not flat.
A section (640 acres) of mountain-land, is often much closer to 1800 surface acres. Many times a mountainous section has even more than eighteen hundred acres. So the calculated “one third” of the continental U.S. is in reality much, much more, perhaps even closer to two thirds of the U.S. land mass. Probably somewhere near two billion actual surface acres. No one seems to have calculated any approximation of how many surface acres there are. A sweetheart of a girl named Cindy Crisler at the U.S. Geological Survey delved into the matter and was surprised by the result of her investigation, “We don’t have that statistic,” she said “and we don’t know of anyone who does.”
Well, as much as those boys and girls have been paid over the years, they certainly should make that statistic available. In your mind’s eye, picture Idaho as comparable to the state of Texas in actual surface acres. You can bet a buck or three that resources on public lands represent better than half this nation’s wealth. That much value is, quite frankly, incalculable. Resources on these lands can impact international markets. Using a little imagination you can easily see why the international socialists would like to keep the land on ice, and how some giant corporations are able to manipulate the ‘designated’ areas to benefit themselves. (Corner the market by putting the competition on ice.)
To give you a clear example of how this works, take Slick Willy’s lock-up of the Grande Staircase of the Escalante. News stories indicated that his good buddy over in Indonesia has a powerful grip on the international market for coal. Buddy Boy bundles up a few million for his friends in the Clinton White House, and Presto! We got shafted with another ridiculous National Monument. The immeasurable amount of wealth in Utah’s coal resources are bundled up in moth balls under the Grande Escalante scam. Our former (thank God and Greyhound he’s gone) President Clinton successfully ingratiated himself to the rich elite class of Hollywood philanthropists while Utah and Colorado took it in the shorts! Again. Well, that’s not all, not by a long shot. Here’s to you, Hollywood. Your hero slapped a moratorium on our forest roads and during his last year in office a reported total of 7,259,159 acres of America’s public lands burned to the ground. Idaho lost the most when 1,282,918 acres were wiped out by fire. Thanks a lot, Willy. Say hello to Barbara Striesand and Alec Baldwin for us. (*See the US Government National Interagency Fire Center web site.)
Another popular ploy for the giant corporations is to write huge checks to the environmental collectives in order to keep them off their backs. The “quid pro quo” works like this. Any super rich giant corporation can write a huge check to the Sierra Club or any other fiendish pack of enviro-looters, thereby assuring that their corporations are left alone while the Hollywood eco-nuts go about whacking the heads off the small companies and the family businesses that buy timber or grazing from public lands. This is what we call “greenmail”. Works just like blackmail, only it’s green.
‘Before the hype about a balanced budget amendment, news reports held that “we” (American taxpayers) owed over four trillion dollars to somebody. If you ask the average citizen “to whom do we owe the four trillion?” you’ll get very few straight answers. I get the impression that most people have no clear concept of what the “national debt” is.
The national debt is the amount owed to whoever owns the T-bills and bonds issued by the Treasury Department, sold on the international market, due and payable upon maturity. The collateral is America the beautiful. Notice how the government runs up the debt by spending trillions on projects that range from warfare to welfare. To whom do we owe all the cash required to pay for this bureaucratic nightmare?
Back in 1994, the Federal Reserve Bank had somewhere near 400 billion dollars worth of U.S. Treasury securities. What it is today, I don’t know, but that isn’t too important in this segment. What’s important is getting things straightened out and working to put a better system in place. So who owns the Federal Reserve Bank? Member banks, you say. Who owns controlling interest in the member banks, and who owns the rest of the trillions U.S. Treasury securities? I asked a Rep from the Federal Reserve Bank. “Big institutions,” he said.
“Like the Rockefeller Foundation and the international bankers?” I inquired.
“Yes,” he averred, “and foreign interests, and huge investment firms. Anybody in the world can buy America. It’s a safe investment.”
“Any foreign entity can buy an I.O.U. in the form of T-bills and bonds from the U.S. Treasury Department, and the American taxpayer is forced to pay off?”
“True.”
* * *
‘Certainly you’ve heard about the “surplus” of funds that the government couldn’t quite figure out how to spend, but don’t, repeat, do not be confused or deceived into thinking that the national debt has gone away. Normally when the invoice for interest and principal on T-bills and bonds is due, the Treasury Department has merely re-issued more T-bills and Bonds, creating new debt that is used to dispatch the old. So, instead of getting smaller, the national debt has grown. The government has now collected so much from the taxpayers that they were able to make the payments and have money left over. Give the Congress and the White House a round of applause. There are many two-fisted Members of Congress who have fought hard to enact the Balanced Budget Amendment. Many members of the Congress are taking a hard line in advocating that paying off the national debt is the right way to go and many a patriot is working toward the day that the Feds will stop mortgaging America. The job is a long ways from being done. The Feds had put us too far into the hole to bail out overnight. Many factions want to keep those trillions of dollars rolling in and out of one another’s pockets. It behooves you and I to put enough pressure on our government that the debt continues to go down instead of up. Meanwhile, back at the ranch ¾
‘My cuddly pet problem comes in here. Does anyone really believe that if the federal lands were sold, that the U.S. government would actually pay the national debt? If you believe that, maybe I could sell you some ocean front property in downtown Denver. You think they’d pay off the U.S. Treasury securities and eliminate our taxes? Fat Chance. They’d be more likely to go on another spending spree and laugh in our faces. Yes, there are some good men and women in Washington D.C. who would fight to keep that from happening, but not nearly enough. So before we allow the government to auction off half the American continent to the highest bidder, ask yourself who owns the land and who would get the money if the land were sold.
American citizens now own the public lands, at least idealistically. But would American citizens get the money if the land were sold? No. The government might very easily abscond with the money. They might abscond with the money, squander the money, and send us a bill. Do you have any compelling reason to believe otherwise? I don’t. We’ve come a long ways toward restoring sanity at the federal level, but we’re not there yet. Not by a long shot.
The federal government should cede the management or title to public lands over to the individual states, and simply bow out. They’ve already screwed up their own affairs to the point where reparation and atonement may take an act of God. So why suggest something as ridiculous as letting them auction off our heritage and our future? To hell with the money, keep the land. The money is fiat currency. The collateral is our land.
¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾
‘And so my fellow Americans,
ask not if socialism in government is selling you into slavery,
ask what you can do to stop it.’
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‘One mainstay of socialism is that the government owns the land. The individual has no rights unless the government bequeaths those rights and even then the individual’s rights are subject to change on the bureaucratic whim of the moment. Did you read in the papers about the John Pozgai affair? You should have. He went to prison for hauling fill dirt onto his own deeded land. Hard to believe? True story.
Once a year some run-off water flowed through a low place on his acreage. A previous owner had left some old junk cars and some old junk tires that backed up some of the water for part of the year, creating a part time mini-marsh. A few tulles, bulrushes and other weeds had grown there. John Pozgai hauled off the old junk cars and tires, then hauled in fill dirt. The Feds charged him with acting in violation of the Wetlands Protection Act, convicted him of a felony, and threw him in prison! Sound preposterous? True story. Documented case. So are you too tired to fight? Look out brother, you’re next.
The Bedke family out in Southern Idaho woke up one morning with a U.S. Forest Service pseudo-SWAT team at their cabin door. Shotguns, rifles, Feds armed to the teeth and crashing into their cow camp. The Feds claimed that the Bedke Family had too many cows on their allotment. The Feds proceeded to force a gather of the cattle in the allotment. Instead of having too many cattle, they actually found not enough. True story. A U.S. Forest Service pseudo-SWAT team raided a common cow camp, treating the Bedke Family like criminals. Documented case, my friend.
Under the Clinton White House there was a proposal to hire 100,000 new U.S. Marshals. Many were hired, but were they hired to protect and defend the rights of honest people like the Bedke family? At least some were hired under the auspices of the U.S. Forest Service. They actually now have Forest Service and BLM vehicles with the words: LAW ENFORCEMENT written in big bold letters on the doors.
How many “eco-cops” will be assigned to assist the cause of environmental socialism in the Forest Service and BLM? Again, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that is also an important question.
‘The premise that residents of a region are more acutely aware of the specific problems that crop up in those regions and therefore have a right to govern and manage the same is a good idea, one might assume. Assume also that Westerners are Americans too, with rights no lesser than Easterners, and metropolitans. That idea has to be packaged and sold against some terrible odds. For every western state’s congressman in Washington D.C., there are over twenty-five of the sons-of-guns from the metropolitan areas.
As long as the eco-socialists and environmental pundits can keep deluding the masses into believing that the way to “save Bambi” is to lock up all the public lands, we don’t stand much of a chance. We are so badly outgunned that we don’t even have a vote. In Idaho, we have two congressmen — in the whole state! And 85% of our land* is either federal land or isolated parcels of deeded land that are surrounded by federal land to the point that said parcels are controlled by the federal government. We’re not alone. Wyoming has only one congressman. Compare that to the somewhere near forty congressmen from southern California. *(Though the statisticians make claims that range from 65 to 70% this does not take actual surface acres into consideration and the exact percentage is not known. The 85% claimed herein is a generality that is likely more accurate than any official statistic.)
Montana used to have two congressmen, but jobless people were leaving Montana so fast during the eighties that they had to cut back to only one. Rich and powerful celebrities (Ted T. /Jane F. types) have been buying Montana’s remaining deeded land for a song and a dance. Without adequate representation out here, it’s no wonder the Feds have run amuck. And too many of the representatives that we do have are willing to go with the high dollar persuaders.
In many of our western counties, the Feds control over 90% of the land. All of our resources come off those public lands. If we don’t have access to our resources, we’re broke, we’re bust, no joke! Who then can afford to live here? The people who do not make their living from the land and who were born to great wealth. Hollywood celebrities and huge corporations have been driving the people from their homes. We are regarded as amusing colonials who are to be pitied and put to flight. So to leave this part, and pick it up later, I will pause with a little joke I heard a few years back:
A logger in Northern California was walking home in the dusk, in August of 1996. A gunman stepped up behind him and put a pistol to his ear. “Who do you want for President,” the gunman demanded, “Clinton, or Dole?”
The logger hesitated.
“Quick,” said the gunman, “make up your mind before I blow your brains out!”
The logger pondered for just a moment longer, and then he replied, “Well, when I get to thinking, it doesn’t really matter — you might as well go ahead and shoot!”
In retrospect, the joke does not intend to make fun of Bob Dole, who would have made a fine American President, but points out the exasperation and feelings of futility or apathy that affect millions of voters today. The Clinton Administration may have gotten the credit for a prosperous era in some quarters, but his tenure was held contemptuously by most of the rural west. His administration served one good purpose out here. And that was to provoke so many western Americans to a state of near rebellion that they have become more unified than ever in the fight for State’s Rights!
‘Let us observe the wicked, evil, California logger. See him cut down the redwoods. He is evil, yes he is! You can see the evil in the grim, hard lines of his face, the calluses on his hands, and the way he strides among the pines as though he owns them, choosing which he will destroy. My God! The evidence is overwhelming! Look! Look! Look at him cut down the trees! He cuts down trees to make money, because he’s greedy, and he wants to feed his family. He wants to raise sons to cut down more and more trees! Soon there will be no trees! Are you blind? Can’t you see he’s destroying the land? He is so despicably evil, can’t you see?’
She took a long breath. ‘Let me toss in a few examples of the way a myth takes hold, and refuses to die. Let’s start with a couple of obvious examples, for the sake of expedience. I think that by the time we’ve run through a few of these, you might begin to believe that what I intend to tell you about the mustang myth is the truth. Let’s tackle this one first: The last of the redwoods are being viciously executed in Northern California!
‘The facts are that from over one hundred million years ago, these trees were extant in many parts of the world, including such diverse places as Texas, Pennsylvania, the Yellowstone, Japan, the Himalayas, and western Europe. Great sheets of ice from the Pleistocene epoch restricted the tree to China and Western North America. The primordial redwood forests did not fall to timber harvesters, but to evolution.
There are three species extant today: the Coastal Redwood of California and Oregon, the Sierra Redwood in Central California, and the Dawn Redwood in China. The two American species, Coastal (sempervirens), and Sierra (gigantia), are both more prolific and more abundant today than they ever were before the advent of the timber industries. Truth: For every tree that is harvested, from five to twelve or more young trees will grow up from the roots of the fallen mature tree.
‘Of all American conifers, the coastal redwood is the most impossible to destroy by logging. The myth that these trees take hundreds of years to grow is quickly dashed when one looks at the thousands of acres of fifty to eighty-year-old timber stands that have attained the same scenic stature and material size as those of three hundred years past. Simply stated, when the new trees don’t have to compete with other plants, (like thickets of brush), and when the young sprouts are not victimized by fires, the redwoods are among the fastest growing, and most prolific trees in America.
The value added to older trees is a matter of density, not height or width. There are more and better stands of redwood today, by far, than there were before the loggers ever came to the redwood forest. That’s not a myth. It’s a well-known fact among all the loggers in Northern California, and among any real students of natural resources.
Have you been inundated with the fancy that the redwood forest is disappearing? Well, friend, that’s propaganda, pure and simple. There is no possible way to annihilate a redwood forest by logging, and to top that off, the best way to assure the stagnation of a redwood forest is to opt for “preservation”. The old timber rots, the unstable trees blow down, and the waste is incredible. With the exception of small tracts that were cleared for farming and building, the redwood forests that were clear cut a generation ago are now covered completely with young, healthy, vigorous forests that guarantee a future for our children. That’s reality.
So the tree sitters hooted that saving the old growth is sacrosanct because old growth provides the only habitat for spotted owls. What they didn’t explain is that Mother Nature will not stand for the perpetuation of old growth.
And as far as the owls were concerned, there’s scant food for owls in old growth forests because a closed forest canopy causes the ground to stay wet much of the time. Rodents are scarce in old growth because they can’t live in wet soil or wet dens. They get pneumonia and die. Most of the rodents are out in the second and third growth timber where the ground is drier. So naturally, that’s where the owls are. You sure didn’t read that in Time Magazine.
It seemed reasonable to people in the forest industries to preserve certain areas of old growth, if only for study and scenic value. Therefore, the owners of timberlands themselves donated thousands of acres to be set aside for parks and recreation. Unfortunately, that wasn’t good enough. The enviro-cults wanted it all, and were willing to resort to the most horrendous campaign of propaganda to get their way. Small wonder. That’s how they make their living.
Now, in northern California, they have only a few political representatives, because there isn’t a huge population base. Out of San Francisco Bay area, and out of LA, they have hordes of representatives, all vying for public popularity. Naturally, saving Bambi is ever popular, and that’s where the votes are. It doesn’t make a bit of difference what the truth is, if the urbanites in southern California think the forest is being devastated, and that’s what they see on the boob tube, then guess which way the votes go? Good-bye to reason. Hello to democratic socialism. Or social democracy. Or democratic centralism. Or whatever the hell you want to call it. I say that you’re not talking about a democratic process at all. Mob rule would be a much more suitable phrase. Let’s call it mob rule.
Before we drop this timber subject, let me highlight some reasons why those rugged loggers might not be such horrible people after all.’ She paused to rest her voice for a moment and treat her vocal chords to a sip of good whiskey . . . .
‘I don’t have a degree in forestry. That’s a fact. I don’t have a degree in anything except common sense. When it comes to that, most of us can qualify. But let me toss out a few mountain girl ideas, so you can weigh some of the real evidence for yourself.
First, if you get a true old growth forest, you can’t have a second growth. Duff builds up under the old trees, and the seeds can’t penetrate. The seeds (and sprouts) have to have mineral soils, air, sunlight, and water, before they can grow. Old forests defeat three of these ingredients, and there is no room for young timber to come up. At this point there are two ways to make room for a new growth of forest:
A: Cut down the old growth and use it for lumber, or:
B. Wait for Mother Nature to erase the entire forest by fire.
‘Either way, the area comes back with browse (brush), grasses, broad leaf species, and new growth forest. Our most treasured big game species thrive on a balanced diet of many plants, including a large quantity of browse, broad leaf plant, and grass, but browse and broad-leaf in particular. Loggers create millions of tons of forage for big game animals by harvesting old growth forests. If loggers don’t harvest the timber, Mother Nature will. Simple fact.
The natives and informed newcomers out here know that we’re losing hundreds of thousands of acres of mature timber stands to fires and insect infestations. Note the historic fires in dead forest areas after the trees had fallen prey to pine beetle and spruce budworm. In the fall of 1988, the rampant fires that cleaned out the thousands of bug-infested acres of timber in the Yellowstone National Park were still smoldering.
Dateline, San Francisco News, 1988: Tourists in Yellowstone marvel at spectacular forest fire, wonder of nature!
‘Well, in a national park, I suppose it’s futile to argue with the Feds. But the bugs came into that region from the eastern side, and had already wiped out thousands of acres of public lands in and east of Island Park. Throughout the Pacific Northwest we’re losing hundreds of thousands of acres in areas that are supposed to be managed under multiple use guidelines. That particular blanket of bugs (that set the stage for the Yellowstone fire of ‘88) started in Idaho, and spread into many parts of Montana and Wyoming. If they think the Yellowstone fire was peachy keen, I’m sure they’ll all smile real pretty when another fire takes out a hundred mile radius all around the park. Come to think of it, that would be a good excuse for them to proclaim the whole area a new pristine wilderness! And lock the doors to public access as well as resources the same way they did over at Mt. St. Helens when the volcano erupted. The Feds came in and confiscated 110,000 acres for a National Monument.
Can anyone foresee a time in the future when the entire society will be made up of young, strong, physically fit beings who cannot relate to the natural world unless it is inaccessible to those less fortunate? Will there be no older folks, or toddlers, or physically or mentally impaired? Will there be no need to utilize resources available and vital to regional economies? Will there be no reason to guide these souls, and will they live by instinct in the shelter of their caves? Some souls would prefer the cave to the home, I suppose, and fires sparked from flint rather than heat produced by electricity. And some would believe that the spirit of an environmentalist is more valuable than the spirit of a natural man.
‘Every person who loves the natural world, anyone who does their best to keep air and water clear and to promote the general good health of the earth might qualify for the title “environmentalist”. If you love nature, care enough to do your best to keep the garden green; shouldn’t that make you a part of nature? We came from nature. We are natural beings. Out here, our spirits revolve around the outdoor life. The way we’re brought up, the outdoors becomes an inseparable part of us . . . .
‘When I was young, I had a best friend named Gale. Gale was an Idaho boy, straight as a lodgepole pine. We rode our ponies on the upland deserts among the ranchers’ cattle, and over endless ranges. We fished and hunted in the mountains, ragged kids from Idaho, free as the air! Where Gale went, so did I, and where I went, so did he. We grew up the way our grandfathers did — in the Idaho wilds.
How many trails we traveled, I don’t know — I couldn’t count them all. Two barefoot pals pounding our tracks in the dust among the pines, and wading in the creeks with our pants rolled up, catching rock-rollers to use for bait and hook the native trout on our homespun rods. And how many kids out here grew up that way? So many . . . Oh! So many!
Then one day, an accident took Gale to a higher plane of existence. My lifelong friend was gone. Everyone who knew him mourned and went on with their lives, but I couldn’t go on with mine. A young adult, I was confused, and lost, so lost!
I drove up into the Trinity Mountains in the Sawtooth Range of central Idaho, and I stayed there for a couple of weeks. No one came around. I cooked my meals over my fire, and spent some time hiking around. I caught a few trout from an unnamed creek, and sat up night after night, gazing into my fire and listening to the wind, talking to the pines.
Then I found him. It was the wind in the treetops without touching the ground that told me the answer to my sorrow. He was there! I heard him laughing from the waterfall, and whistling from the willows! I saw him bouncing down the trails in the shadows of the pines and scampering through the rocky draws the way he used to do so long ago when we were as wild as the trails we traveled.
Gale was there! His spirit was part of it, like mine, and like my grandfather’s. Gale was alive, as he is right now, and he laughs beside me on the same unnamed trails whenever I go back to the Trinities. He talks to me in a more perfect way, and I love him in a more perfect way — whenever I go back there.
I ask you, now, do you think that I am wicked to want to take my children back to places where Gale and I learned to love the outdoors, just because I want to drive there, as I have done all my life? Would it be so selfish to ask that our little road to the Trinities be left open for generations to come? And if I return to discover that a logger has harvested a part of my beloved forest, do you think I can’t understand the cycles of life and death in the forest?
Gale and I knew, from the time we were small, that forests, like all plant and animal life, grow old and die. The old trees will not give ground to the new ones unless there is a harvest. Why not let a logger make an honest living for himself and his family? Why not let him raise up a little barefoot boy, just like Gale, who will grow tall and strong like the young pine trees in the western wilds . . . .
‘And so, my memories are yours,’ she said, and she spent a moment in mental recluse. ‘There are many memories . . .’ Her voice trailed off, then reflectively began anew.
‘It is common knowledge out here that some trees are diseased or infested with parasites and should be harvested before the fires take hold and rage out of control, demolishing not only the grey forests, but spreading to healthy forests as well. Other trees must be left to seed offspring, and provide conifer for our ecosystems. We’ve learned it from our fathers, and we’ll teach it to our children, who will love this country with the same passion we have ourselves. Our grandparents knew it, and our grandchildren will too.
How many city people, though, even understand that when an area is Designated Wilderness by congress, our entire resource base is gone, leaving millions of acres to be devoured by insects and wiped out by fire? When the mills are shut down, the loggers are out of work, and our timber base is “preserved in its natural state,” how many metropolitans are even vaguely aware of the disastrous consequences that surely will follow?
Do they know that our existing roads are closed, that all the best hunting and fishing accesses are denied, that when they come to our west, they’ll soon discover that what used to be public domain where every citizen of America had a possessory interest will be locked up tight for the exclusive use of a select few?
Do they know that areas where my father used to take me when I was a little girl have been shut down and rendered so inaccessible that my own toddlers are expected to hike for miles to get to the Saturday morning fishing hole? Still, the plaintive moan goes out to metro America: The last of the Wilderness will be devastated if it isn’t preserved!
The bromide is endless, mindless. Why should it be so difficult to make people understand that nearly a hundred million acres have already been Designated Wilderness, with total disregard for the rights of private citizens, and the environmental cults have plans to shut down a hundred and fifty million more?
Why should it be so tuff to go eye-to-eye with the metro audiences and explain that the millions of acres already “designated” do not even include the National Parks, Wild and Scenic Rivers, State Parks, Game Refuges, Bird Refuges, and special use areas? The media won’t budge. They lie like a pack of dogs. Don’t believe me? Here. I’ll give you a couple of classic examples . . . .
‘This skit is provided for your entertainment. The skit is based on NBsC’s malicious tabloid-styled attack on the forest industries. This is not the actual monologue, but a complete packet of information about this outlandish propagandizing is available from the Intermountain Forestry Association in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. To be fair, the broadcast wasn’t likely to have been Brokaw’s fault. After all, he merely reads the news that is fed to him on air. But he’s fair game and since he took a potshot at us, well . . . let’s turn on