Thunderbear 295

Now most folks, even his supporters, agree that the Nevada cattle rancher, Cliven Bundy is a scofflaw.

Some time ago, Mr. Bundy signed a contract with the landowner, The Bureau of Land Management ( BLM), an entity of the US Department of the Interior and therefore the US government. (Yes, Virginia, the American people do own a lot of land, held in common for the benefit of all by various federal land management agencies, and the only people who believe otherwise are a few Rocky Mountain greed heads.)

The agreement stated the Mr. Bundy would be permitted to graze a certain number of cattle in a certain area of BLM holdings with certain restrictions (particularly, in regard to the endangered desert tortoise.) In return, Mr. Bundy agreed to pay the BLM a certain amount of money for each animal per month. This is called is a grazing fee, what we ordinary folks might call "rent".

Mr. Bundy signed the document and presumably both Bundy and the BLM kept a copy.

There is no evidence that the BLM coerced Bundy into signing this agreement, and indeed, the BLM will undoubtedly be able to prove that Bundy approached the BLM with an offer to lease BLM land.

However, somewhere along the line, possibly as a result of consorting with bad company, Bundy got it into his head that he did not have to pay grazing fees as, according to Bundy, the federal government does not really own title to the land.

Now neighbors, some of you may own rental property; something modest, perhaps a summer cottage, a store or some retail business, family farm etc. I guarantee that if you stay in the landlord business for any length of time, that you will eventually run into a tenant that cannot or will not pay the rent on time.

The reasons for non-payment will be many: often heart rending, often true: Loss of a job, a death in the family, illness, divorce, a runaway spouse, and so on. You will be touched, I guarantee.

However, at no time will your tenant claim that you don't own the property. He/she may ask for a rent reduction or extension, but they will not challenge your legal ownership of your property.

Nor will your tenant tell you that he has engaged the services of the Mafia or the Ndrangheta to murder you should you persist in trying to reclaim your property.

Civil Disobedience as practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King and their followers required a cheerful scofflaw attitude toward certain regulations and a desire to make mischief enroute to freedom, plus no violence.

Ideally, both sides play by the rules. In the case of Mahatma Gandhi in India, Gandhi urged his followers to break the law by making their own salt. (The British not only had a monopoly on the manufacture of salt, they imposed a tax on its sale!) Thousands followed Gandhi to the sea to make salt and thousands were arrested. Gandhi told them not to resist. (In one instance, the British, who did not always play by Gandhi's non-violent rules, opened fire on the salt makers with Hotchkiss heavy machine guns. More than 200 were killed, many more wounded, Gandhi still counseled passive resistance, and he and his followers went on to ultimate victory and Indian independence.

Traditionally, the scofflaws show up peaceful and unarmed, and break the law they object to.

The police are present (often forewarned by the scofflaws) as are the TV and other media people. After telling the scofflaws to cease and desist, the police gently and politely arrest (handcuff) some or all of the scofflaws, carting them off (gently) for a night in jail and or a fine and a chance for a TV interview. The scofflaws, for their part, do not offer resistance, armed or otherwise. (Had Bundy been interested in non-violent protest, he could have painted "DON'T LET THE FEDS TAKE BOSSY!" on one of his cows and chained himself to the beast: Great TV footage!) But then again, Bundy is basically an elderly, but still dangerous, thug.

Obviously, it doesn't work if police first response consists of tanks and machine gun fire circa Tiananmen Square.

It does (sometimes) work if the protestor's cause has merit and logic, and there is a dash of police overreaction as the Selma March in the Civil Rights demonstrations.

However, Civil Disobedience can backfire as in the case of Cliven Bundy, who suffers from the inability to keep his mouth shut.

Bundy, with his big white cowboy hat and his "G" droppin' Western drawl, had cleverly tapped into a number of American myths and fears.

Bundy played the "Frontier and cowboy myth" for all it was worth, reinforced in the popular mind by thousands of Hollywood and television Westerns, the "rugged individualist" fighting against daunting odds and an unfeeling "guvmint". Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck ate this stuff up.

Then there is the fear of "Big Government" carefully nurtured by the modern Republican Party

Bundy was ahead on points against a rather inarticulate Bureau of Land Management, when he turned to a New York Times reporter (Who probably could not believe his luck!) and stated that, among other things, the problem of the American Negro was that he had forgotten how to pick cotton.

Hannity, Beck, and every Republican running for reelection hastened to distance themselves from Cliven Bundy.

However, at this writing, Bundy's cattle continue to graze unmolested and unpaid for on Department of Interior land.

Now what do you suppose might have happened if Theodore Roosevelt had been president and some scofflaw rancher had told the old Rough Rider that "No, he was not going to pay federal grazing fees and that he had assembled a small army of gunfighters to make sure that his cattle would not be confiscated?"

Theodore would have been DEElighted! He would have called out the U.S. Cavalry and his cabinet would have had the Devil's own time convincing Roosevelt that he should not ride at the head of the column. Putting down his very own scofflaw insurrection! Bully! ("You must always remember," said the British Ambassador, "That the President is about 6 years old!")

However, one man's scofflaw is another man's Seeker after Justice. Roosevelt himself was not above a little (or a lot) of Scofflawing, if, as the saying goes, "The end justifies the means." As in Theodore's helping to arrange the annexation of Hawaii while Assistant Secretary of the Navy or the theft of Panama while President.

Indeed, the historian Barbara Tuchman observed "When Roosevelt made up his mind to accomplish an objective, he did not worry too much about legality of method"

His own attorney general, Philander Knox wittily remarked "Ah, Mr. President, why have such a beautiful action marred by any taint of legality!" when asked if something was legal or not.

One of Roosevelt's best efforts at being a scofflaw was his famous "Midnight Forests" caper.

In 1907, Congress was rich, corrupt, and Republican, very much like today. They had noted with increasing anger and alarm that Roosevelt was taking land out of the very malleable public domain and "locking it up" in the form of national forests, where there were (gasp! shudder!) rules and regulations as to use. The total protected land was now up to 150 million acres! This had to stop! (Sound familiar?)

The bad guys attached a rider to the 1907 Agriculture bill. The rider forbade the President from unilaterally creating any more national forests from public land without the express consent of Congress. (The rider had an eerie resemblance to various bills sponsored by today's Rocky Mountain greed heads to repeal the Antiquities Act of 1906).

Now the annual Agriculture bill is important today, but it was even more important in 1907, when most of us lived on farms or in small towns servicing farms. The bill could not be vetoed without dire political consequences.

The Agriculture bill landed on Roosevelt's desk with ten days to go before it had to be signed or vetoed.

Roosevelt invited his good friend Gifford Pinchot, Chief Forester of the United States to the White House with instructions to bring staff and maps. Mattresses and maps were laid on the floor, the White House staff made sandwiches and coffee and against the express wishes of Congress, Roosevelt and Pinchot carved an additional 16 million acres of national forests out of the public domain. Roosevelt signed the Agriculture bill with only minutes to spare on the tenth day. Congress was predictably outraged.

A number of these "Midnight National Forests" were later consolidated into California's mighty Los Padres National Forest in 1936 under another Roosevelt.

The two million acre Los Padres National Forest provides the scenic backdrop for what many believe to be the most beautiful city in America, Santa Barbara, California.

The US Forest Service in its laundry list of "Multiple Use" benefits provided by national forests, (Logging, Grazing, Mineral Extraction, Recreation, etc.) is understandably reticent about one of its greatest "Multiple Use" contributions: That would be sequestration.

The national forests sequester land that could be used for "development", that is, urban sprawl.

Understandably, developers regard sequestration or "locking up" of public land as one of the Seven Deadly Sins of Liberal Thought. (Ironically, once public land gets "unlocked", that is, privatized, it really DOES become "locked up"; complete with private security guard with fake badge but very real gun, who tells you that this is private property and no bird watching allowed.

Fortunately, the majestic mountain backdrop to Santa Barbara is safely sequestered in Los Padres National Forest. Therefore, you don't see scabrous tract housing creeping up the slopes of the Santa Inez mountains; just acres of green forest and picturesque rock outcroppings Generally speaking, most Santa Barbarians, including most Republicans, sort of like that idea.

Are there any problems? Well yes. You see Los Padres National Forest, big as it is, is not very "dollarable". Even though Los Padres is a "working forest" (as compared to lazy, deadbeat National Park forests), it does not have too much forest products to sell.

Unlike other national forests that have stately (and very "dollarable") stands of Coast Redwoods, Jeffrey Pine, Douglas Fir, Sugar Pine and other "commercial" trees, Los Padres National Forest specializes in chaparral forests. This is a low growing, mixed species thicket of trees and shrubs. The trees are as gnarly and crooked as those in a children's fairy tale and useful only to a very imaginative furniture maker (who has yet to appear on the scene.)

In addition, chaparral forests are highly inflammable (understatement of the year!) and are a fire menace to even large cities such as Santa Barbara.

Now with very little income from their traditional multiple uses, and a long and expensive fire season, and no doubt, prodding from Washington, the Los Padres managers looked about for other sources of income.

"Dollarizing" Recreation seemed to be the answer. The Los Padres was well within a day's drive of millions of middle class recreationists. Except for its wilderness areas, the Los Padres was honeycombed with fire roads, which in turn, led to trail heads, where hikers park their cars.

The Forest Service would sell something called the "Adventure Pass" which, when placed on the dash board of a car parked at a trail head or viewpoint, would prevent the Forest Service from ticketing you.

Now neighbors, I must admit that I am a scofflaw. I didn't purchase my Adventure Pass, which would have enabled me to legally look at the sunset or view the wildflowers; yet I do nor so so, every chance I get, with repetition; the mark of a true scofflaw.

Don't I think the reg applies to me? Of course it does! I am guilty as charged! Arrest me! I simply believe the law is unfair and is willing to go to court to contest it.

"Now just a darn minute!" You say indignantly "National Parks charge admission; why not the US Forest Service?"

Generally speaking, the NPS provides a service; a visitor center, toilets, and above all, knowledgeable staff that you can talk to; that is worth something. (It is often difficult to track down the understaffed and very busy Forest Service Personnel. I don't call a gravel parking lot at a trailhead as an "improvement".)

So, how do I differ from Cliven Bundy as a scofflaw? (Well, for starters I haven't threatened to shoot anyone.)

Before embarking on my career as a scofflaw, I checked in with Kitty Benzar The Princess of Good Scofflaws, just to see if there had been any changes in the legal aspects of scofflawry. Kitty had founded and is president of The Western Slope No-fee Coalition (www.WesternSlopeNo-Fee.org) as an antidote to greedy land management agencies.

Hi PJ!
We've been working on this for quit a while. We have a federal court injunction against the Forest Service against their charging a fee just to park and access backcountry without using developed facilities. Up to now, they are defying the Federal Court Injunction and have not taken down a single sign. We have two lawyers working on the case Pro Bono and there are some mighty angry people out there.

The main thing to know is that they are keeping their posteriors out of court by writing few if any Violation Notices. Instead, they write something called a Notice of Required Fee, which is not a ticket but rather a second chance to pay a fee you probably didn't owe in the first place. These can be safely ignored. Even if they did write you a "real" ticket (i.e. Violation Notice) presenting your Senior Pass would get it instantly dropped. Some would advise you to not to pay, not to display a Senior Pass and try to avert your eyes as you pass by the intimidating signs.

I also asked Kitty on how to respond to "poor mouthing" on the part of agency spokespersons that claim they have no money.

How did they fund the agencies from their establishment until 1996, the year Fee Demo arrived? Didn't they get through two World Wars and the Great Depression with appropriated funding from taxpayers? What changed in 1996, in the middle of a period of peace and prosperity? Answer: What changed was the switch (sparked by the American Recreation Coalition and radical-libertarian forces such as PERC) from seeing their roles as stewards to public property and instead to being entrepreneurs using public property as their working capital. They switch from seeing us as citizen owners and started referring to us as "customers". They started to quantify the value of recreation only in dollars, ignoring the other unquantifiable health, spiritual, and other benefits.
That was all to soften us by transferring federal lands to private for-profit management, a process that is well on its way. Witness the 80% of FS campgrounds (for which no one disputes that fees are appropriate) that are managed by private concessionaires. These net the agency little or no revenue. Under Fee Demo and FLREA they could manage these campgrounds themselves and keep all the revenues in their local budgets. Why don't they? Because at every level and especially at the top, the FS is much more beholden to their concessionaires than they are to the public.
The Bishop bill of last year would have brought the concessionaire model to the BLM (Which currently does manage all their own campgrounds directly) That bill is down for now but not dead. And just a few days ago Kurt Repanshek ran an interview with Derrick Crandall that said he wants concessionaires to take over more NPS campgrounds, of which most of the basic no-hook up ones are still NPS managed.
Don't ask me to cry for them about lost revenue from passes for parking and general access while they are voluntarily forgoing the revenue they could get from directly collecting and retaining fees for things where fees are not controversial such as campgrounds.
And while your talking to them, try asking for their most recent audit report as required by federal accounting standards (Hint: They don't have one.)
Hope you are well. Happy Spring!

Kitty

If Kitty is correct, and I suspect she is, the scofflaw concept is spreading to the Forest Service in their apparent defiance of the Federal Court Injunction. In the interim, I still park without my Adventure Pass.

A BIRD IN HAND...

For many years, environmentalists had pined (no pun intended) for a Northwoods National Park.

Usually, they would place this wished-for national park in North Central Maine, happily quoting Henry David Thoreau and his travels through wilderness Maine.

However, realists in the conservation community were quick to point out the futility of such wishful thinking as a Northwoods National Park in Maine.

First of all, the land was private. Most national park areas are carved out of the fiefdoms of other federal land management agencies, namely the US Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management, and thus elicit little complaint-except from those agencies (They have grown have grown increasingly territorial and want their very own national monuments, thank you!) Parks that were created from private land have proven to be very controversial, at least initially.

The creation of Northwoods National Parks would require the purchase or donation of private land, lots of it. Maine's only other national park, 47,000-acre Acadia, was acquired painstakingly parcel by parcel by donation or purchase as land became available.

The Acadia land was often the summer vacation estate of well educated, well to do businessmen who were Progressive Republicans in the mold of the Rockefellers, Steven Mather, or Horace Albright. Such people were predisposed to donating their land toward the creation of a national park.

Not so in the case of a Northwoods National Park. The forestland in North Central Maine is not owned by individuals but by large corporations engaged in wood pulp production, mainly for paper.

These corporations hired local loggers to cut the trees and transport them to the mills, which were unionized and thus paid a good wage. The corporations practiced sustainable forestry through sheer self-interest, so the logs, though not very big, kept coming. Just as important, the corporations shared their forests; everyone was invited to hunt in the private forests, or go snowmobiling, or cut a Christmas tree or gather a reasonable amount of firewood, or even build a small "hunting camp" all free of charge. The corporations didn't mind; it was good PR, binding the workers to the corporation's point of view.

Needless to say, there was absolute zero interest in a Northwoods National Park in North Central Maine among the workers and the corporations.

"We don't need no dickey bird watchers or posey sniffers around Maine; we need smoke stack industries!" said one forest product worker when asked about the desirability of a Northwoods National Park. In addition, the culture of national parks was not the culture of rural Maine. Although hunting is allowed in some NPS units (usually those with "Preserve" attached to the name) it is tolerated as a necessary evil and its participants are neither encouraged nor celebrated; in contrast, every "Down Easter" hopes to get his annual moose, hunting on the corporate lands.

The NPS was also likely to cast a cold eye on snowmobiling, having been burned in Yellowstone. The natives on the other hand, regard snowmobiling as an historic birthright. After all, what is there to do in Maine in the winter except drink or go snowmobiling?

However, the people of Maine were about to receive an object lesson in classic Adam Smith Capitalism.

The goal of Capitalism is not to create jobs but rather to make a profit by producing a product at the lowest possible cost; and then to sell to a willing buyer at the highest price obtainable.

In the last part of the 20th century, demand for Maine forest products began to slacken. There were a number of reasons for decreasing demand for newsprint, Americans were getting their news on their computers and newspapers were going out of business.

Also, trees grow faster and more efficiently in sunny Georgia than shivery Maine. In addition, unions were frowned upon in the South, providing lower labor costs for the Southern pulp mills.

Maine was not only on the short end of that "lowest possible cost" but also there were fewer "willing buyers" for their product. (If every American family could be required to buy an 800 pound roll of newsprint every year and store it in their basement for use as note paper, well then, the Maine Forest Products industry could be saved)

Ms. Quimby was a hippie flower child that arrived with her husband in rural Maine in the 1970's to lead the simple life in a log cabin on 30 acres of hardscrabble land.

Some people are just not cut out for a life of eternal poverty, no matter how blessedly simple. That was the case of Roxanne's husband who disappeared, leaving her with the log cabin and twins, a boy and a girl. Roxanne took up with an eccentric beekeeper named Burt and noticed that that he had a surplus of beeswax. This she turned into candles and finally, their charismatic product Burt's Bee Balm, which, unlike newsprint and forest products, sold like water in the desert.

As Roxanne became improbably rich, selling Burt's Bees for more than 300 million dollars to the Clorox Corporation, the Maine Forest products industry continued to collapse.

Millions of acres of private land suddenly came into play as corporations sought to divest themselves of money loosing assets.

For the first time since the Great Depression, the idea of a Northwoods National Park suddenly became a possibility.

One group of dreamers grandly announced their dream of a mighty 3.2 million acre National Park, larger than Yellowstone and Yosemite combined, to be purchased from the corporate landowners. It would amount to 15% of the total area of the state of Maine and would rival New York's Adirondack State Park in size if not in beauty. All in all, a remarkable environmental idea, except for two things; (A) the dreamers had no land or money and (B) A considerable number of the people of Maine considered the idea to be absolutely terrifying, a nightmare intrusion into their way of doing things. The National Park Service, which dearly wants to be loved by all and to antagonize no one, backed away from this one, fearing adverse publicity.

Meanwhile, Roxanne Quimby had come up with a plan. She had purchased some 150,000 of timberland in north central Maine. She planned to gift 75,000 acres to form a traditional national park, (No hunting, timber harvest, etc.) relatively modest in size, but still larger than Maine's only other national park, , 48,000 acre Acadia, AND adjoining the park, in order to placate Maine's motorized recreational use crowd , there would be a 75,000 acre National Recreation Area, where snowmobiling would be permitted, IN ADDITION, Roxanne volunteered to "take out the trash and do the windows" by establishing a 40 million dollar trust fund to take care of maintenance of the park and recreation.

Turns out, quite a few; including Maine's Republican Governor Paul Le Page. The governor cites loss of land for hunting, ATV, snowmobiling and logging and dismissed the idea that the park could add 1,000 new jobs, and that the national park would draw visitors away from Maine's flagship Baxter State Park.

Other opponents claim that the presence of a national park would result in tighter water and air quality standards, thus hurting "smokestack" industries (and, presumably, depriving Mainers of access to lung and liver cancer; the treatment of which is a "growth" industry. (Again, no pun intended).

However, more and more Chambers of Commerce and towns, and just plain people are beginning to show up on the side of Roxanne Quimby's national park idea.

Gail Fanjoy, President of the Katahdin Area Chamber of Commerce, supports the national park idea and has made some pointed remarks about "socialism for the rich" in which million of Maine tax dollars were spent trying to revive The Great Northern Paper Mill "which did nothing for us and shut down anyway". Ms. Fanjoy is too polite a lady to suggest that the money might have been, well, stolen.

Now Roxanne Quimby's proposed 150,000-acre national park and recreation area snuggles right up against the 209, 501 acre Baxter State Park. Combined, the three areas will form a very respectable 359,501-acre Northwoods national park & Recreation area: Right?

Percival Baxter (1876-1969), Governor of Maine and creator of Baxter State Park, hated three things: The Federal Government in general, The National Park Service in particular, and the Ku Klux Klan at all times.

One could understand Baxter's hatred for the Klan; he was a decent man and hated bigots. His sturdy opposition to the Klan cost him reelection and made him a one-term governor.

Baxter was a Republican patrician who had inherited his wealth from equally conservative parents and who thought ill of government meddling, which accounts for his distrust for the federal government.

But why did he dislike the NPS, a rather harmless entity, so much so that he made sure that the charter and deed for Baxter State Park stated unequivocally that Baxter State Park was never to become or be added to a national park?

Well, I don't know, neighbors. When you don't know something, it's often helpful to ask a local academic. So I e-mailed Dr. Richard Judd, professor of Maine History at the University of Maine and asked him that very question

My take on this was that he was interested primarily in a wilderness park, and the NPS at that time was interested in installing amenities that would attract more visitors-hotels, pools, golf course, good roads and other things. Stephen Mather's belief was that more visitors would mean more protection (and more expansion) of the park system. Also, there is a long history of anti-federalism in Maine (Still strong, it seems) which existed even before the New Deal, but was exacerbated by an almost visceral hatred of Roosevelt in what at the time was a very Republican (Baxter included) state and a distrust of deficit spending, among other things-failure of the Passamaquoddy Bay Hydropower project, etc. etc. But as I said, even before this, there was an anti-federal mood that would be difficult to find elsewhere above the Mason-Dixon line. Also, with Baxter, I believe he thought he was giving his gift primarily to the people of Maine, not the nation. (As today, Maine cars are admitted to the park free others pay entrance fee).

To this day, Baxter State Park remains largely primitive with a single dirt road running through it. (One corner of the park has a 29,000 acre "Scientifically Managed Working Forest" that is supposed to pay some of the costs of running the park.) Your editor asked the Maine chapter of the Sierra Club if, in their opinion, it was being "scientifically managed." Since we have not heard from the Sierra Club, we can only conclude that all is well in Baxter State Park.

There may have been yet another reason for Percival Baxter's objection to his namesake park becoming a national park. Governor Baxter was not known for hiding his light under a bushel (The highest point on the Katahdin Massif is-you guessed it-Baxter Peak) The NPS is willing to see a person's name on a visitor center, but not on a national park, unless you happen to be a President. It is entirely possible that Percival Baxter thought that "Baxter State Park" had a better ring to it than "Northwoods National Park".

Actually, nothing, except that many National Park buffs feel the Quimby proposed park would be "thinning the blood".

Why? Because the Quimby park proposal is scenically challenged. It is simply not as impressive as Baxter State Park. Indeed, the best sights are distant views of Mount Kahtadin-in Baxter State Park! Detractors say that it would be "The only National Park that would showcase a State Park."

That is not quite true. Wind Cave National Park certainly sucks the hind tit scenically (low rolling hills) when compared to its next door neighbor, Custer State Park, well equipped with granite "needles", tall trees and mountains.

Actually, the Quimby Proposal, though less scenic, is perhaps a better sample of a Northwoods boreal forest than Baxter State Park. Boreal forests are usually not mountainous, but rather flat or rolling, with bogs and ponds and numerous rivers. It is a somewhat monotonous ecosystem. If you can identify seven or eight trees species, then you are an expert on the forest. The Boreal Forest may appear dull to the casual visitor, but it is bigger than the Amazon Forest and stretches around the world's top from Norway through Siberia to Labrador and Newfoundland.

Should such an ecosystem be represented in the National Park System? Most certainly. The park would be a quiet, thoughtful park, very much like Henry David Thoreau. Road building should be discouraged or forbidden, lest the impatient motor driven taxpayer demand an "inspiration point" or awe inspiring overlook. Boreal Forests don't come equipped that way.

Rather, the park visitor should be encouraged to canoe or raft the 25 miles of the Penobscot River in the proposed park, or hike the trails. Baxter State Park and the proposed national park butt up against one another, and while Baxter State Park will always remain Baxter State Park, there is no reason for a fence between the two parks and hiking trails could cross the invisible boundary line.

Traditionally, when it comes to the creation of a national park, the affected state's congressional delegation is enthusiastically on board as is the state's governor. This does not seem to be the case with the Maine delegation, and Maine's governor is a Tea Party cult member.

In addition, as you may have noticed, the Republicans control both houses of Congress.

Now one of the nice things about being a lame duck President is that you can offend greedy, obnoxious people and there are no repercussions.

So, sometime this summer, the President might gather up the family and head up to Maine to go white water rafting on the Penobscot River with Roxanne Quimby. At the conclusion of which, the President would thank Roxanne, proclaim North Woods National Monument as our very latest National Monument.

THE ARRIVAL OF THUNDERBEAR

As Leonard Nimoy remarked "I am not Spock"; in the same vein, your editor is not THUNDERBEAR. Dr. Frankenstein and his Monster also faced the same role reversal in the public mind.

To keep things historically accurate, I should record my first meeting with the Flying Bear and the resulting alternative newsletter.

At the time of our meeting, I was the park historian at John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, California, a unit of the National Park Service. John Muir NHS is not to be confused with Muir Woods National Monument, a grove of Coastal Redwoods about 36 miles away in Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

John Muir National Historic Site (JOMU to its friends) is an 8-acre remnant of the 2600-acre fruit ranch of John Muir, the great Scottish American Naturalist and patron saint of the National Parks and the environment. The ranch was the way Muir supported his family and the infant conservation movement. In spite of being something of an environmental mystic, Muir was also a canny Republican businessman, rising and marketing Queen Anne Cherries, Tokay grapes and Bartlett Pears.

Now in remote parks such as Yosemite or Sequoia, the NPS provides housing for its people albeit the housing may be a retired army tent or an equally veteran trailer. However, in urban areas, the NPS employee must fend for himself when it comes to housing.

There are several nice ways to house you in the San Francisco Bay Area. One is to live aboard a sailboat, the other isn't. Accordingly, I lived aboard my sailboat THE CHRISTIAN BUREAUCRAT, in the Martinez Marina. The Marina is located on the Carquinez Straits, where the Pacific Ocean meets the delta of the Sacramento River; one of the last great tidal marshlands left in the United States. Fresh water meets seawater. Fresh waterfowl meet seabirds; freshwater sturgeon and stripped bass coexist happily. It is a meeting place of worlds, an altogether fascinating place.

The inhabitants of our floating village were of similar interest. None of them could be termed entirely conventional and tended toward the raffish. (With the exception of your esteemed editor, of course.)

A significant number of the males were divorced (usually with cause); the wife having taken the house, leaving him with the family boat.

There was a concert pianist and her violinist husband who lived aboard their houseboat in the marina, and the sound of their music drifting over the water in the twilight was an unforgettable part of marina life.

There was a salty old sea captain left over from the age of commercial sail, the windjammer era. He had worked in Hollywood as a consultant on tall ships for some of the major studios when they did pirate and Napoleonic era sea films. He got to know some of the more famous stars of the period and some of them hired him to skipper their yachts while they attended to other matters.

The "Other Matters" provided grist for some shocking Hollywood sea stories that he related to me and that I cannot relate to you, as this is a Christian publication.

The chap that owned the expensive double ender sloop next to my berth was a rather famous trial lawyer specializing in narcotics cases. A friend of mine, Officer Mike Stafford of the Martinez PD asked the lawyer to explain the kilo and a half of cocaine Mike had found in the trunk of his car. No wonder the lawyer had always been so jolly!

The only snake in this sea going Garden of Eden was our next-door neighbor, The Godzilla Oil Refinery. Now Godzilla Oil has never meant any harm, and is in fact, one of the worlds of the Delta. Godzilla refines about 20% of the foreign crude laid down on the West Coast. Naturally, in a huge operation there will be some losses (i.e. spills) that in relation to the total amount of oil safely landed and processed, must be considered "statistically insignificant". This is true.

However, when there is a "loss", the Martinez Marina is directly in the path of the "statistical insignificance."

Now there is no way to prevent the boats in the marina from getting a good coat of crude, but the resident waterfowl could be saved by baiting them with cracked corn out of the water and into a temporary holding pen until the oil is soaked up by a commercial firm that specializes in oil spills. One of my volunteer jobs at the Marina was to do exactly that; I was the Assistant Duck Leader (The harbor master took care of the duck problem during his working hours; at night it was up to me.) The humor of the job title was not lost on either the harbormaster or myself, so I had a signboard routed "UNTER QUACKEN FUHRER" which was even more impressive.

On one dark and rainy night in January, I had just returned to my boat from an oil spill alert which had proved false.

A cold and clammy Tule fog was drifting in from the marshes and I was looking forward to a glass or several of hot, mulled wine (Zinfandel works best!) and a good book.

The book was John McPhee's "COMING INTO THE COUNTRY". (For some reason, I have always found books on Alaska the best for cold weather.)

There was a loud crash, followed by the impact of something very heavy landing in the cockpit.

Thinking that somehow the shrouds had parted and the mast had fallen, I grabbed a flashlight, opened the companionway hatch and looked out.

"Permission to come aboard?" The bear asked with confidence of those long used to acquiescence.

I had never encountered a talking flying bear and besides, he was already aboard.

Although the Bear was seated on the floor of the cockpit, I could see that he was quite tall, nearly 12 feet when fully erect.

His wingspan exceeded 28 feet and extended well beyond the beam of my sailboat and rested on the docks.

The bear wore a black Australian "digger" hat with half the brim turned up at a rakish angle. He wore a grey shirt and black pants and boots. There were two crossed bandoliers across his chest. The bandoliers appeared to hold cans of beer. Other than that, there was nothing unusual about his appearance.

BACK CHAT

Exceptions to that rule are any articles critical of Mountain Biking or rejection of "Hinkyness." Those topics always bring a robust response from some of the readers.

You will recall that issue #294 had an article on how Federal Courts had rejected "Hinkyness" as a reason for police to stop & frisk citizen of the Black persuasion and a suggestion on how that problem might be solved.

For new readers, "Hinkyness" is police jargon for the very strong feeling on the part of the police officer that "something is not quite right and that evil comes our way". Virtually every cop has strong anecdotal evidence that "Hinkyness" or intuition is true. Academics tend to reject anecdotal evidence unless it is backed by statistics. Cops don't like bookkeeping.

An old friend, Officer Mike Stafford, late of the Martinez, California police department and now working in Oregon, weighed in with this "Hinkyness" anecdote.

Officer Mike was working the streets of Martinez and pulled over a car for the usual "routine violation". Nothing untoward. However, as he walked toward the car, "Hinkyness" began to set in. Something did not seem to be right. The driver seemed to be looking forward to be getting a ticket. Abruptly Mike changed plans and went to the passenger's side rather than the more usual driver's side and looked in.

The driver had rigged a stockless, sawed off 12-gauge shotgun into the driver's door. A very thin, almost invisible wire ran from the trigger to the driver's finger. Raising one's empty hands could fire the shotgun, as if in surrender.

I first met Mike under somewhat unusual circumstances. I was putting up the flag one morning at John Muir National Historic Site.

There was the usual early morning rush hour as John Muir NHS is located beside the cloverleaf of the John Muir Memorial Parkway (Yes, I know; John Muir would have been ironically amused at the honor).

There was something odd about the traffic flow; people were swerving as if to avoid something.

The "something" was a Martinez police officer and a young woman fighting in the middle of the street for control of some kind of package. Now that was unusual! Something you don't see everyday.

Now, normally I mind my own business. The municipal police do their thing and I do mine, but this was strange. The officer, a burly 200 pounder certainly wasn't losing the fight, but he wasn't winning it either; the woman still controlled the package which seemed important to both of them.

"Hinkyness" began to set in. Something was definitely out of sync. That is, "Hinky". I decided to meddle.

"You get the woman!" I'll get the baby!" Said the cop. (Ah! So that was the "package" of interest!)

The woman had cocked her arm back in a pass worthy of Joe Montana and launched the baby into the traffic. Officer Mike made a desperate interception as the baby left its mother's hand. He hustled the squalling child into his patrol car and returned to the fray.

She was immensely strong, having recently ingested PCP, a popular drug of the period, and seemed immune to pain. Although just a "mere slip of a girl" she lifted me off my feet several times before Mike reappeared to add more weight to the struggle.

With some difficulty, we got her cuffed and into the patrol car. The baby went to Child Protective Services. The mother went to "J Ward", the psychiatric ward of the county hospital. It seems that after taking PCP, she came to believe that her child was possessed by the devil and she needed to throw it off the overpass and would have done so, had Mike not noticed her erratic driving.

The J Ward staff was familiar with the young lady. Indeed the nurse memorably remarked that "Her mother should have gone bowling the night she was conceived" as we held the woman down for a sedation injection. (The baby? That was long ago; I am sure he/she is now a member of Congress).

And that was the beginning of a long and adventurous friendship, stretching from Alaska to Mexico, started by an incident of "Hinkyness."

THE SAFETY MESSAGE

Falls are among the most common sources of injury. METRO, the subway system of Washington DC estimates that falls and slips account for fully one third of reportable injuries.

In my case, the usual foreseeable chain of circumstances had been set up to form "The Perfect Storm" of an accident.

My wife and I had rented a small cottage in Santa Barbara, California. The cottage was accessed by a flight of concrete stairs. Now concrete is an excellent material for stair treads-unless the treads gets wet, then it becomes slippery as a politician's promise.

Fortunately, for slippery stair avoiders, it never rains in Southern California. (Well, hardly ever!) Southern California is in the midst of a multi-decade drought that will cause the state to run completely out of water by, oh, next year. Since it never rains in Santa Barbara, it never occurred to our elderly gentlewoman landlady to put anti-skid strips on each of the stair treads. Nor did the stairs have a handrail. (Not required in the 1924 code when the cottage was built)

Then God made it rain. Not much, mind you, just enough to wet the steps. I was taking the trash down to the recycling bin. It was no contest: my feet went out from under me as slick as WD-40. It was a classic "Arse over teakettle fall" that you see in old Charlie Chaplin flicks, except that I landed on my back rather than face. I then bounced down every tread, winding up in a shallow puddle at the bottom.

Every vertebra in my back screamed in perfect unison "STOP WHATEVER DUMB THING IS YOU ARE DOING! THIS IS TERMINALLY DESTRUCTIVE!

I lay in agony in the small puddle; thinking about my next move. Was my spinal cord severed? Would I spend my remaining years watching "I Love Lucy" reruns from a wheelchair?? Should I try to get up? Clearly I could use some expert advice: I called upon veteran Ranger-EMT George Durkee (Granted, a bit later in the time line)

So I was correct in sitting in the puddle at the bottom of the stairs, wiggling my toes and fingers, and eventually and painfully climbed back up the stairs and had my wife drive me to the local Emergency Room.

My spouse wanted to know how or why I fell down the stairs? For some reason people always want to know this. Perhaps it's the Universal Quest for Knowledge, but when you think about it, stair falling is not exactly a Nobel Prize achievement, nor will it ever be an Olympic event. Still, people want to know why you fell.

When I fell down the stairs, my hands were extended uselessly upward, along for the ride. Aikido or Judo will teach you the proper way to break a fall with your hands and rebound. The trick is that you must practice the fall (under supervision) often enough so it becomes automatic muscle memory.

ABBEY PARK

We have named them "Abbey Parks" in response to a famous chapter in Edward Abbey's lightning rod book DESERT SOLITAIRE. The chapter in question was titled "Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks," and a polemic it was; an unabashed battle cry to free the national parks (and their patrons) from the "tyranny" of the automobile. The gist of the polemic was quite simple; make park visitors park their vehicles and other contrivances outside the park boundary and make them walk the park trails, which would be the only access to the wonders of the park. The benefits, according to Ed, would be many; Not only would the visitor benefit from healthful exercise and a more intimate appreciation of Nature, but the park would be spared the stealthy creep of concrete as superintendents jockeyed for "just one more road," visitor center or parking lot; all appurtances of the evil automobile.

In addition, the park would grow magically in size without the addition of any more acreage. If the park visitor had to walk to see the park, this would require that he/she would have to camp over for one or more nights. This would require some planning ahead, leading to research and a better understanding of what they would experience. Eventually, every "visitor" would become his own Henry David Thoreau (Or, dare we say, Edward Abbey).

Now Edward Abbey was not everyone's can of beer. He could be merciless toward those who did not fit his Procrustean bed of what constituted the perfect park visitor. DESERT SOLITAIRE was written at the height of Abbey's physical prowess, and he was most ungracious toward the elderly, the infirm or the handicapped (As well as toward those of the Republican persuasion.)

I once asked the supervisory park ranger who had first hired the man who was to become the most famous seasonal ranger in the annals of the NPS if he would mind being interviewed on the subject of Edward Abbey. The ranger did mind and declined to be interviewed on the subject, stating that "Hiring Ed Abbey was the worst thing he had done in his Park Service career."

Now, it was true that Abbey was impossible to supervise and that he lacked proper reverence for the NPS chain of command and that he was liberal enough to invite the attentions of the FBI, but he did have some points.

According to Ed: "We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms, and other sanctums of our culture. We should treat our national parks with the same deference as they too are holy places."

John Muir, Steve Mather and Horace Albright thought otherwise; believing that some controlled automobile access to certain "points of interest" would be useful in popularizing the concept of national parks against competing interests.

However, the NPS love affair with the automobile and all its appurtances has not been entirely salubrious for the park "resource," the park "visitor" or even the National Park Service. For example, a significant portion of the infamous two billion maintenance backlog concerns automobile infrastructure: roads, culverts, bridges, gas stations, and parking lots. Lastly, but certainly not least, is the constant myrmidon swarm of cars in parks; ants with noise!

So would it be possible to have a national park without automobiles? Certainly! We have them right now. Such "Abbey Parks" are unusual, but they are not rare. (Ironically, Edward Abbey visited few if any of the "Abbey Parks" or at least wrote about them, being a self confessed, "desert rat".)

Perhaps the most famous is Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior; a 571,790 acre wilderness where you must start walking or paddling as soon as you disembark from the NPS ferry.

Then there is Cumberland Island National Seashore, the 36,347-acre former winter retreat of the Carnegie family located off the coast of Georgia. The island has a visitation cap of just 300 people per day and is off limits to automobiles. (At least YOUR automobile) did this ever prove inconvenient? Well, yes. My wife is a Kennedy buff and was interested in visiting the church where JFK jr. and Carolyn Bessette were married on Cumberland Island. Was that possible? Yes indeed! All we had to do was hike a jaw dropping 16 miles. One way. It looked like we would need an early morning start from the campground. Fortunately, Joan is quite charming and chatted up a local, whose jeep had been "grandfathered in". She drove us up and back. We appreciated that!

Most, (but not all) Alaskan parks are de facto Abbey Parks, that is, automobile free. This is not due to some holistic environmentalism on the part of the Park Service, but rather the sheer expense and difficulty of building roads in the Arctic and subarctic. You and your gear are flown in by bush pilot to a remote sandbar or lake in the national park with the understanding that the pilot will pick you up at an agreed upon date and place. The pilot's word is your bond, is never broken, and automobiles do not exist in your wilderness world. Now you begin to walk or paddle.

Denali National Park is interesting in that it became car free in a rather daring experiment in which visitors were required to park their cars and use free buses to see the park (at least the part that has a road). It seems that large numbers of cars scared the animals beyond viewing distance. In addition, there was the safety factor of drivers on a winding, unfamiliar, gravel mountain road. The buses seem to have solved both problems with surprisingly little complaint from park visitors.

True, but Denali is located in a remote area of a remote state. Would an Abbey style, car free park be possible near a major metropolitan area?

Indeed it is, neighbors! That would be Channel Islands National Park off the shore of America's second largest city, Los Angeles.

Cars are effectively banned by a moat called the Pacific Ocean. (It is always best if God does the forbidding rather than the NPS; you get fewer complaints.)

Five islands make up Channel Islands National Park; Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and Santa Barbara. Each island is different both in geography and plant life, which is why we need them all. In addition, there is a series of marine reserves offshore of all the islands, which protects the magnificent kelp forests, which have been called "The underwater Redwoods" as they are the tallest seaweeds in the world.

Each of the five islands is served by the park's concessioner, Island Packers. (Unlike other parks, which seem to have the adversarial relationship of a very bad marriage between the NPS and the park concession, Island Packers and CHIS seem to get along very well in a symbiotic even amiable manner.)

Anacapa and Santa Cruz may be visited year around; while the other islands can be visited on a spring through fall schedule.

So, since CHIS is a good example of an Edward Abbey car free park, how does this work out for the park visitor and taxpayer?

So, in next issue # 296, we will board an ISLAND PACKERS vessel and pay a visit to Santa Rosa Island.

SCOFFLAWS

A BIRD IN HAND...

THE ARRIVAL OF THUNDERBEAR

BACK CHAT

THE SAFETY MESSAGE

ABBEY PARK

Return HOME

© Copyright 2015 by P. J. Ryan, all rights reserved.
PJ Ryan can be reached at:
thunderbear123@gmail.com.

SCOFFLAWS

A BIRD IN HAND...

THE ARRIVAL OF THUNDERBEAR

BACK CHAT

THE SAFETY MESSAGE

ABBEY PARK

Return HOME

© Copyright 2015 by P. J. Ryan, all rights reserved. PJ Ryan can be reached at: thunderbear123@gmail.com.

© Copyright 2015 by P. J. Ryan, all rights reserved.
PJ Ryan can be reached at:
thunderbear123@gmail.com.