Selling the Real Estate

Selling the real estate

Fifteen Canada geese are flying south from near McCall, Idaho and honking like an unwarranted traffic jam. Ospreys have already gone, silently, flown to the coastal states in the same pattern they took last year: along the rivers. Gone too is the lurid beauty of mountain bluebirds, scarlet tanagers, and goldfinch, flown over mountains in hops. I haven’t seen black bear or grey wolves on my property for two years, but I know they’re there.

The apple trees haven’t been raided this year and the golden green apples lie rotting on the ground or are saved in the bowl inside my shabin. They were raided two years ago by a bear; it had camped out there beside the apple tree for two days and tore down three big branches. A pack of wolves apparently got a little too close to a band of domestic sheep two summers ago. You could hear the helicopter all night, near my property. I heard wolf howls the night before and none since. As for the domestic sheep, they were herded along the Farm-to-Market Road two days after the wolves were dealt with and I followed slowly behind the massive herd in my car for at least a mile cursing the sheep for being in the way of wolves. A small herd of elk will soon pass through my land, taking the same route they’ve travelled for as long as I’ve been here, on their route to a higher, safer landscape, away from bullet riddled hunting grounds.

These are the circumstances as I pack my shabin, getting ready to move out for a place in the valley and the city below. A wintering place and possibly more. It has become too expensive to live in McCall, at least for a writer in the harsh winter of Valley County. You might ask what is a shabin? Part shack, part cabin is a shabin; a place that a developer simply calls a “teardown palace.” Reporters call it a ramshackle, ticky-tacky hut, a place uninhabitable for any sane person. But that depends on your perspective of sanity. It has sheltered me for five years, as developers have deserted their nice homes and lives, bailing out of heavy loans or mortgages for the obvious threat. For what it’s worth, I have none of the crushing debts, but still I have some that I can’t afford to pay without a consistent job. Jobs in Mccall haven’t been consistent and selling this land would get me out of the hock I’ve been in for all of the years that I’ve lived here.

Granted my shabin is a one room building that was permitted by the county for a five dollar storage unit permit. It isn’t quite legal to live here in my storage unit but I have built a composting toilet, installed solar panels power lights, music, and a well pump. The well was drilled easily 50 years ago and had stood capped since then. I opened it four years ago and tapped its pure water. I built the shabin for about $5,000 after living for a year in a wall tent.
Any carpenter could make the shabin into a more kindly cabin by putting siding on top of the hardboard plywood and covering the inside insulation with more aestheticly pleasing boards. It was built by my friends and me with muscle, beer, and kindness: putting piers under the floor, tilting-up the walls, lifting rafters and attaching them to the walls, roofing the top, putting in a front door, windows to the eastern view, a loft, a counter, furniture, a wood stove—and that friendship and labor convey much unpaid value. The shabin became a writing retreat, with my girlfriend living a few miles away that was home about half of the time. The land upon which it stood, however, has been much more that a place to stay. The land has taught me more than my traditional work has and the view was spectacular. Or I should say is spectacular.

I’ve been an environmentalist since 1984 and have worked with a number of organizations at a number of levels. For 24 years I’ve transformed this land from an overgrazed horse and cattle lot to a place of tall grasses and encroaching forests. This land is transitioning from one where 85 foot tall Ponderosa pines grew, into one where 85 foot Ponderosas will again grow. In between, the big trees were cut down and shade intolerant lodgepole pines grew for twenty-five years. It was these trees which provided the shade in which Ponderosas could again grow. Now the lodgepole pines have experienced an infestation of bark beetles and many of them are dying, allowing the Ponderosa pines–now that they’re reestablished–to reassert their dominance and grow again.

Aspen trees are expanding into the forest and beginning to cover the open land that had been used for grazing. They grow in several groves of identical clones and each individual stand has a different “time-clock” turning the leaves classic autumnal colors: from green to gold, orange, and scarlet. The aspen groves turn colors at different times and make the shifting colors last for several weeks. They are growing together and mixing colors on a palete unique in McCall.

Grasses on the neighbors land, which has been grazed for many years, run along the fence enclosing the cattle-free land on my side of the fence. Here the difference is stark, as the grazed land has many small patches of bare soil and shorter grasses than the vegetation on my side of the fence. However, the conclusion that I’ve reached is that vegetation on the ranchers side is more diverse than that on my side. On my side the grasses haven’t been chewed down and the roots have established themselves in thick mats, which means that other plants have little opportunity to grow. On the other side, trampling and eating of the grasses by livestock gives other flowering plants–buckwheat, yarrow, aster, pentstemmon, sego lily, and chickory- the opportunity to grow on the bare ground. That has increased the number and diversity of different plants that can survive in the spring when the ground is still damp. My land needs to be grazed by elk, deer or, heaven forbid, domestic cows, and it should be burned occasionally, so that other flowering plants can live there. This is not what I would have thought when I fought grazing as an environmentalist! But time has mellowed me.

A little. Not a lot, actually. But time also tells me to move on from this land and tackle other challenges. The dreams move so slowly! As slowly as the recovery of land and nature and my heart.

A Tale of Craters of the Moon          (short version)

The Land 

          Craters of the Moon is fabulous place for a heap of black rock.  It’s a big piece of land, make no mistake, with 3/4 of a million acres of this odd lava formation that exists by Ketchum in southeast Idaho.  Craters is a uniquely weird and seemingly impaired landscape.  You may want to speed up when your goal is to drive to Yellowstone National Park north of Craters, because it is hot, damned hot–roll up your windows and hit the air conditioning hot–and it looks like nothing more than a patch of gray vomit out there on the countryside.  However, if you stop, you’re in for a treat. 

            We went there—four of us all professional environmentalists Doug Schnitzspahn, Katie Fite, Miquel Fredes, and I—to support protection for the national monument.  It is a very dry, desolate place that is full of broken lava and walking over the land sounds like someone walking on a clattering batch of broken teacups and saucers.  We advocated protecting Craters as an enlarged national monument (from 50,000 to about 775,000 acres) to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and President Clinton.  Now the four of us were out there to look around and get to know the landscape better.  I had been there several times before and I had seen the beautiful Laidlaw Park Kipuka–it was 50 thousand acres of grassland surrounded by lava.  There were cinder cones and shield volcanoes, spindle bombs and the Blue Dragon lava, caves running through the landscape and the Crystal Ice Cave that once held vast stalactites, and natural arches formed of lava. 

            We were ambitious and wanted to protect Craters of the Moon for all time.  This was the seed we had planted with the aim that we could win everything if only we tried. These were the salad days, as Shakespeare said, when we were green in soul and cold at heart.  And what we wanted we deserved to get, by God!  In those days I was full of piss and vinegar, ego and good wine; I was one tough cookie, one tough cabajero, a don’t-mess-with-me kinda guy.

My stroke

            But then I had a stroke out in the wilderness of Craters of the Moon; it was as unexpected as a sneeze.  As we hiked over the teacups and saucers of lava we got a little separated—it was cold and the rain came mixed with snow and sleet and everyone had their hoods over their heads. I was wandering a bit and just like that, I stumbled and fell.  But it really wasn’t merely a stumble because immediately I couldn’t stand up, couldn’t speak, couldn’t walk, and I couldn’t think straight.  My friends had passed on ahead of me. So I lay there, going nowhere.  Thinking and not thinking.  For an hour, for two, for three, for awhile anyway; but after only a minute I knew I was in terrible, terrible trouble.   I cried and cried within an hour because I didn’t know what had happened to me.  I thought about dying, because who would find me in this trailless, wicked place?  I thought about my father who had died from brain cancer and the stroke that came from it, and I realized that maybe my father’s fate would also be mine as evening closed in on daylight.

            However, my friends found me in a few hours by walking in a line and going over and over the path where we had gone before.  Katie ran some miles back to the car and drove for an hour or more to find a home where some people were able to call and arrange for a helicopter to land in the rugged terrain of Craters of the Moon and get me flown to the hospital 80 miles away.  Miguel and Doug watched me while Katie left and talked with me until the group of rescuers came with flashlights to save my sorry ass as a helicopter landed in a grassy place nearby.  I was taken to the hospital in Pocatello.

Recovering the Land and myself

            When I woke up the next morning a doctor whispered in my face: “Mike, Mike can you hear me?”  I nodded, thinking, duh, of course I do.  “You’ve had a stroke and you’re paralyzed.”  No, I’m not; don’t be silly, doctor.  At least that was what I was thinking but I couldn’t respond in words.  I nodded, understood nothing.  And the doctor disappeared in a poof of smoke.

            Now I have to tell you that the most powerful thing in the world is laughter, the support of friends, and a place to go to find yourself when you’re lost.  So I would like to tell you a couple of funny and somewhat ironic stories.

            The first came when a therapist came to work with me; her beauty was a gift.  I was in a hospital room recovering and she set a bag of cosmetics on the bathroom sink and asked me to pick up an item and use it.  So I picked up one and began to brush my teeth with it.  It was a basic thing to do, you know I was in the bathroom and at the sink and it was a pretty mundane action. 

            “No,” she said, “that’s for your hair.  It’s a comb.”

            “Oh.”

            She motioned for me to scrape it across my head and I did.  “You were thinking about a toothbrush.  That’s this other item.”

            “Oh, yeh, a toot brush for my toots.”

            “Right, its for your teeth.”  I was very embarrassed and I had to learn all of life again, it seemed.

            Another time, after less than a month after I returned to Boise, I had a meeting with a neurologist and I went with a friend and my mother.  The neurologist asked me to tell me about myself and my family.  “How many siblings do you have?” he said.

            “I’ve got three kids and I’m married to a very nice woman.”  Keep in mind that I couldn’t speak quite as clearly as that—I spoke in broken words—but that is what I was trying to say. 

            “How about the rest of your family, your mother and father?” he said. 

            “They’re fine.”  I pointed to my mother.

            My mother broke in, agast.  “Mike, you have no children and no wife, unless you’re holding out on me.  And your father died many years ago.”

            “Oh yeh, that’s true isn’t it?”

            “Yes.”

            “I’ll remember dat.  No kids, no wife, and no father, got that.  Doctor, will I ever get better?”

            “Yes you will,” he said “but it will all be up to you.”

            A third time when a woman brought me cookies to my home in Boise.  There was a lull in our conversation.  “Mike,” she said.  “Can you, uhm. Can you get a stiffy?”

            I was stunned.  “Huh?”

            “You know, can you still get a, a uh, you know, a stiffy?”

            I coughed and tried to regain a little composure to tell her the truth.  But I really didn’t know what it was.  “Yeth, of course I can.” 

            “Oh, I was just, uhm, wondering a little bit,” she said.

            “Yeth.  It’s natural question.” But now I was wondering whether I could get a stiffy.  And naturally, I went to the internet, after performing a little experiment on myself that went surprisingly well.  The internet suggested that just about all stroke victims can have sex as long as they aren’t terribly depressed about doing so.  So I learned not to be depressed….

            I found a need to go back to Craters of the Moon to understand the condition of the land that I had loved and to recover from my stroke.   I hiked on the route of Robert Limbert the man who, in 1924, had lobbied in Washington DC for the protection of the original 54,000 acre Craters of the Moon National Monument and that President Clinton had expanded to 737,000 acres.  I was speaking, thinking, walking, and thriving just as the larger national monument was beginning to recover.  Rare species were becoming more common and I found some of the secrets in Craters: the caves and arches and beautiful lava formations, animals and plant communities that are thriving there.  I’ve learned to love the silence of the land and to be a bit less egotistical in my endeavors.  But no less ardent for protecting the wildness of the land.  This is the tale of wilderness and the lesson of earning my own wellness from its absence.

Running Along the American River

Thoughts Upon A Run
As I went running along the American River in Folsom, California the licorice smell of anise mixed with the fragrance of ripe blackberries made me remember the river of my youth. I had contacted my friend, Doug, in passing through Sacramento and when he asked if I needed a place to stay, I looked at my watch—6:00 pm on Saturday—and decided to take him up on his offer. Otherwise I would have to crash on another friend whom I wasn’t yet able to contact, or find a random piece of land somewhere to throw my sleeping bag. Doug planned to go to his workout at a nearby gym and he had a few chores to accomplish, but if I didn’t mind, his place was mine.

The home is subtle and spectacular: a large, old rambling house with four bedrooms, beside a perfect garden. The garden includes pear and apple trees, conically cut junipers, a carefully trimmed 100 foot long laurel shrub, a maze of short bushes with azaleas and rhododendrons beside the front door. A nicely shaped swimming pool lay in the side yard. On the north side, the house overlooks the swift American River, and in evening, with a full moon, light provides a dimensioned view of sprawling valley oaks contrasting with the eerie shapes of over-tall cottonwoods and weepy willows. Inside the house is spare, the floors wood, the kitchen roomy.

I dressed for a run in 90 degree heat and headed out, dropping down to the American River along a subdivision road. The American River Parkway follows the river and runs through gravel pits left by an excavation company that had been purchased to protect the river’s values. In the first mile I saw figs growing under hand-shaped leaves, quail scurrying through the brush, a walnut tree growing beside the trail, vultures soaring through the trees, more blackberries, and a river otter diving and swooshing its slim body through eddy lines in the river. This area isn’t really wild but it is protected to assure that the riparian area and wildlife continue to live there in health. As they do.

A valley oak spreads across a parking lot, forming a one-hundred foot circle of shade in this otherwise overheated area, creating a one-tree-oasis in the graveled expanse, begging for a picnic. Its branches droop to the height of a person standing; just right. Beyond the tree, I ran on a dirt trail that snakes through the riverside vegetation in the coolness of the growing evening. In a couple of miles I come to Lake Natoma.

Lake Natoma is a regulating reservoir for Folsom Reservoir and when the volume of Folsom is quickly released to provide power, Natoma gives the river a steadier flow. Below Natoma the salmon run halts and a nearby hatchery provides spawning facilities. Cormorants sit and watch, 18 of them stand motionless across a line from bank to bank above the river. Number 19 flies low on the river with its wings barely missing the surface until it approaches its compatriots; then it sweeps up twenty feet without a wingbeat, soars up to the line of its comrades, stalls, and ever so gently glides, lites, and with a folding of wings, sets beside them, disturbing none.

Fishermen fish silently. One has a large fish, maybe 12 pounds, on his stringer and it floats upside down, twirling in the current; he is the only lucky one in all the creatures trying to catch a fish who has succeeded.
“Is that a steelhead?” I ask.
“No, it’s a salmon.”
“Nice!”
I’ve passed a number of fishermen on my route and asked: “Catch any?”
The inevitable answer has been: “Nope.”
One man asked, “Where are the fish?”
“Who knows?” I said. “In the river I guess.” What more can a fisherman say?

As I run along the American River it occurs to me that I love it here among star thistles and dollar-sized sunflowers, the blinking lights of Folsom, the poorly defined ridge between here and the Sierra, all of the vultures, hawks, and cormorants, heat among dead white trees and smells of the river. It’s a perfect place to run here along this river, in synch with nature and time. It was a perfect place to grow up here years ago.

But what I realize is that my mother is the one whom I ought to thank. Why? Because she brought me here after my father died in 1969. She thought that a boy ought to have room to play outside of a city; he ought to be able to breathe the fresh air and live like a Tom Sawyer. Los Angeles was no place to grow up and Galt, south of here, is where she grew up through the Great Depression. When I had a stroke, she came to Boise, a place she disdains, to help me. I have recovered and it seems that now is my time to return a favor to her while it is still possible, while she yet retains her memory of the majestic oaks and she grows older in this place that she loves.

American River essay

Thoughts Upon A Run
As I went running along the American River in Folsom, California the licorice smell of anise mixed with the fragrance of ripe blackberries made me remember the river of my youth. I had contacted my friend, Doug, in passing through Sacramento and when he asked if I needed a place to stay, I looked at my watch—6:00 pm on Saturday—and decided to take him up on his offer. Otherwise I would have to crash on another friend whom I wasn’t yet able to contact, or find a random piece of land somewhere to throw my sleeping bag. Doug planned to go to his workout at a nearby gym and he had a few chores to accomplish, but if I didn’t mind, his place was mine.

The home is subtle and spectacular: a large, old rambling house with four bedrooms, beside a perfect garden. The garden includes pear and apple trees, conically cut junipers, a carefully trimmed 100 foot long laurel shrub, a maze of short bushes with azaleas and rhododendrons beside the front door. A nicely shaped swimming pool lay in the side yard. On the north side, the house overlooks the swift American River, and in evening, with a full moon, light provides a dimensioned view of sprawling valley oaks contrasting with the eerie shapes of over-tall cottonwoods and weepy willows. Inside the house is spare, the floors wood, the kitchen roomy.

I dressed for a run in 90 degree heat and headed out, dropping down to the American River along a subdivision road. The American River Parkway follows the river and runs through gravel pits left by an excavation company that had been purchased to protect the river’s values. In the first mile I saw figs growing under hand-shaped leaves, quail scurrying through the brush, a walnut tree growing beside the trail, vultures soaring through the trees, more blackberries, and a river otter diving and swooshing its slim body through eddy lines in the river. This area isn’t really wild but it is protected to assure that the riparian area and wildlife continue to live there in health. As they do.

A valley oak spreads across a parking lot, forming a one-hundred foot circle of shade in this otherwise overheated area, creating a one-tree-oasis in the graveled expanse, begging for a picnic. Its branches droop to the height of a person standing; just right. Beyond the tree, I ran on a dirt trail that snakes through the riverside vegetation in the coolness of the growing evening. In a couple of miles I come to Lake Natoma.

Lake Natoma is a regulating reservoir for Folsom Reservoir and when the volume of Folsom is quickly released to provide power, Natoma gives the river a steadier flow. Below Natoma the salmon run halts and a nearby hatchery provides spawning facilities. Cormorants sit and watch, 18 of them stand motionless across a line from bank to bank above the river. Number 19 flies low on the river with its wings barely missing the surface until it approaches its compatriots; then it sweeps up twenty feet without a wingbeat, soars up to the line of its comrades, stalls, and ever so gently glides, lites, and with a folding of wings, sets beside them, disturbing none.

Fishermen fish silently. One has a large fish, maybe 12 pounds, on his stringer and it floats upside down, twirling in the current; he is the only lucky one in all the creatures trying to catch a fish who has succeeded.
“Is that a steelhead?” I ask.
“No, it’s a salmon.”
“Nice!”
I’ve passed a number of fishermen on my route and asked: “Catch any?”
The inevitable answer has been: “Nope.”
One man asked, “Where are the fish?”
“Who knows?” I said. “In the river I guess.” What more can a fisherman say?

As I run along the American River it occurs to me that I love it here among star thistles and dollar-sized sunflowers, the blinking lights of Folsom, the poorly defined ridge between here and the Sierra, all of the vultures, hawks, and cormorants, heat among dead white trees and smells of the river. It’s a perfect place to run here along this river, in synch with nature and time. It was a perfect place to grow up here years ago.

But what I realize is that my mother is the one whom I ought to thank. Why? Because she brought me here after my father died in 1969. She thought that a boy ought to have room to play outside of a city; he ought to be able to breathe the fresh air and live like a Tom Sawyer. Los Angeles was no place to grow up and Galt, south of here, is where she grew up through the Great Depression. When I had a stroke, she came to Boise, a place she disdains, to help me. I have recovered and it seems that now is my time to return a favor to her while it is still possible, while she yet retains her memory of the majestic oaks and may grow older in this place that she loved.

In the Sesesh

The Wild Heart of Idaho!

The Secesh (pronounced Sea-sesh like a seashell), Buckhorn, and French Creek wild areas comprise the most scenic, most untamed, geologically and biologically diverse areas in the wild heart of Idaho, near McCall.  The U.S. Forest Service has recommended 225,000 acres of these areas as wilderness; that’s big, but it’s a pittance.  In my 25 years of working to protect Idaho’s 9 million acres of roadless areas as wilderness, it has been these three areas that have inspired the most enthusiasm to continue my advocacy to protect them.  They are stunningly beautiful but accessible, and are surrounded by more roving, wild lands, one mountain range after another.  If this appeals to you, well then, read on!

Each has significant opponents and threats to the wild nature of the land.  In French Creek it is logging projects and road construction, that are now on hold.  In the Buckhorn and Secesh areas there is a slowly renewing ardor for logging and the growth of both motorized and non-motorized vehicle use in this sublime landscape.  On the Payette National Forest, where these wilderness values exist, there is a growing indifference to the loss, as weak conservationists look elsewhere to find support for easier places to protect.

The Secesh Crest of unroaded lands, (including the Secesh, Buckhorn and French Creek wild areas) is surrounded by the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, Caton Creek, Salmon River Breaks, Patrick Butte, and the Seven Devils Wilderness among others.  Taken as a group, all of these areas are the preeminent place in Idaho for providing migration of wildlife from Montana to Oregon along the Salmon River system in this warming world.  The intact landscape supports a remarkable number of animals: wolves, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, lynx, bears, martin, wolverine, fisher, salmon, trout, steelhead, migratory birds ospreys, eagles, bluebirds, and in lesser numbers, people.

The elevation runs from 3,400 feet to above 9,000 feet at Loon peak–from grasses at lower elevation to above treeline. This includes lodgepine pine, Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine, spruce, larch, aspen, and up to whitebark pine near the rocky summit.  This region is extremely rugged and includes Victor Peak, Loon Peaks, and Storm Peak where a number of spectacular lakes occur: Enos, Twenty mile, Storm, Victor, Burnside, Hum, Box, Buckhorn, Cly, Prince, Tsum, Maki lakes and many, many others.  Look at their names and you will learn: Hum is said to be named for the humming of mosquitoes; Storm peak for the violence of the winters in the peak’s vicinity.  The Secesh River and the South Fork Salmon River flow through the Secesh wild area, beside the Buckhorn Creek region, both of which protect critical salmon and steelhead habitat.  

The name “Secesh” comes some of the rich history of the region that was originally settled by secessionists at the end of the American Civil War.  The name recalls the way that the people in central Idaho would like to live and see themselves as being—independent, gun-toting, and free.  That is all illusionary, of course, as everyone living here depends on the largesse of federal subsidies for their very survival, but in nearby towns of Secesh Meadows, Warren, and Yellowpine the concerns of local citizens about access and fire threats have to be heard or a shootout, or more likely, a lawsuit, may ensue.

What is the future of this splendid western land?  I can’t tell you, after 25 years of trying to divine its fate, but these things I can tell you: all of your outspoken opinions will count in both the short and long run.   Your silence will count on the other side.  And by-and-by, it will be decided somewhere in the middle, in due time.  How much time is “due time” will depend upon how much noise we can make in the short time.  If you would like to join us at the Secesh Wildlands Coalition contact me at mikecmedberry@msn.com  There is a poster that I will send you if you ask and we are considering publishing a book on the wild Secesh country within a year.

 End

Solstice 2011 (Part 2)

Solstice 2011 (Part 2)
The sun rose above the horizon at 5:50 on Big Creek Summit along Warm Lake Road on the Solstice. Fifteen minutes and a short drive along the South Fork road, 27 of us were up with our boots tied on, water in our hip bags, lunch stashed in a mule’s packsaddle, and we went off hiking, huffing and puffing, with 40 pounds of saplings to the top of the goddammed world.

After a mile walking along a grown-over skid road, our numbers had stretched out until the hikers in front couldn’t be seen around the next bend and people behind couldn’t be heard talking or tramping. I was in the middle of the group and content to be breathing hard and deep. In a couple of miles we came to a big burn where most of the lodgepole pines were blackened and singed into curlicues.  The rest were burned to the roots and the soil was white and powdery and puffed up with each step. It burned hot a few years ago, but the turf remained devoid of anything but dry ash. Little rivulets ran down this parched slope and soil gathered downhill: a reminder of the character of this batholitic geology. I crossed an unnamed creek, headed uphill seemingly alone.  A man who appeared beside me out of nowhere hooted for his compadres. They hooted ahead and behind as we continued uphill on the next push.

A great gray owl flew out of the woods in a patch of green trees, as silently as the man had, and disappeared. “Hey, did you see that?  A great grey owl!” Jessie nodded and smiled broadly as we headed on to the top of the mountain. “Wow, look at that!” I said. But there was no one there beside me. A forest service employee 50 yards away said, “They’ve gone down the hill, planting.”

“Ain’t that purty,” I said. The ridge of the Needles rose on the northwest after sunrise with snow in their teeth.

“Yep. It’s nice to get paid to hike, eh?”  I nodded, catching my breath, and headed down to plant among the workers before me. I found my place in the line fifteen feet from each man working down the slope, slashing at the ground with my sharp blade, clearing a 2’ by 2’ swatch (well, ok it might have been 1’X 1’ but if anyone asked it was 2’X 2’), making a manly swing of the pick to put a gash in the land to place a tree, putting a sapling into the hole, and covering the roots with a stiff kick of the ground. I moved fifteen feet downhill to the next place. The pouches we carried were full of sapling pines and by the time we travelled 1,000 feet downhill, the 300 saplings that each worker carried were nearly empty.  Mine were nearly full and the man next to me said: “Line.”
“What?”

“Line!” he said again.  It sounded like an order and it sounded despairing. The man on the other side called “Line!” I looked both ways and there were 50 feet on either side before another man was stationed. “Yu follo line!”

“Sorry, sorry,” I said. They had each covered for my inattention by planting a couple of trees apiece on my line. Then I lost the line in a big way as it broke in two: three men headed down the mountain and two headed up. I really didn’t know which way to go so I followed the three headed down. I called “Hey, over here!” but no one listened to my English.

Senior Heffe came upon my mistake and took all of my remaining trees and sent me up the mountain to follow three men who were also going up. “This couldn’t be a good sign,” I told one man who just replied “No say.” I climbed up the mountain to where a mule team had deposited another series of boxes of saplings. I watched the two men unload the 50 pound box of trees into their pouches and then they lifted an additional box onto their shoulders.

”You’re kidding!” I said, completely flabbergasted. One man looked at me, shrugged, and headed down the mountain with the box over his shoulders. A third man picked up another box and gestured me to lift it on his shoulders. I laughed and indicated that I wouldn’t do that. He smiled and we headed down each with fifty pounds on our hips. That seemed quite enough on the steep mountainside and we unloaded the saplings when we got down to where the others were working. And we got back to it.

After a short lunch, (we climbed back up the same 600’ for lunch that the four of us had gone to get the additional saplings), we each loaded up our pouches and went back out to plant trees. I was followed by the Forest Service official who checked out our work and by my supervisor to make sure that I was planting the trees properly. Mostly I wasn’t. “Make a wider slash!” “Put the roots in the ground straight!” “Keep moving,” “Stay on the line,” was what I gathered I was being told. Suddenly we were finished and we trudged out about five miles along a ridge to the truck.

I dragged going downhill and felt the blisters on my feet, which had grown into hot coals since last week.  That slowed me down substantially.

I was the last man out to the van and felt lucky to get away from the nagging boss. As I hiked, I had stopped to fill my canteen with the rushing creek water that tasted gritty and roily in my mouth; it was like nectar from the heavens. When I got down we filled the van with our ripe smelling bodies and after one groggy, head bouncing hour, each person piled out into the gas and goodies station on the roadside in Cascade, bought a pint of water, beer or, Gatoraide and had half a chicken to feed himself.

I sat on the curb at the gas station and felt the sunshine on my soot-charred face on this solstice day.  It was the ninth day of my employment, nearly two work weeks. I ached. I limped. I groaned. And when we got to the motel, I slept.

At nine o’clock I was down on the floor for the night on this longest day of the year. My fortune was that the next day was a day off. I’d decided that two weeks was two weeks longer than most of the gringos had lasted doing this crazyassed work, I had made $1,000, and that was enough money to carry me for awhile to find another job. My lament was that on the solstice, I couldn’t stay awake long enough to see the sun set.

Regardless, I had seen the roadless Needles and felt every inch of the rugged mountains on my favorite South Fork of the Salmon River; I’d seen deer, several bears, grouse, eagles, elk, and a great gray owl; had tasted the creek water as a much needed gift in the heat of day; and found the friendship of the men as a great generosity.  However, I was done with this job, absolutely, freaking  finished, but I was a bit richer and a bit wiser about how this work got done.

In the South Fork Salmon River drainage with a Mexican Crew

Planting trees on the South Fork Salmon River with a crew of Mexican men (part 1)

            The men are energetic and talkative, strong and young.  Unfortunately they don’t speak my language, nor I theirs.  Well, they are speaking in broken English, occasionally, and I speak no Spanish, decisively.  The Mexicans have a reputation of doing the taxing job of planting trees efficiently, thoroughly, and quickly.  Senior Heffe, the boss, said I could try this job but that all of the gringos he’s seen over the last 10 years had not lasted because it is very hard work.   He told me that I wouldn’t last two days; I laughed and told him I was 55 and I figured that was young enough to know, old enough to know better.   We both laughed.

            “See you tomorrow” I said.

            “You don’t have to.”

            We headed out the next day with a crew of 27 people packed into two vans and travelled an hour or so to the starting point and an immediate climb of 1,000 feet, weighed down with roughly 40 pounds of seedlings.  We started the planting and I really didn’t care much for the work, but I did care for the money—$13.00/per hour–and the views.   I figured we were going on the Cascade District west of the town of Cascade, on a piece of logged land that I didn’t know, nor care much about.  But we went east to a burned and cut-over piece of the South Fork of the Salmon River drainage.  This salvage sale was challenged and lost by The Wilderness Society several years ago.

            This is my home territory—the Needles—which is now adjacent to a 100,000 acre proposed wilderness that I had fought to preserve for more than 25 years: steep land with burned trees now stacked one upon another in a land of full of black bears, spruce grouse, mountain lion, huckleberries, morel mushrooms, gray wolves, tamarack trees,and in the river below steelhead, bull trout, and Chinook salmon.  This is no wasteland, but a stunningly beautiful place, impaired, for a short time, by fire and management.  This parcel was eliminated from wilderness candidacy by logging that the U.S. Forest Service had proposed and managed roughly five years ago.  I was now replanting this land by utter coincidence.

            Let me be the first to say that it ain’t particularly easy work: climbing a thousand or more feet up and down and up and down through a burned canyon with many downed trees, planting seedlings in a straight line of people that were placing trees 15 feet apart.  We lined up 27-people across and swept the land; we came down on this land like a biblical plague of locusts that stomped every inch of the land we crossed.  I was confused by commands that were spoken in Spanish and when the workers moved in formation to meet convolutions of this uneven land; I moved differently. 

            All the animals were chased away as we hacked the ground with our foot-and-a-half long blades, clearing a place where seedlings could grow, and planted small Ponderosa pine, spruce, and Douglas fir.  I saw three bears that ran and at least half a dozen piles of their scat along the route.  There was much ruckus among my amigos when animals were seen, but I didn’t see much beyond the land below my feet.  After the second day, my muscles ached, my hands and feet were blistered, and my air was spent; I slept on the floor of the motel room in Cascade instead of driving 30 miles to and from the work site to make the starting time of 5:30 am, and ate the generous food that was offered me.  I could afford no more.

            The best thing about this job was that it provided an opportunity to get in better shape and get paid for it.  And of course it was a gorgeous stretch of land known by few.  The water tasted sweet out of rivulets that ran down the mountainside and I drank it in quickly in the cup of my hands, quenching the thirst, again and again.  I’d experienced a place that I never saw this closely and I vaguely hoped that the threat of Giardia and disease carrying ticks were going to prove empty ones.  At the moment I didn’t care.  The water in each moment was pure and life giving.  I hadn’t counted upon the aches and pains that arose in the odd crannies that I never knew could give pain.  Aspirin did the job on most of these aches and the rest were only the price of entry to the Mexican ways in this American land.  When the week was over, I gladly took the weekend to heal and came back for another week of this abuse in paradse.

 Part 2 Continued next week

Running Down the Track

Running Down the Tracks

“Rail Runner, the coyote’s after you; Rail Runner, if she catches you you’re through!”

That’s the message from New Mexico Governor, Suzanna Martinez, who has threatened to cut the expense of running the Rail Runner train, to sell the trains, and count coup for her vastly conservative administration.  But it would hurt all who anticipate the future (with vastly increased gasoline prices), the government center in Santa Fe, and the community spirit of this stunningly beautiful, and remarkably liberal town.

It’s a cool run from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, past a prairie dog colony, down by the flat roofs and tiny windows of adobe dwellings, beside the old Santa Fe Brewery, travelling across the chamisa desert, passing rabbitbrush, juniper trees, and arroyos, cows, windmills, and solar panels along the way.  The Rail Runner, the train that was financed by Congress, connects Albuquerque to its richer, more famous neighbor to the north.  The round trip price is eight dollars and it takes roughly an hour to ride each way for the 300 or so people who regularly board; the riders travel in comfort on this train that the former governor supported with zeal.  As a visitor (I used to be a resident of Santa Fe), it is a pleasure to travel by train and to have the luxury of seeing the landscape that I’m visiting.  The train is more than a luxury though, for the riders who take it for transportation to get to their jobs and it runs through the Kewa pueblo, where native Americans can use it for connection to the rest of New Mexico.

The land is dry and windy across this expanse of the state, which accounts for the windmills bringing up water, as it is very, very hot and sunny.  The mountains, the Sandias, are a high dinosaur’s crest immediately out of Albuquerque and the mountains around Galesteo creep to the east, providing a lonesome look of the shadows-and-light, crenulated view of the parched New Mexican landscape.  There are also five locomotives for this short run.  The trains were built in Boise, Idaho, and occasionally run more than 100 miles per hour running on diesel and electric power.  The government is looking into running the trains on biodiesel.  

On the way back to Santa Fe, the sunshine warmed my shoulders in late afternoon, lit the Rio Grande like a coppery snake and the snarled and bent cottonwoods which graced the extended plain.  An arroyo cut through as we lifted beyond the river plain with purple, charcoal, and chalk colored cliffs that led to a juniper dotted mesa.  It was very scenic!  The short trip was full of surprises that ended with the Meep! Meep! call of the roadrunner, a gentle warning to mind the rail. 

I gotta think that the Rail Runner is going to outsmart wily ol’ Governor Martinez with little more than the sweet little Meep! Meep!, like the warning little buzz of a rattlesnake.      

If any are interested I will provide the financial and political analyses for you; just let me know.

Violence on a run

Violence on a run

            I was about to head out for a long run along the railroad tracks in Santa Fe last Sunday and realized that I had left my sunscreen somewhere else, well, I didn’t have any in my backpack, so I stopped a couple that was headed out in their car.

            “Excuse me do you have a little sunscreen that I could borrow?”

            They both looked and said sorry but no they didn’t have any.   I said thanks and went over by the tracks about 200 feet away and began to stretch my aching leg muscles in the intense sun.  Just then a woman ran out to the car that was now moving from the driveway to the street and she demanded the attention of the drivers.  “Hey, hey, hey!  Help!” I heard as the car stopped and the drivers listened to her frantic pleas.

            In about 15 seconds a man came out of a nearby house and began screaming at the woman.  I couldn’t hear what he said but it got my attention.  They were at odds, face to face, across the hood of the car with the occupants stuck and horrified.   He screamed at her and she responded as I stopped stretching and stood blankly to hear what was said. 

            He argued in half articulated words and seemed drunk–drunk on a Sunday morning, a lovely morning—and he walked over to confront the driver of the car.  The woman moved away.  I walked slowly towards them just as he confronted the driver and banged on their tightly closed window. 

            “What are you doing here?” he said.  “Leave us alone and go! Go away!  We don’t need you!”  He pounded on the window again and formed his hand into a form of a gun and pretended to fire it through the window at the people inside.  “Go away!”

            Horrified, I moved more closely to be a witness and to lend whatever help the people in the car might need.  I stood with my arms folded like a disciplinarian, staring at the man, trying to determine if he had a real gun or was bluffing.  I decided it was a bluff and he stared at me now.  The woman took this break in the scene of his attacking her to get into another car and drive away.  I don’t know where the other car came from but it was there at the right moment.  The couple drove around the corner and stopped their car. 

            But that left me facing the angry, drunken man; I backed away as he ranted about something or other.  I feared that he might have a real gun in his pocket or somewhere and it was just he and me and I kept my distance from him as I backed away.

            He saw that their cat was walking my way and said:  “Even the fucking cat is going with you.”  Now he was merely whining and I felt sorry for the man, but not much.  I felt more sorry for the cat.  And the woman who had left but probably would return.  I ran and waved at the other car in thanks.

            I ran for two hours and felt cleaner but very, very tired in the painfully hot sun of Santa Fe.  When I returned to the place I had started my run, there was no clue about what had happened nor where the people had gone.  It seemed like nothing had even happened until the cat came towards me, meowing.

The Gila Monster Arrives

The Gila Monster Arrives
I went to the Gila River in Southwest New Mexico on a search for a Gila Monster on Earth Day. Gila Monsters are pretty rare so I figured that I wouldn’t see one but what the heck, I might. I talked to everyone I could find, well, in the bars around Santa Fe and Silver City New Mexico and asked if they knew where a Gila Monster could be found. A biologist working at REI (go figure…) suggested a place outside Silver City, Turkey Creek, where she saw one last year. An amazing piece of luck!
Santa Fe was kinda boring and a bit high-brow for me to hang out looking for a single woman to dance with or drinking the $10 beer, so I took off to Silver City and found a drunk or two to ask about Gila Monsters. I found a drunk in Silver City who said “Sure, I know where you can find a Gila Monster because I’ve seen many of them.”
“Yeh, right,” I said.
“No, seriously, you go down to the Gila River and walk into the Gila Wilderness and along the river you will see Gila Monsters laying on the rocks beside the river, practically littering the river banks.”
That sounded like a tall tale, like the guy had changed the story from one with bikinis on the beach at Santa Monica to one that fit the thing I wanted to see, but you know, whatever, I had nothin’ better to do. However, the wilderness was up the Gila River from the point that he put his finger on, not downstream, where I was headed.
Another person said she hadn’t seen one and suggested going to search in Arizona. Another guy thought that they should be in New Mexico, probably around the Gila Wilderness but he was more interested in making a pathetic pool table shot and made one that flew off the table. (I told him that in my bar, in Idaho, that move wouldda cost him five bucks.) Arizona is a big place so I just thanked him, took his free beer, and headed out to the Gila River after sleeping in my car on the edge of a vast arroyo. It was a crap shoot to head out for the river, but I got a cup of coffee and drove through a uhm, slight hangover.

I walked along the river and combed the rocky banks for the elusive Gila Monster, feeling like I was on a goddamm snipe hunt. Then I crossed a water diversion and went up an arroyo that was full of big boulders and channels that water had built. It looked, well, kind of monsterish with enormous rocks cast about. About half an hour upstream I looked before me and there was a Gila Monster lollygagging accross the gravel bar. I almost stepped on it! I was incredulous and very excited to see this foot-and-a-half, poisonous lizzard that my father had told me about 35 years ago, crawling right before me! That’s a Gila Monster: it’s body was about as svelte as a sausage, its color was orange-and-pepto-bismo pink with stark black bands across its bee-bee studded body. Its tail was thick and its thick, black tongue slipped in and out of its wide mouth to sense the world like a rattlesnakes. The Gila Monster seemed a prehistoric character out of a comic book or a portrait from the artists in Santa Fe on Canyon Road, it just didn’t seem real.

I watched it for two hours during which he or she ate a birds egg under a bush that I’d scared it to. It swallowed the whole egg after chewing on it for a couple bites and found it impossible to break. What the hell, go for it Lizzie. I figured that my bothering it had resulted in its getting the egg, so I figured that we each had a good experience. My quest weekend was cut short by finding the prize of the quest, the lizzard that I would never have dreamed to find. But the weekend had its other high points: pronghorn antelope along the road, a rattlesnake in my trail, and a stunningly gorgeous mountain kingsnake along a road with red, white, and yellow bands on it. However, the Gila Monster was the best thing that Earth Day could provide me with: a seemingly mythic animal that was out on the earth and very much alive. We left in peace, the sweet little monster one way and me the other.