An Urban Greenspace Revolution

Home , Like a River Runs, Mount Hood Wilderness

The premature death of a rail trail AN URBAN Hallucinogenic toads Lithium mining GREENSPACE threatens sacred sites REVOLUTION Vol. 53 / July 2021 No. 7 • hcn.org EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER Greg Hanscom EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jennifer Sahn ART DIRECTOR Cindy Wehling FEATURES DIRECTOR McKenna Stayner MANAGING DIGITAL EDITOR Gretchen King ASSOCIATE EDITORS Emily Benson, Paige Blankenbuehler, Bryan Pollard (Interim) PHOTO EDITOR Roberto (Bear) Guerra ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR Luna Anna Archey ASSISTANT EDITORS Jessica Kutz, Anna V. Smith EDITOR AT LARGE Betsy Marston COPY EDITOR Diane Sylvain CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Elena Saavedra Buckley, Ruxandra Guidi, Michelle Nijhuis, Jonathan Thompson, Christine Trudeau CORRESPONDENTS Nick Bowlin, Leah Sottile, Sarah Tory EDITORIAL FELLOWS Ivan Bender, caretaker of the Hualapai Tribe’s Cholla Canyon Ranch in western Arizona, points out the boundaries Jessica Douglas, Brandon Yadegari Moreno of the tribe’s property from a site where exploratory drilling for lithium deposits has taken place. Roberto (Bear) Guerra / HCN EDITORIAL INTERNS Surya Milner, Wufei Yu DIRECTOR OF PHILANTHROPY Alyssa Pinkerton SENIOR DEVELOPMENT OFFICER Paul Larmer CHARITABLE GIVING ADVISOR Clara Fecht DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATES Hannah Stevens, Carol Newman DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT & MARKETING Gary Love MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER Michael Schrantz EVENTS & BUSINESS PARTNER COORDINATOR Laura Dixon DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS Erica Howard ACCOUNTS ASSISTANT Mary Zachman CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER Kathy Martinez Know CUSTOMER SERVICE Karen Howe, Mark Nydell, Pamela Peters, Tammy York GRANT WRITER Janet Reasoner the FOUNDER Tom Bell

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Brian Beitner (Colo.), John Belkin, president West. (Colo.), Seth Cothrun, treasurer (Ariz.), Jay Dean (Calif.), Bob Fulkerson (Nev.), Laura Helmuth, secretary (Md.), High Country News is an independent, reader-supported nonprofit 501(c)(3) media organization that covers the important Samaria Jaffe (Calif.), Marla Painter (N.M.), issues and stories that define the Western U.S. Our mission is to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the West’s diverse natural and human communities. High Country News (ISSN/0191/5657) publishes monthly, 12 issues per year, from 119 Grand Raynelle Rino (Calif.), Estee Rivera Murdock, Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes vice president (Colo.), Andy Wiessner (Colo.), to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for Florence Williams (D.C.) submission guidelines. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155, hcn.org. For editorial comments DIRECTOR EMERITUS Luis Torres (N.M.) or questions, write High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or [email protected], or call 970-527-4898.

2 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS EDITOR’S NOTE FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS

Stella Kalinina Los Angeles, California @Stella_Kalinina

Jessica Kutz Tucson, Arizona @jkutzie

Maya L. Kapoor Lotus, California We are water @kapoor_ml

THE OTHER DAY, I WENT FOR A WALK in the forest as a light rain fell and the sun intermittently Surya Milner shone down through the trees. Everything was gloriously moist and plant life was abundant. A creek Bozeman, Montana tumbled in and out of view, churning with aquamarine swirls and pearly froth. The precipitation @suryamilner wasn’t heavy enough to soak through my light jacket, but it was enough to sustain the trillium blooms and coax the rhododendrons closer to blossoming. In the Mount Hood Wilderness, there seemed to be enough water to go around, though much of Oregon was already experiencing extreme drought. Andru Okun A few days earlier, I had driven to Portland from California’s Central Coast, where the lush greens of New Orleans, spring had already faded to a tawny brown, the oak trees and their shadows drawing a stark contrast. Louisiana My route bisected Shasta Reservoir, the largest human-made lake in the state. Shasta Dam is operated @andruokun by the Bureau of Reclamation, which builds and maintains dams and canals for water storage, delivery and power generation. As of mid-May, Shasta Lake was at 54% of average capacity, and predictions suggested that it might fall to its lowest level in 40 years ... perhaps even lower. Jenny Shank Boulder, Colorado I crossed the Klamath River, where 70% of juvenile salmon surveyed over a recent two-week period @JennyShank were found dead. (See story on page 7.) The Klamath is managed for the benefit of many: salmon, agricultural users, commercial fishermen and the Klamath, Karuk, Hoopa Valley and Yurok tribes. These constituencies are often described as competing interests, though the salmon certainly don’t see it that way; the salmon are just trying to stay alive. And then there are the interests of the river itself, upon Carl Segerstrom which — or I suppose I should say whom — the Yurok Tribe bestowed the rights of personhood in 2019. Spokane, Washington @carlschirps The truth is, all these interests have legitimate reasons to want to make use of the Klamath. But when water is in short supply, everybody suffers. How much water, for how much agriculture, versus how much water for salmon? How much for sustaining other fish species of cultural importance to the Indigenous people who have stewarded this river for thousands of years? The calculus grows more Anna V. Smith impossible with each passing drought. Portland, Oregon @annavtoriasmith There is simply not enough water to go around in the West this year. There will be even less in the years to come. Future droughts may not end at all, merely fluctuate between classifications, from moderate to exceptional. And exceptional may someday become normal. Without water, we are nobody, we are sad sacks of skin-covered bones. We cannot base our lifestyle or our economies on using more water Leah Sottile than is available. We’ll need to learn to treat water like the precious element that it is. As the water Portland, Oregon protectors remind us over and over through their acts of resistance: Water is life. @Leah_Sottile

Jennifer Sahn, editor-in-chief

JULY 2021 3 Sheep graze the artificial hillside of a decommis- sioned landfill in California’s San Gabriel Valley to FEATURES help mitigate the risk of fires (above). Stella Kalinina / HCN Reclaiming LA 22 How communities in Los Angeles are turning industrial sites The Sonoran Desert toad, threatened in New Mexico into pockets of green. and thought to be extinct in California, is being PHOTOS BY STELLA KALININA | INTRODUCTION BY JESSICA KUTZ poached in Arizona for its hallucinogenic secretions (facing). Maricopa County Parks and Recreation Derailed How a trail in rural Oregon became a target of far-right extremism. 28 BY LEAH SOTTILE | ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOAN WONG

Access to subscriber-only content: hcn.org ON THE COVER hcne.ws/digi-5307 Carina Lizárraga on Memorial Day with her parents and siblings at Los Angeles State Historic Park in Chinatown. The park is located on the former site of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company’s River Station. Stella Kalinina / HCN Follow us @highcountrynews

4 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS REPORTAGE REFLECTION & REVIEW

A hallucinogenic toad in peril 14 How will humans live 41 How one species got caught up in the commodification of spiritual awakening. through ecological collapse? BY JESSICA KUTZ In Believers, Lisa Wells profiles ordinary people who want to lead less destructive lives. REVIEW BY ANDRU OKUN

Farmworker organizing 42 in Washington is undoing discriminatory labor policies A conversation with Victoria Ruddy and Elizabeth Strater of the United Farm Workers. Q&A BY CARL SEGERSTROM

The female inmates 44 battling wildfires In Breathing Fire, Jaime Lowe uncovers the benefits and drawbacks of California’s inmate fire program. REVIEW BY JENNY SHANK

Wildfire needs 45 new narratives The podcast Fireline is a start. REVIEW BY SURYA MILNER

#iamthewest 48 Alex Kim, racial justice engagement Ongoing fish kill on the 7 ‘I’m scared of getting sick 11 specialist, Missoula, Montana. Klamath River is an ‘absolute from the water’ BY TAILYR IRVINE worst-case scenario’ Some rural California communities Unprecedented drought in the Klamath have waited nearly a decade for Basin leaves communities wondering state regulators to repair their how they will survive the summer. tainted drinking-water systems. BY ANNA V. SMITH BY CLAUDIA BOYD-BARRETT PHOTOS BY MARTIN DO NASCIMENTO When Indigenous religious 8 freedom and public-lands Public lands inundated 16 management clash Record numbers of visitors Demand for lithium-ion batteries are swarming the outdoors. threatens a landscape in western FACTS & FIGURES DEPARTMENTS Arizona that is sacred to the BY JONATHAN THOMPSON Hualapai Nation. BY MAYA KAPOOR | PHOTOS BY ROBERTO (BEAR) GUERRA 3 EDITOR’S NOTE

6 LETTERS

15 THE LATEST

18 DONORS / READER PROFILES

46 HEARD AROUND THE WEST

JULY 2021 5 LETTERS issue, and especially Claire Thomp- can issues is admirable, I am less son’s book review (“The wisdom interested in those stories. Good of trees,” June 2021). As a retired luck. national park ranger-naturalist, Chuck Stearns with two forestry degrees, I’m Whitefish, Montana painfully aware of the split within the forestry community. Trees are EXCEPTIONAL finally getting some recognition, Your efforts bring me such a tingly and not just as homes for the cute kind of joy. Every issue is out of the fuzzy aboveground beasts they park! You are the mythical excep- shelter. tional American. Thanks. Eric Burr Jon Herman High Country News is dedicated to independent Mazama, Washington Roslyn, Washington journalism, informed debate and discourse in the public interest. We welcome letters through UNCERTAIN WATER SUPPLY FAR AFIELD digital media and the post. Send us a letter, find us Thanks for Sarah Tory’s story When I first subscribed to your on social media, or email us at [email protected]. on Phoenix’s water-depletion magazine, I was ready to put on myopia, “Uncertain water supply” my boots to explore Colorado and (June 2021). Tory did a great job of adjacent states and write to Wash- summarizing the history compre- ington, D.C., regarding matters THE FIRE NEXT TIME is not an exact science, like chem- hensively, yet comprehensibly. pertaining to wilderness. As time It was with great interest that istry or physics. It really is an art That’s talent. has gone by, your magazine has I read the June issue of HCN, to be able to manage our resources I live in Phoenix and fear for gone so far afield from your origi- especially the article about the wisely. But it can be done. the future. Phoenix is built out, nal purpose that I no longer agree Salmon-Challis National Forest Lamar B. Taylor but the main industry, just beyond with your mission. (“The Fire Next Time”). We lived Buffalo, Wyoming Phoenix’s borders, remains hous- Barbara H. Hannah there for eight and a half years (’77 ing development, even though the Grand Junction, Colorado to ’85), when I worked as a range I read with great interest the June conditions point to a bad ending. I specialist for the Bureau of Land 2021 article, “The Fire Next Time” never thought I’d applaud polyure- BEST WISHES Management for four-plus years by Carl Segerstrom. thane sod, but there you are. I’ve been an on-and-off subscriber and then on the Salmon Ranger Similar events have occurred Kate Nolan and occasional contributor to District for another four-plus years. on the national forests and grass- Phoenix, Arizona High Country News for so many It’s amazing that now, 36 years lands in Texas. The Forest Service years I’ve lost track — roughly later, the agencies, the users, the everywhere is trying to avoid doing KEEP GOING 25. I just received the June issue, environmentalists and other inter- required environmental analy- I’ve been reading High Coun- along with a sticker saying it is my ested parties are still often at odds sis. This is wrong, illegal, and the try News since I fought fires in last one and that I need to renew. I with each other over the manage- agency knows this. Wyoming in 1977. HCN looks better opened it to read your inaugural ment of our natural resources. No Megafires are not stopped than ever, with great photos of the Editor’s Note (by Editor-in-Chief one group is to blame for the recent by thinning, prescribed burn- Atascosa and its plant life — as well Jennifer Sahn) and was absolutely disastrous wildfires or other envi- ing or other forest management as the LA River (both May 2021), delighted to discover a kindred ronmental problems. All groups actions. They are driven by the and your articles are as smart as spirit. All — literally all — of my have a stake in the guilt. Compro- local weather and national climate, ever and more wide-ranging (i.e., spiritual experiences have been mise and cooperation are what including human-caused climate culturally diverse). Keep it up, keep in wild places, and at age 59 I still it will take to solve the problems. change, drought and winds. going: That’s why I subscribe. go into the wilderness, often alone, Each group needs to put aside its Brandt Mannchen Sesshu Foster to nurture that connection and own agenda and work with the Humble, Texas Alhambra, California restore my sense of faith and my other groups on what they have in sense of responsibility to protect common and what they can agree THE WISDOM OF TREES NOT RENEWING nature and its inhabitants, and to on. Natural resource management Thank you for another excellent It is with a bit of remorse that I have create a path for humans to live to tell you that I will not be renew- sustainably with our fellow travel- ing my subscription this fall, thus ers on this Earth. On the strength ending my continuous subscrip- and inspiration of your inaugural CORRECTIONS tion of 38 years. While I understand issue, I’m renewing my subscrip- We neglected to note that research travel for our June feature, “The some of the journalism changes tion and sending a contribution to Fire Next Time,” was made possible by a grant from the Society of you have made, I find myself read- HCN. We may never meet, but I will Environmental Journalists’ Fund for Environmental Journalism. Thank ing fewer articles in High Country think of you and send you my best you, FEJ! In our May 2021 Heard Around the West column, we said that News. I regret the reduced focus on wishes with every issue I read. Tom Satre told his story about deer swimming out to his boat to the Sitka environmental issues. While the Tom Starrs Gazette. It was actually the Juneau Empire. We regret the errors. increased focus on Native Ameri- Portland, Oregon

6 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS REPORTAGE Barry McCovey Jr., Yurok Fisheries Department director and Yurok citizen, who has studied fish disease on the Klamath for 20 years. This year’s drought is part of the new climate regime the Ongoing fish kill on the Klamath River basin is shifting into. “Good water years where there’s plenty of water to satisfy all the needs of is an ‘absolute worst-case scenario’ the basin are rare now,” McCovey said. With the forecast so grim so early in the year, Unprecedented drought in the Klamath Basin leaves communities wondering communities are already seeking aid. A first how they will survive the summer. round of drought relief allocated $15 million for irrigators, and $3 million for the Klamath Basin BY ANNA V. SMITH tribes, though the tribes — along with commercial fishermen and nonprofits — have requested $250 million in relief. In a virtual forum this THE VIDEO SHOWS clear river water washing May with congressional representatives, Ben over rocks as sunlight dances in the shallows. DuVal, president of the Board of Directors of Small slivers of white that look like leaves float the Klamath Water Users Association, called on the surface. But they aren’t leaves; they’re for a settlement agreement to bring “long-term the bodies of juvenile salmon, most of them no stability” to the basin. “It can be done; it has longer than a finger, dead from a warm-water been done elsewhere,” he said. Such agreements disease exacerbated by drought on the Klamath have been attempted in the past with varying River. The caption to the video, filmed by Yurok degrees of success, though one of the last major Vice Chairman Frankie Joe Myers, is stark: efforts, the Klamath Basin Restoration Agree- “This is what climate change looks like when ment, never made it through Congress. (The we don’t act.” Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement, Fish have been dying on the Klamath since which is still in effect, details the planned around May 4, according to the Yurok Tribal removal of four dams on the Klamath.) Fisheries Department. At that time, 97% of the Large-scale agreements like that require juvenile salmon caught by the department’s significant federal involvement. Interior in-river trapping device were infected with Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) has the disease C. shasta, and were either dead, or indicated her interest in Klamath issues, but would die within days. Over a two-week period, has not yet talked about an agreement. In 70% of the juvenile salmon caught in the trap April, acknowledging the impact of climate were dead. change and the difficult summer ahead, she This spring, the Klamath Basin is already in reversed a number of memos and assessments extreme and exceptional drought — one of the by the Trump administration, saying they were worst drought years in four decades. Irrigators issued without tribal consultation and don’t upriver from the fish kill were told in mid-May reflect the current administration’s goals. Rep. that for the first time since the “A” Canal in the Jared Huffman, D-Calif., has urged Haaland to Klamath Project began operating in 1907, they appoint a “Klamath czar” — a “high-level oper- These juvenile salmon, collected by the Yurok Fisheries would not receive any water from it. The irriga- Department’s in-river trapping device, were killed by a ative who can make quick and important deci- tors say they need 400,000 acre-feet of water, warm-water disease. Matt Mais / Yurok Tribe sions.” The planned removal of four dams on the but this year, they will receive just 33,000 acre- Klamath, meanwhile, is still awaiting approval feet from the Klamath Project — a historic low. was canceled because of low flows last August, by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The situation has put pressure on an embat- and after a dry winter, heated litigation around The ongoing fish kill is reminiscent of the tled region already caught in a cyclical mode water allocation persists. In June, several irriga- traumatic 2002 die-off, in which 60,000 fall run of crisis due to a drying climate. “For salmon tors set up an encampment by the Klamath Proj- adult chinook salmon died of disease because people, a juvenile fish kill is an absolute worst- ect head gates, which have been forced open by of low water in the Klamath. The optics that case scenario,” Myers said in a statement. irrigators during past droughts. “This drought year were much more dramatic — the bodies In a statement about this year’s drought, is not a fluke event,” Yurok citizen and tribal of the fish were everywhere, piled on the banks Klamath Irrigation District President Ty counsel Amy Cordalis testified in an early June of the river, floating downriver — but the mass Kliewer said, “This just couldn’t be worse. The House hearing on the ongoing drought in the death of juveniles means they’ll never make it impacts to our family farms and these rural West. “It is part of a larger pattern of drought out to the ocean, and never get a chance to lay communities will be off the scale.” brought on by climate change. Climate change their eggs. Given the life cycle of a salmon, it Last summer was also dry, and farmers is no longer some vague future threat — we are also guarantees that the salmon run years from and their supporters held a tractor convoy to seeing its effects happening now, in real time.” now will be abysmal. “Everyone’s going to keep protest the lack of water and the Bureau of Wet years used to be the norm, and dry on suffering if we don’t come up with a plan that Reclamation’s allocation decisions. Mean- years were uncommon, but in recent years works moving forward,” McCovey said. “And we while, the Yurok Tribe’s Boat Dance ceremony that’s changed, especially since 2014, said don’t have much time left.”

JULY 2021 7 Ivan Bender, the caretaker of the Hualapai Tribe’s Cholla Canyon Ranch, was the first to realize that exploratory drilling was taking place around the perimeter of the tribe’s property. REPORTAGE Instead, Christian colonizers were the rightful owners, based on the Spanish colonial “Doctrine of Discovery,” a racist and anti-Indigenous policy holding that non-Christian, non-European soci- eties were inferior, and that Christian European When Indigenous religious freedom nations had a superior right to all land. “Part of what justified the claiming of the and public-lands management clash land was that (colonizers) would teach the Indigenous people Christianity,” Michalyn Demand for lithium-ion batteries threatens a landscape in western Arizona Steele, an Indian law expert at Brigham Young that is sacred to the Hualapai Nation. University and a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians, said. “If they rejected Christianity, then BY MAYA KAPOOR | PHOTOS BY ROBERTO (BEAR) GUERRA they essentially forfeited their rights to the land and resources.” By the late 1800s, the U.S. had banned Indigenous religious practices, forcing tribes to socially and politically assimilate, and to adopt ONE AUTUMN EVENING four years ago, corridor for everything from cradleboards to Christianity through agricultural, lifestyle and Ivan Bender, a Hualapai man in his mid-50s, drums. religious practices. took a walk with his fluffy brown-and-white The mining company (USA Lithium Ltd., More recently, courts have continued to Pomeranian, Sierra May, to check on the ranch- which has since been acquired by Hawkstone) weaken protections for Indigenous religious land he tends. Nestled in western Arizona’s hadn’t told the Hualapai Nation it was search- freedom on public lands. In the precedent- Big Sandy River Valley, the ranch protects Ha’ ing for lithium on nearby Bureau of Land setting 1988 case Lyng v. Northwest Indian Kamwe’ — hot springs that are sacred to the Management lands. That evening, Bender was Cemetery Protective Association, the Supreme Hualapai and known today in English as Cofer shocked to see the destruction taking place. Court ruled that the Forest Service could widen Hot Springs. As the shadows lengthened, Bender The company eventually bulldozed a network a logging road in Northern California’s Six saw something surprising — men working on a of roads, drilling nearly 50 test wells more than Rivers National Forest, even though it would nearby hillside. 300 feet deep in the sacred landscape. destroy a region that played an essential part “I asked them what they were doing,” Bender This summer, Hawkstone plans to triple its in the religious beliefs of tribes, including the recalled. “They told me they were drilling.” As it exploratory drilling, almost encircling Canyon Yurok, Karuk and Tolowa. The Supreme Court turns out, along with sacred places — including Ranch and the springs it protects. In the next reasoned that although the location might be the hot springs, ceremony sites and ancestral few years, Hawkstone hopes to break ground utterly wrecked, that destruction did not violate burials — the valley also holds an enormous on an open-pit mine and dig an underground the Constitution, because it would not force lithium deposit. Now, exploratory work by pipeline to transport the slurry about 50 miles tribal members to violate their religious beliefs Australian company Hawkstone Mining Ltd. to a plant in Kingman, Arizona, where it will use or punish them for practicing their religions. threatens those places, and with them, the sulfuric acid to extract the lithium from the ore. “Even assuming that the Government’s religious practices of the Hualapai and other Lithium, which is listed as a critical mineral, is Indigenous nations. But this threat is nothing crucial for reaching the Biden administration’s new: Centuries of land expropriation, combined goal of replacing gas-guzzling vehicles with elec- with federal court rulings denying protection to tric vehicles, and Big Sandy Valley is relatively Existing roads sacred sites, have long infringed on Indigenous close to the Tesla factory in Nevada. Altogether, Proposed roads religious freedom. Hawkstone has mining rights on more than Existing drill sites Proposed drill sites Cholla Canyon Ranch, where Bender is the 5,000 acres of public land in Arizona for this Water well caretaker, includes approximately 360 acres project. Yet tribes whose sacred sites are at risk Mining claims about halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas, have almost no say in its decisions. flanked to the west by the lush riparian corridor Public lands from Bears Ears to Oak Flat AZ of the Big Sandy River. The valley is part of an contain countless areas of cultural and reli- Cholla Canyon ancient salt route that connected tribes from gious importance. But when tribes have gone Ranch as far north as central Utah to communities in to court to protect these sites — and their own Baja California and along the Pacific Coast. It has religious freedom — they’ve consistently lost. been documented in the songs and oral tradi- Courts have narrowly interpreted what counts as tions of many Indigenous nations. a religious burden for tribes, largely to preserve “There are stories about that land and what the federal government’s ability to use public it represents to the Hualapai Tribe,” Bender said. land as it sees fit. Cholla “To me, it holds a really, really sacred valley of life The roots of this policy are centuries deep. Canyon Ranch in general.” According to Tribal Council member In the landmark 1823 case Johnson v. M’Intosh, Richard Powskey, who directs the Hualapai the Supreme Court ruled that Indigenous Natural Resources Department, the Hualapai people could not sell land to private owners in harvest native plant materials along the river the United States, because they did not own it. Source: BLM

JULY 2021 9 The Cholla Canyon Ranch protects a Hualapai sacred site named Ha’ Kamwe’ — known in English as Cofer Hot Springs.

For its part, in March Hawkstone said that “All (I)ndigenous title is cleared and there are no other known historical or environmentally sensitive areas.” Hawkstone’s report ignores the fact that even when tribes lack legal title to their traditional lands, those spaces still hold religious and cultural importance. When asked for comment, Doug Pitts, a U.S. advisor at Hawkstone Mining, emailed HCN that, given the early stage of the project, “we do not feel a discussion on the project is worthwhile at this time.” Even without a clear legal path forward, the Hualapai Nation has not given up on protecting actions here will virtually destroy the Indians’ Steele and Barclay urge the federal government its religious practices from lithium explora- ability to practice their religion, the Constitution to protect Indigenous religious practices as tion. Nor is it alone: In April, the Inter Tribal simply does not provide a principle that could one of its trust responsibilities, and to be very Association of Arizona, representing 21 nations justify upholding respondents’ legal claims,” cautious about allowing destruction of sacred including the Hualapai, passed a resolution Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in the major- sites on public lands. objecting to the lithium mining, calling the ity opinion. As things stand, state and federal agen- BLM’s environmental analysis “grossly insuf- The court ruled, in part, to avoid granting cies may permit irreversible damage with little ficient.” Recently, the BLM agreed to extend tribes broad control over their ancestral lands input from affected Indigenous communities. the comment period until June 10. But Council through the exercise of their religious freedom. Indeed, communication between the BLM and member Powskey pointed out that during the “Whatever rights the Indians may have to the Hualapai Nation about Hawkstone’s Big Sandy Standing Rock protests against the Dakota use of the area ... those rights do not divest the River Valley lithium impacts has been almost Access Pipeline — which in part concerned Government of its rights to use what is, after all, nonexistent. Although the BLM invited the the destruction of burials — the authorities’ its land,” the ruling said. Hualapai Nation to consult with the agency in response was violent, and tribal nations, for a Though Congress partially protected June 2020 about Hawkstone’s exploration plans, long while, were the only ones who seemed to that sacred region by adding it to the Siskiyou the agency later rebuffed the tribe’s request to care. And in the end, the pipeline was built. Wilderness Area, the Lyng ruling still reverber- be a coordinating agency on the project. It also Big Sandy is not the first battle the Hualapai ates across Indian Country today, creating what rejected the suggestion that a tribal elder walk have fought to protect sacred landscapes in this Stephanie Barclay, the director of the University through the area and educate the agency about remote corner of Arizona, where wind turbines, of Notre Dame’s Religious Liberty Initiative the cultural resources and history that mining gold mines and other private interests already and a former litigator at the Becket Fund for might imperil. have destroyed culturally important places — Religious Liberty, calls a “double standard” in The BLM said that it found only four cultural and it won’t be the last. “You know, there’s more how Indigenous sacred sites are treated. resource sites in the proposed drilling area. Of to come,” Powskey said. Barclay compared the situation of tribes those, it said it would attempt to avoid one, which Meanwhile, the likelihood of more lithium such as the Hualapai, which rely on the federal was eligible for protection under the National exploration around the ranch upsets caretaker government to access sacred sites, to that of Historic Preservation Act. Meanwhile, in its Ivan Bender. The double standard in how Jewish prisoners who adhere to a kosher diet, publicly available environmental assessment, Indigenous sacred sites are treated galls him. or Sikh members of the military whose faith the agency stated that the project’s impacts on “They come in here and desecrate your forbids them to cut their hair. In all of these cases, Native American religious concerns or tradi- sacred land,” he said. “Would they appreciate religious freedoms are controlled by the govern- tional values were “to be determined,” and that me if I go to Arlington Cemetery and build me a ment. But, Barclay said, tribal members don’t get it was consulting with the Hualapai Tribe, among sweat lodge and have me a sweat on that land?” the same religious protections. others. As of this writing, BLM staff had neither he asked, comparing the valley to another site “If the government is unwilling to accom- agreed to an interview nor responded to written long considered sacred. “I’d rather they go some- modate an access for different Native peoples questions from High Country News. where else and leave history alone.” so that they can practice their religion in those sacred sites, then it won’t happen,” she said. But the Supreme Court has narrowly interpreted religious protection of Indigenous sacred sites on public lands, to the point of allowing wholesale “To me, it holds a really, really sacred destruction. In a recent Harvard Law Review article, valley of life in general.”

10 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS REPORTAGE manage the town’s water infrastructure almost entirely as volunteers. Wilkerson said he worries about his own health as well as that of his family. “But what ‘I’m scared of getting sick am I going to do?” he said. “You get to the point of, it is what it is.” from the water’ And indeed, people in towns like El Adobe have few options. Arsenic can be removed from Some rural California communities have waited nearly a decade water, but it’s prohibitively expensive for most for state regulators to repair their tainted drinking-water systems. small towns. An arsenic treatment facility requires millions of dollars to build and another BY CLAUDIA BOYD-BARRETT | PHOTOS BY MARTIN DO NASCIMENTO $100,000 or more per year to operate, said Chad Fischer, an engineer who works at the Califor- nia Division of Drinking Water’s district office in Visalia, which regulates water in the region. WHEN RAMONA HERNANDEZ turns on her provide enough water to meet year-round El Adobe is so small — just 83 homes — that kitchen faucet in El Adobe, California, an unin- demand. That means that many residents of the if community residents split the cost of a treat- corporated town just a few miles southeast of unincorporated town, including the Hernan- ment system, they’d spend tens of thousands Bakersfield, the water that splashes out looks dezes, continue to pay for water they can’t drink. of dollars each and face dramatically increased clean and inviting. But she doesn’t dare drink it. The El Adobe Property Owners Association water rates. “The math is awful,” Fischer said. “You worry about your health,” she said in charges households $125 a month for tap water, “It ends up being unaffordable.” Spanish as she sat in her tranquil front yard one money that also covers streetlights and road It’s possible for individual users to install morning early this spring, her elderly mother- maintenance (although only one road is paved). an advanced filtration system, such as reverse in-law working in the garden behind her. Most residents also buy bottled water at the osmosis, in their homes, usually under the sink, “I’m scared,” Hernandez said, “of getting store. Others take their chances and drink the to remove arsenic. But these systems can cost sick from the water.” Drinking the tap water tap water despite the risks. Many townspeople hundreds of dollars to install and maintain. Some in this tiny community of dusty ranches and are low-income farmworkers and retirees, and small water systems do install these in people’s unpaved roads could expose Hernandez to buying bottled water is a significant expense. homes, passing on the cost to consumers, but the arsenic. So, for years, she and her husband, “I can’t afford bottled water all the time,” state considers this a temporary fix. Inexpensive Gerardo, have shuttled twice a week to the said Kyle Wilkerson, 40, a father of three who pitcher-type filters do not remove arsenic. nearby town of Lamont to load up on bottled lives on a fixed disability income. He’s also pres- A permanent solution was supposed to be water. At a cost of about $80 a month, it’s enough ident of the El Adobe Property Owners Associa- coming for El Adobe. In 2013, with funding from for drinking and cooking. If they had the money, tion, a small cadre of community members who the California State Water Resources Control Hernandez, 55, would buy bottled water to shower with and use for her chickens. But given her husband’s salary as a farmworker, she says, that’s not a realistic option. Like more than 300 communities across California, El Adobe lacks safe drinking water. Since 2008, the arsenic levels in one of its two wells have regularly exceeded the safety standards set by federal and state authorities, often by more than double. Long-term exposure to arsenic in drinking water is linked to diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer. Contaminated drinking water affects an estimated 1 million people in California, many of whom rely on private wells or small community water systems like El Adobe’s. A majority of these residents live in the Central and Salinas valleys. These are largely low-income, rural and Latino communities, where lack of access to clean water exacerbates the health disparities that already exist due to structural inequities. Since 2012, California law has recognized that access to safe and affordable water is a human right, but action has lagged behind the language. Arsenic levels in El Adobe’s other well Cheryl and Edward Blackhawk at their home in El Adobe, California. They retired here after being assured that are currently deemed safe, but the well can’t the water system would be fixed within a year, but four years later, they’re still hauling water.

JULY 2021 11 Board, El Adobe commissioned a report that BEYOND THOSE DELAYS, dozens of other Scott Taylor, general manager of the Lamont concluded that the best option for the commu- communities in California are also wait- Public Utility District, where wells have been polluted with the highly toxic agricultural chemical nity was to connect with the larger water system ing on construction projects for clean water. 1,2,3-trichloropropane (above, left). Ramona in Lamont. According to Scott Taylor, general Approximately 110 other out-of-compliance water Hernandez outside her home in El Adobe. She and manager of the Lamont Public Utility District, the systems in the state are planning or considering her husband, Gerardo, pay for water as part of their state promised to grant Lamont enough money to consolidation with another system. Sometimes, $125 monthly homeowners’ association fee, but they can’t drink it (above, right). El Adobe is one of some build the connecting pipeline, service lines and the larger communities resist appeals to absorb 300 communities in California that lack safe drinking new wells needed to accommodate the increase the smaller systems because they fear it will water (facing). in users and replace aging infrastructure. increase costs and strain their own water supply, “Eight years, it still hasn’t happened,” said particularly as droughts continue. The state Taylor. “I think it’s bureaucracy. For example, often offers financial incentives to encourage when we submit any kind of a document, a cost consolidation, and can mandate it, if necessary. the country, El Adobe’s wells, pipes, pumps and estimate, an engineering report … for whatever Other times consolidation isn’t even an option other water infrastructure are showing their age. reason, it takes them two to three months to because a community is too remote. El Adobe’s most critical well, the one without review it. If it took any of my staff a month to In 2019, California passed a law that estab- arsenic, was built in 1967, the same year Ronald review a document, I don’t care if it’s 100 pages, lished a program called Safe and Affordable Reagan became governor of California and labor I’d fire them.” Funding for Equity and Resilience (SAFER), activist Cesar Chavez initiated a nationwide Blair Robertson, a spokesman for the Cali- designed to help fund water improvements for boycott of the state’s table grapes. The commu- fornia State Water Resources Control Board, said communities that struggle to provide clean nity’s arsenic-laced well was built in 1985. the state is still waiting for Lamont to purchase water to their residents. The state water board is The life of a well depends on the chemicals land for the new wells and drill test wells to see working to complete a needs assessment to deter- in the local soil and water, and the quality of if water at the proposed sites is contaminated. mine which water systems need help and to what the well materials and construction, said Dave There is currently no start date for the project, extent, according to a recent report by the state’s Warner, community development manager at which is estimated to cost between $13 million Legislative Analyst’s Office. However, the state is Self-Help Enterprises in Visalia, which helps and $22 million and will probably be split into still “in the very early stages of implementation,” low-income communities access funding for several construction phases. Formal state and “much work remains to be accomplished” water projects. But an old well, especially one approval of the project will likely be in 2022, before all Californians have access to safe and that dates back to 1967, “is really pushing it,” Robertson said, but there’s currently no time affordable drinking water, the report stated. he said. Over time, the casing inside the well frame for when El Adobe residents will have Cheryl Blackhawk, 67, and her husband corrodes, and sand and other contaminants can clean drinking water. Edward, 69, are fed up with not having safe get into the pump, causing it to fail. Still, drilling Planning and implementing a water water in El Adobe. They moved to the town a new well costs more than $1 million, according system consolidation takes time, Fischer four years ago from nearby Greenfield, seeing to water officials. Securing state funding for it said, especially when the community, like El it as a quiet and affordable place to retire. At can take more than a decade, Warner said. Adobe, is small and lacks a team of engineers the time, the seller assured them that the water The precariousness of the situation is not and other professionals to manage its water connection to Lamont would happen within a lost on Edward Blackhawk. Without functioning supply. Lamont has its own water problems year. They’re still buying water bottles by the wells and pumps, people’s faucets would run with contaminants and aging wells, which caseload from Walmart. dry. Toilets wouldn’t flush. have added to the difficulties of the project, he “You can’t go to the faucet to get water to “If these wells go down, we’re out of luck,” he said. Projects usually take five or more years drink,” said Edward Blackhawk. “You can’t said. “We’re out of water.” to accomplish, he added, depending on their cook.” complexity. But it has already been eight years, Contaminants aren’t the only problem. THREE MILES DOWN THE ROAD, Lamont and construction has yet to begin. Like innumerable systems across California and has its own water struggles. Five of the town’s

12 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS eight wells are contaminated with a highly toxic collapsed. Taylor said he “raised holy hell” would go to California. However, Gov. Gavin chemical called 1,2,3-trichloropropane, or 1,2,3- with the state water board and obtained emer- Newsom has called Biden’s plan “a game TCP. The chemical was added to soil fumigants gency funding to build a new well, which is now changer.” used in agriculture during the 1940s through under construction. Another three wells need And Warner, with Self-Help Enterprises, the 1980s. It persists in the environment indef- replacing, he said. Those new wells may also agreed. Right now, there’s not enough state and initely and is recognized as a carcinogen by the need treatment systems. Funding for that is federal money available to efficiently tackle all state of California. The state started regulating supposed to be included in the consolidation of California’s water contamination and infra- the chemical in drinking water in 2017, which project with El Adobe. structure problems, he said. Biden’s plan “gave meant communities like Lamont had to find a So far, Lamont has managed to provide me a lot of hope,” he said. “But it’s got to get way to remove it. clean water to residents, but that could change approved.” Just like arsenic, 1,2,3-TCP is expensive if another well breaks or demand increases Meanwhile, Susana De Anda, co-founder to get rid of. A treatment system costs over enough to require making a contaminated well of the Community Water Center, an environ- $1 million per well, plus about $100,000 a year operational, said Taylor. mental justice organization based in Visalia, to change the filter, said Taylor. Lamont has “It’s a little discouraging,” said district applauded California’s SAFER program, but installed treatment systems on four wells, using board member Miguel Sanchez. “You’re trying said communities need help faster. A short-term money from a settlement with Dow Chemical to comply with all these regulations, and the solution would be for the state to implement a and Shell Oil, the companies allegedly respon- system is crumbling.” rate-assistance program for low-income resi- sible for the contamination. But two of the treat- dents who are struggling to pay their water bills, ment systems are leased, and the utility district BUT CALIFORNIANS NOW have a reason including those who pay for water twice because still doesn’t know how it will pay for them long- to be more optimistic: A $2 trillion proposal their tap water is contaminated, she said. term. Two other wells still need 1,2,3-TCP and by President Joe Biden to fund infrastructure “We want solutions now,” she said. “It’s a arsenic treatment systems, respectively. improvements across the nation, including huge problem, and we have generations that Lamont’s population of 15,000 is almost for clean water, could provide their state with have been condemned to this reality.” entirely Latino, and many residents are farm- more money for these types of projects. Biden’s In El Adobe, Hernandez worries that she may workers. The average per capita income is just plan — if approved by Congress — would be inhaling contaminants or absorbing them over $13,000 a year. Plans to raise water rates last include $111 billion in clean water investments. through her skin when she showers. The concen- year to help cover some of the district’s expenses The proposal seeks $10 billion to monitor and tration of arsenic in the water is still safe for bath- were delayed because of the pandemic. Even remediate new drinking-water contaminants ing, according to state regulators, and arsenic so, dozens of accounts fell into delinquency as and to invest in small rural water systems like does not evaporate into the air, but Hernandez people lost jobs and struggled to pay bills. The El Adobe’s. The plan also requests $56 billion remains distrustful, particularly since she and district is now short about $70,000 from delin- in grants and loans to upgrade and modernize her husband both have lung problems. quent accounts, Taylor said. America’s aging drinking water, wastewater and If only officials in Sacramento could spend a Lamont’s wells are also nearing the end stormwater systems. Support for low-income day in her shoes, she said. “How would they like of their lifespan. Last year, shortly after the communities and communities of color is a big it?” she asked. “They don’t have to worry about district installed a $1 million filtration system focus of the proposal. having a shower, about drinking the water.” for 1,2,3-TCP on a 60-year-old well, the well It’s not yet clear how much of the money At the edge of the community, Cheryl and Edward Blackhawk checked on El Adobe’s second well, the arsenic-laden one, and its water tank, which sits inside a small enclosure littered with tumbleweeds. Cheryl Blackhawk, who serves as financial secretary for the property owner’s association, said she fears that drought conditions this year will lead to falling water levels that result in higher arsenic concentra- tions in the well. Her husband, standing quietly beside the aging pump, confessed he’s beginning to doubt the connection to Lamont will actually happen. “There’s a lot of people out here who think it’s dead in the water,” he said softly. “And it’s not just us. There are hundreds (of communities) like us in the state.”

This article was produced in collaboration with the California Health Report for the “Tapped Out: Water, Justice & Power in the West” project. It was supported by a grant from The Water Desk, with support from Ensia and the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Amplify News Project.

JANUARYJULY 20202021 1313 REPORTAGE where retreat costs can range from $200 a session to all-inclusive packages upwards of $3,000. The toad’s newfound popularity concerns Robert Villa, president of the Tucson Herpetological Society and a research associate with the University of Arizona’s Desert Laboratory A hallucinogenic toad in peril on Tumamoc Hill. “There’s a psychedelic renais- sance that’s happening,” he said, “and there’s How one species got caught up in the commodification of spiritual awakening. a whole sect of this community that is devoted to the Sonoran Desert toad, extracting (it) for BY JESSICA KUTZ psychedelic use.” Villa became aware of the toad’s growing popularity after working in 2017 as a consultant for an episode of a Vice docuseries, LATE ON A THURSDAY EVENING in July what one participant described as “on the floor Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, in which Mexican prac- 2018, three intruders were caught on a wildlife of a chic apartment on the Upper West Side” of titioners are on camera noting the decline in local camera at the Spur Cross Ranch Conservation New York City — the psychedelic has become toad populations in the state of Sonora. While Area, a park north of Phoenix. Holding flashlights, the latest trendy shortcut to spiritual awakening. those who collect the bufotoxin on both sides of they scoured a Mexican lily-filled pond near Ceremony participants often lie down on the the border claim to do so in a sustainable fash- a popular hiking trail, on the hunt for Sonoran ground, on blankets and sarongs, and smoke the ion, often releasing the toads afterward, Villa said Desert toads. A young woman squealed as she dried secretions — a Schedule 1 drug — which there’s no real way to do this. “Toads offer those held up a fat one — both hands wrapped around induce an otherworldly state that lasts for about secretions in a defensive context, in a stressed its belly — and dropped it into a plastic bag. Later, half an hour. Many who’ve undergone the expe- and violent context,” he said. “Ultimately, people a young man wearing a tattered cowboy hat and a rience refer to the poison as a “god molecule” that are self-medicating at the expense of another tank top came into view, his face and hand loom- has cured their addictions or helped them achieve creature.” As the toad’s secretions become increasing large in the camera frame as he clenched a a deeper connection to the Earth. Shrines, T-shirts ingly popular, Villa is raising the alarm about the grocery bag. A jumble of legs pressed frantically and tattoos of toads all profess reverence for the practice’s cascading cultural and environmental into the thin plastic, captive amphibians trying to species. impacts. escape their new prison. The practice has gone from an obscure “That is like the last thing I expected to see,” desert phenomenon in the ’80s to an increasingly THE SONORAN DESERT TOAD, as its Kevin Smith, Spur Cross Ranch’s sole park ranger, popular psychedelic in recent years. In his new common name suggests, is primarily found in the said. He estimates, from the footage, that the memoir, Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s Sonoran Desert, which stretches from California thieves grabbed at least a dozen toads. Though son, claimed that 5-meO-DMT helped temporar- and Arizona to Mexico. Its habitat also extends the recordings — and the story’s peculiar nature ily cure his addiction to crack. “The experience slightly into New Mexico. The landscape is home — made local and national news, briefly caus- unlocked feelings and hurts I’d buried deep for to a diverse array of species that have evolved to ing a stir, the culprits were never caught. What too long,” he wrote. “It served as a salve. I stayed flourish in the harsh environment. For most of the happened to the creatures isn’t hard to guess, sober for a year afterward.” Since 2018, the World year, the toad hibernates in underground burrows. however: In recent years, psychedelic enthusiasts Bufo Alvarius Congress in Mexico has attracted In the summer, when the monsoon season hits, it have been rounding up Sonoran Desert toads in hundreds of participants annually from across the resurfaces to breed in shallow ponds and streams. order to obtain their secretions, which contain globe. (Bufo alvarius is the toad’s former scientific It’s during this window of time that it is a powerful hallucinogenic substance called name; it has since been renamed Incilius alvarius, vulnerable to being snatched from its habitat. But 5-MeO-DMT. and is also sometimes called the Colorado River determining the scope of the poaching is difficult. In “toad medicine circles” — underground toad.) Many ceremonies take place in the country, The species is listed as threatened in New Mexico ceremonies that take place across the country and, increasingly, for white tourists in popular — a 2006 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report cites in swanky areas from Malibu and Santa Fe to destinations like Tulum on the Yucatán Peninsula, myriad reasons for this, including overcollection

14 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS — while in California it is believed to be extinct. But in the cactus. Steven Benally, a Diné founding Trail camera video images of the July 2018 poaching in Arizona, where its range is significantly larger, it member of the Indigenous Peyote Conservation that occurred at the Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area in Maricopa County, Arizona. Maricopa County is still considered abundant. “We think poaching Initiative, told the Los Angeles Times last year, Parks and Recreation takes place. And there have been some anecdotal “To these outsiders, we say, ‘Leave peyote alone. reports of it (happening),” said Thomas R. Jones, Please.’ ” Beyond the ecological impacts, this Amphibians and Reptiles Program manager with type of trade often has cultural implications. As extensive monitoring efforts before such a desig- the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “But Taylar Dawn Stagner (Shoshone, Arapaho) wrote nation could be achieved. Jones said it’s not even our law enforcement guys don’t have a good in High Country News, describing the current always easy to determine when to start moni- feel for toad poaching,” he added, though “that “new age” obsession with white sage: “It’s become toring a species. “What is often the case is that could be because it’s not on their radar.” so popular that it has been commodified to the people like me will say, ‘Yeah, they’re abundant. Evidence of the growing demand, however, point of erasure, robbed of its Indigenous roots I see them all the time, like I used to.’ And then, can be found at the U.S.-Mexico border, where and cultural importance.” after about 10 years, someone says, ‘Hey, you Jeff Moore, a senior wildlife inspector with the Oddly enough, the toad’s secretions have know, I haven’t been seeing them like I used to.’ U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said that people no documented historical use in tribes either And then you start monitoring them in some place have been caught attempting to bring the toad in Mexico or the U.S. Yet practitioners are still and discover that either they’re still there or that or its secretions into the United States. “We have marketing it as a traditional pan-Indigenous they’ve declined.” Jones said. “But because there’s encountered it and are working with other part- remedy, lumping it together with other substances, no standard monitoring effort that’s going on for a ner agencies on the enforcement,” Moore said, including peyote and ayahuasca. species like that, it’s really hard to gauge.” adding that because of ongoing investigations, The toad itself is culturally significant to the Given that species like the Sonoran Desert he could not comment further on the scope of Yaqui Tribe in the Mexican state of Sonora and the toad already face multiple threats, including the trafficking. Pascua Yaqui in Arizona, playing a symbolic role climate change and rapid urbanization, over- Whenever demand for a trafficked species in tribal stories and ceremonies. But during the collection can have consequential impacts. “It grows, however, there are going to be conse- last decade, the tribe has noticed a decline in local really kind of shocks me, actually. The fact that quences. When the psychedelic peyote, which is populations, according to Villa, who consulted people assume, based on its abundance, that it’s native to West Texas and Mexico, became popular with tribal members in Mexico in 2014. fine,” said Villa, who has spent the last few years with people outside the Indigenous communi- The toad has not been classified as endan- raising awareness about the toad and its plight. ties where its ceremonial religious use originated, gered or threatened at the federal level in either “When you begin to notice something’s happen- this led to a black market and a steep decline Mexico or in the U.S., and it would require ing in those populations, it’s too late.”

THE LATEST Backstory Followup In February 2019, ExxonMobil shareholders In May, the oil industry received a major attempted to pass a resolution that would shock: Against executives’ wishes, have pushed the company to adopt stricter ExxonMobil’s shareholders elected three new and more transparent emissions targets in members to the board of directors, all with response to climate change. Exxon fought the expertise to help transition Exxon away back, blocking the vote through the Securities from oil and gas and toward clean energy. and Exchange Commission, which under Calling it a watershed moment, Fred Krupp, the Trump administration stalled similar Environmental Defense Fund president, told resolutions at other companies, dismissing the Washington Post: “It’s no longer tenable Shareholder the idea as “micromanagement” (“Can the for companies like ExxonMobil to defy calls to tools of capitalism curb climate change?” align their businesses with decarbonizing the revolt April 2019). economy.” —Jessica Kutz

JULY 2021 15 Zion National Park, Utah, this May. Bridget Bennett

FACTS & FIGURES UTAH

Pounds of human waste a Zion National Park Public lands inundated 9 ranger collected along a single stretch of trail late last year. He also cleaned up more than 1,000 drawings Record numbers of visitors are swarming the outdoors. or etchings people had made on the rock.

The volunteer search and rescue team in Washington BY JONATHAN THOMPSON County, Utah, responded to 170 incidents in 2020, exceeding the previous record by almost 40 calls.

Visitation at Utah’s state parks in 2020 was up by LAST SPRING, AS THE FIRST WAVE of and the air filled with smoke, people began trav- 1.7 million people from 2019, with some parks, such as Goblin Valley, seeing two to three times the number measures to halt the spread of coronavirus eling again, mostly by car and generally closer to from previous years. Judging by this spring, that new kicked in, travel screeched nearly to a halt, and home. They inundated the public lands, from record is likely to fall in 2021. the hospitality and tourism industry slowed the big, heavily developed national parks like considerably. Locals in public-land gateway Zion and the humbler state parks, to dispersed IDAHO towns predicted doom — and also breathed a big campsites on Bureau of Land Management and Number of visitors to Idaho’s sigh of relief. Their one-trick-pony economies national forest lands. 7.7 million state parks in 2020, a 1.2 would surely suffer, but at least all the newly It was more than just a return of the same million jump from 2019, which itself was a banner year. “It’s laid-off residents would have the surrounding old crowds. Millions of outdoor-recreation a mind-boggling number,” said Brian Beckley, chairman of land to themselves for a change. rookies apparently turned to the public lands the Idaho Parks and Recreation Board, in a news release. For a few months, the prognostications — to escape the pandemic. Nearly every national both positive and negative — held true. Visitation park in the West had relatively few visitors from to national parks crashed, vanishing altogether in March until July. But then numbers surged to are volunteer, were overwhelmed, with some places like Arches and Canyonlands, which were record-breaking levels during the latter part of being called out three or more times a week. shut down for the month of April. Sales and lodg- 2020 — a trend that was reflected and then some Meanwhile, the agencies charged with oversee- ing tax revenues spiraled downward in gateway on the surrounding non-park lands. ing the lands have long been underfunded and towns. Officials in many a rural county pleaded If nature did manage a little healing in the understaffed — a situation exacerbated by the with or ordered nonresidents to stay home, easing spring, by summer the wounds were ripped global pandemic. They were simply unable to get the burden on the public lands. It was enough to open again in the form of overuse, torn-up alpine a handle on all of the use — and increased abuse. spawn a million #natureishealing memes. tundra, litter, noise, car exhaust and crowd- There is no end in sight: The first five In the end, however, the respite was short- stressed wildlife. Human waste and toilet paper months of 2021 have been the busiest ever for lived. By midsummer, even as temperatures were scattered alongside photogenic lakes and much of the West’s public lands. And tourist climbed to unbearable heights, forests burned streams. Search and rescue teams, most of which season has only just begun.

16 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS Trash hanging from a tree (left) and a sign (middle) at a popular dispersed camping area in Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest, in July 2020.

People gather to catch a glimpse of Grizzly Bear 399 and her four cubs on May 25, 2021, in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming (right). Ryan Dorgan

Boulder Creek, Colorado, in 2020 (below). Andria Hautamaki

WYOMING

Last year was a banner year for Wyoming’s state parks, which received 1.5 million more visitors than in 2019. But thanks in part to waning revenues from taxes and royalties on fossil fuels, state lawmakers slashed the Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources budget by $1.1 million this year. 28,890; 43,416 Number of visitors who entered Yellowstone National Park during Memorial Day weekend 2019, and 2021, a 50% increase.

OREGON

Oregon’s state parks were getting overrun by out-of- staters, leaving no place for residents to recreate or camp. So, in August, state officials upped camping fees for nonresidents. Even if it doesn’t deter people from visiting, it might help make up for the state parks’ $22 million budget shortfall.

WESTWIDE

Amount by which camping participation 28% in the United States grew during 2020, which adds up to about 7.9 million additional campers.

10-14 months Approximate wait time to get a modified van from Storyteller Overland, which COLORADO NEVADA makes Mercedes Sprinters #vanlife-ready. Storyteller COO Jeffrey Hunter told KIRO Radio that coronavirus- On the busiest days prior to 2020, up to 200 people The Las Vegas tourism and gaming industries took a related demand for the vehicles — priced at $150,000 made the trek to the utterly Instagramable Ice Lake massive hit in 2020, as visitation plummeted by 55% to $190,000 — has surged so much that the company Basin in southwestern Colorado. But late last summer, compared to 2019. Only about 42% of the city’s 145,000 doubled its workforce. 400 to 600 people per day inundated the place. In rooms were occupied, on average; lodging tax revenues October, a hiker started a wildfire that burned 500 were less than half of normal. At the same time, crowds Visitors to acres and forced the helicopter-assisted evacuation converged on the area’s public lands like never before. national parks, of two dozen hikers. This summer, the trail is closed. January-April Estimated number of people who Amount by which 2020 visitor 10,000 entered the Red Rock Canyon numbers at Colorado state parks National Conservation Area near Las Vegas on a single 23% exceeded those from 2019. day in April 2020. The Bureau of Land Management temporarily closed the scenic loop road in response For years, most of the public lands around Crested and implemented a timed-entry reservation system. Butte, Colorado, have been open to dispersed camping. But after the free-for-all got out of hand in MONTANA 2020, public-land agencies halted dispersed camping, designated a couple dozen sites and implemented Increase over previous years in number a reservation system. By April, all of the sites were 30% of applications for nonresident deer- booked through Labor Day. and elk-hunting permits for 2021.

Number of avalanche-related fatalities in 12 Colorado during the 2020-21 winter, matching Sources: National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, the record high (since 1950) set in 1993. Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, Outdoor Industry Association, Wyoming State Parks & Cultural Number of drownings on Colorado’s lakes Resources, Colorado Parks & Wildlife, Idaho Department 34 and streams in 2020, a record high. of Parks and Recreation, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, Town of Silverton, Great Outdoors Colorado, Teton County.

JULY 2021 17 HCN COMMUNITY

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A grizzly bear mother stands with her three cubs, in Katmai National Park, Alaska. Shin Yoshino / Minden Pictures

JULY 2021 21 DECEMBERJANUARY 2020 21 The Chen Lin brothers at Los Angeles State Historic Park in Chinatown. The former Southern Pacific rail yard opened to the public as a park in 2017.

22 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS Reclaiming LA How communities in Los Angeles are turning industrial sites into pockets of green.

PHOTOS AND REPORTING BY STELLA KALININA INTRODUCTION BY JESSICA KUTZ

TUCKED NEXT TO THE 105 FREEWAY, just east of the Los Angeles International Airport, is the Lennox Community Garden. Once an agricultural hamlet, Lennox is now a densely built neighborhood cornered by two freeways. There is little room for green spaces. But in 2012, residents set out to change that, transforming an abandoned parcel of land owned by the California Department of Transportation into a series of raised garden beds packed with vegetables — a veritable oasis in this urban landscape. In the San Gabriel Valley, 30 miles to the east, community members are fighting to turn a closed landfill into hundreds of acres of permanent open space. The landfill was closed 25 years ago, and its terraced grassy slopes are already home to mule deer, gray foxes and a variety of birds. And in Baldwin Hills, a state agency is hoping to purchase land that is currently dotted with operational oil pump jacks, transform it into hiking trails, fields and parks, and then put it into public use and ownership. This reuse of industrial space, often spearheaded by communities of color that have historically lacked easy access to parks and gardens, provides an inspiring blueprint for how to reclaim and replenish the land, both for ourselves and the generations to come, Los Angeles-based photographer Stella Kalinina told High Country News. “It’s a regenerative process,” she said. “They are healing the land, healing our cities and healing people.”

This story was created in collaboration with Mother Jones.

JULY 2021 23 Drone photographs by Keri Oberly

WISHING TREE PARK in West Carson has been 25 years in the making. This site was created to serve as a buffer zone between the Del Amo Superfund Site toxic-waste pits and the community. Between the 1940s and 1970s, Montrose Chemical dumped hazardous levels of DDT in a ravine on which homes were later built. The DDT was removed in the 1990s, and 67 of the houses were torn down, but some heavy metals remain. As an extra precaution, another two feet of clean soil has been added. “The park is going to be a jewel for our community, which has had nothing. So many community members died waiting for this park; kids grew up without this park,” said community activist Cynthia Babich.

Cynthia Medina, assistant director of the Del Amo Action Committee, with her daughter, Valerie Medina “Who knew when we moved in here, 40 years ago, that there was so much underground? About 10 years ago now, 23 homes on my street, in the front, all the yards were taken out because of the (DDT) contamination. Now, we are not really planting vegetables because our dirt isn’t good dirt. We had at one time about 75 chickens, including all the little babies. But then, all of a sudden, we would lose all 12 babies. They were just dying. So then a university came and did an egg study. The agency that does our food tests said the eggs weren’t safe for consumption. And we stopped growing our vegetables, because I was afraid to feed the kids. In my heart, I know that this (home) was not healthy for my kids. My oldest son was diag- nosed at 9 years old with diabetes. Both of my daughters have a blood disorder. One of my daughters has rheumatoid arthritis, so she’s bedridden. And when my granddaughter was here, she had problems. She’s now 22 and suffers from asthma.” —Cynthia Medina

24 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS PARQUE DOS RIOS is located at the confluence of the LA River and Rio Hondo, between the 710 Freeway and the two rivers. It is one of several projects currently in progress in the city of South Gate, all of them created to add more park space, restore habitat and clean the runoff that flows into the LA River. The landscaping and park features will be installed in the coming weeks, and the park is scheduled to open this July.

THE BKK LANDFILL holds the potential to preserve hundreds of acres of open space in the highly developed West Covina area to benefit local communities and wildlife.

Brian Jobst, co-founder of Livable West Covina “In many ways, the BKK Landfill is a huge hidden gem in the San Gabriel Valley. There, people and nature have already begun to make amends for a troubled past. The past is written. This is about the future of BKK and our community. We’re ensuring that BKK’s final chapter protects public health and becomes a thriving shared space for people, nature and even low-intensity commerce, like solar energy. We’re trying to do our best to make sure that next chapter puts health and well-being ahead of profit. There’s 26,000 people that live within one mile of the BKK Landfill, and 176,000 that live within three miles. There’s huge population density in this area. And West Covina doesn’t have a lot of parks; we’re below the county average for park acreage per person. It would be remarkable if people could walk or bike to a park loaded with native vegetation and wildlife, and simply enjoy nature. Doing that shouldn’t mean you have to drive to the mountains.”

JULY 2021 25 LENNOX COMMUNITY GARDEN was a vacant site left over following the construction of the 105 Freeway in the 1980s. The community garden opened in 2012.

Frank Alvarado, LOS ANGELES STATE community gardener HISTORIC PARK opened in 2017 “I’ve been living here in the at the former site of the Southern community of Lennox for 40 years. Pacific Transportation Company’s I remember this place when it was River Station. In one of LA’s landmark environmental justice victories, a large a bunch of houses. In the early to and diverse alliance of community and mid-’80s, Caltrans (the California civic groups fought for years to turn Department of Transportation) this contaminated former rail yard into took over, tore down the build- a park instead of a massive warehouse complex. ings and started building the 105 Freeway. Everybody who used to live here, they bought them off. Stacey Gray and Alex Kellerman, People moved out. park visitors I’ve had this garden for the Gray: “I know where to go for parks. last four or five years. I got it But I don’t feel like parks are gener- because my kids were younger ally accessible in LA as much as back then. Now they’re like 15-16, they could be.” and they don’t want to come over Kellerman: “I don’t know if I agree. here anymore. I decided to just I feel like there’s a ton of parks.” keep it and plant vegetables. It’s Gray: “If you have a car.” good entertainment after work. I come over here and just water my plants, clean up, and get my mind off all the troubles that you might have. It keeps you active, instead of being a couch potato at home. Then you get to meet people over here, too. There are not enough parks here, for sure. I guess we ran out of space around here.”

26 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS KENNETH HAHN STATE RECREATION AREA is the cultural center of the BALDWIN HILLS PARKLANDS. It holds a special place in the hearts of the area’s Black and brown communities, having hosted countless family reunions, birthdays and quinceañeras since 1984. However, many community members fear that the area’s cultural fabric is now threatened by gentrification.

Lawrence Dotson, hike leader with Hike to Yoga “When I first started coming here, it was a great place to just roll around in the grass and have fun. It was like a big playground. And then when I was in college, I needed breaks, so I would come here and let my imagination run wild. I will go up in the hills hiking. There are so many pathways, so many things to do to get lost. And then, after the riots, it became a sanctuary. It was a place just to calm down and cry, to let out the frustration, the rage, the sadness of watching my neighborhood burn down. Having grown up here, this park was like a friend. I’d go here and just be anything I wanted to be. I’m just going to my own world and have trees around me, blue skies, green grass, a waterfall. As I got older, I said, ‘OK, my health is important. Here’s a place to go exercise. I know the trails and how to challenge myself.’ Then my son was born, so I was like, ‘Yeah, this is perfect. Let me introduce him at an early age to all the beauty and nature that’s right here around the corner.’ It’s nice to see a kid just so amazed at the simple things, like a rock.”

Irma Muñoz, founder of Mujeres de la Tierra “With the women that I have worked with through my nonprofit Mujeres de la Tierra (Women of the Earth), I have seen them come together and fight against contaminated lands. They want to understand the science. How did this get contaminated? And who contaminated it? And how long has it been contaminated? And what is it contaminated with? Is it impacting the water, the air? How is it impacting community health? Let’s find out! The power of one is unbelievable. It takes one person to decide, ‘I want to make change,’ and then say, ‘We can do it.’ But it’s got to be a we. As Dr. (Martin Luther) King says, you do not need a master’s degree or bachelor’s degree or Ph.D. to do good. All you need to have is the heart and soul desire to make change. And I do believe that’s in everybody.”

JULY 2021 27 DERAILED How a trail in rural Oregon became a target of far-right extremism. By Leah Sottile | Illustrations by Joan Wong

UP THE SLOW RISE of a country road, in the shadow of an Yamhill, met Kulla at the cemetery. Higgins, who is a commer- oak tree, one of the oldest gravestones in the Yamhill Carlton cial real estate broker, grew up understanding “that when you Pioneer Memorial Cemetery lies flat against the wet green don’t have a lot of spare money, the government doesn’t seem earth. Until his death nearly 140 years ago, a white settler like it’s there to help you.” farmed here, preached and claimed that he carried bullets Kulla pointed to a metal tab on Higgins’ pants pocket. in his back from an Indigenous boy’s gun. Presumably, those “See the little clip on it?” Higgins smiled and pulled out a bullets are buried, too: a reminder of the way stories can even- Kershaw folding knife. Kulla, in turn, fished out a grafting tually become Western myth. knife from his pocket, well-worn from harvest. Downhill from the graves, plots of freshly turned soil The two men joked about how they contradict the rural mark the sites of future homes. Beyond them lies an aban- stereotypes they seem to signify: Kulla wore Vivobarefoot doned railroad line, now just a stretch of trees and bushes. shoes, Higgins wore a Rolex. “This,” Higgins said, rolling up And beyond it a patchwork of hazelnut trees and farmhouses his sleeve to display it, “is the urban-rural divide.” The men and green velvet vineyards stretches out toward the distant cracked up laughing. Coast Range. It is a sedimentary view of history. If we tell But as they walked down the hill toward the old railroad ourselves stories to live, the dead of Yamhill County have a right of way — the unlikely source of so much local anger — full view of the truth of this place: what it was, what it is and their tone changed. “Yamhill County is the urban-rural divide what it will be. personified,” Higgins said. One cold and windy day in late March, an organic fruit In Oregon, as in other Western states, “urban-rural divide” and vegetable farmer named Casey Kulla parked his car near is shorthand for the cultural, political and economic tensions some old headstones. Kulla’s jeans were mud-splattered, but between the few urban centers — Portland, Eugene, Salem, his shirt was fresh. He was in his early 40s, a thin man with a Bend — and the many rural communities. That divide, Kulla big smile and a neatly shaved head. said, is fundamental to understanding the place. He wishes In 2018, Kulla was elected one of Yamhill County’s three it wasn’t real, he said, “but it is.” commissioners, besting the conservative incumbent. Over In 2013, the county received a grant to purchase the aban- the last 40 years, this county in western Oregon’s Willamette doned railway right of way near the old graveyard. The plan Valley has become one of the world’s premier wine-growing was to repurpose it as a public trail: the Yamhelas Westsider regions, bringing an influx of money and visitors. Kulla, who Trail, named for the Kalapuya Tribe, whose homeland this is, is unusually liberal for a conservative county, ran on a plat- and the rail line that trundled through in the 1870s. form of smart planning for inevitable growth and protecting The route would eventually span 12 miles. Rail-to-trail vulnerable people in the community. At the time of his elec- projects exist all over the United States; there are 23 in Oregon. tion, he was also a cannabis farmer. Supporters believed it would encourage visitors to come and Philip Higgins, the son of Quaker back-to-the-landers in celebrate the place’s natural beauty.

Illustration sources: Casey Kulla image courtesy of Kulla (left); Mary Starrett, OregonLive/The Oregonian (right); Lindsay Berschauer, YouTube capture / KOIN 6 (center); Yamhelas Westsider, YouTube capture; McMinnville winery, George Rose via Getty Images; Map, Yamhill County.

28 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS DERAILED “People want to come here and experience whispers over the mountains, cautioning the supported it. Locals loved the idea; one wine- (Yamhill County),” Higgins said, “and preserv- wine grapes about ripening in haste. maker donated $16,000 to the cause. The state ing that experience is really what we need to be The county’s 10 small cities differ widely, gave the county a $1.5 million grant to help doing, so we aren’t all of a sudden full of Quiznos reflecting the cultural collisions that define, purchase the right of way, and the commission and Starbucks.” and divide, Oregon. The county seat, McMin- hired engineers to build a bridge outside Yamhill But the trail has since become the center of nville, has a four-year university and an annual that was needed to develop the trail. a local culture war. “We don’t talk about abortion UFO festival commemorating the time a farmer An early phase would span 2.8 miles, in our community, or guns,” Kulla said. “We talk snapped an infamous photo of a flying saucer. In connecting the towns of Carlton and Yamhill, two about if you support the trail.” He is currently its the 1960s and 1970s, rural communes attracted communities linked in many ways: The schools lone supporter on the county commission. hippies and agrarians. Nearly 10% of the locals share the name Yamhill-Carlton, and the entire The project was first imagined in 1991. claim veteran status. area is deemed an AVA — an “American Viticul- Locals supported it: As recently as June, an In the mid-1800s, white settlers grabbed up tural Area” — for the loamy soil that allows grapes online petition in its favor had more than 3,200 land and established a provisional government to flourish here. There is no Yamhill without Carl- signatures. in what would become the state of Oregon. They ton, and no Carlton without Yamhill. But the trail, like the railroad that preceded banned people of color, and the federal govern- And yet the towns differ widely. Though timber built Carlton, wine revived it: Nearly every Main Street storefront now houses a wine-tasting room. A bakery sells “We don’t talk about abortion in our mushroom truffle gougères and complicated artisan breads. Gardens behind white picket community, or guns. We talk about if you fences burst with tulips like spring fireworks. In Yamhill, most of the storefronts stand support the tra vacant, and yard signs and flags project a differ- il.” ent vibe: “Blue Lives Matter” and “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Trump.” A billboard next to a red barn yells: “The United Nations is Not Your it, would cut through farmland. A group of more ment forced Indigenous people to reservations. Friend!” than two dozen farmers — some with property Around 30 tribal communities from around Hand-drawn signs at T&E General advertise alongside the right of way, others from 20 miles the state — known today as the Confederated ribeye steaks for $9.99 and “ice cold ice.” Around away — say the trail would impact how they farm Tribes of Grand Ronde — were relegated to what noon, the warm aroma of fried chicken strips and what they can spray. It would encourage is now the county’s southeastern edge. Just 2% and jojos wafts outside, and the parking slots fill trespassers and maybe attract tent encamp- of the county currently identifies as Indigenous, with pickup trucks. ments for unhoused people. They say land-use compared to 77% who are white. Trail construction between the towns laws mean farmers shouldn’t have to change, no In the early 1900s, the town of Carlton began in 2020, with the bridge. But by spring matter what the community wants. became a timber hub, with a manmade lake 2021, building had come to a halt, and the They also say the county didn’t involve them where big logs bobbed after floating down- half-completed bridge stood along the trail’s in the planning. “(County officials) pissed people stream from the rugged Coast Range. Then path, connected to nothing at all. off,” Higgins said. “And Yamhill County is one came the Great Depression and the Tillamook of those places where if your great-grandfather Burn, which ultimately destroyed 350,000 acres LAST YEAR, TWO WOMEN ran for the single pissed my great-grandfather off, we’re probably of forest. By the late 1960s, the timber industry open seat on the County Commission. One issue not getting married.” had all but vanished from the county. dominated the race: the trail. In a state where politics is dominated by Places like this inspired Beat writer Ken Commissioners set budgets, oversee land- the urban-rural divide, it’s as if the proposed Kesey’s 1964 novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, use decisions, and deal with contracts, develop- Yamhill County trail is the actual place — the about a hard-headed family of Coast Range ment and economic growth, among other things. exact line — where that divide begins. loggers. Their motto was “never give a inch” — Farmers pay close attention to commission elec- to anyone. It’s been called the greatest Oregon tions, because the county’s economy, and iden- PORTLAND — OREGON’S LARGEST CITY book of all time, perhaps because it expresses a tity, is agricultural. — is only 12 miles northeast of Yamhill County, haunting truth: Rural ways of life have vanished Candidate Barbara Boyer was a well-known but Yamhill is a different world, where rows before, and many Oregonians fear that it will farmer in her mid-50s who co-founded the local of crops are so straight and parallel, the land happen here again. farmers market. She has accolades from the state looks as if it’s been groomed with a giant comb. In the 1870s, at the urging of farmers and Board of Agriculture, the Agriculture Heritage Two-lane highways cut through fields of grass loggers, the rail line was constructed to connect Commission, the local Soil and Water Conser- seed, hazelnuts and grapes. Usually, traffic flies Yamhill County to the rest of the state. Over the vation Board. She preached compromise and down those roads, but now and then it creeps next century, though, it was abandoned. In the conversation, and waved away political drama behind a combine. Sometimes the rains come mid-1980s, the rails were pried up, and, over with a smile and big laugh. heavy, blown in from the west, over the jawline of time, the right of way became an overgrown strip Boyer’s opponent was a 40-year-old mountains that guard the valley from the stormy of forgotten land. Arizona native and Republican political consul- Pacific. People say it’s that ocean air that creates When the Yamhelas Westsider Trail was first tant named Lindsay Berschauer. She has long so much bounty, so much green: like a voice that conceived, the county’s three commissioners brown hair and big eyelashes, and often wears

30 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS power suits. She is known for her willingness to all over again, and it seemed to resonate: Yamhill. He and his family live in the house he stir the pot. “I would consider myself a consul- Berschauer’s fundraising committee received grew up in, on the farm where his father taught tant who likes to push the limit,” she explained at least $13,900 from farmers opposing the trail. him to farm. From there, he produces hazelnuts at a forum in 2016. She had worked for Oregon Days before ballots were due, glossy post- for Nutella, ships grass seed throughout the U.S. Transformation Project, an organization fueled cards arrived in voters’ mailboxes, featuring and to China, and dispatches blueberries around by anti-Portland rhetoric, which poured tens of mugshots of Boyer and a list of offenses dating America to live short happy lives in clear plastic thousands of dollars into conservative political back to the 1990s, including a DUII and mari- cartons on grocery store shelves. coffers, exhorting voters to halt “Portland Creep.” juana possession. The political action commit- This spring, there was little to see on the Congestion, density and crime, its billboards tee behind it had not received any contributions nearby right of way: just a different section of warned, were coming for outlying areas. in at least two years — until that month, when the corridor Kulla and Higgins had walked a Until recently, Berschauer lived in a it received one of its largest ever: $10,000 from few weeks before. “To us, it was abandoned,” spacious waterfront home on the Willamette Stimson Lumber, one of Oregon’s oldest logging VanDyke said. “We didn’t really think much of it.” River, according to public records. But during operations. (Stimson also donated $5,000 to When his family first got wind of the proj- the race, she presented herself as a work- Berschauer’s committee.) ect, they weren’t worried. “When we heard ing-class candidate who idolized the Oregon Turnout was low, but Berschauer won by about it, it was, ‘Oh, there’s no way this is going logger. During the election, Berschauer wore a more than 3,500 votes. Her victory signaled through because Yamhill County is still a very ag Carhartt vest and jeans. a change: The county didn’t want conversa- county,’ ” he said. “Then we started to figure out Her platform boasted that she was a gun tion and compromise. It wanted people like that there’s some backers that really wanted it.” owner and a protector of “individual freedoms.” Berschauer. The group hired a high-powered land-use She was proud to be endorsed by Timber Unity, a Among her supporters was a 41-year-old attorney and triggered a cycle of complaints grassroots group that talks about rural solidarity farmer named Ben VanDyke, who grows hazel- to the state Land Use Board of Appeals. By but welcomes far-right extremists and conspir- nuts alongside the proposed trail section between mid-2020, after several remands from the acy theorists. Yamhill and Carlton. He’s a thin man who wears board stalled the trail’s momentum, the county During a virtual debate in April 2020, a goatee and a stain-flecked ballcap, and gives off began to move forward with a master planning Berschauer called the trail “a symbol of Metro the air of someone who is not easily upset. process to make sure all concerns were properly invading our county,” “Metro” being the regional Dozens of farmers oppose the trail, and addressed. But by then, the farmers didn’t want government that manages growth in the Port- several share the VanDyke name. Ben — like their concerns addressed; they didn’t want the land area. It was the Portland Creep argument his dad, and his grandfather — runs a farm in trail, period.

Illustration sources: Lindsay Berschauer, YouTube capture/KOIN 6; Landscape, Carl/Flickr; Tractors, YouTube capture/KOIN 6; Truck, Kelly Jordan/Statesman Journal; Map, Yamhill County

JULY 2021 31 “(People) think we’re an anti-trail group, and anti-government group in 2019 — runs columns really where we’re at right now. that’s so far from what we are,” VanDyke said. from a roster of far-right ideologues. In 2004, “Yamhill County has always been a conser- But that particular trail, in that particular spot, Starrett questioned the legacy of Dr. Martin vative county,” he added, “but it’s never been was too much of a change. “We’re just trying to Luther King Jr. “If we judge Martin Luther King mean-spirited.” uphold land use.” Jr. on ‘the content of his character’ and ‘not the Berschauer shrugs off criticism: “I wasn’t The fight — like Kesey’s novel — is about not color of his skin,’ surely no banks or schools or elected because I’m a go-along-to-get-along giving an inch. “It’s not like this is the Alamo,” post offices would be shut down for a day,” she woman,” she wrote on Facebook in February VanDyke said. But he also said if farmers change wrote. “Few have the guts to state the truth.” 2021. anything — even by creating a few feet of buffer, In 2006, Starrett ran for governor as the That was right after a virtual meeting during even if the community wants the trail — it opens candidate of the Constitution Party, which which Berschauer berated county employees, the door for Yamhill County to slowly become an promotes theocratic views. She received few wondering aloud whether they had committed extension of Portland. endorsements beyond the Oregon Firearms “fraudulent actions” by working on the trail. For “That land is the only thing that puts the Federation, a gun rights group helmed by her almost five hours, Berschauer, wearing tortoise- food on the table for my family,” VanDyke said. brother, and support from Oregonians for Immi- shell glasses that reflected her screen, admon- “If I do anything to destroy that, I’m destroying gration Reform, a white nationalist organization. ished staff. At one point, she thrust photographs my entire heritage.” Her platform in the Salem Statesman Journal of the unfinished bridge toward the camera, demanding: “Where is the money going to come from then to finish this bridge?” In the end, Berschauer made a motion to “That land is the only thing that puts the withdraw the land-use application for the trail, which would effectively kill the project, stop- food on the table for my family. If I do ping the planning process and halting bridge construction. It would also mean the agencies anything to destroy that, I’m destroying and parties that gave more than $1 million would want to be repaid. my entire heritage.” Kulla cautioned his fellow commissioners against halting the process. “We can move forward with this in a way that honors everybody in our community,” he said — BY JANUARY 2021, the Yamhill County illustrated a type of bigotry that has long been taxpayers, trail supporters and the farmers who Commission was majority anti-trail. Newly acceptable in Oregon: white supremacist talking felt ignored. “As a farmer, I respect them just as elected Commissioner Berschauer joined one points that never use the word “white.” “I believe much as anybody else.” of the project’s loudest opponents: Commission until we start looking at why things are such a But Starrett asked for the vote anyway. She Chair Mary Starrett. mess in this state, nothing will change,” she and Berschauer voted “Aye”; Kulla opposed. In Zoom meetings, Starrett’s square gives wrote. “Look at the advocacy commissions for Thirty years after its conception, the trail off a homey ambiance, with a pot of flowers Latinos, Asians, women, African Americans and died an unceremonious death. (Though Kulla behind her and crimson drapes filtering soft Native Americans. The Oregon Constitution is remains optimistic: “As long as the county owns sunlight. She is in her 60s, with brown hair cut clear that no group should receive extras that it,” he said, “there can be a trail.”) But by then, it in a short, wavy bob and glasses balanced on the other groups aren’t privy to.” was arguably the least of Yamhill County’s prob- end of her nose. Despite the overt racism, more than 50,000 lems. The arguments over the trail had gone on Starrett has opposed the trail since she people — about 3.6% of the total turnout — voted so long, and drummed up so much anger, that a was elected in 2014. During the 2020 elec- for Starrett for governor. gap had formed in the community — a space just tion, she endorsed Berschauer. “For 7 years I Starrett has had a long political career in large enough for people with far-right ideologies have opposed spending money on this project Yamhill County and could run for a third term as to shoulder their way inside. until and unless the County could get all the commissioner next year. She is open about her And so, by February, the story of the trail necessary land use approvals,” she wrote in an extremist views, but they seem palatable even to wasn’t really about a trail. It was a story about email to me. “The newly-elected commissioner more moderate voters, perhaps because of the a community divided, about extremism and campaigned on the folly of allowing the trail and down-home niceness she projects. bigotry, about powerful people who try on a won her race over her pro-trail opponent.” But the brash and argumentative working-class identity like a costume. In the 1980s and 1990s, Starrett hosted the Berschauer has inflamed the locals. Niceness, popular AM Northwest program on the local ABC it seems, is what separates the two women; one IF NEWSPAPER ARCHIVES are any indica- affiliate in Portland. A newspaper once praised a known quantity, and the other not. (Despite tion, the term “urban-rural divide” has been in the TV anchor’s “winning personality.” multiple requests, Berschauer did not comment use for nearly 100 years. But since the 1990s, But by the mid-2000s, Starrett was better in time for publication.) no state’s papers appear to have used it more known for her politics. She co-founded Orego- “When you have people who cater to resent- frequently than Oregon’s. nians for Life, an anti-abortion group, and ment and everything is an existential fight — Around the time the trail was first discussed, authored conspiratorial columns for the everything — it really becomes difficult to find in 1995, a Salem Statesman Journal commen- website News with Views. The website — which common ground and problem-solve,” Sal Peralta, tator wrote that state legislators’ infighting the Southern Poverty Law Center branded an a city councilman in McMinnville, said. “That’s stemmed from their different worldviews. “What

32 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS the urban-rural split represents is two Oregon’s, group — and Oregon Pushback signs: “Legis- Councillor Sal Peralta told me. “There’s a lot of each trying to impose its values on the other,” he lators want to take your guns.” Proud Boys — a money going toward those county commission wrote. In 2009, a longtime political columnist violent far-right group — mingled. And all of it races, and there’s a lot of effort going toward wrote that the state’s biggest challenge was “the was Timber Unity. making Oregon county commissions more urban-rural divide.” Later, when asked about the groups assem- extreme.” “People in the Portland-centric Willamette bled under its banner, one of Timber Unity’s Timber Unity’s effectiveness — from elect- Valley don’t appreciate the challenges facing leaders did not disavow them: “We’re not the ing candidates to derailing the climate bill — rural Oregon, and vice-versa,” he wrote. “Too free speech police,” she said. coupled with its extremist connections has made many Oregonians cling to outdated stereotypes “Timber Unity purports to be a voice for rural it something of a boogeyman in Oregon. Several of one another.” working Oregonians in the natural resources sources for this story declined to comment on Timber Unity provides one such stereotype: field,” said Lindsay Schubiner of the Western anything related to it out of fear. Rural Oregonians who are working-class and States Center, which combats white national- In a meeting of one group of citizens that mad as hell. ist groups. “I think that’s a disingenuous way of I attended, a presenter said that, in Oregon, The group is many things: a grassroots orga- presenting themselves. And they have a lot of Timber Unity “may be stronger than the Repub- nizing force, a social media hashtag, a political supporters who are involved because of what lican Party.” action committee. Its public Facebook group has they say their mission is. But I think that it’s also more than 26,000 followers, and its private group really important to note they create space for AT ITS FOUNDING, Timber Unity received boasts more than 60,000. In 2019, organizers dangerous far-right groups to create influence $5,000 from Andrew Miller, the CEO of Stim- said it sprang from Oregon’s urban-rural divide. and reach their supporters.” son Lumber. Miller has some of the deepest “We’re tired of being steamrolled,” the group’s On Jan. 6, 2021, Angelita Sanchez, a board conservative pockets in Oregon. Since 2008, he’s lead organizer said. “There are other parts of the member and spokesperson of Timber Unity’s personally contributed upward of $387,000 to state of Oregon other than just Portland.” political action committee, attended the rally conservative candidates and causes, and his In June 2019, logging trucks swarmed the before the storming of the U.S. Capitol in Wash- company has donated $2.3 million. In 2016, state Capitol, horns blaring, as loggers in hard ington, D.C. — an insurrection that has now Miller made headlines for funding a PAC that hats waved signs. Tractors circled, protesting resulted in more than 400 arrests. sent out a glossy mailer digging up the criminal a controversial bill aimed at capping green- Sanchez, who remains on Timber Unity’s history of an Oregon mayoral candidate. It was house emissions, which would have required board, is an administrator of the group’s private similar to the flyer about Boyer, Berschauer’s industries to buy permits in order to, essentially, Facebook group. Berschauer is also an admin- opponent. (Miller said he was not behind the pollute the air. istrator. Boyer mailer.) But before the vote, Republicans threatened “They’re trying to have it both ways: engag- Miller has deep Oregon roots: Stimson to walk out of the Statehouse — an act of political ing in anti-democratic and far-right approaches, Lumber, which was founded by his great-great- theater that made national headlines. while working to be seen as a mainstream great-grandfather, has logged in Oregon since Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, warned legis- organization working for rural Oregonians,” the late 1800s. The company owns timberland lators that if they did leave the Capitol, a build- Schubiner said. in Yamhill County worth “a couple hundred ing topped with a gilded statue of an ax-holding Berschauer has never been shy about her million dollars,” including Spirit Mountain, a “Oregon Pioneer,” she would send the Oregon association with the group. “I’m proud to stand place sacred to the Confederated Tribes of Grand State Police after them. with #TimberUnity,” she wrote online. “The elit- Ronde. He also owns local hazelnut farms. Republican State Sen. Brian Boquist — ism of many of our state lawmakers and special He is skinny and soft-spoken. His company whose district includes part of Yamhill County interest groups is costing our working families is known for donating a 75-foot-tall Douglas fir to — responded. “Send bachelors, and come heavily their livelihoods.” VanDyke, who campaigned the city of Portland for its Christmas Tree Light- armed,” he told reporters. “I’m not going to be for Berschauer, said he doesn’t care about her ing. He lives in a 10-bedroom home in one of a political prisoner in the state of Oregon. It’s connection; his family is happy with the job she’s Portland’s ritziest neighborhoods. just that simple.” Later, when journalists charac- done so far. Miller told me that other than his initial terized his words as a “thinly veiled” threat, he In 2020, Timber Unity endorsed 11 county contribution, he has “no active role” in Timber corrected them: “Nothing thinly veiled” about commissioner candidates across Oregon, includ- Unity. “For some reason people think I’m a it — a shocking promise of violence by a sitting ing Berschauer. Nine were elected. “In general, master puppeteer or the man behind the green elected official. the Timber Unity candidates and the candidates curtain,” he said. The next day, they went into hiding, effec- (Berschauer) has historically backed — those According to Miller, the group was born out tively killing the bill. folks have done really well,” McMinnville City of rural Oregon’s deep resentment of Portlanders, Boquist had merely echoed the rhetoric on display at the Timber Unity rally outside the Capitol. Men stood on the building’s steps, holding banners that read: “Where We Go One, We Go “There’s a lot of money going toward those All” — the slogan of Q-Anon, a conspiracy theory that claims Satanic pedophiles have infiltrated county commission races, and there’s a the federal government and only former Presi- dent Donald Trump can stop them. lot of effort going toward making Oregon There were Oregon Three Percenter sweat- shirts and hats — garb of the far-right militia county commissions more extreme.”

JULY 2021 33 who view the sparsely populated part of the state a way to sort of create rural backlash against concerned this curriculum promotes a politi- as “a drive-by on the way to somewhere,” he said. the general cultural grievance that urban areas, cal bias and ideology,” she said, adding that she “Or maybe a recreational weekend. It’s not really brown people, educated people (and) liberals thought elements of the training might violate a connection with the people, the communities.” have too much sway, and we should go back to people’s constitutional rights. He believes state politics, and urban Orego- the way it used to be. Behind the scenes, Andrew Miller also nians, tend to ignore rural life. “Urban Oregon “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to think expressed fury. He wrote to Kulla, who supported (has a) conceit and arrogance in wanting to tell about that value proposition and go, wait a the training: “Do you think I should feel guilty rural Oregonians, ‘No, let me tell you, Mr. Trailer second,” he told me. “There is a racial compo- for being a successful white man? ... Do I feel Trash, Mr. Logger. … ’ ” he said. “ ‘I’m going to tell nent to that.’” guilty? Not in the least.” you how you should be living your life, and it’s And there is a racial component to the Kulla suggested they meet in person to have going to be based on my standards.’ ” Yamhill County story, too: Two months after a more productive conversation. Steve Pedery, conservation director at Oregon Republicans walked out of the Statehouse and Miller declined. “I strongly disagree with Wild, said his nonprofit became “extremely Timber Unity made its grand political entrance, your public position that white people need to concerned” about Timber Unity because of Mill- Commissioner Starrett was fighting diversity be trained to be better human beings, or need to er’s involvement. “What we feared was the timber training for county employees. She questioned feel guilty about their existence,” he wrote back. industry in Oregon, sensing that it was losing even whether white privilege was real, drawing on “You are the worst type of racist.” more of its social license in the state, was gonna myths about Asian Americans, saying Asians Sal Peralta, the McMinnville city councilor, go full Trumpian. ‘If we can’t have it, no one can. “have better credit scores, they have more wealth. is one of the few people of color in a leadership We’ll burn it all down,’ ” he said. … We could talk about Asian privilege.” position in Yamhill County. He said that every time he spoke out against Timber Unity or its supporters, his personal information — and sometimes his photograph — were shared “We don’t actually have a ton of timber online. He thinks he’s targeted because he’s Latino. here. I think (it’s) sort of fascinating — One morning this spring, he found a toilet in his front yard. “I don’t know if that was Timber that story we’ve told about ourselves has Unity,” he said. “I also have a Black Lives Matter sign in front of my house. I don’t know why it become more true than the truth happened, but I can tell you I have been singled .” out clearly and deliberately so many times that it wouldn’t surprise me if it was deliberate.”

To Pedery, Timber Unity simply exploits Her comments drew local outrage, even SHORTLY AFTER THEY KILLED THE Oregon’s urban and rural stereotypes, making though they merely echoed sentiments she’d TRAIL — which Berschauer lauded as a victory the divide a tool for recruitment. expressed for decades. The following week, for private property — Berschauer proposed an “They have come to stand for the working dozens of citizens testified in support of the train- ordinance making the county a Second Amend- rural Oregonian in a way that the Republican ing at a meeting that lasted more than two hours. ment Sanctuary, effectively nullifying new gun Party doesn’t,” City Councilor Peralta said. ”And Progressive Yamhill’s Corvus was the laws within its borders. (Starrett had tried but I think it’s ironic because … this is an organiza- second person to speak. She is a white woman failed to pass it in 2019.) tion that is, first and foremost, promoting the married to a Black woman, with whom she has The ordinance “defends the Right to Keep interests of very large and powerful people in two biracial children. “I had no opportunity in and Bear Arms,” Starrett wrote in an email. “It the state.” the culture that I was raised in here in Yamhill promotes the idea of ‘Shall not be infringed’ by That appeal to rural resentment has County to even fundamentally understand what eliminating the local enforcement of many of worked in Yamhill County. Megan Corvus, a it would mean to be a Black person in this coun- the state and federal firearms regulations that lead organizer with a local grassroots group try,” she said. “I have learned so much by being restrict the ability of individuals to protect them- called Progressive Yamhill, said the group has given access to training like this. … I now recog- selves, their families, and others.” It is also part found a foothold here, where she was born and nize myself as racist. I was raised in a culture that of a trend in Oregon, and in the rest of the coun- is currently raising a family. is fundamentally racist, that believes in white try, backed by militia groups and powerful gun “Timber Unity has a ton of fans here,” she supremacy.” lobbyists, to subvert the Constitution. told me. “We don’t actually have a ton of timber Corvus told me Starrett’s jaw dropped when The idea echoes the 1970s Posse Comita- here. I think (it’s) sort of fascinating — that story she called herself racist. “It’s OK to say that we tus movement. Latin for “power of the county,” we’ve told about ourselves has become more are racist, as long as we recognize it and work to Posse Comitatus argued that county sheriffs are true than the truth. And people don’t want to end the ways in which we are racist, to become the highest law enforcement authority. The idea hear the truth.” anti-racist,” Corvus said. came from a white supremacist from California Pedery said the term “rural” works as a kind Only two people supported Starrett. One who urged citizens to form “posses” and hoard of code: “We don’t mean Indigenous,” he said. — a farmer who is now part of the organized firearms in order to combat globalistic forces, “When we say ‘rural,’ we don’t mean Hispanic opposition to the proposed trail — said diversity particularly the United Nations. farmworkers. It has become weaponized in this training would “chip away at cultural norms.” The movement’s reach extended across state’s politics, and most states in the West, as The other was Berschauer. “I am very the West. One southern Oregon posse made the

34 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS Casey Kulla image courtesy Casey Kulla; landscape, George Rose/Getty Images; Road, YouTube capture/Yamhelas Westsider; Map, Yamhill County news when it “seized” the county dogcatcher; show put on by the other commissioners. “I may that he could let them into the building. He another, in 1975, threatened an Oregon state be putting a little more Machiavellian spin on it now faces criminal charges, and mid-June, he senator with death if he didn’t repeal a land-use than is probably necessary, because of the finan- became the first representative in state history conservation law. cial liability of unwinding the trail,” he said. “If to be expelled from the Legislature. Posse Comitatus evolved into today’s Patriot you can divert people’s attention to this Second The week before Nearman opened the movement, the far-right subset on full display Amendment silliness, that sort of makes people door, Kulla’s email was flooded with strange at the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. The move- look away from the tax implications.” messages — conspiratorial, demanding, sinis- ment cares deeply about county-level govern- Kulla tromped off into a bramble of over- ter. The Yamhill County Commission was set ment, seeking seats on commissions in order growth, returning with a handful of pods. “That’s to vote on reassessing its COVID-19 restrictions. to oversee land use, private property rights and really interesting,” he told Higgins, picking “It was clear something was going to go down,” gun regulations. through the bits in his palm for mullein seeds. Kulla said. “They were attempting to obstruct Yamhill County’s sheriff, Tim Svenson, said “Your observation is way more gentle and light- democracy.” there were “so many unknowns” about the sanc- hearted than mine. The emails came with such speed and feroc- tuary ordinance that he couldn’t answer ques- “Before there was a U.S. Capitol attack by ity that they felt coordinated, as if someone was tions about it. “I can tell you that I have been a insurrectionists, there was a forced entry of the directing people to put pressure on Kulla, or strong supporter of Second Amendment rights Oregon state Capitol,” he reminded us. worse: Frighten him. and have testified in Salem to that effect,” he That happened on Dec. 21, 2020, during a “We will prevail,” read one, “even if it means said. “I am not a fan of passing gun laws that special session of the state Legislature. Repub- washing this fine country in blood.” Kulla further restrict lawful gun owners.” lican Rep. Mike Nearman — whose district forwarded it to the county attorney. “There is definitely a real concern,” Kulla includes the southernmost edge of Yamhill “Before email, we got this same drivel on said. People have “essentially been told by the County — made headlines after he opened a paper from the Posse Comitatus,” the attorney board of commissioners that they can do what- locked door at the Oregon Capitol, allowing a replied. Now it was coming from a new brand ever they want with their guns here.” crowd of unmasked protesters waving Trump of the far right, “who construct their own legal Berschauer introduced the ordinance in flags to enter, leading to confrontations with fictions to justify lawlessness.” February. A month later, I met with Kulla and the state and local police. In early June, video Still, it felt like a threat. Kulla started sleep- Higgins, the real estate broker, at the site of the surfaced of Nearman giving out his phone ing with his phone next to the bed. And he trail. Higgins believed it was all posturing — a number and implying, with a wink and a nod, moved his hunting rifle closer to the house.

JULY 2021 35 GREEN LIVING GUIDE

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JULY 2021 39 40 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS REVIEW

How will humans live through ecological collapse? In Believers, Lisa Wells profiles ordinary people who want to lead less destructive lives.

BY ANDRU OKUN

“THE END OF THE WORLD” of them are based in the Western all we take for granted.” Finisia Medrano, left, at Lone Pine is a slippery concept; writing the United States. Wells spends time Some of Believers’ best Ridge, Idaho. Adrain Chesser phrase, I feel the need for quotes to with Finisia Medrano, an itinerant moments involve Wells digging avoid giving the impression that I transgender woman who traveled into the cultural delusions of the thought to have once blanketed can define it. It makes sense, then, the Western backcountry by foot frontier, “the foundational myth of the West; game was abundant, that the ways we deal with the pros- and horse for decades, living off the the American West.” The land that’s salmon filled the rivers, and flocks pect of doomsday would vary. In land and planting as she went. In the been taken was already inhabited, of migrating birds were so thick that Believers: Making a Life at the End woods of northwest Oregon, Wells she reminds us; colonization is an they sometimes darkened the sky of the World — the nonfiction debut studies with a wildly impressive ongoing process. Any examina- for days. She is clear that there is of Lisa Wells, a poet and essayist tracker named Fernando Moreira, tion of nature in America requires no going back — “no return to inno- living in Seattle — the author writes, whose attention to detail leads her acknowledging this violence and cence” — but she believes there’s “If we imagine that our civilization to consider our habitual disconnec- its attendant fantasy of emptiness. still hope and real value in acting is already in collapse, the question from the natural world. In New “What does it mean,” she asks, “to on behalf of future generations. tion we are faced with is this: How, Mexico, she meets with a group of ‘go back to the land’ in a country In the Sierra Nevada, Ron Goode, then, shall we live?” Her book is a Mennonite rewilders. In Paradise, that was never yours?” This line a North Fork Mono elder, gives Wells direct response to major ecological California, she discusses devastat- of questioning undergirds her a tour of a hidden meadow he first issues — increasing carbon emis- ing wildfires and the role of humans thinking on the limits of the envi- sought to restore over 15 years ago. sions, declining biodiversity, thaw- in ecosystem restoration. ronmental movement, which she Walking with the assistance of a cane, ing permafrost — but collapse is not Believers is digressive and weaves into this history through he introduces Wells to the plants that really the focus; rather, it is “the its scope broad, the book’s many recollections of coming of age he helped steward — black oaks and backdrop, the central prophecy.” threads tied by Wells’ appraisal of in the Pacific Northwest during milkweed; yarrow and manzanita. Prolonged thinking about the environmental damage and repair. the radical environmentalism of Deer, bears, bobcats and birds have apocalypse can inspire hefty, exten- She’s largely successful in this inter- the 1990s. There are times when all become regular visitors to a patch sively researched books on how the twining, although some storylines Wells appears uncomfortable as a of earth that was once choked with crisis will affect our species and are better executed than others. A memoirist — reticent about some brush and illegally dumped garbage. others (The Sixth Extinction and The chapter that fluctuates between a difficult portions of her life — but, Now it’s a biodiverse habitat for a Uninhabitable Earth among them). reconciliation ceremony in Taos, like the subjects she profiles, her growing number of species; Goode It can also plunge a writer into fatal- New Mexico, and a mental break- memories ground Believers’ big has found “his joy and his purpose,” ism. But Wells merely edges up to down on a trip to Philadelphia feels questions in personal stakes. his “ecological niche.” As Wells the cliff, using her eco-anxiety and off-kilter. (Sometimes, the language The current forecast indicates writes, “The span of a single human grief as a starting point to examine itself feels circular; while reading, I that climate change — a phrase I’ve life is almost no time at all, and yet how different people reckon with underlined a sentence that struck avoided using until now, although we can do so much to keep our world planetary catastrophe. me. When the same sentence you’ve likely been thinking of it all living.” And yet, there are no survival appeared 10 pages later, its repeti- along — is destroying our chances bunkers or billionaire isolationists tion felt more accidental than inten- of inhabiting the Earth long- in this book. Instead, the Believ- tional.) Still, Wells’ prose, rooted term. Settler colonialists’ failure Believers: Making a Life at ers’ eight chapters introduce us to in her poetry, gives her a unique to understand the interrelation- the End of the World “relatively ordinary people” with a advantage when writing about living ships between plants, animals and Lisa Wells shared belief “that their inherited through this unstable moment in people set us on our current course. 353 pages, hardcover: $28 way of life was destructive.” Most history, “feeling the tenuousness of As Wells notes, edible gardens are Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

JULY 2021 41 Lauren Crow / HCN

LAST YEAR, when the COVID-19 a rising wave of efforts aimed at pandemic kept most people home undoing discriminatory labor and emptied supermarket shelves, and immigration policies. Similar U.S. farmworkers stayed on the job. Farmworker organizing legislation is under consideration Unable to work from home, they in Oregon and Colorado as well as at sustained their vital but dangerous in Washington is undoing the federal level. In a press release industry. But they also organized celebrating the Washington law, for better working conditions discriminatory labor policies President Joe Biden urged Congress and pay. In central Washington’s to pass legislation addressing fertile Yakima Valley, workers at A conversation with Victoria Ruddy and Elizabeth Strater farmworker protections. “For too apple-processing warehouses led of the United Farm Workers. long — and owing in large part to wildcat strikes last May and June, unconscionable race-based exclu- ultimately winning the right to BY CARL SEGERSTROM sions put in place generations ago form workers’ committees, obtain — farmworkers have been denied better personal protective equip- some of the most fundamental ment and earn higher wages. rights that workers in almost every In November, dairy workers labor. The court ruled that the state years. By 2024, agricultural labor- other sector have long enjoyed,” won a Washington State Supreme law preventing overtime payments ers, like most hourly workers, will Biden said. “It is long past time that Court case that forced their employ- was unconstitutional. receive time-and-a-half wages for we put all of America’s farmworkers ers to pay them for overtime work. On May 11, Gov. Jay Inslee, D, hours worked beyond 40 per week. on an equal footing with the rest of Federal and state laws exempt agri- signed a bill codifying that deci- Today, Washington has the most our national workforce.” cultural workers from certain labor sion. The law, which passed with an comprehensive overtime protec- A week after the Washing- protections, creating a vulnerable overwhelming bipartisan majority, tion for farmworkers of any state. ton law was signed, High Country class of workers in an industry that will phase in overtime payments for For farmworker advocates, News spoke with Victoria Ruddy, depends on minority and migrant farmworkers over the next three securing overtime pay is part of who lives in the Yakima Valley and

42 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS is the Pacific Northwest regional intact. The fact that farmworkers not just the representation of the any industry get to feel entitled to director for the United Farm Work- were getting sick and dying to city council; it’s all part of the same limitless labor from any one kind ers (UFW), a nationwide agricul- produce food for Americans during big picture where these communi- of body? tural worker union, and Elizabeth the pandemic was something that ties have just been systemically Two days after the bill signing Strater, the UFW’s director of stra- pushed people to have to think disenfranchised. in Washington, Rep. Raúl Grijalva, tegic campaigns, about organizing about where food comes from, And it’s by design — we don’t D-Ariz., reintroduced the Fair- and what’s next for the movement. and why it’s so important that we need to be coy about it — it’s by ness for Farm Workers Act, which This conversation has been edited protect farmworkers. design. It’s ultimately upholding is the federal overtime bill. You for clarity and length. a system of power that is based on look at different state laws that How are Washington’s new over- exploitation and injustice. And you are moving and have some real What was the driving force time laws affecting farmworkers can trace it all the way back to slav- momentum — like Oregon, like behind the overtime protections and their communities? ery: Why do you think farmworkers Colorado — (and) you also look at recently passed in Washington? Ruddy: A lot of the workers that are excluded from the Fair Labor some of the federal signals that are Victoria Ruddy: Farmworkers we’re hearing from, particularly Standards Act? Why don’t they coming, (and it’s) like this tipping work in one of the most dangerous workers with families, are talking have NLRB (National Labor Rela- point is being reached. industries in the state. And I think more about the impact on their tions Board) rights? Because that’s that’s kind of the background of family life and their children versus work that’s traditionally associated Ruddy: We have a lot of support this lawsuit, and how we got to an economic impact. This is more with slavery, and there’s no way the and organizing going on with winning overtime pay. Farm- than just economics. This is really Southern congressmen were going our farmworker leaders here in workers are regularly exposed to about farmworkers having time to to pass it in the 1930s. (The federal the Yakima Valley, hundreds of the elements and face wage theft see their kids, to spend time with Fair Labor Standards Act, which leaders who are organizing folks and sexual harassment. They’re them, to do homework with them, granted overtime pay to most around immigration reform. It exposed to chemicals and toxins. to be home to rest, things like that. workers but not farm laborers, was really is so closely tied to labor They’re disproportionately likely to That’s what’s really on a lot of enacted in 1938.) And that’s why rights, because when farmwork- be killed or injured, or even get sick, people’s minds. we’re still there. ers feel like they’re safe to express which we saw during the pandemic, their concerns, when they have as farmworkers were getting sick There have been a handful of How does Washington’s passage a legal status and don’t feel like and literally dying at work. voting rights cases in Yakima and of overtime protections fit into they’re going to be threatened That’s really the foundation for the Tri-Cities area recently that the larger national context of farm with deportation if they speak up farmworkers fighting to be treated have sought to balance racial labor organizing, and what’s next about sexual harassment, or about as equals and to organize for justice. representation in city govern- for this movement? not having clean bathrooms, or And that’s what they did here in ment and counter the impacts of Strater: If you look at the bipartisan not having hand-washing stations, Washington state. … It really is just gerrymandering, which has left and overwhelming vote in Wash- or whatever the issue might be — about being treated as equals. It’s the majority Latino population ington state, that’s the writing on they need legal status to be able about health and safety. It’s about underrepresented in local politics. the wall. When you get those over- to do that. the fact that the human body isn’t How are these voting rights cases whelming bipartisan votes, (and) I think farmers for too long designed to work 16 hours a day, or related to farmworker organizing? then that message of congratula- have taken advantage of the fact 70-plus hours in a week. Elizabeth Strater: The two issues tions to Washington state from the that farmworkers are vulnerable are intermingled in a really deep president — President Biden reach- because many of them don’t have How did the pandemic impact way. The folks that are living in ing out saying this is a racist exclu- legal status in this country. So I farmworker organizing? these rural communities that are sion, it’s archaic, it’s time to right think that’s the next step. Farm- Ruddy: I think the pandemic in Latino voters are far more likely a historic wrong — these are all workers are essential, and they general has empowered farm- to be folks that are working in jobs just showing that there’s this wider deserve to have legal status and to workers. We did a lot of work with that are disproportionately vulner- awareness of the moral question: not feel scared to talk about all the the H-2A (seasonal agricultural able to labor abuses. It’s not just Do farmworkers deserve the same labor abuses that they’re experi- visa) workers, who were getting one issue: It’s not just overtime, it’s basic rights as other people? Does encing at work every day. sick by the hundreds. A lot of those workers speaking up and elevat- ing their voices is what was able to bring about a lot of the protections and emergency rules that came through last year. I think we do still have some of that momentum from “The pandemic elevated the fact that the pandemic, and workers feeling empowered to talk about what was farmworkers are killing themselves to keep going on. The pandemic elevated the our food system intact.” fact that farmworkers are killing themselves to keep our food system

JULY 2021 43 REVIEW

The female inmates battling wildfires In Breathing Fire, Jaime Lowe uncovers the benefits and drawbacks of California’s inmate fire program.

BY JENNY SHANK

IN 2016, A BOULDER STRUCK in camp, and up to $2 an hour while her interviewees see the benefits of and killed 22-year-old Shawna fighting fires. The California Depart- their work, Lowe notes that “most Jones while she battled the Mulhol- ment of Corrections and Rehabili- bristled at the idea that they volun- land Fire in Malibu, California. tation estimated that paying such teered.” When an incarcerated Jones was part of an inmate crew minuscule wages for this vital work, woman wants to avoid the trauma from Correctional Camp 13, making rather than the standard hourly rate, of prison, from sexual assault to her the first incarcerated woman to “saved the state at least $1.2 billion” solitary confinement, “she might die while fighting a fire since 1983, over 13 years. be looking for any alternative,” the year women first joined Califor- Lowe delves into Califor- Lowe writes. “She might even be nia’s inmate firefighting program, nia’s history of compulsory labor, willing to risk her life.” which started in 1946. including a cruel law passed in Breathing Fire doesn’t shy After Jones’ death, the Los Ange- 1850 that allowed white people to away from complicated truths. les Times published a bare-bones accuse Indigenous people of lack- For many women, the program Incarcerated firefighters working on article about the incident. It revealed ing employment, whereupon they offers relative dignity and purpose the Detwiler Fire in Mariposa County, California, in 2017. Peter Bohler little about Jones, but it drew the could be arrested and sold into four compared to the grim realities of attention of California-raised jour- months of slavery at a public auction. incarceration. Besides receiving nalist Jaime Lowe, who was deter- Lowe draws a direct line from this good food and exercise, they get to Proposition 57, which allows nonvi- mined to discover more. Lowe’s to the inmate labor that contributed live in the forest of Malibu, where olent felons with convictions for years-long investigation resulted to the construction of much of Cali- their families can visit them under multiple crimes to seek early in Breathing Fire, an immersive, fornia’s infrastructure, including pine trees rather than the fluores- parole after they complete the full comprehensive look at Jones’ life building the Pacific Coast Highway cent lights of a prison. Fire-threat- sentence for their most signifi- and the lives of other incarcerated and carving out the 22-mile stretch ened residents hold up signs to cant crime. Its backers aimed to firefighters, as well as California’s of land to create Sunset Boulevard. thank them for their work. Because ease prison overcrowding, but it history of inmate firefighting and When World War II brought person- the forestry programs are popular also depleted the pool of potential its growing reliance on it. Given the nel shortages, corrections officers among inmates, talked up as “a firefighters. The proposition high- new reality of California’s fire season, began forcing inmates to fight fires. prison Shangri-La — lobster, shrimp, lighted a point that David Fathi, which “lasts 13 months,” as environ- Lowe vividly paints the real- ocean breezes,” there is no sustained the director of the ACLU National mental historian Stephen J. Pyne ities of present-day firefighting. opposition to them, despite the low Prison Project, expressed to Lowe: puts it, often all that stands between Her precise descriptions of sensory pay. But even these benefits are “If these people are safe to be out a family’s home and a conflagra- details — the air is “congested with short-lived: Former inmates face and about and carrying axes and tion are the inmates that labor, blackened particles” — and fire- many obstacles if they seek to build chainsaws, maybe they didn’t need sometimes for 24 hours straight, to fighting and inmate lingo make a career in firefighting, given laws to be in prison in the first place.” restrain the flames. readers feel as if they’re in camp that prevent the state from hiring In the meantime, as questions Inmates comprise up to 30% of with the women, jumping out of ex-felons and parolees. As Lowe surrounding criminal justice loom, California’s wildland fire crews. At bunks at the 3 a.m. siren and piling pieces together Shawna Jones’ the megafires will continue to rage, the time Lowe reported this book, into a buggy to race off toward a story through public records and keeping California in perpetual around 200 of these firefighters roaring wildfire. Lowe also weaves interviews with her fellow inmate need of firefighters. were female, making up three out in accounts of the women’s lives, firefighters, family and friends, it of California’s 35 inmate fire camps. including their stints in standard becomes clear that Jones felt the Inmates do difficult work, establish- prison facilities before they joined firefighting program turned her life Breathing Fire: Female Inmate ing “a line, usually a few feet wide, the firefighting program. Most were around. Had she lived, she would Firefighters on the Front Lines of by cutting through trees and shrubs sentenced for drug offenses, as only have tried to pursue it as a career. California’s Wildfires and removing anything that could nonviolent offenders who complete In recent years, the firefight- Jaime Lowe burn.” For this grueling and risky an intense training regimen can ing program has dwindled. In 2016, 304 pages, hardcover, $27 labor, they earn $2.56 per day while join the program. But even though 65% of California voters approved MCD Books, 2021.

44 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS Western U.S. with details from the among firefighters as “fire season” frontlines today, Angle finds room begins to encompass the entire year. for both splendor and severity. At Fireline’s final two-part the same time, he explores how episode considers the wild- Westerners might live alongside fire land-urban interface, or WUI, the in our inevitably entangled future. neighborhoods on the outskirts For conveying a sense of what of cities and towns that bleed into that future might feel like, Angle’s undeveloped land. The nation’s choice of medium is ideal: Sounds fastest-growing land-use type, of fires crackling, boots crunching it already includes one in three on gravel and wind rustling in trees houses across the U.S. In conver- punctuate the series, bringing the sations with forest rangers, volun- listener closer to its subject — the teer firefighters, social scientists people and communities grappling and homeowners across the West, with wildfire and climate change. Angle shows how practical actions The first of Angle’s stories aimed at fire resistance in the WUI, traces the Forest Service’s history such as retrofitting homes and of suppressing fires, beginning thinning nearby forests, are possi- in 1910, when one of America’s ble only through prolonged and largest-ever forest fires, the legend- intentional trust-building. Near ary Big Burn, scorched huge swaths Missoula, this happens through of Montana, Idaho and Washing- “listening sessions” between the ton. Its destruction and death toll Lolo National Forest and at-risk inspired a century-long effort to communities, and plans such as eliminate wildfire from the land- Wildfire Adapted Missoula that scape. But many Western ecosys- seek to help officials and residents tems require low-intensity burning create fire-resilient neighborhoods. to rejuvenate the soil. Without peri- Coordination is necessary to, as REVIEW odic fires, in fact, fuel accumulates Angle puts it, “see a future that’s and forests grow denser, leading to not just doom and ash and gloom.” hotter and deadlier fires that sear By early June of this year, the the soil instead. Intermountain West was experienc- To understand the importance ing historic drought. “It is possible How to live with fire of controlled, low-intensity fire, that this may be the baseline for the Angle visits two members of the future,” Elizabeth Klein, an Inte- Wildfire needs new narratives. Confederated Salish and Kootenai rior Department senior counselor, The podcast Fireline is a start. Tribes. The pair, a father and son, testified before Congress near the use prescribed burns to revive their end of May. The situation is grim — BY SURYA MILNER ancestral lands and encourage the nearly every state in the West has growth of camas, a culturally signif- seen its biggest wildfire since the icant plant with star-shaped purple year 2000, Angle reminds us, and flowers, near the Flathead Reser- scientists say that fire season is 80 FLAMES CASCADED DOWN hills, orange sky, Clarke was riveted by the vation’s Mission Mountains. For days longer now than it was in 1970. engulfing old oak trees as firefighter fire’s brilliance, its beauty and might. millennia, the tribes have viewed Fireline acknowledges those Lily Jane Clarke watched, transfixed. Clarke’s reverence and awe fire as a gift, using it to maintain and realities but resists succumbing to She was standing in the thick of the captivated Justin Angle, a market- shape the landscape before Euro- fear, hopelessness or, worse, resig- August Complex, a giant 2020 wild- ing professor at the University of pean settlers, with their Dante’s nation. Instead, listeners receive fire that burned over a million acres Montana and the host and creator Inferno-esque fears, commenced a new lenses through which to view of Northern California forestland. of the podcast Fireline, released regime of fire suppression. fire: reverence, gratitude, wonder, “It’s beautiful,” she said, speaking this spring. A six-part series from From there, Angle and his team curiosity, resolve. Fireline, then, into a recorder, her voice light and Montana Public Radio, Fireline traverse the West to unearth other comes as a sort of salve against the measured. It was also destructive: attempts to reconcile two seem- narratives that see fire as more than arresting panic that’s dominated The blaze consumed nearly 1,000 ingly incompatible views of wild- just an enemy, invader or destruc- mainstream fire narratives since structures and killed one firefighter. fire: a catastrophe that amplifies tive force. They tell the story of the the Big Burn. It’s not an antidote to The August Complex was a stark climate anxiety, and a “part of the anthropologist who believes that fire itself, nor a robust game plan for reminder that wildfires are getting natural world, like the view from a food cooked over a fire is what set moving forward. It’s an invitation bigger, hotter and more devastat- mountaintop,” as Angle describes humans apart from apes, for exam- to understand the West’s long and ing across the West. But even as she Clarke’s outlook. Combining illu- ple, and talk to a former firefighter troubled relationship with fire, and inhaled thick smoke beneath an minating histories of wildfire in the who tracks declining mental health to envision a new one.

JULY 2021 45 Heard Around the West Tips about Western oddities are appreciated and often shared in this column. Write [email protected].

BY BETSY MARSTON

THE WEST ALASKA We always enjoy the Boatman’s Betsy, the elusive 600-pound cow Quarterly Review, a classy publi- that escaped a Father’s Day rodeo cation that celebrates the boat three years ago, used to be glimpsed people who not only challenge wandering the countryside around tough rapids but also share their Anchorage, reports the Anchorage knowledge of the Colorado River’s Daily News. But her owner, rodeo history, environment and geogra- promoter Frank Koloski, believes phy. Tourists sometimes arrive with those days are over: “I think she’s ideas that need more context, to put moved on to greener pastures, if it mildly. One passenger asked river you know what I mean.” It wasn’t for guide Shyanne Yazzie, 28, who was lack of pursuers that the legendary born and grew up on the Navajo bovine remained at large: Anchor- Nation, this doozy: “How did John age police flew a drone over Far Wesley Powell get his boat over the North Bicentennial Park, state troop- Glen Canyon Dam?” Probably the ers, police and fire departments same way dinosaurs crossed the conducted searches, and even the Grand Canyon: They had the fore- FBI became involved — sort of. “She sight to travel before it existed. walked right up to the front doors of Every visitor to Colorado has the FBI building,” Koloski said. But heard some classic weather-related Armando Veve / HCN when he got there “to lasso the errant axioms: “You know it’s windy cow, all he found was marks on the when a chain blows out flat,” or “If eavesdropper … you are missing out might as well be crammed onto glass left by Betsy’s breath.” Way to you don’t like the weather, wait a on better conversation. Get your the same boat. Hilary Hutcheson, go, Betsy. Live free or die. minute and it’ll change.” According lazy butt out of bed and join us! The a longtime fly-fishing guide, told to the Colorado Sun’s Jason Blevins, elk barely look up from their graz- the Associated Press that last CALIFORNIA the state boasts 12 temperamental ing. They aren’t complaining. ...” summer brought a lot of first-time Admittedly, having 10 or 15 enor- seasons: Winter, Fools Spring, 2nd anglers as well as first-time camp- mous carrion-eating California Winter, Spring of Deception, 3rd MONTANA ers: “Montana was their third condors camping out on your roof Winter, Road Construction, Actual Last summer broke records as choice after going to Disneyland and loitering on the railings has Spring, Summer, Fire, False Fall, people sick of lockdown headed or going to Europe.” That required its drawbacks, what with their 2nd Summer, Actual Fall. What he West in droves to national parks her to employ some diplomacy, primitive table manners. As Seana didn’t mention is that residents and rivers. This summer, even “telling people that bear spray isn’t Quintero, daughter of homeowner experience three or more seasons more of us are likely to hit the road, a repellent you spray on your kids Cinda Mickols, put it, “My tiny little on any given day. which likely means another bout like insect repellent.” Often, visi- mom was staring down a bunch In Hailey, Idaho, the Idaho of “Rivergeddon,” as writer Todd tors wanted to replicate what they’d of birds half her size …(and) they Mountain Express facilitates lively Wilkinson dubbed it in Mountain seen in movies like A River Runs kept messing stuff and pooping exchanges between anonymous Journal. Rivergeddon means traf- Through It, i.e., the “full wader everywhere.” Still, Quintero told locals through its “Miscellany” fic jams on rural roads as people set-up,” as opposed to fly-fishing AP that her mom remains in “awe” column. Hailey residents Irene in waders line up side-by-side from rafts. As Jim Robbins reported of her uninvited guests, knowing and Mike Healy noticed one testy in the Madison and other iconic in The New York Times, “gridlock their extraordinary comeback exchange, which began with a Montana rivers, all of them cast- in a natural paradise” may not be from near-extinction. She under- complaint: “Groups of women ing for fish in willy-nilly fashion. new to the West, but it has defi- stands why they’d want to visit running in our neighborhoods at You’ve got to feel for fish that get nitely accelerated, leading some their historic hunting grounds, 5 a.m., chatting about Pilates and caught and released over and over residents to question whether but wishes they would find another avocado toast: Stop scaring the again. Meanwhile, float trips can tourism’s benefits outweigh the restroom: “Trees are fine but not wildlife!” Response: “Dear 5 a.m. so clog the river that passengers impacts of too many people. the house, please.”

46 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS JANUARY 2020 47 119 Grand Avenue PO Box 1090 Paonia, CO 81428

U.S. $5 | Canada $6

#IAM THE WEST ALEX KIM Racial Justice Engagement Specialist Missoula, Montana

As a kid, I always played around outside, but my introduction to outdoor recreation wasn’t until I moved to Montana. I was intimidated because I grew up around a very diverse community, a very Korean American community; I always felt welcomed, because I saw people like me. When I moved out here, it was a lot harder. Outdoor opportunities are not always announced to people of color, and there are cost barriers to get started. The BIPOC outdoor program I piloted is really for anybody that wants to get outside and do things for free. Creating that community opens the door for people to have the confidence to be outside. Especially in Montana, where there’s so much outdoor recreation, it should be

easy for anybody to have access. Irvine / HCN Tailyr

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