The Parks You Don't Know

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SPECIAL TRAVEL ISSUE

High Country ForN people whoews care about the West

The Parks

March 7, 2016 | $5 | Vol. 48 No. 4 | www.hcn.org No. 48 | $5 Vol. 2016 March 7, You Don’t Know FROM A TRAIL ON THE BORDER TO A TINY ISLAND IN WASHINGTON, THE NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM INSPIRES — AND SURPRISES High Country News EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER FEATURES Paul Larmer MANAGING EDITOR THE PARKS 14 Brian Calvert Tracing borderlands history on the Anza Trail SENIOR EDITORS By Sarah Tory COVER Jodi Peterson Jonathan Thompson YOU DON’T ART DIRECTOR 29 Oregon’s trail through time Cindy Wehling How do you protect a historic artifact from the development it helped create? ONLINE EDITOR Tay Wiles KNOW By Sarah Gilman ASSISTANT EDITOR Kate Schimel D.C. CORRESPONDENT INSIDE Elizabeth Shogren WRITERS ON THE RANGE EDITOR Betsy Marston 4 A park ‘in the raw’ New Mexico’s Valles Caldera National Preserve ASSOCIATE DESIGNER Brooke Warren 4 Parks confidential Discoveries from readers and staff COPY EDITOR Diane Sylvain 6 Listening to big empty An acoustical journey into Great Basin National Park CONTRIBUTING EDITORS 8 Cally Carswell Dark parks The national park system does more than celebrate beauty. It also Sarah Gilman commemorates the ugliest parts of our past. Michelle Nijhuis CORRESPONDENTS 11 Where you go — and where you don’t The National Park Service’s known, Ben Goldfarb and lesser-known, sites Krista Langlois Sarah Tory 18 SPECIAL SECTION: TRAVEL MARKETPLACE Joshua Zaffos EDITORIAL FELLOW 19 NPS unveiled Paige Blankenbuehler INTERNS 36 WRITERS ON THE RANGE Lyndsey Gilpin Bryce Gray Whiteness reigns in a new film celebrating national parks By Glenn Nelson ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER 37 BOOKS Alexis Halbert DEVELOPMENT MANAGER A Thinking Person’s Guide to America’s National Parks by Robert Manning, Alyssa Pinkerton DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT Rolf Diamant, Nora Mitchell and David Harmon, and The Wonder of It All, Christine List edited by the Yosemite Conservancy. Reviewed by Brad Tyer. SUBSCRIPTIONS MARKETER JoAnn Kalenak WEB DEVELOPER Eric Strebel 39 ESSAY DATABASE/IT ADMINISTRATOR By Ana Maria Spagna Alan Wells Unpeopled places COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Gretchen King FINANCE MANAGER DEPARTMENTS Beckie Avera ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE 12 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends Jan Ho man CIRCULATION MANAGER 34 MARKETPLACE Tammy York By Betsy Marston CIRCULATION SYSTEMS ADMIN. 40 HEARD AROUND THE WEST Kathy Martinez CIRCULATION Doris Teel, Kati Johnson, ONLINE ONLY AT HCN.ORG Stephanie Kyle ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Gonzo Utah pipeline gains ground hcne.ws/-UT-pipeline David J. Anderson ADVERTISING SALES Scalia’s death ripples through the West hcne.ws/-scalia-west REPRESENTATIVE Bob Wedemeyer SOPHIE KITTREDGE GRANTWRITER Janet Reasoner [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Complete access to subscriber-only content [email protected] HCN’s website hcn.org FOUNDER Tom Bell Digital edition hcne.ws/digi-4804 Tablet/mobile apps hcne.ws/HCNmobile-app BOARD OF DIRECTORS John Belkin, Colo. Follow us Beth Conover, Colo. @highcountrynews Jay Dean, Calif. John Echohawk, Colo. (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 times a year, by High Bob Fulkerson, Nev. Country News, 119 Grand Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, Carswell Gilman Hansman Langlois Spagna Wayne Hare, Colo. postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post ofﬁces. POSTMASTER: Laura Helmuth, Md. Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, John Heyneman, Wyo. CO 81428. All rights to Samaria Ja e, Calif. publication of articles in Nicole Lampe, Ore. this issue are reserved. See Marla Painter, N.M. hcn.org for submission Dan Stonington, Wash. High guidelines. Subscriptions to Rick Tallman, Colo. Country HCN are $37 a year, Luis Torres, N.M. $47 for institutions: Andy Wiessner, Colo. News 800-905-1155 | hcn.org Florence Williams, D.C. Thompson Tonino Tory Tyer Zaffos

2 High Country News March 7, 2016

www.hcn.org High Country News 2 Editor’s note

FEATURES The parks less traveled

14 Tracing borderlands history on the Anza Trail I’ll never forget the misty June morning I caught By Sarah Tory COVER a glimpse of a gray wolf, loping like a ghost dog through the green of Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley. 29 Oregon’s trail through time Or the March afternoon I squeezed through the claustrophobic Joint Trail in Canyonlands, How do you protect a historic artifact from the development it helped create? emerging sweaty and exhilarated into a By Sarah Gilman surreal landscape of red and white sandstone hoodoos. The West’s national parks naturally INSIDE evoke indescribable feelings of awe. But there is more than beauty involved; many of these places are designed to 4 preserve American history, and to provoke moments of reflection — A park ‘in the raw’ New Mexico’s Valles Caldera National Preserve even if those reflections are sometimes uncomfortable. Years ago, 4 Parks confidential Discoveries from readers and staff for example, I hiked to the Shrine of the Stone Lions at Bandelier National Monument, only to find that park staff had removed the 6 Listening to big empty An acoustical journey into Great Basin National Park offerings of turquoise, eagle feathers and antlers left by Native 8 Dark parks The national park system does more than celebrate beauty. It also people, who hold the place sacred. Why? Because non-Native tourists commemorates the ugliest parts of our past. had started adding their own offerings — including beef jerky and 11 Where you go — and where you don’t The National Park Service’s known, .38 caliber bullets. and lesser-known, sites Last year, a record 307 million people sought out the more than 400 units of the national park system, ranging from the world- 18 SPECIAL SECTION: TRAVEL MARKETPLACE renowned “Y” parks, Yellowstone and Yosemite, to their more obscure 19 NPS unveiled but perhaps equally intriguing alphabetical cousins, Yucca House National Monument and Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area. This 36 WRITERS ON THE RANGE year — the parks’ centennial — is likely to see even more visitors. Whiteness reigns in a new film celebrating national parks By Glenn Nelson And so this HCN special Travel Issue is devoted to the parks. 37 BOOKS But we’re not going to recommend hikes and lodges and road trips, or make suggestions about what you should pack. (Although you A Thinking Person’s Guide to America’s National Parks by Robert Manning, should know that, during National Park Week, April 16 through Rolf Diamant, Nora Mitchell and David Harmon, and The Wonder of It All, 24, you can visit any U.S. park for free.) You can find that kind of edited by the Yosemite Conservancy. Reviewed by Brad Tyer. information in many other places. Instead, we want to introduce you to some lesser-known Western 39 ESSAY gems. Contributing editor Sarah Gilman takes us to the Oregon Trail and considers the complexities involved in preserving this key By Ana Maria Spagna Unpeopled places Westward route — and the vexed question of how the story should be told, and who should tell it. On the U.S.-Mexico border, correspondent DEPARTMENTS Sarah Tory explores another historic trail, the Anza, with its uncomfortable parallels between modern and historic immigration. 12 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends Out in Nevada’s remote Great Basin National Park, Leath Tonino 34 MARKETPLACE playfully blindfolds himself to discover how the landscape might stimulate other senses. And in New Mexico, contributing editor 40 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston Cally Carswell visits Valles Caldera, which failed under semi-private management but is now reinventing itself as one of the park system’s newest units. Our writers also visit what we call “dark parks,” places ONLINE ONLY AT HCN.ORG that memorialize some of the West’s most painful historical chapters. Gonzo Utah pipeline gains ground hcne.ws/-UT-pipeline We’ll also meet a few of the men and women (and even sled dogs) who keep things running behind the scenes. hcne.ws/-scalia-west Scalia’s death ripples through the West We hope you enjoy the journey, and that it inspires you to seek out the hidden riches of this truly unique invention: our national parks. —Jodi Peterson, senior editor

Contributors Cally Carswell is a High Country News Krista Langlois is a freelance journalist and Brad Tyer is a former editor of the Missoula, contributing editor who lives in Santa Fe, New correspondent with High Country News. She Montana, Independent, and the author of Mexico, and is currently working on a ﬁlm project writes from a tiny round cabin outside Durango, Opportunity, Montana: Big Copper, Bad Water, and about dog-powered sports. Colorado. the Burial of an American Landscape (Beacon Press). In the early 2000s, Sarah Gilman unwittingly Glenn Nelson is the founder of The Trail Leath Tonino’s writing appears in Outside, Men’s traveled parts of the Oregon Trail on her way to Posse (trailposse.com), which documents and Journal, Orion, The Sun and other magazines. He and from college in southeastern Washington. encourages diversity and inclusion in the edits poetry for the Afghan Women’s Writing

She is a High Country News contributing editor in outdoors. He tweets @trailposse. Project. Cover Portland, Oregon. Ana Maria Spagna lives and writes in Stehekin, Sarah Tory is a freelance journalist and A tunnel through Heather Hansman is a Seattle-based freelance Washington. Her most recent book is Potluck: correspondent for High Country News. an arundo thicket writer. She’s a former editor at both Powder Community on the Edge of Wilderness. on the Juan Bautista Joshua Zaffos is an HCN correspondent based and Skiing magazines and a contributor to de Anza National Jonathan Thompson is a High Country News in Fort Collins, Colorado. His work has also Smithsonian’s “Innovations” department. Historic Trail on the senior editor, and writes from Durango, Colorado. appeared in Audubon, Yale Environment 360, outskirts of Nogales, Wired and other publications. Arizona. JORDAN GLENN

www.hcn.org High Country News 3 Parks confidential

In keeping with our A park ‘in the raw’ theme of The Parks You Don’t Know, we New Mexico’s Valles Caldera National Preserve recently entered the park system, ending an asked readers and experiment in funding and managing federal lands outside the traditional agencies staff about some of the little-known discov- BY CALLY CARSWELL eries they’ve made within the national om Ribe leans into the steering wheel of of the Valle Grande, but not the treasures pricing everyday New Mexicans out of park system. Here is a T his green pickup, its dashboard a mosa- beyond it. Access to the view alone wasn’t this public treasure,” says Joel Gay of the sampling. ic of souvenir pins from public lands. Just much, but it was enough to make New New Mexico Wildlife Federation, a sports- past the Valles Caldera National Preserve Mexicans feel they had a stake in the men’s group that supported National sign, in New Mexico’s Jemez Mountains, place. Park Service management. he brakes. The pine forests sandwiching In the late 1990s, recognizing public Despite the Trust’s experimental Highway 4 have dropped away, replaced to support for a purchase, New Mexico’s se- charter, says Benson, people’s expecta- the north by the Valle Grande, a stunning- nior senator, Republican Pete Domenici, tions remained rooted in the egalitarian ly expansive, treeless valley surrounded by overcame his opposition to more feder- values that helped create public lands. gentle, forested domes. ally owned land and struck a deal with “There was early on a general concern The valley was created after the vol- President Bill Clinton. Instead of being that the Valles Caldera might become a cano, whose magma still boils a few miles run by the Forest Service or National playground for the few,” she says, which underground, erupted and its crater Park Service, the Valles Caldera would be was evident in the debate around the collapsed inward from the rim. Cold air managed by a presidentially appointed lucrative hunting program. drains into the valley, forming an inverse citizens’ board. This “Trust” would contin- In response to public concerns, in treeline. The view — a sea of white in ue to lease land for grazing, but also man- 2013 the Trust implemented a more winter, a verdant grassland in summer age the preserve for ecological health, rec- equitable one hunter-one ticket lottery — is singular in New Mexico. reation, timber, hunting and fishing. And system. That impacted revenues, but the But this January morning, Ribe fo- it had 15 years to make the whole thing Trust viewed financial self-sufficiency as cuses on something more pedestrian: the financially self-sufficient. Domenici’s sup- just one goal, not the primary one. Even- newest panel on the preserve’s timber- port was key to securing money from the tually, it even reinterpreted its mandate: frame sign, a brown National Park Ser- Land and Water Conservation Fund. In It would aim only to recover the costs of vice arrowhead. “I love seeing that Park 2000, enjoying a rare budget surplus, the programs like grazing and recreation, Service logo,” he remarks, turning right U.S. government purchased the property rather than to make the entire preserve into the big valley. for $97 million. self-sufficient. That, Benson says, high- CHUCK HANEY The preserve was added to the “Even in Congress, people believed lights a key lesson of the experiment: national park system last fall, ending the nation could afford to buy itself a “Making money isn’t what public lands Cycling-to-the-Sun a 14-year experiment in semi-private wonderful gift,” says author, conserva- do best.” public-land management, and prompting tionist and former chair of the Trust, Most of its 2 million stakeholders to consider the lessons William deBuys. s we skirt one of the Valle Grande’s annual visitors become acquainted learned, both practical and philosophi- But the Trust had trouble living up A volcanic domes, busting through with Glacier National cal. For many locals, these 89,000 acres to its many — sometimes conflicting — wind-swept snow sculpted like desert Park by driving Going- remained mysterious and forbidden even goals. Though it wasn’t a typical public sandstone, I ask Ribe and Schoustra: Why to-the-Sun Road, the after the federal government purchased agency, it still had to comply with federal the Park Service? New Mexico has few cliff-hugging main them. Now, with the Park Service in administrative and environmental regu- public lands that aren’t managed for mul- thoroughfare. But charge, the public is assured open access lations. Compliance was labor-intensive tiple use, Ribe responds. Forest Service what many don’t to the valleys, streams and hot springs and frequently “bewildering” for trustees, oversight, he says, would have come with know is that in the hidden behind the domes ringing the recalls deBuys. the possibility of logging, off-road vehicles spring, the road is Valle Grande. On top of that, while other public and a lot more cows — looser protections, only open to cyclists, pedestrians and To Ribe and his wife, Monique lands are included in a federal insur- in other words, heightening the risk of other non-motorized Schoustra, longtime advocates for Park ance pool, the Trust had to buy its own the place getting “trashed.” trafﬁc. Cyclists can Service management, this seems a small coverage. It was costly and put the Trust “I thought it would be really great to inch their way around miracle — especially since it required an perpetually “one lawsuit away from hav- have a place that was not an archaeologi- hairpin turns toward act of Congress. Ribe, who often writes ing to close their doors,” says University cal site in the Park Service, where you Logan Pass, before op-eds for this magazine, has strong opin- of New Mexico professor Melinda Harm could have a large piece of land and say, running into snow ions about public lands, but a calm and Benson, who studies public lands. ‘Here’s an alternative way of relating to yet to be cleared. The quiet demeanor. “I have this pessimism To help cover costs, the preserve this place,’ ” says Ribe. He and others refreshingly intimate in me sometimes,” he confesses. “I really charged high fees. Grazing fees were wanted it protected not for its practical and uncrowded didn’t think it was going to happen.” around 10 times what they are on other utility, but for its wildlife and its aesthet- glimpse of the park’s main corridor is harder In the parking lot, Ribe and Schoustra federal lands. Hikers, bikers and skiers, ic, even spiritual, qualities. to replicate in the car- run into two friends. They yuck it up about who were restricted to a few trails, were The Park Service is still developing choked months from being able to get in for “free” with their na- charged $10 per person, per day, per its management plan, a process likely to July to October. Just tional parks passes and take off in any di- activity, when most national park units take a few years, so the scope of changes be sure to test your rection — which we soon do on snowshoes, charged $10 to $20 per vehicle for seven remains uncertain. For instance, it’s brakes before the ride into a cold wind that bites at our temples days and most national forests and BLM unclear how much of the preserve will be back down. and skims powder from crusty snow. The lands could be visited for free. Elk-hunt- opened to overnight camping, which was —Bryce Gray, slender grasses poking through it shiver. ing tags often went to hunters who could previously restricted to one unimproved HCN intern afford up to 20 lottery tickets to increase campground. he Valles Caldera became a private their odds in the draws. Daytime access has already increased T ranch in 1876. From Highway 4, pass- The public balked, and the Trust still substantially, though, and fees are ersby could admire the miles-wide sweep lacked financial self-sufficiency. “It was consistent with other Park Service units.

4 High Country News March 7, 2016 Parks eventually kept out of riparian areas, confidential and removed altogether during severe drought. Lively Rain Remarkably, no lawsuits followed. In About ﬁve years fact, the Trust, which supported a robust ago, I visited Death research and monitoring program run Valley National Park by ecologist Bob Parmenter, was never in February with a sued. That’s a testament, Benson says, to friend. Threatening dark clouds meant the success of transparent, science-based that we had popular decision making, which is widely viewed Mosaic Canyon mostly as the Trust’s most important legacy. to ourselves, especially It’s an approach Silva-Bañuelos plans to after a cold shower continue. began. As the rain

s morning wanes, a storm approach- A es, whitewashing the sky. There are few sounds aside from the wind and our steps, and no one else in sight, until we crest a subtle rise and spot a lone skier. Silva-Bañuelos told me earlier that he thinks of the Valles Caldera as “a JEAN DAY national park in the raw.” There are no paved roads, and little has been done to continued, we drove to the historic ranch buildings for decades. Badwater Basin, where The visitor’s center is a doublewide with the usual low, salty a woodstove. “It’s both a warning to the pools had spread into public,” he said — you won’t find much a shallow ephemeral Elk forage in Valles Caldera National Preserve, where between 2,500 and 3,000 elk live, above. lake, reﬂecting distant infrastructure here — and “an oppor- Visitors cross-country ski around Cerro La Jara, a forested lava dome within the caldera of Telescope Peak. Along Valles Caldera National Preserve, below. LARRY LAMSA/CC FLICKR; NPS/ BRITTNEY VAN DER WERFF tunity to see this national park at its Artists’ Drive, we hiked origin.” into a canyon; the I ask Ribe and Schoustra if they soaked soils, slippery worry that the new status might bring underfoot, revealed too many visitors. They don’t. In nearby colors even more vivid Bandelier National Monument, they than usual, shades of point out, the expansive backcountry is red, green, yellow and underused. It probably won’t be much purple. Rain brought different here. out the best in the park, even as it kept Silva-Bañuelos agrees, saying most other tourists mostly visitation will be concentrated in the indoors. Valle Grande, near the main entrance. —Jodi Peterson, HCN That’s where the agency will likely senior editor develop interpretive sites covering forest ecology, climate change, volcanic geology, Desert winter and the history of Native peoples in the It’s cold in January as region. But Silva-Bañuelos also hopes to 2016 gets underway, develop additional trails for mountain and we’re hiking bikers, hikers and horseback riders. His bundled up on snowy staff will complete a feasibility study trails in Arches for an 80-mile trail circling the caldera’s National Park. As we explore the twisted rim, the longtime dream of local trails red rock, losing and advocate Dorothy Hoard, who died before ﬁnding our way as we New Mexico Sens. Martin Heinrich and cross ice-hard streams, Tom Udall convinced Congress to trans- we see boot tracks, fer the preserve. but not a soul. It’s just To celebrate the transfer, Ribe and us, surrounded by the Schoustra went skiing just after the New park’s bizarre beauty. Year. The snow was fresh, the weather It feels magical. So mild, the preserve peaceful. They stopped try visiting a park like in the visitors’ center, and another skier Arches, which gets little snowfall, in the dead Visitors can get in with a national parks from the Trust’s original charter, Silva- came in. “His cheeks were all flushed, he of winter. Enjoy the pass or a $20 weekly vehicle fee, and a Bañuelos says, but stocking rates had ran over and said, ‘That was exquisite!’ ” quiet punctuated only new backcountry vehicle permit allows already been reduced from historic levels. Schoustra says, flipping her poles in the by the squawks of a anyone to drive into the more remote When the Trust took over, researchers air. “We just looked at each other and raven, and avoid a long northern valleys. “(It’s) created a release used a model to determine appropriate said, ‘That’s why.’ ” queue of generally valve for that pent-up desire to explore,” cattle numbers to leave enough plant impatient people, all says Jorge Silva-Bañuelos, the preserve’s cover for elk, birds and erosion control. IF YOU GO waiting under a hot sun to pay their way new superintendent. They found there was typically enough to Valles Caldera National Preserve Grazing will continue to some extent, support 750 cows for four months annu- into the park. Jemez Springs, New Mexico —Betsy Marston, HCN but only for research or historical inter- ally; the private owners had run as many 575-829-4100 Writers on the Range pretation. This is a significant change as 9,000 head for six months. Cattle were nps.gov/vall editor

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 Listening to big empty An acoustical journey into Great Basin National Park

BY LEATH TONINO

wake at dawn, and before my eyes Then I quickly corrected myself, I even open, I’m drenched by the creek. cinching the blindfold tighter: Hear. Not the water but the song, the liquid harmony braiding and unbraiding 10 feet hat nature is more than scenes and beyond the tent’s thin wall. No need for T scenery, more than a movie to watch the blindfold yet, I tell myself. Just stay or some image to capture and upload, is warm in the sleeping bag, listening to hardly a new thought. George Catlin, the this music. frontier painter who in 1882 proposed Coffee calls to me, though, and soon “a nation’s park,” included in his vision Mormon tea is I’m at the picnic table, firing up the stove, (excuse that sneaky ocular metaphor) a hearing the hiss of propane, the grinding prairie refuge characterized by “desolate whispery, delicate. flick of a lighter. For a while there’s just fields of silence.” John Muir could sup- Mountain my boots stomping heat into numb toes, posedly identify every tree species in the the occasional dark-eyed junco clicking Sierra Nevada simply by listening to its mahogany is in the snowy underbrush. Then it’s the “wind-music.” coarse, gruff. percolator’s oh-so-sweet gurgle and a first Natural sounds don’t just provide sip that pricks up my ears. listeners with a sense of place — they are Prickly pears Getting here, to this day of uninter- the place, no less so than dirt and grizzly have little to say, rupted focus, was a chore — six hours of bears. Wilderness fragmented by human tires whumping over old pavement, six din is not wild, and even keeps ecosys- though they do hours of pop-country radio and ranting tems from functioning as they should. nip at the ear talk-show hosts. Great Basin National Frogs need quiet to discuss potential Park is located south of Route 50 in dangers. Birds need to court. Quite when I lean in too Nevada, the nation’s so-called “Loneli- simply, land conservation, to deserve the close. est Road.” Since 1934, the park has name, must include the conservation of welcomed a total of 3.5 million visitors, soundscapes. which is about how many people flooded The National Park Service picked up Zion National Park’s sandstone can- on this in 1972, when the Noise Control yons in 2015. Where better than the Big Act was passed. The law requires the Empty to practice walking the land with federal government to regulate, among ears in your feet? other things, commercial helicopter and Actually, the plan isn’t to walk, that airplane tours over national parks. But it proving tricky once you’re blindfolded, wasn’t until 2000, with the creation of a but to sit. To explore the uncharted natural sounds division, that the agency micro-topography of snaps, grumbles, got serious about “protecting, maintain- chirrs, buzzes and burbles. To stage a ing, and restoring acoustical environ- quiet revolt against the tyranny of eye- ments.” Tasks range from baseline audio sight, the dominant and mostly unques- sampling at front- and backcountry tioned belief in our culture that nature is sites to tracking threats such as grow- a visual spectacle, nothing more. ing crowds and industrial development Years ago in Grand Teton National beyond park boundaries. But public out- Park, on what had to be the most reach, educating and inspiring the masses postcard-perfect autumn weekend of all — that’s arguably most important of all. eternity, I tied a bandanna across my Intrusive anthropogenic noise, while eyes — blacked out the vistas, deposed a serious issue, is only half the problem. the tyrant. My friends were incredulous: The other half is under-hearing — disre- Why conduct your little sensory depriva- gard. A failure on the part of hikers and ancient stratigraphy crumbling grain by tion experiment now, in the presence of picnickers and photographers to open grain, you might as well be sitting on the these crazy toothy peaks? I told them themselves to potential opportunities. tour bus, looking out the window. that it wasn’t deprivation I was after, Can we climb El Capitan’s immaculate but the opposite. Enrichment. A nuanced granite with our ears? Can we appreciate fter a strong cup of coffee and 20 min- sense of the terrain. The hidden park a Yellowstone wolf’s howl cutting across A utes of close listening — the juncos, inside the park. the face of the full moon without ever I realize without looking, have taken to At that exact moment, or so the story lifting our gaze? These questions should the piñon pines, their voices mapping in goes in my memory, a bull elk bugled be asked and answered by experts and my mind the precise location of perches nearby, sending harmonic overtones regular park-goers alike. They should be — an annoying rumble rises in my gut. WEB EXTRA Listen rushing through the forest. Countless engaged with playfully, in the field. Nope, not hunger. The other morning to sounds from your aspen leaves rattled on their stems. The As pioneering soundscape ecologist rumble, the one that comes 12 hours after national parks and get bones in my body whistled like so many Bernie Krause puts it, writing of the a dinner of baked beans and hotdogs, like some tips on how to en- flutes. For an instant that felt more like Grand Canyon: “The pictures of the park a rockfall in the echoey alpine cirque of hance your soundscape an hour, nobody made a peep. really do only convey a fraction of the my belly. experience at hcn.org. See, I said. experience.” If you’re not hearing the Strolling to the bathroom, I work

6 High Country News March 7, 2016 Parks A double exposure of a bristlecone pine in children. By night, it bellowed like a confidential Great Basin National Park, Nevada, and its tortured monster. And it never stopped. It bark. Can you imagine the wind blowing Surprising places was always speaking, even when it wasn’t. through the branches, or the creaking of the I’ve bumped along the slowly growing bark? DAVID MUENCH Hiking along, I ruminate. Maybe it’s not so much what we hear as that we try terrible road to Chaco Canyon, hoping there to hear, that every once in a while we was something worth or close to nothing. The approaching approach a landscape delicately, on tip- seeing at the end. storm’s invisible edge. My breath within toes, alert to possibilities. Maybe it’s this Imagine my surprise the heave and sigh of some larger el- effort and intention that drops a pin flag at the wonders of emental breath. It’s hard to describe the into our life. Maybe park rangers should this ancient city. I’ve way our world knits itself into wholeness hand out complimentary blindfolds as a floated the Kenai one whir and rustle at a time without way of encouraging toddlers and grand- Fjords, surprised as getting all cheesy and metaphysical. But parents and everybody between to take huge sea glaciers it’s true, very real. it easy, quit the chitchat. Maybe once our calved before my eyes and a whale breached A Clark’s nutcracker cuts by with a ears are tuned, once the practice has be- the ocean surface time whoosh of wings, arresting me mid-step. come ingrained, we can do away with the and time again. And The sky almost audibly re-gathers itself blindfolds and enjoy a synesthetic won- I’ve hiked to Delicate in the bird’s wake. Then the moment’s derland, our senses working in concert to Arch, surprised I could gone, dissolved, which is a good thing, as perceive an infinitely layered world. still enjoy the view it’d be dangerous to delay any longer my Maybe. But not today. when it was too hot rendezvous with the “comfort station.” After a few slow miles, a soughing to breathe, or hike. Misnomer? You bet your frigid fanny. draws me over to a particular piñon pine. The greatest surprise And you can throw in the icy seat as I lie down in a crunchy patch of exposed as I travel the West? well! Never fear, I’m a pretty tough guy, duff on the leeward side of the trunk, That we have had the wisdom to set and moreover, I’m beginning to get lost boughs just inches above my forehead. aside these lands to in aural reveries. I experiment with the Out comes a thick cotton bandanna, soft continually surprise concrete walls and the ping-ponging res- on the bridge of my nose. I cinch it tight. generations to come. onance, humming for a few minutes, Stories unfold beneath the pine, all May it always be so. chanting some bass notes. Boy, if only I without beginning, middle or end, all —Rosann Fillmore, could get a corvid in here, I think, then without plot or character. Branches clat- reader we’d really be jamming. ter against branches. A million needles Back outside, the mountain slope sift fast-moving air. I want to rip the above the campground is beginning to bandanna away, find the source of a moan, a lenticular cloud forming around specific sound, but the fun is hanging in Wheeler Peak’s summit. Channeling there, taking the ride, letting the tension John Muir, I hike into the piñon-juniper build. Sometimes the wind is almost too woodlands — pausing, crouching, trying intense, as if an 18-wheeler is about to to distinguish between the thrum of smash me into oblivion. I brace for im- sagebrush and the thrum of cliffrose. pact, tensing every muscle, only to relax Personalities emerge. Mormon tea is seconds later into an unexpected lull. whispery, delicate. Mountain mahogany Bernie Krause again: “When the is coarse, gruff. Prickly pears have little sound of wind is hushed and subtle, it to say, though they do nip at the ear sometimes reminds me of the breath of when I lean in too close. I’m reminded of living organisms; it becomes the cross- other natural history pursuits — sorting over between animals and an alive- seashells, identifying lichens with a hand sounding earth.” lens — and how the ecological communi- This is my last thought before think- ty starts to resemble just that: A commu- ing stops altogether, before I disappear. nity, a neighborhood of individuals. Where do I go? Far, that’s all I can say. Ruins in Chaco Canyon The nondescript forest is suddenly I travel far, return, emerge from a state KATHERINE DARROW described. A snag and a living tree speak of consciousness that resembles dream- the same language but different dialects. ing yet involves no sleep. Pulling off the More wild, Even the growing wind comes across as a blindfold, I try to stand but only manage less people gang of many. to stumble. I can barely see, barely walk, North Cascades is one on parsing the various sounds within a barely pick up the journal that falls from of the greatest Western national parks. And yet single footstep: First the crush of loose s far as I can tell, the sounds we my pocket — and when I do, there are no it’s often overlooked. surface snow, then the creak as the sole A absorb — a mountain lion’s scream, notes to write. Words fail. There is only Why? Probably because flexes and compacts the base, and last a glacier’s groan — become landmarks the day’s eloquence pressing against me it is mainly wilderness the tinkle of crystals thrown ahead by in our personal sonic geography. Capitol from all sides. and backcountry. Yet it the push-off. It’s November, a squall Reef National Park is for me the back- I’m out of it. By which I mean in it. reminds me of Glacier forecasted to arrive this morning, and the and-forth of raven calls inside slickrock Way deep. National Park, only campground is vacant — not that I would alcoves. Rocky Mountain National Park And then I’m in my jacket’s hood, with more glaciers, expect anything less. On my first trip is an electric crackle and the slam of the storm’s first snowflakes scratching mountain goats and a here, I climbed 13,064-foot Wheeler Peak, thunder against an exposed ridgeline. Of perfect tiny poems — haiku — against lot fewer people. Yes, the park’s centerpiece, and had the entire a solo backpacking trip on the beaches of the nylon. there are grizzlies, but far too few of them summit to myself, along with a sizeable the Olympic Peninsula, the only color I to be a concern while chunk of the Basin and Range. And the remember is gray — foggy gray, relentless IF YOU GO hiking. whining of my nervous system, the pulse gray. But the push and pull of waves, that Great Basin National Park —Robert Wattez, reader of blood in my temples. was strange, unforgettable. By day, the Baker, Nevada Today, I’m hoping to hear nothing, ocean laughed like a schoolyard of happy 775-234-7331, nps.gov/grba

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 DA RK PA RKS

Why are we drawn to monuments that In 1942, Shigeho Kitamoto and her four commemorate evil, darkness and death? What children, left, were among more than 200 compels us to remember things we would rather Bainbridge Island forget? Every year, thousands of visitors journey residents of Japanese descent forced from to Nazi concentration camps. Here in the U.S., their homes and into internment camps. President John F. Kennedy’s birthplace is a national Corp. George Bushy, historic site, but the museum on the sixth floor member of the military guard, assists of the Dallas book depository, from which JFK’s with her young son. assassin fired the deadly bullet, is arguably more Below, a terra cotta frieze and origami popular. birds are part of the Bainbridge Island Perhaps we seek out these places to remind Japanese American Exclusion Memorial. ourselves of the depths to which we can sink, and AP PHOTO, LEFT. to give us the will to resist those darker impulses. PAUL GORDON, BELOW. Maybe it’s a kind of collective therapy: By facing our demons, we can begin to purge them. Bainbridge Island A handful of “dark” sites are scattered across Japanese American the West, and the National Park Service is adding Exclusion Memorial more to its roster of historic places. The park hen the Bainbridge Island Japa- Wnese American Exclusion Memorial system now includes not just Mesa Verde National was little more than a clearing in a forest Park, but also the Japanese American interment on Puget Sound, among its first visitors was a cacophonous murder of crows. On camps and Sand Creek Massacre site; not just March 30, 2002, about 750 people came monuments to vanished civilizations, but also to mark the 60th anniversary of the first forced removal of Japanese Americans reminders of bloody savagery. The Manhattan from the West Coast after the attack on Project sites in Hanford and Los Alamos somehow Pearl Harbor. By shining a light on this dark piece of American history, the me- manage to be shrines to both human ingenuity and morial was meant to discourage racially barbarity. fueled hysteria. Bainbridge Islanders of Japanese “Our job is to help tell the full story of America descent were taken primarily to the — the giant jigsaw puzzle that is the United States Minidoka camp in Idaho, now a National Park Service unit that includes the Bain- and the American experience,” says John Sprinkle, bridge memorial. That day in 2002, their acting chief historian for the National Park Service. names would be read aloud as part of the dedication of a small granite marker. Moriwaki recounted this tale on That story is unavoidably complex. “You can’t just The crows arrived swiftly and nois- a chilly evening last December as we have happy history.” ily when Clarence Moriwaki, one of the waited for a vigil to begin at the memo- memorial’s organizers, spoke the first rial. I am Japanese American but have no The sinister chapters of our past, Sprinkle adds, names. The cawing was so uproarious direct connection with the prison camps; offer lessons in survival, and maybe that’s part of what that some people no longer could hear my mother was in Japan during the war. Moriwaki, despite the sound system. Yet I still feel strongly attached to that motivates us to engage with them. “Folks in the past Moriwaki worried about the moment of history, such a central part of my racial had it tough and faced adversity and came through silence scheduled to follow. heritage, and have visited the memorial But as soon as he uttered the last several times. and survived.” In darkness, there can be hope. name, the crows, which the region’s Na- The place holds a jarring grace, its Here, we visit three “dark parks.” tive peoples consider the spirits of their beauty and serenity seeming incongruous ancestors, flew off. A hush reclaimed the with the history of hatred it records. The JONATHAN THOMPSON forest. “It was as if a switch went off,” centerpiece is a 276-foot story wall, one Moriwaki recalled. foot for each Japanese American exiled

8 High Country News March 7, 2016 Parks confidential The national park system does more than celebrate beauty. It also commemorates the ugliest parts of our past. JOHN KRZESINSKI, CC VIA FLICKR Yosemite Falls “moonbow”

Nixon, moose and e prairie in moonbeams southeastern There are lots of great, Colorado where at unexpected things least 150 Cheyenne in national parks. and Arapaho Indians Death Valley: Getting died in the Sand out to the Racetrack, Creek Massacre in and a few years later, 1864. seeing the “mystery” NATIONAL PARK SERVICE of the stones solved. Redwoods: A burl that looked just from Bainbridge Island. It is made of old- Custer’s troops by the Sioux and Chey- Sand Creek Massacre like Richard Nixon. growth red cedar, and bordered by wet- National Historic Site enne, but it didn’t end until 1890, when Grand Teton: A bull lands and cherry trees. The names of the every Plains tribe had been ushered onto moose swimming the exiled are affixed to the wall. It doesn’t stood on a bluff in southeastern Colo- a reservation. Snake, surrounded by scream the intended message: “Nidoto Irado, overlooking the lonesome prairie, While the massacre never entirely pelicans. Yosemite: Nai Yoni” — let it not happen again. Not 180 miles southeast of Denver. Bare cot- faded from memory, it was rarely men- Learning about the the way a bit of razor wire might. tonwoods lined the dry bed of Big Sandy tioned in history books and only whis- “moonbow” at the I confessed my misgivings to Moriwa- Creek. Otherwise, there was nothing pered about by tribes. Little Bighorn base of Yosemite ki, who reacted with unexpected delight. but grass, earth, rocks and sky. The only became a national park; Sand Creek Falls during April and There already was too much ugliness sounds that November day were the wind became private ranchlands. Otto Braided May full moons, and getting photos of it. and pain associated with the forced and the singing of LaForce “Lee” Lonely Hair, a Northern Cheyenne, says he never —Steve Snyder, reader removals, he said. The organizers sought Bear, a Northern Cheyenne spiritual learned about Sand Creek in school. a site for healing, honor and hope as well adviser. Braided Hair, Lone Bear and the oth- Awesome Arches as history. The Japanese “less-is-more” This was the site of the notorious ers who brought me to the site in 2005 One of my favorite aesthetic was a testimony to the exiled, Sand Creek Massacre. At dawn on Nov. had been working to change that, partly hikes is the one to Del- who had been burdened by shame. They 29, 1864, a 675-man Colorado militia, by establishing Sand Creek as a national icate Arch at Arches approached this part of their past accord- led by Col. John Chivington, a Method- historic site managed by the National National Park, which ing to the Buddhist notion of “Gaman” — ist minister, attacked a small, peaceful Park Service. Along with other Cheyenne often has a steady enduring the seemingly unbearable with village of Cheyenne and Arapaho camped and Arapaho tribes, they envisioned it stream of tourists patience and dignity. This place offered a along the creek. Without provocation, the becoming a place of remembrance and heading to the top. A release. militia charged and killed at least 150 healing for their own people and the na- lot of them look like Below us in the candlelit night, people Indians, mostly women and children. Ac- tion. “So the history may live on,” Lone maybe they don’t get out hiking very much. assembled at the base of the wall to cording to militiamen and survivors, sol- Bear told me. At the end of the trail, protest recent anti-Muslim rhetoric from diers chased unarmed Indians down the That November afternoon, the five you can’t see the arch Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. creek bed, raped and bayoneted women, Northern Cheyennes had journeyed there until you come around It struck a chord on Bainbridge Island: hacked off limbs and genitals. Chey- from Montana to repatriate the remains a rock wall and sud- More Japanese Americans returned there enne Chief White Antelope was scalped of an ancestor who died there. As Lone denly there is this after World War II than to any other and mutilated as he pleaded for peace. Bear’s prayer carried across the plains, huge, impossible rock place in the U.S. On Bainbridge, they The Cheyenne say that White Antelope I realized I was experiencing a doubly formation sitting on were embraced by neighbors, who looked repeated his final journey song as he lay rare moment. I was afield with Native the edge of a cliff with after their property and possessions, dying: “All my relations, remember / Only Americans during a sacred rite at a sacred a magnificent vista fought against the mass incarceration, the rocks on earth stay forever.” place, and also glimpsing a national park all around it. When people come around and in some cases even made mortgage This horrific massacre — denounced site to-be. After Lone Bear concluded his the corner and see the payments for the imprisoned. The memo- as a “cowardly and cold-blooded slaugh- song, I followed him and the others down arch, they get a look rial is as much a monument to those ter” by an 1867 U.S. Army inquiry — a bluff and through the grove of wrinkled of absolute awe on relationships as it is a warning against escalated simmering conflicts between cottonwoods. Braided Hair told me that their faces. It feels like racial hatred. As Moriwaki put it, they Plains tribes and settlers. The fighting they wanted the park to be simple, with a a pilgrimage. “demonstrated the best of what America climaxed with the 1876 Battle of the few short trails and limited services; they —Amy Brunvand, can be.” GLENN NELSON Little Bighorn and the annihilation of didn’t want visitors wandering around the reader

www.hcn.org High Country News 9 IF YOU GO lowlands and creek where the massacre the atomic bomb, the federal government nuclear-era history of the communities, Sand Creek actually occurred. That, the tribes believe, settled on Hanford. It seemed ideal –– the engineering feats that were accom- Massacre National is consecrated land. essentially empty, an immense, remote plished, and the complicated consequenc- Historic Site In 2000, the project received congres- expanse of channeled scablands inside a es of fission, for better and worse. Eads, Colorado sional authorization and the Park Service curve of the clear, cold Columbia River. I went to Hanford to reconcile the 719-438-5916 began acquiring privately owned ranch- Hanford displaced three farming two narratives I associated with the nps.gov/sand lands encompassing the site. The Sand towns, whose ruins still stand, inter- atomic age — innovation and annihila- Minidoka National Creek Massacre National Historic Site spersed with the remains of the infra- tion. Nancy Bowers, a docent for the B Historic Site was officially designated in April 2007, structure needed for the world’s first Reactor, said they’ve avoided talking Bainbridge Island, two years after my visit. Since then, a full-scale nuclear reactors. The construc- about the bomb’s impacts until now. Most Washington; modest number of tourists have trickled tion camp became the state’s fourth- of the visitors come for the pre-WWII between Twin Falls through. And every year in November, biggest city; its 51,000 workers devoured history. Now, with the park’s new focus and Jerome, Idaho the Cheyenne and Arapaho organize a 7,200 pies at Christmas. At its height, on nuclear history, that’s likely to change, 208-933-4100 nps.gov/miin healing run from Sand Creek to Denver, the 640-square-mile site was home to 544 and Bowers is uncertain what she’ll say. to help commemorate the massacre, the buildings. On the wall inside the B Reactor, Manhattan Project tribes and their way of life. The B Reactor, the first to be opera- there’s a framed copy of the front page National Historic “Part of the reason for establishing tional, and the only one you can visit, is of the Richland Villager newspaper from Park Hanford, Sand Creek as a national historic site,” a blocky concrete layer cake of a build- Aug. 6, 1945, the day the U.S. bombed Washington; Los Superintendent Alexa Roberts told me, ing. Inside, a cavernous room holds the Hiroshima. “It’s atomic bombs,” the head- Alamos, New “is to use it as a vehicle to recognize and three-story tall reactor, its face a grid of line screamed. Most of Hanford’s workers Mexico; Oak Ridge, help prevent such incidents from ever 2,004 tubes where scientists enriched didn’t know what they had been building Tennessee occurring again.” As Lone Bear and his uranium into plutonium 239. One ton of until the news broke; no one knew that 303-969-2700 friends had hoped, the exhibits and ser- uranium made a hockey puck-sized piece more than 200,000 people would die from nps.gov/mapr vices today remain minimal. The primary of plutonium. the bomb’s fallout. visitors center is in the nearby town of By the late ’80s, plutonium produc- In the operating room behind the re- Eads, so that at the site, “the landscape tion had ceased, and in 1989, the U.S. actor, Bowers tells me that Enrico Fermi’s can speak for itself,” Roberts said. Department of Energy, which runs the code name was Earnest Farmer. She It’s still possible to stand on the bluff site, demolished most of the buildings and describes how the operators had to sneak above the creek bed and gaze across the cocooned the reactors. The nuclear waste the plutonium down to Los Alamos, send- empty, rolling prairie, imagining scenes cleanup continues, costing $2 billion a year. ing it a different way every time. Bow- of 19th century tribal life, and then to In 2009, former workers asked the ers says she tries to simply give people picture the terrifying chaos that erupted Department of Energy to start giving the history and let them form their own on a frozen November morning. North of tours of the B Reactor. “People can’t un- opinions. “I always talk to people about the site, there’s a speck of a town called derstand the impressiveness of this,” says ‘presentism,’ and not evaluating things Construction of Chivington, named after the colonel who Kevin Haggerty, the reactor’s facilities that happened 70 years ago by today’s the B Reactor at the Hanford Site led the attack. Now, the Sand Creek Mas- manager, noting the astonishing speed standards,” she says. “You have to put in Washington, sacre appears on maps, too. But only the with which the power of fission was yourself back in their shoes.” circa 1944, below. rocks stay forever. JOSHUA ZAFFOS discovered and exploited. “It changed the Inside the reactor, it’s easy to imagine e B Reactor was way countries interacted with each other.” the hum of excitement Fermi and his the rst reactor So last fall, the DOE and the National team felt. But driving out of the eerily built on the Manhattan Project Park Service teamed up to operate the beautiful site, past the cleanup zones Hanford Site, and National Historic Park site as part of the Manhattan Project Na- and the hulking shells of the reactors, was also the rst tional Historic Park, which includes parts the Manhattan Project’s fallout feels full-scale reactor ast the gates to the Hanford Site, of the Los Alamos National Laboratory very present. Perhaps that’s part of the in the world. Below right, a Peastern Washington’s plains seem to in New Mexico, and Oak Ridge National value of the park, and of coming to places modern-day tour sprawl forever. In 1943, seeking a site Laboratory in Tennessee, the two other like this to contemplate the past. It’s of the B Reactor. to produce plutonium for the top-secret sites where plutonium was processed into rarely clear-cut, even when looking back. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY Manhattan Project, which would yield bombs. Tour guides talk about the pre- HEATHER HANSMAN

10 High Country News March 7, 2016 Parks confidential Where you go — and where you don’t Unimpressed by predators The National Park Service’s known, and lesser-known, sites I once traveled through Yellowstone hough the West’s national parks endure, visitation to specific sites constant- Ziesler says cheap gas and a growing population also draw tourists. Rocky National Park in the T ly varies, subject to the whims of gas prices, social media and even books Mountain National Park, on Colorado’s Front Range, saw more than 4 million early spring, with and movies. visits in 2015, nearly twice as many as a decade earlier, mainly because of the my sister and her “Sites really tend to fluctuate with special events and what’s going on in park’s proximity to rapidly expanding Denver. (See graph at bottom.) daughter. My niece was 7 or 8 at the time, popular culture. That gives them a pretty good push for a year or two,” says Pa- Still, many of the park system’s more than 400 units exist under the radar and I bought her a mela Ziesler, National Park Service statistics coordinator. When a documentary of most travelers, meaning that there is still plenty of open space in parks, pre- little laminated field about John Muir came out in 2012, visitors flocked to the Muir Woods near Mill serves, monuments, historic sites, national seashores and battlefields. One such guide for the flora Valley, California. And after Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild (and the 2014 movie lesser-known treasure is Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in South- and fauna. The roads based on it) became popular, so did the Pacific Crest Trail: In 2015, 3,000 east Alaska. While Wrangell-St. Elias is the largest unit in the system —13.2 had just been cleared, people applied for a permit to complete the entire 2,650-mile path, compared million acres — it’s so remote that fewer than 100,000 people find their way to and there was a ton to 300 people in 2012. it each year. PAIGE BLANKENBUEHLER of snow still on the ground. Bison walked A SAMPLING OF TYPES OF NATIONAL PARK UNITS, AND THEIR MOST AND LEAST VISITED SITES IN 2015 past the cars with heavy breath in the cold, and, when we National Park National Seashore stopped at the side of Yellowstone, the first national park, was There’s only one national seashore in the West: Point Most visited: the road, we saw some designated by Congress in 1872, “dedi- Grand Canyon, AZ Reyes, designated in 1962. Typically, states manage kind of canine pulling cated and set apart as a public park or 5,520,736 visits Point Reyes, CA their coastal landscapes, but the Park Service took an elk carcass out of a pleasuring-ground for the benefit and en- 2,501,106 visits responsibility for Point Reyes because of its value as frozen lake. My niece joyment of the people.” In 1916, President Least visited: a wildlife sanctuary, home to more than 1,500 plant looked down at her Woodrow Wilson created the National Gates of the Arctic, AK and animal species. identification sheet Park Service to preserve natural and cul- 10,745 visits and said, in a matter- tural resources for future generations. Big Hole, MT National Battlefield of-fact way: “I think that’s a gray wolf.” It 39,549 visits The National Park Service man- was. The wolf is now National Monument ages just a single battlefield in her favorite animal. While national parks protect large areas Most visited: the West. Big Hole Battlefield in —Brian Calvert, HCN of exceptional natural beauty, national Muir Woods, CA Idaho, where U.S. soldiers and the Nez Perce managing editor monuments preserve specific assets, like 1,099,923 visits fought in 1877, became a national monu- landmarks or structures with prehistoric Least visited: ment in 1910, and was added to the or scientific interest. The first monument Aniakchak, AK parks system in 1933. Finding family was Devils Tower in Wyoming in 1906. 153 visits Most visited: In my not-quite-teen Golden Gate, CA years, I traveled with National Historic Site 14,888,537 visits National Recreation Area my father and sister Most visited: from Colorado to The Historic Sites Act Least visited: The National Park Service began of 1935 allowed the San Francisco emphasizing certain units’ outdoor Crater Lake National Maritime Park, CA Lake Chelan, WA National Park Service to recreation opportunities, officially Park in Oregon. My 4,173,014 visits 32,186 visits parents were newly designate historic sites differentiating them from parks and divorced and traveling Least visited: — locations with special monuments in 1936. These areas often with just one of them features and a strong tie Eugene O'Neill, CA focus on water-based recreation and are 3,942 visits seemed awkward. Plus, to the past. typically located near major cities. since we already lived in the country’s most alluring state, I wasn’t sure why we needed to journey so far for A SAMPLING OF THE BIGGEST CHANGES IN NPS SITE VISITATION, 1965-2015 Lake Mead Recreation Area: Low lake levels yet more mountain beauty. But at the 10 Years of drought can be blamed for visitation de- Lake Mead National Recreation Area overlook of Crater -2,540,237 visits since 1995 creases at one of the West’s most popular recre- Lake, I choked up ation areas, Lake Mead. Last year, approximately and felt a surprising 8 7 million visitors came to its shores, compared to sense of belonging. nearly 10 million a decade earlier. Maybe it was knowing that my family was Vancouver National Historic Site: still my family, even 6 Increasing the appeal if it wasn’t the same, Since 1995, visitation has more than doubled — and maybe it was the partly because of a new trail system and highway understanding that overpass that allowed visitors to walk from the for- the great outdoors is 4 Rocky Mountain National Park mer fur-trading post and Army base to the Colum- a place I’ll always be + 1,277,747 visits since 1995 bia River waterfront. able to find myself. Number of visits, in millions Number —Gretchen King, Rainbow Bridge National Monument: HCN community 2 Drought detracts engagement Vancouver National Historic Site The fate of one of the smallest park units is linked +164% visitation since 1995 Rainbow Bridge National Monument to nearby mega-attraction Lake Powell. Since most -78% visitation since 1995 trek to the remote desert landmark en route to the 0 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 popular reservoir, drought-related visitation de- clines kept many visitors from Rainbow Bridge, too. SOURCE: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE. *GRAPH USES SOME OF THE BIGGEST NUMERICAL AND PERCENT CHANGE INCREASES AND DECREASES IN THE WESTERN NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM. www.hcn.org High Country News 11 THE HCN COMMUNITY

RESEARCH FUND Thank you, Research Fund donors, for connecting Americans to our public lands

12 High Country News March 7, 2016 DEAR FRIENDS

THE NATIONAL PARKS: AN AMERICAN LEGACY Photographs by Ian Shive, introduction by On the road between W. Clark Bunting 240 pages, hardcover: $50 here and there Earth Aware Editions, 2015 We love Paonia, Colorado, the ticipants spoke, either: Brooke “When I think about large landscape conservation, I small town where High Country Warren, our associate designer, think about connectivity — of the land, yes, but also News is based, but we couldn’t gave a wonderful modern dance the air, the water, the wildlife, the migratory patterns function without our corre- performance.) A big thank-you and corridors — and how all these things know no park spondents and editors, who are to all the writers, editors and boundaries,” writes National Parks Conservation Associa- scattered all over the West. Our thinkers, near and far, who keep tion president W. Clark Bunting in The National Parks: An far-flung colleagues adventure HCN chugging along. American Legacy. This coffee-table book celebrates the Park Service’s centennial with over 300 never-before-seen through the region’s most un- Finally, a few clarifications. photos shot in vivid color by Ian Shive, accompanied by usual and beautiful places, re- In our “Sagebrush Insurgency” essays from conservation groups, including the Yellow- porting and writing the stories issue (“The Rise of the Sage- stone Park Foundation and Friends of the Smokies. Shive, you find in the magazine. A lot brush Sheriffs,” HCN, 2/2/16), winner of the 2011 Ansel Adams Award for Conservation of great people spend some time we included a photo of Richard Photography, travels from New Mexico’s White Sands at HCN, but we’re especially Mack, founder of the Consti- National Monument to Montana’s Glacier National Park, thrilled when their journeys tutional Sheriffs and Peace capturing intricate geologic and botanical details as well finally lead them back to us. Officers Association. Mack spoke as vast landscapes populated by an astonishing variety And so we’re delighted to at a pro- (not anti-) gun rally in of wildlife. His images illuminate our deep connection to the American landscape, together with its extraordinary welcome back Kate Schimel, our Washington, D.C., in 2010. In history. LYNDSEY GILPIN assistant editor, who re-joins our graph, “Common Cause,” we us at HCN headquarters after listed Siskiyou County Sheriff A view of mountains through fireweed wildflowers a long sojourn in the Pacific Jon Lopey as supporting both inside Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska. Northwest. Kate, who worked the CSPOA and the Oath Keep- © IAN SHIVE / TANDEMSTOCK.COM for us as an editorial intern and ers. Lopey says he has avoided correspondent, is now back in contact with those groups since Paonia, after a long, long, long 2014. And in our story about drive from Seattle, across the anti-fracking measures, “Colora- Julie Clark De Blasio | Los Angeles, CA In memory of Judy Carr Easton | sagebrush sea. It’s nice to have do activists set their sights on a Mark DeGregorio, Mariah Tree Farm | Glenwood Springs, CO you back home again, Kate! ballot measure to limit drilling” Masonville, CO In memory of Echo, the Grand Canyon wolf | We’ve had a lot happening (HCN, 2/22/16), Rep. Jared Polis Hugh & Ginger Denning | Vashon, WA Beaver, UT in our little town, including did support two 2014 anti-frack- Derby Canyon Natives | Peshastin, WA In memory of Fred H. Fieth | Cañon City, CO TedXPaonia, an independently ing measures, including one that James Donlin | Parker, CO In memory of Thomas Groarke | Yankee Hill, CA organized TED event in early would have created an “environ- Mike & LouAnn Drews | Carson City, NV In memory of Margaret D. Hayden | February, which included some mental bill of rights,” which were Evergreen, CO Steve & Dena Duke | Boise, ID of our favorite writers and slated for the Colorado ballot In memory of Erna R. Headrick | Hayden, ID Larry & Katie Dwyer | Reno, NV speakers. Several longtime and were widely supported by In memory of Chuck Kroger Richard S. Eckert | Woodland Park, CO HCN contributors put in an many activists. However, neither In memory of Dave Lusby John Ellerbeck | Logan, UT appearance, including award- of those initiatives had backing Amy Cilimburg | Missoula, MT Pamela Ellison & David Herz | Paonia, CO winning author Craig Childs and from the Colorado Community John L.E. Clubbe | Santa Fe, NM Mike & Monica Eng | Tucson, AZ Christie Aschwanden, lead sci- Rights Network, and it was Peter & Suzanne Coe | Pagosa Springs, CO William & Barbara Everheart | Dallas, TX ence writer for 538.com. And Re- federal district court that over- Marlene Cole | Arlington, VA Amy Ewing | Albuquerque, NM becca Clarren, a longtime writer turned a community ordinance, Victoria Collier | Grand Junction, CO and former HCN editor, stopped not New Mexico, as we indicated. Donna Fisher | Santa Ana, CA Chuck Coltharp | Aurora, CO by to peek at her old desk and We regret the confusion. John Flanagan | Eugene, OR Bruce, Judy & Erin Connery | reminisce about her time as an —Paige Blankenbuehler Bill Flower | Livermore, CA Southwest Harbor, ME intern in 1999. (Not all the par- for the staff Martin Fowler | Fort Collins, CO Ryan Couch | Seattle, WA Fred Frahm | Boise, ID Ted & Marie Crusberg | Brookline, MA John Garcia | San Anselmo, CA Sally Cuffin | Littleton, CO Josh Garrett-Davis | Los Angeles, CA Dick Cullor | Fort Collins, CO Thomas & Brenda Geers | Boulder, CO Wallace B. Curtis | Petaluma, CA Gregory Gessay | Phoenix, AZ Edward Czyscon | Woodstock, GA Gary Gianniny & Cynthia Dott | Durango, CO Kenneth Decker | Santee, CA Charles W. Goff | Gold Canyon, AZ Philip A. Dennis | Chico, CA David Goldfarb & Lisa Saiman | Laura Dennison | San Diego, CA Hastings on Hudson, NY Jeffrey Dial | Wilson, WI Mary Gutekanst | Brisbane, CA Ferd Dirckx | Broomfield, CO John Harner | Colorado Springs, CO Michelle Dong | Oakland, CA Robert Harrell | Portales, NM Ann Donoghue | Fort Collins, CO Margaret S. Hart | Lake Forest, IL Anna Doyle | Denver, CO Robert Dozono | Milwaukie, OR FRIEND Jay Duncan | Blackhawk, CO Anonymous (20) Myrl Duncan | Topeka, KS In honor of Laura Burkle | Bozeman, MT Stacia Duvall | Littleton, CO In honor Char Corkran | Portland, OR James Easter | Mobile, AL In honor of Vicki J. Givins | Santa Fe, NM Jim Easton | Glenwood Springs, CO Former HCN editor Rebecca Clarren, far le; contributor and author In honor of Ben Goldfarb | New Haven, CT Craig Childs, third from le; former contributor and science writer The Eastvedts | Longmont, CO In honor of Becky Hines | El Cerrito, CA Christie Aschwanden, h from le; HCN associate designer, Brooke Daly Edmunds | Fort Collins, CO In honor of Doc & Orla Kimzey Warren, sixth from le; and former contributor Alex Carr Johnson, third Darwin Eggli | Salt Lake City, UT from right, participated in Paonia, Colorado’s TEDx event in February. In memory of Vicki Caldwell | Montrose, CO Don L. Eicher | Boulder, CO © R. BEN LEHMAN/WWW.LEHMANIMAGES.COM In memory of Jeff Cutter www.hcn.org High Country News 13 Tracing borderlands history on the NZA TRAIL am lost before I’ve even started. that’s marked. memorate it. The border, it seems, erases It’s December and I’m in Nogales, Instead, there is a giant steel fence history. Arizona, determined to re-trace the equipped with motion sensors, and the At least that’s how Teresa Leal, a footsteps of the first Spanish coloniz- ever-vigilant eyes of the U.S. Border petite 66-year-old anthropologist with a Iing expedition across what is now the Patrol. pixie haircut and a mischievous smile, border between the United States and Anza actually began his journey sees it. She belongs to the Anza Society, Mexico. Nearly 250 years ago, in 1775, a 600 miles south of here, in the town of established to help commemorate the young Spanish commander led a group Culiacán, Mexico. But the route managed expedition’s history in both Mexico and of mostly poor villagers — men, women by the National Park Service begins on the U.S. and works as the director of the and children — together with more than this side of the border, and heads north, Pimeria Alta Museum, a stone’s throw 1,000 horses and cattle from the Mexican then west, a loosely connected corridor from the Nogales portion of the border state of Sinaloa northwards across a vast of dirt paths, protected areas and ruins wall. desert to the far reaches of the Empire that “connect history, culture, and outdoor Leal’s ancestors were Opata, once the in what was then called Alta California. recreation from Nogales, Arizona, to the most numerous people in what is now Like Yosemite or Yellowstone, or the Or- San Francisco Bay Area.” the border region of northeastern Sonora egon Trail, the expedition’s route is part But here in downtown Nogales, with and southern Arizona. Anza, she explains, of the national park system. It should its stream of honking cars and people did not actually blaze the trail that today be easy to find. But the Juan Bautista waiting to cross the wall that divides the bears his name, but rather followed in the de Anza National Historic Trail has no city, I can find no remnants of the original footsteps of the area’s indigenous people, official starting point — at least not one route, nor any modern markers that com- whose ancient paths created the first

14 High Country News March 7, 2016 their thickets of 12-foot-tall arundo. The Teresa Leal, above Tracing borderlands history on the cane is invasive, admits Anthony Sedg- le , at the wetlands wick, 38, who pulls up on his motorcycle, of Las Lagunas, a Triumph Street he painted himself. But where the Juan it’s partly what makes this place what Bautista de Anza it is. “Plus,” he says, “it’s a good barrier National Historic Trail begins on the against the warehouses.” outskirts of Nogales, Before the wetland was restored, Arizona. Top, there was a drive-in movie theater here. Nogales, Mexico, FEATURE BY SARAH TORY When that was abandoned, the space as seen across the became a de facto dump for everything border wall. Above, from cars to refrigerators to an entire one of the shrines trailer home. It took all summer to along the trail. NZA TRAIL JORDAN GLENN migration routes through the modern-day sidewalks and roaming dogs. Marimba uncover the original ecosystem; the junk “A” ILLUSTRATION BY borderlands. music drifts through the wall as if it were they removed filled up multiple 40-foot HOLLY MCCLELLAND As a person whose history spans the paper. dumpsters. border itself, Leal is bothered by the lack Sedgwick hopes that by uncover- of commemoration. There are Anza Trail ON OCT. 14, 1775, Anza’s expedition ing the wetlands he is helping uncover markers in Sonora and farther north in reached a small wetland a few miles a forgotten history as well. “Up until a Santa Cruz County, but along the border, north of the present-day border. Today, few years ago, I thought of the late 17th nothing. Long ago, she says, we stopped Las Lagunas, a privately owned nature century as when the British landed at defining this place as interesting — as preserve on the outskirts of Nogales, Plymouth Rock,” he admits. We tend land worth preserving. Why? She ges- marks the unofficial beginning of Arizo- to focus on dates like 1607, when the tures at the wall that rises just behind na’s portion of the Anza Trail. It belongs English settled at Jamestown, Virginia, the museum: Because it is the border. to John Anthony Sedgwick, who, with or 1620, when the Pilgrims arrived. But “There is something unreal about it.” his son, Anthony, runs a nonprofit called there’s another, older history — the Span- One day, Leal hopes there will be two the Santa Fe Ranch Foundation, which ish colonization of America, which began Anza Trail markers on the border, one brings local school kids to Las Lagunas a century before that. It’s rarely taught facing north and the other south. For now, for outdoor education. in our schools, because, as Sedgwick puts there are just the rust-colored bars of an It’s an unlikely wilderness, just 2.8 it, “there’s this issue with Latin American 18-foot-tall barrier, the streets of Nogales, acres, sitting next to some warehouses. studies not being ‘American’ enough.” Mexico, visible through it — colorful Interstate 19 rumbles just beyond the Sedgwick sighs. It’s the border again. houses perched on steep hillsides cracked hilltop overlooking the small ponds and At the far edge of the wetlands, he stops

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 at a clearing where migrants used to years ago, after a rough day, Ferree came camp. He’d find empty water jugs, dis- upon the checkpoint installed along I-19 carded clothing, sleeping bags, and pizza not far from the Tumacácori Mission in boxes, mostly the Little Caesars Hot-N- 2006. (That liminal place, the border, Ready kind, because they only cost $5, seems to be migrating northward.) A and people were hungry. border patrolman peered into her car The campsite stays mostly empty and asked for proof of citizenship. Ferree now. Fewer people cross near Nogales, snapped back: “You look Canadian, can where the border is now heavily patrolled I see your papers?” The officer, clearly and mostly walled off. Instead, they taken aback, waved her through without are pushed deeper and deeper into the further questioning. Anza’s expedition desert, where, every year, dozens die of would have passed within a mile of that thirst or exposure. Before 9/11, Nogales checkpoint; back then, it was deep in was a thriving border community. People Spanish territory. crossed into Mexico to shop at the mar- Ferree brings her grandchildren to ket, which was always pulsing with life. the river when they visit, because she Slowly but surely, that stream of com- wants them to feel that it is part of them, merce withered. “Now, there are these too. And she would bring her students ridiculous checkpoints,” says Sedgwick, here. Now she sees them sometimes referring to the Border Patrol station on walking on the Anza Trail with their I-19, 20 miles north of the actual bor- families. “It’s so cool to see that,” she der — an “affront to our Constitution,” says. “To hear that they’re teaching them Sedgwick calls them. about the history.” People believe that crime is ev- erywhere, he adds — that Nogales is I DECIDE TO WALK the 4.5-mile stretch dangerous. The community is struggling. of trail between the villages of Tumacá- But Sedgwick consoles himself with the cori and Tubac. At 3:30 p.m., it is still thought of Las Lagunas: an unlikely wet- brutally hot, and the trail grows increas- ORY land in the middle of a desert where kids ingly unkempt as I head north. At one can run free. point it nearly disappears into the mud of H T ARA H S a braided river channel, which I navigate JORDAN GLENN FROM LAS LAGUNAS, Anza travelled al- with the help of some logs placed to make most due north along the Santa Cruz Riv- the crossing easier. “ ere’s this er. But the modern trail-follower should Beads of sweat are running down boxy shopping malls. probably begin roughly 20 miles north of my legs, and blisters are forming on my Just a few miles from here, the issue with Nogales near the old Spanish mission of feet because I stupidly forgot to wear expedition suffered its first — and only — Tumacácori, nestled among cottonwoods socks. And though I’ve been walking for death throughout the entire eight-month Latin American and mesquite alongside the river, where only a little over an hour, I’m thirsty and journey. In his diary, Anza writes that on Anza stopped for supplies. Here, the first hungry. At this point, I remember that the first night out of Tubac, they stopped studies not section of real trail begins. the expedition was less than halfway near the Santa Cruz River, where one of I happen to arrive during the annual through its 1,200-mile trek. The thought the women “felt the first pains of child- being ‘American’ Fiesta de Tumacácori, and stop for my is somewhat depressing. birth.” A few hours later, she gave birth own supplies in the form of an ice-cold Turning back was not an option for to a baby boy. But the mother’s health enough.” horchata, served up by Lupita Ferree, a Anza and the settlers. In the late 18th faltered, and in the middle of the night, teacher with freckles sprinkled across her century, Spain’s hold on Northern Cali- “other various troubles befell her,” writes — Anthony Sedgwick, nose, who lives in the nearby town of Rio fornia was tenuous at best. Just five in- Anza, and she died. At daybreak, the rain who, with his father, John Rico. Ferree, 63, has been walking this adequately staffed missions and two pre- began and the expedition continued on, Anthony, brings school stretch of the trail since the 1970s, before sidios were all that stood between those carrying the woman’s body through a children to Las Lagunas it was designated. remote Spanish holdings and potential downpour. They buried her two days later for outdoor education When Ferree and her family first takeover by Russian or English forces. So at the San Xavier del Bac Mission, on the moved to Arizona from Sonora, she and when Anza sought to recruit the settlers outskirts of what is now Tucson. her siblings played in the river. Now, he needed from the hardscrabble towns Meanwhile, my own attempts to fol- almost all of the Santa Cruz’s flow is of New Spain, he spoke eloquently of the low Anza across the desert are starting to treated wastewater from the Nogales abundant rainfall and pleasant climate unravel. Supposedly there is an interpre- Treatment Plant and Ferree won’t let her far away in Alta California. There, he tive sign on the highway marking Anza’s grandchildren play in the water. And yet, said, a better life would be possible. campsite at La Canoa, but I never find without the wastewater, the river would I, on the other hand, cannot stop it. Instead, I drive on through the Green run dry most of the year. The riparian thinking about the half-eaten package of Valley, whose name must owe more to the ecosystem would vanish. “We sort of have Twizzlers in my rental car sitting in the abundant golf courses and large farms a conflicted relationship to it,” admits parking lot of the Tubac Presidio. I decide than to the land itself, which is mostly Marty Jakle, a retired biologist who leads to turn back. brown. a nature walk along the trail. But there I leave Tucson on a side road marked are signs of improvement, he says; the FROM TUBAC, the expedition continued by the occasional Anza Trail logo. The endangered Gila topminnow was recently north, to La Canoa, or the “Watering route grows more desolate as it merges spotted for the first time in a decade. Trough.” Today, it is a 4,800-acre conserva- with Interstate 10 and then I-8, on its Back at the festival, I ask Ferree tion area owned by Pima County, with fine way through Pinal and Maricopa Coun- about her relationship to the river. “For views of the Santa Rita Mountains. There ties. Even from the inside of my car, the immigrants, you don’t associate the land is no proper trail yet along this part of the desert feels freakishly large, made more necessarily with who you are but who route, so at dusk I get back on the Inter- freakish still by the large number of you want to become,” she says. “And the state and drive north, past a blur of gated things whose existence we’d rather not longer you’re here, the more invested you communities filled with identical stucco think about — prisons and industrial become in the place.” homes, interspersed with endless parking feed lots and massive solar plants. South Yet here, where the concept of “place” lots. Here in the desert they seem even of here, there is a bombing test zone in is muddled by the border, making that larger than usual — swaths of asphalt the the strip of desert along the border called investment can be challenging. A few size of football fields, surrounding giant the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range.

16 High Country News March 7, 2016 Lupita Ferree, le , looks out on the trash-strewn river that runs along the Juan Bautista de Anza Trail in Rio Rico, Arizona, where both the water level and its quality have declined since the 1970s, when her family came here from Sonora. Below, a cross marks the site near Las Lagunas where migrants used to camp a er crossing the border.

SARAH TORY

Later, I pass another housing develop- into endless rows of date palms. I drive to live. “Survival is at the bottom of this.” ment, this one abandoned, its hollowed around for hours here, completely disori- No matter how many walls we build, remains filling with sand. ented, until a farmworker from Mexico people will find a way to keep coming. named Ramón Rodriguez Avalos shows That is the real story of the Anza Trail, NORTH OF TUCSON, I stop briefly at Pica- me how to get back to the interstate. Leal tells me. cho State Park, a rocky cactus-studded It’s dark when I pull into Yuma, a It is her story, too. When Leal was 2 peak rising out of the desert. The expedi- vibrant little town known for its date crop, years old, her uncle, a laborer, was shot tion made its 21st camp near here. Upon on the banks of the Colorado River at the in the head in Sonora, murdered while he leaving the next day, Anza laments the California border. In the morning, I run sat drinking coffee outside his house. He “lack of water, any of which is found only on the riverside trail, through wetlands was killed by a big landowner who took by rare accident.” Nevertheless, he contin- that peter out into irrigation canals on the issue with his involvement in the land- ues, “no dissatisfaction whatever has been far side of town. The river moves lazily redistribution movement that rippled shown by the people who have made the here and looks less than 100 feet wide. through Mexico in the 1940s and ’50s. march, and this is a thing to marvel at, Crossing it, I think, wouldn’t be so hard. When Leal’s mother, who had been away especially in the women and children, and Anza’s diaries, however, describe a river buying groceries at the market returned, their patience under the hardships is an 240 feet across and more than six feet she found the bullet still smoking inside indication of the contentment with which deep in some places. None of the travelers the headboard where it lodged — in the they are accepting their lot.” knew how to swim. Twice, a man carrying same room where her daughter lay sleep- Just a few hours of driving across this a child fell into the water, but thanks to ing. “She couldn’t take it anymore, so she desert has me wondering if it ever ends. help from the Yuma Tribe, the entire ex- took me and ran to the border,” Leal says, On foot, it must have seemed impossible. pedition eventually made it across. From speaking of the violence and fear that Just past the town of Gila Bend, where there, they continued across the desert, drove her mother north. Leal has spent the expedition rejoined the Gila River to a place beyond the distant line of bald, her entire life near the border, watching, — now just a dry wash — I turn off the amber-colored peaks rising from the sand. over the years, as the wall grew taller interstate towards the Bureau of Land Anza’s colonists reached San Fran- and more forbidding, trying to figure out Management’s Painted Rock Petroglyph cisco Bay on March 28, 1776, and estab- exactly where she belongs. site. Anza camped somewhere near here. lished the Presidio of San Francisco. No “It’s a work in progress,” Hale Sar- Without the Cocomaricopa people, whose one, as far as we know, ever asked to see gent, the Anza Trail’s interpretive spe- land this was, the expedition would never their papers. cialist, told me before I started my trip. have survived. But for now, Leal can see something of At Painted Rock, there are several “THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT REPEAT herself in the trail’s piecemeal existence, shaded picnic tables but no visitors. A themselves,” Teresa Leal told me, before I and in its attempts — however feeble — caretaker lives in an RV, keeping watch left Nogales. She was talking about how, to reassemble a broken history. over a large pile of rocks etched with centuries before the Anza expedition, her In early spring, Lupita Ferree likes IF YOU GO squiggly prehistoric markings, souvenirs Opata ancestors migrated between the to walk along the trail, when the cotton- Juan Bautista de of a history written centuries before Anza high mountains and the river valleys, woods are shedding their pods, floating Anza National came through. I continue on towards their journeys timed to survive the hot to the ground like snow. She’ll sit on a Historic Trail Yuma, along a network of old dirt roads, summers and cold winters in this land log, listening to the birds and to all the Nogales, Arizona, through more empty, cactus-studded des- of extremes. They would travel from the mysterious little sounds. In those mo- to San Francisco, ert. Somewhere near a place called Agua Santa Cruz River all the way to the Gila ments, on that fragment of trail, Ferree California Caliente, where Anza spent his last night River, along the same route Anza and his feels part of everything. “All that stuff out 415-623-2344 nps.gov/juba with the Cocomaricopa, the desert morphs people later followed, looking for a place there in the world fades.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 18 High Country News March 7, 2016 NPS unveiled What makes our national parks run? Thousands of dedicated individuals in parks from Denali to Petrified Forest, some with little-known and sometimes quirky jobs you might not have considered. High Country News contributor Krista Langlois caught up with a few of them.

“I get these moments with wildlife when there’s no one else around.”

Name Rachel Cudmore Age 32 Park Yellowstone Rachel Cudmore, the winter courier at Yellowstone, makes deliveries to employees who Title Commercial film permits coordinator and winter courier overwinter in the park’s interior. BIANCA KLEIN Job description In the summer, Cudmore issues film permits for nature documentaries and yearns for the quiet winter the park all winter, Cudmore’s deliveries — and her company — months, when she sometimes finds herself alone in the park’s may be their only connection to the outside world. 2.2-million-acre interior, watching wolves lope down a moonlit Necessary skills Troubleshooting broken snowmobile parts, bak- road. Since 2009, Cudmore has been a lifeline for the 100 or so ing cookies for Christmas and Valentine’s Day employees and volunteers who overwinter in Yellowstone. Twice a week from December to March, she climbs into a truck or Job perk “So many times in Yellowstone when there’s an animal snowmobile and embarks alone on a 140-mile loop of closed-off, spotted, you’re not the only one there. I get to have these mo- snow-packed roads to deliver mail and packages from the out- ments with wildlife when there’s no one else around. It’s like side world. For rangers, caretakers and others who don’t leave watching a National Geographic documentary.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 20 High Country News March 7, 2016 NPS unveiled ...

Her favorite dog? “That’s like asking which child is your favorite.”

Name Jen Raffaeli Age 40 Park Denali Title Kennel manager Job Description When rangers need to haul trash out of or bring scientific research supplies into Denali’s 2 million acres of designated wilderness, they call Raffaeli. As manager of Jen Ra aeli with the only team of Canine Rangers (sled dogs) in the country, a husky puppy in Raffaeli’s mushing helps keep the backcountry quiet, by doing training as a canine work that would otherwise be done by snowmobiles or mo- ranger in Denali National Park. torized vehicles. She also plays a role in preserving Alaskan COURTESY history: As snow machines replace dogs in many villages, and JEN RAFFAELI smaller, faster breeds replace traditional Alaskan huskies in races like the Iditarod, Denali’s 27 sled-pulling huskies (and breaking trail in deep snow, dogs that are best for bringing into six puppies) are a living link to the state’s past. Denali’s kennel the cabin to snuggle, dogs that are best for raising puppies.” was founded in 1921 to control poaching in the newly designated park; today, Raffaeli and her team still mush some 3,000 Biggest accomplishment In her five years managing the kennel, miles a year. neither Raffaeli nor her staff have ever fallen through the ice. But with climate change bringing warmer winters and later Favorite season Winter freeze-up, Raffaeli has become extra-diligent. “It’s a constant Favorite dog “That’s like asking which child is your favorite,” wake-up call,” she says. “Just because a route has always been Raffaeli says, laughing. “There are dogs that are best for good, doesn’t mean it’s good now.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 21 22 High Country News March 7, 2016 NPS unveiled ...

Cave visitors leave behind tiny pieces of themselves — clothing fibers, skin cells, hair

Name Pat Jablonsky Age 72 Park Carlsbad Caverns Official title Lint camp coordinator (retired) Unofficial title “The nagging lint lady” Job description In 1986, a park ranger leaned over a retaining wall deep within the caverns and grabbed a handful of what Pat Jablonsky uses a paintbrush to loosen the layer of lint that collects in a cave in Carlsbad Jablonsky thought resembled the lint from a clothes dryer. Caverns National Park. COURTESY PAT JABLONSKY That’s basically what it was: For decades, visitors had left behind tiny pieces of themselves — clothing fibers, skin cells Best way to put her out of work “If everyone caved nekkid!” and hair — that coated Carlsbad’s famous formations, creating a barrier that trapped acidic cave moisture and helped cor- Other interests Paleontology. Jablonsky once helped excavate rode the formations. Over the next three decades, Jablonsky, a ground sloth from a remote cave in Carlsbad, and has a a volunteer, organized annual camps to pick the lint from the fossil, Pseudopalatus jablonskiae, named after her. Her biggest caves. Between 1988 and 2014, when she retired, Jablonsky and passion, however, remains caving: Her husband took her caving 386 other volunteers spent 8,111 hours removing 495 pounds of on their second date, and while she’d always been fascinated human detritus. Jablonsky’s work and the research it spawned by caves, “to finally get to go into one was like a disease. I was has helped cave managers in the United States, Australia and hooked.” New Zealand develop rules to minimize human impact on delicate underground environments.

www.hcn.org High Country News 23 24 High Country News March 7, 2016 NPS unveiled ...

Occasionally, she’ll rescue an old saw from a crumbling cabin inside the park

Name Tara Vessella Age 35 Park Rocky Mountain Title Backcountry coordinator Job description Rocky Mountain National Park has 250 backcountry campsites, and Vessella and her crew are in charge of maintaining all of them. Often, that means packing tools, food and gear dozens of miles into the wilderness to repair tent platforms, clean pit toilets, and fell dangerous “widowmaker” trees Tara Vessella, right, prefers an old-school crosscut saw for her work at Rocky Mountain NATIONAL PARK SERVICE to keep campers safe. Although chainsaws are allowed when National Park. deemed necessary for human safety, Vessella is part of a small Favorite tool Llamas, used to pack tools and supplies into the but passionate group that prefers to do things the old-fashioned backcountry, “because without them I don’t think a lot of the way: with a crosscut saw, often one that’s older than she is. things we do would be possible.” When she’s not slicing through beetle-killed wood, Vessella is sharpening her skills, sometimes with the help of Forest Service Unexpected downside In 2015, Rocky Mountain shattered its saw-sharpening legend Dolly Chapman. She also bargains with previous backcountry record by nearly 3,000 permits. That saw hunters — collectors and middlemen who travel the West means there’s a whole lot of people in the backcountry, and searching for vintage crosscuts –- and occasionally does some many, Vessella says, are inexperienced and lack fully developed hunting of her own, rescuing old saws from crumbling cabins “Leave No Trace” ethics. Or to put it bluntly: “We pick up a lot of inside the park. human waste.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 25 NPS unveiled ...

Parker uncovered a Revueltosaurus skeleton and found it wasn’t a dinosaur at all

Name Bill Parker Age 48 Park Petrified Forest Title Paleontologist Job description Despite its abundance of fossils, visitors to Petrified Forest often struggle to picture what the park looked like in the late Triassic Period, 200 to 250 million years ago. That’s where Parker comes in. As one of the park’s three paleontologists, he digs up, preserves and documents fossils, then turns his research into information that helps the public imagine the arid Arizona landscape as an ancient jungle, replete with giant ferns, six-foot-long amphibians and freshwater sharks. Since he began working for the park in 2001, Parker and his team have discovered two to three new species of plants and animals every year, gradually providing the creatures weren’t dinosaurs at all, but rather the ancestors Bill Parker at the a better glimpse into an environment that disappeared as the of modern crocodiles, throwing a wrench into evolutionary site of a phytosaur continent shifted northward. theories that had persisted for decades. “It was very exciting,” in Petried Forest National Park. he says. Coolest discovery The world’s first Revueltosaurus skeleton. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Previously known only by its teeth, Revueltosaurus was thought On seeing the world “It’s kind of annoying, but I don’t see scenery to be the ancestor of later dinosaurs like Stegosaurus and Tric- anymore. When I drive through Utah, I don’t remember the exit eratops. But in 2004, Parker uncovered skeletons that revealed numbers. I remember the geologic layers.”

26 High Country News March 7, 2016 “We do a lot of schlogging up and down this mountain”

Name Stefan Löfgren Age 44 Park Mount Rainier Title Mountaineering district ranger / chief climbing ranger Job qualifications EMT certification, substantial mountaineering skills, experience around helicopters, avalanche training, technical rope rescue Number of Rainier summits 105 Job description Löfgren is one of a dozen seasonal and full-time climbing rangers who staff Mount Rainier’s high camp, haul supplies up and down the mountain, and educate and register the 11,000 or so climbers who attempt to summit the 14,409- foot peak each year. But the elite climbing rangers are perhaps cold toes and dehydration as injuries. Stefan Löfgren best known for their search-and-rescue work. Although calls evacuates On climbing mountains in his off time “I’m really not motivated.” rose by 40 percent last year, Löfgren says that the increase an injured Or as one of his colleagues puts it, “We do a lot of schlogging up came largely from casual visitors, not mountaineers, who tend climber from and down this mountain for work, so if we can avoid schlogging to be better-prepared. Still, in his 25 years at the park, Löfgren Lane Peak in on our personal time, we do.” has responded to more climbing rescues than he cares to recall. Mount Rainier National Park. He’d rather not discuss the “gory” ones; he prefers to recollect What he does instead Walks across countries and continents. Löf- NATIONAL PARK the time he helped find a group of five climbers in a white-out gren has traversed the United States and Europe by foot, and SERVICE blizzard. They had been presumed dead, but survived with only attempted Nepal and New Zealand.

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www.hcn.org High Country News 27 NONPROFIT AND EDUCATIONAL TRAVEL LISTINGS These listings are brief advertisements, helping nonproﬁt and educational organizations connect with HCN readers. If your organization would like to be listed in next year’s special HCN travel issue, contact 800-311-5852 or email [email protected].

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One- or two-week residential summer www.bighorn.org educational programs, group tours available, camps and science courses for students ages 10- craft and artisan festival, free outdoor concert, CFI offers unique Colorado Plateau nature trips 18. Privately accredited semester school running Film Screening and much more. and seminars that immerse you in the landscape September through December for high school and culture of our world famous destinations: WOLF HAVEN INTERNATIONAL juniors, seniors and gap year students. Phone: 970-878-0111 Arches and Canyonlands national parks; Email: [email protected] Colorado, Green and San Juan rivers; Cedar 3111 Offut Lake Road SE Phone: 503-358-1949 www.meekersheepdog.com Mesa; Range Creek; Navajo Mountain, Rainbow Tenino, WA 98589 Email: [email protected] Bridge. Scheduled and private, custom trips for www.cascademountainschool.org adults/families, groups, schools. 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ARAH G ILMAN through time FEATURE BY SARAH GILMAN

ILLUSTRATION: S ILLUSTRATION: PHOTOS BY OTTO KITSINGER How do you protect a historic artifact from the development it helped create?

gnore the cold that stiffens your northwest of Ontario, Oregon, was a fingers this blustery November day. brutally dry 25 miles between the algae- Ignore the snow atop the distant choked Malheur River and a final crossing mountains and the seed-flecked mud of the Snake River called Farewell Bend. thatI weights your boots. Forget the Jeep I conjure creaking leather, plodding live- Cherokee you came in. None of that was stock, and sunburnt families on foot. It’s here, in eastern Oregon, in late summer not easy: The ruts look more like an eroded when they crossed. ditch grown over with sagebrush. I can “You’ve gotta pretend,” says Gail Car- faintly hear traffic on Interstate 84, out of biener, “that it’s 100 degrees.” sight beyond a hill that fails to conceal a I close my eyes. Beneath my feet are the cellphone tower. ruts of the Oregon Trail, left by thousands The visual intrusion makes 81-year-old of covered wagons that settlers used to Carbiener scowl beneath his John Deere haul belongings from Missouri to the val- ball cap, but otherwise, the white-grassed leys beyond the Cascades, back during the hills appear mostly unchanged since the 1840s, ’50s and ’60s. Even then, the route 19th century. That’s why the Carbieners wasn’t new: Fur trappers and missionaries so love this spot, called Birch Creek. Those used it, and so, for millennia, did Native early travelers “would talk about coming peoples. up to a ridge, and as far as the eye could Today, it’s the designated Oregon Na- see, they saw wagons,” Gail Carbiener con- tional Historic Trail, administered by the tinues. “And so the dust here was unbeliev- National Park Service and mostly visited able. The diaries would say that it was so by history enthusiasts like Carbiener and thick, we can’t see the oxen in front of the his wife, Muriel. This particular stretch, wagon.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 29 To complete the scene, I glance at Muriel Carbiener. She performs living history at the High Desert Museum in Bend, where the couple lives, and today, she’s in character. A bonnet covers her close-cropped hair and a floral-print dress hangs to her ankles, cinched with a slightly tattered apron. “And of course there’s a corset,” the diminutive 79-year- old laughs, to “keep the girls in. Do you want to walk 2,000 miles without any support?” The Carbieners want me to stand in pioneers’ boots, but they’ve brought me here to imagine something else: lattice towers up to 195 feet tall marching along a nearby ridgeline. Though the Park Ser- vice is charged with protecting the trail, it doesn’t actually have control over the 2,250-mile long corridor, which crosses a patchwork of federal, state and private land. This spot belongs to the Bureau of Land Management, and it’s contemplat- ing routes for the Boardman to Heming- way Transmission Line Project, or B2H Gail Carbiener discusses a photograph that is marked to show where power lines might obstruct — a 300-mile, 500-kilovolt powerline the view from Oregon Trail wagon ruts south of Birch Creek, according to one route between Boardman, Oregon, and the proposed in the 2014 dra environmental impact statement. Hemingway substation near Melba, Ida- ho. Idaho Power, the utility that proposed the project, says the B2H will enable elec- tricity sharing between the Northwest and the Intermountain wrote in 1853, men and women “had a fair test as to the stuff West, helping meet new demand as the population grows. they were made of.” According to the BLM’s 2014 draft environmental impact Their pride also hinged on the transformation of the region’s statement, the line could also cross the Oregon Trail a dozen land into thriving farms, ranches and settlements. Whether times and be visible from up to 80 percent of it within the the settlers acknowledged it or not, that land was “empty” only project area. Much of the trail corridor is already significantly because of the brutal displacement of Native people. But when altered, but about 18 percent in Oregon still has intact ruts the U.S. fell victim to widespread economic depression around and relatively pristine views. That the turn of the century, the romantic idea of the frontier gained includes significant portions of this even more traction. In the ensuing “cultural crisis,” historian “We’re a bunch of damn old stretch, which the BLM’s preferred Peter Boag writes, “efforts intensified to remember Oregon’s pio- route would parallel south of where neer generation as representative of a cheerier and more heroic folks that just like to go out and we stand and cross just to the north, phase of the local past.” walk the ruts! And then all of a causing, as the agency acknowledges, It’s not surprising, then, that many early attempts to com- “direct, long-term adverse impacts to memorate the Overland Trails were themselves development sudden, we’re realizing that they’re the visual setting.” Farther north- proposals, calling for paved roads along the wagon routes to en- west, the line could sweep across the courage growth. Between 1906 and 1928, the most famous Or- disappearing.” viewshed of other fairly pristine sec- egon Trail campaigner, an elderly, ambitiously bearded former tions of trail and the BLM’s National pioneer named Ezra Meeker, crossed the country several times, —Gail Carbiener, history enthusiast and member Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive in part to promote a memorial highway. Twice, he retraced of the Oregon-California Trails Association Center outside Baker City. the Oregon Trail by covered wagon. He also went by car with The Park Service has expressed covered-wagon carapace, by plane, and by train — his vehicles serious concerns about those impacts. And the Oregon-Cali- mirroring the transformation of the West, for better or worse. fornia Trails Association, to which the Carbieners belong, is It wasn’t until Congress designated the trails under the pushing for the line to be rerouted if not stopped altogether — 1968 National Trails System Act that preserving their remains putting the organization in the interesting position of defend- became a formal federal priority. The Oregon and Mormon ing a historic agent of development from a modern one. “We’re Pioneer trails were listed in 1978, and the California and Pony a bunch of damn old folks that just like to go out and walk the Express trails in 1992. “In many ways,” historian Will Bagley ruts! And then all of a sudden, we’re realizing that they’re dis- wrote for the Park Service in 2007, the four trails’ 11,000-mile appearing,” says Gail Carbiener. “Our concern is that we can’t web constitutes “America’s longest and narrowest national afford to lose any more. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.” park, stretching from the Missouri River to the Great Salt Lake and beyond the summits of the Sierra Nevada and the WHAT EXACTLY IS LOST when parts of the Oregon Trail succumb Cascades.” to development? The events are over, the people long dead, “What we’re trying to define is a moment in time that has and the corridor itself is less a continuous trail than a series of disappeared,” explains Aaron Mahr, superintendent of the Park car-accessible historic sites and segments. First and foremost, Service’s National Trails Intermountain Region. Preserved today’s trail is a story. And the one most often told is of ordinary ruts, a long view, an important mountain pass, a spire of rock people enduring an incredibly difficult months-long journey in repeatedly noted in old journals — all provide anchor points for search of new beginnings. The rhetoric that helped inspire the contemporary travelers to connect historic events to the places first waves of the 300,000 to 500,000 settlers who headed west where they occurred, illuminating the pioneer experience. “The along the Overland Trails often highlighted their character in landscape,” agency archaeologist Lee Kreutzer says, “is part of the face of privation and struggle, and glorified them as the van- the trail.” guard of the new nation’s aggressive expansion. The pioneers But preservation is complex. The Park Service relies on themselves later formed societies to celebrate a similar notion partnerships with the Forest Service and the BLM to protect of their experience — one in which, Benjamin Franklin Owen trail corridors and help provide interpretation, as well as with

30 High Country News March 7, 2016 Muriel, in 1852 period garb, and Gail Carbiener, who have helped erect Oregon Trail signs and markers, walk on the Oregon Trail at Birch Creek. state historical offices, tribes, and private landowners. Nonprofit with houses, windrows, and, improbably, two fighter planes “What made a volunteer organizations also provide labor and expertise. Among parked amid low prefab buildings. Gail Carbiener steers the them is the Oregon-California Trails Association, or OCTA, Jeep through the tiny community of Vale, where stoic-looking good route of which has about 1,400 members and draws half its budget from settlers and a single Indian stare from a grocery-store mural. travel in 1840 the Park Service. It was founded in 1982 after an Oregon farmer Technically, we’re back on the trail, buried under Glenn Street, plowed up a mile of ruts to plant potatoes; the trails were van- but we’re bound for a stretch of pristine ruts farther south, makes a good ishing even as preservation efforts ramped up. beyond the B2H’s reach. “Tell her about how you were in the And no wonder: “What made a good route of travel in 1840 bathroom and the Donners were there!” Carbiener calls to his route of travel makes a good route of travel in 2016,” says Kreutzer, who tracks wife. projects on federal land that might affect the trail. Aside from The Donner Party was a group of emigrants trapped by in 2016.” being swallowed by farms and settlements, stretches of the Or- snow in California’s Sierra in 1846, who may have resorted to —Lee Kreutzer, egon Trail have long since disappeared under modern highways cannibalizing their dead to survive. “When I meet descendants National Park Service like I-84. Utility corridors parallel it. Natural gas fields and of real people, I really get excited,” Muriel Carbiener elaborates. archaeologist pipelines gnaw at the sage flats surrounding it and other trails. The couple was visiting Donner Memorial State Park when Overuse can even be a problem, with thousands of Mormon Muriel emerged from a restroom stall to find two Donner rela- pilgrims hauling heavy handcarts across a Wyoming stretch of tives: The family, it turned out, was there observing the ordeal’s trail each summer. But wind farms and new powerlines like the sesquicentennial. She clasps her hands jubilantly. “It was just B2H are the biggest worry, simply because they’re tall enough like, AAAHH!” to bite into the vistas that support the vicarious emigrant Muriel Kilgo intended to major in history at UC-Berkeley, experience. but married Gail Carbiener instead. After the Carbieners’ Preserving historic trails is just one of many legal mandates children finished school, she returned to her studies, focusing on that the Forest Service and BLM must balance, and neither of emigrant women’s lives, and earned her degree in 1990. When the agencies have any say on private land, home to an estimated she dragged her skeptical husband, a retired banker, to an 1,700 miles of the Oregon Trail, explains Kreutzer. “And the Na- OCTA convention in 1994, he was hooked, too. One of his ances- tional Historic Preservation Act is just not that strong. All (the tors traveled the Mormon Pioneer Trail, and he likes to think he Park Service) can do is speak up and hope to be heard.” also would have come West; he’s always loved the mountains. “Sometimes that works straightaway, or you get some Since then, the Carbieners have collected 200 books and compromise,” says OCTA’s national preservation officer, Jere diaries on the emigrant trails and have explored them exten- Krakow, who held Mahr’s superintendent position until 2007 sively. Gail Carbiener volunteers a few weeks each year for and is now monitoring 29 projects in nine states. Still, “We try federal agencies, sleuthing historical sites with a cadre of other to preserve everything, knowing that we’re going to lose.” metal-detector-wielding old guys, under the supervision of an archaeologist. With OCTA, the couple erects directional and THE LAND WEST OF ONTARIO, population 11,000, is remarkably interpretive signs, and Gail Carbiener has even re-cast concrete flat. From the town’s assembly of chain motels and restaurants, trail markers in home-built molds. tilled earth sweeps toward the hills in all directions, peppered After we park below a gap in the hills called Keeney Pass,

www.hcn.org High Country News 31 Carbiener tenderly takes his wife’s arm and they stroll along the wagon track through the sage. “You’re camping in a cesspool and you’re walking in one,” Muriel Carbiener reminds me cheerfully. The trail would have been littered with livestock feces and carcasses, denuded of grass for miles around. To lighten the load, people often jettisoned belongings — a piano, libraries of books, thousands of pounds of bacon, even a diving bell — a wake stretching back to Missouri. Many died from cholera or drown- ing. Others, according to historian John D. Unruh, died as a result of “careless handling of the fantastical arsenal of fire- arms” they dragged west. Some, perhaps, even succumbed to despair. A plaque at the grave of John D. Henderson, which we visit next, notes mournfully: “Died of Thirst, August 9, 1852, Unaware of the Nearness of the Malheur River … Proved too Great a Struggle for the Weary Travelers.” Those remembered hardships retain their power, especially for pioneer Wagon ruts on the Oregon Trail at Keeney Pass south of Vale, Oregon. descendants. David Welch, former OCTA president and national preservation officer, describes his sense of connection to a little-changed landscape in Nevada, where his great-great- Before I leave the Carbieners, we stop at McDonald’s. grandmother walked while nine months pregnant. Amateur Muriel elucidates the finer points of emigrant cuisine as she historian Stafford Hazelett says perfect strangers reach out to nibbles a burger: “Beans … and beans … and beans.” The list him for help finding the exact places along the trails where their underscores the relief they probably felt trading with tribes ancestors are buried. for salmon and vegetables. Early on, Native Americans often Muriel Carbiener carries paper towels and water to clean helped travelers with dangerous river crossings and route find- signs and marked graves. Sometimes, she feels ghosts with her. ing, especially in Oregon. Sometimes, Muriel Carbiener says, “It seems like you take care of these like you might take care of “the Indians wanted to charge people for crossing their land, a family member’s grave,” I observe. and most whites refused to do that.” She pauses. “We were “Gosh,” she says, as if surprised. mean and nasty.” “Maybe more than a family mem- That hints at a painful side of trail history that the Car- To lighten the load, people often ber’s.” bieners frankly acknowledge. Empowered by a sense of divine “It’s personal,” her husband adds. destiny, the emigrants squatted on tribe-owned lands, over- jettisoned belongings — a piano, “It really is.” grazed grass tribes needed for their horses, depleted wild game, libraries of books, thousands That might explain the vehe- destroyed staple camas meadows, fouled drinking water, and in- mence with which he’s fought the advertently devastated Native American populations with novel of pounds of bacon, even B2H. He’s driven to Eugene to meet diseases like measles — ultimately leading to bloody clashes as with environmental lawyers, Skyped settlement swept the region. “This is our history,” Muriel says a diving bell with law students, and, with OCTA, circumspectly. “None of us would be here unless these people has signed onto a lengthy comment had done this.” letter opposing the project alongside hardline environmental “I think these stories are a part of us,” OCTA’s Krakow says groups like Oregon Wild. Just before I met the Carbieners, the later. They carry a lot of the nation’s formative values, “and not BLM dismissed Gail from a special committee reviewing the all of those are good ones.” proposal: He had inadvertently shared privileged information in an anti-B2H letter to the editor. HITÍIMECIX WÉETESNE — THEY ARE MARKING THE LAND. The Nez It’s uncertain how the powerline will affect Birch Creek Perce phrase appears on a text panel at the Tamástslikt Cul- and the pristine segment to the south, called Alkali Springs. tural Institute. About 160 miles northwest of Ontario on I-84, The final environmental study won’t be out until summer. And it’s the only tribal interpretive center on the designated Oregon because powerlines traverse their own patchwork of public and Trail route. The panel describes the treaty process that carved private land, they’re perhaps as hard to build as the trail is up the Columbia Plateau, forcing the Umatilla, Cayuse and to protect. The alternative routes here have their own contro- Walla Walla to surrender their lands alongside other tribes in versies: One would pass through more farmland, potentially 1855. Beside it, there’s a map of the tiny trapezoid that became disrupting irrigation and crop dusting, says BLM Vale District the Umatilla Indian Reservation, where Tamástslikt is located, project coordinator Renée Straub, and both cross more habitat contrasted against the vast expanse of ceded ancestral territory. that is considered a priority for greater sage grouse. Much of the B2H’s length, it turns out, falls inside that ceded Recent preliminary maps suggest the BLM may be leaning land, where the Umatilla, Cayuse and Walla Walla — now the away from the route that most impacts the Oregon Trail here. Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation — still But its preference for the section near the interpretive center have treaty-protected hunting and fishing rights. While the appears little changed, and 35,000 to 40,000 people visit that tribes have no official position on the line, their formal com- site annually. Other alternatives for that spot, at least those ments fault the BLM for not adequately consulting them about that have been analyzed, are more problematic; the only one the project’s possible impacts on archaeological resources, as that would mostly bypass the trail would detour far from exist- well as the continuing uses and cultural significance of the land. ing utility and transportation corridors, slicing through more In fact, the tribes preferred the proposed routings that most intact forest and big game and sage grouse habitat. “It’s not irk Oregon Trail advocates because they’re closer to existing always feasible,” says Straub, “to protect everything when we’re development and appear less harmful to wildlife. “Our first pri- trying to balance all these resources.” ority is preservation of tribal cultural history and treaty rights,”

32 High Country News March 7, 2016 ere are more than two dozen murals in Vale, Oregon. is one, called Death on the Trail, is on the side of a Les Schwab Tire building. explains Chuck Sams, tribal government spokesman. But “we Matthew Dennis writes, “history and memory are not merely want to ensure that the line has negligible impacts on every- ways of recollecting the past but are also means of obscuring one’s historical background.” and forgetting it.” “All of that is part of our past, too,” Bobbie Conner, Tamást- slikt’s director since 1998, tells me later. “I believe the wagon THE SKY IS FADING TO PINK WHEN I EXIT the interstate one last No matter ruts tell an important story. I understand what enlightenment time, then wind through alfalfa fields. Center-pivot sprinklers it brings people to know the struggles of their ancestors.” She loom like giant mantises, and gray birds blink through my how close the notes her own blended heritage: Umatilla, Cayuse and Nez headlights. Beyond someone’s farmhouse and up a gravel road, I Perce, with a last name from a Scotch-Irish ancestor. Still, she park at a picnic shelter and set out down an asphalt path buck- agencies get adds, “There is much that we wish to protect that’s much older. led by tumbleweeds. It’s completely dark by the time I find the to telling the We’ve been here in this landscape for more than 10,000 years. cement obelisk marking a stretch of wagon ruts at Echo Mead- And we don’t ever expect to leave.” ows. To the northwest, red lights atop the Columbia Gorge’s Oregon Trail’s It’s this last message that Tamástslikt most conveys. In thicket of windmills pulse with cardiac regularity. addition to showcasing tribes’ rich histories and covering the I follow the bright spark of reflective trail markers in the complete story, dark years of land division and forced assimilation that fol- other direction, towards a black horizon crowned with stars. I the scars of lowed white settlement, it takes visitors up to the present, as think of the rest areas along 84, with their Oregon Trail kiosks the tribes restored water and salmon to local rivers emptied by — of the families adjusting baggage in their SUVs, the truck land theft irrigation and built a modern economy while still maintaining drivers hunched into cellphone conversations. I think of the traditional culture. Núun Wišíix, reads a wall near the end of people who honor pioneer ancestors, and those who make a and its legacy the exhibit: We are. hobby of following emigrants’ footsteps. Few among them could Such inclusive histories have been slow to catch on at other claim roots in this region more than a handful of generations remain. emigrant trail interpretive sites. Recognizing the problem, deep. Perhaps the trail helps them feel that they belong, both to the Park Service began holding tribal listening sessions about history and to the landscape itself. five years ago to build relationships and find ways to integrate As a recent transplant to Oregon, I pause to see if I, too, tribes’ perspectives. The agency has worked with Oglala Lakota might experience something like Muriel Carbiener’s commu- College students to collect oral histories from elders on the Pine nion with ghosts. I hear rustles and squeaks in the head-high Ridge Reservation for use in a trail interpretive film, for exam- sage. But all I feel is the disquieting sense of drift that comes ple, and the BLM hopes to use Park Service funds for an exhibit from being in constant motion—just one more emigrant shifting exploring Native Americans’ experience of the Oregon Trail. between the hubs of a society that is forever pressing outward, But no matter how close the agencies get to telling the Or- devouring new places. History aside, perhaps the best reason egon Trail’s complete story, the scars of land theft and its legacy to preserve these last shreds of trail and the sweeping views remain. No signs on I-84 identify the ancestral homelands of around them is as reference points that help us remember how the Cayuse, Walla Walla and Umatilla. A casual traveler would much the land has changed — and is still changing. have no idea they used these routes in a seasonal migration for food long before the pioneers, or that the tribes are still deeply IF YOU GO invested in this landscape. The Oregon Trail, meanwhile, is Oregon National Historic Trail marked with signs likely to catch the eyes of even incurious Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon drivers, emblazoned with the symbol of this region’s conquest: 505-988-6098 A covered wagon. As University of Oregon emeritus professor nps.gov/oreg

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If you advanced studies and knowledge of natural advertising is modest, and the number of sociation.org/jobs. combine a scheming sense of communica- and cultural history with Yellowstone National advertising pages will not exceed one-third tions strategy with a thorough knowledge of Park emphasis; identification of plants of our printed pages annually. environmental issues, campaigns and stake- and wildlife; safe driving, communication, Ranch Caretaker Assistant — May-Sep- holders in the American West, we would like teaching, outdoor leadership skills. tember assistant to ranch caretaker for to hear from you. Visit about_us>job_oppor- www.yellowstonesafari.com. BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES maintenance and repair of infrastructure on tunities at www.wildearthguardians.org. Send cover letter/résumé to: Conservationist? Irrigable Land? Stellar ranch as well as daily upkeep on property [email protected]. and facilities. 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For more information, please fully guided trips as well as operating a very Kitchen and cabins manager — Daily staff support to the LCL Committee, design- visit our website at www.wilderness.org/ busy canoe and kayak livery in a national upkeep of guest ranch kitchen and cabins ing and delivering trainings at local, state, careers-and-internships. 202-429-2649. monument. The leading outfitter since 1965. from mid-May through September. Assisting regional and national conservation confer- [email protected]. Three-bedroom home, 40-by-60-foot ware- domestic operation of the ranch. Opportunity ences, as well as other duties as assigned. house, fleet of vans, trucks, trailers, over 70 for couple; we’re also seeking ranch manager The Associate will be working remotely from Director of National Outreach — canoes and kayaks. Turnkey. 1-877-538-4890. assistant for same period. a home office. Ideal locations would be near Headquarters, Washington, D.C. Defenders EMPLOYMENT Email: [email protected]. cities with major airports, but all locations of Wildlife, a national nonprofit membership within the United States will be considered. organization, seeks a National Outreach Director to oversee strategic development and management of Defenders of Wild- life’s national advocacy outreach program and regional representatives. Go to www. defenders.org to see position descriptions. Defenders of Wildlife is EOE. 202-772-0215. [email protected]. www.defenders.org.

Idaho Wildlife Federation, Executive Director — IWF seeks a qualified individual to hire as its Executive Director. Qualifica- tions include a passion for wildlife and skills in fundraising and organizational development. For full job description and application instructions, please email: [email protected]. http://www.idahowildlife.org.

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www.hcn.org High Country News 35 WRITERS ON THE RANGE Whiteness reigns in a new lm about national parks The new film National Parks Adventure in between not only as antithetical, but Anker, but he is a black professional aims to inspire its viewers, as producer also as a continuing indictment of the snowboarder with a compelling back- Shaun MacGillivray puts it, “to get off National Park Service’s overwhelming story. Hudson grew up in and out of their couches and get outdoors.” Its des- whiteness. homeless shelters until, at 14, his life tination of choice is our national parks, This land doesn’t appear to be made was changed when he was introduced which are celebrating 100 years of man- for you and me if a significant number to snowboarding by Outdoor Outreach, agement by the National Park Service of us are missing from the picture. And a nonprofit dedicated to empowering in 2016. MacGillivray and his crew used National Parks Adventure, which opened at-risk youth through outdoor activi- every IMAX 3-D trick at their disposal, globally on Feb. 12, feeds this perception ties. Hudson was part of an expedition, from jaw-dropping aerial footage of sun- by illustrating the national parks experi- led by Anker, which attempted to climb splattered landscapes to in-your-face en- ence as an almost exclusively white one. Denali. That expedition was likely the OPINION BY counters with furry, squeaky creatures The trick to solving the diversity reason that Hudson was with Anker, his GLENN NELSON like prairie dogs. issue, of course, is to actually begin stepson, Max Lowe, and friend Rachel As if the visual feast weren’t enough, diversifying. Otherwise, absent outside Pohl at one of the film’s more spectacu- the film also serves up actor-environ- agitation, there’s little potential for lar stops in Pictured Rocks National mentalist Robert Redford as narrator, recognizing that diversity indeed is an Lakeshore. climber Conrad Anker as narrative focal issue. The people affected aren’t at the We know Hudson is there, because point, and a soundtrack that features table. Pohl mentions his presence. If you watch rocker Bruce Springsteen. But missing This is the challenge for the produc- carefully, without blinking, you’ll see Max Lowe and from the buffet, as usual, is the story of tion company, MacGillivray Freeman, him on the screen, ever so briefly. What Rachel Pohl explore the parks’ future — the one filled with known for producing IMAX hits includ- a lost opportunity. a cave behind a those diverse people who will not only ing Everest, Dolphins and The Living MacGillivray also said that the film- frozen waterfall in Pictured Rocks enable the parks’ continued existence Sea. When asked about diversity in his makers wanted to portray John Muir National Lakeshore but, as the impending nonwhite major- film following a Seattle screening, Shaun and Theodore Roosevelt, the architects of in Michigan. ity in this country, provide the political, MacGillivray, the president of the pro- the Park Service, “who just happened to Professional economic and spiritual wherewithal to duction house, hailed the film’s opening be white.” The only semblance of diversi- snowboarder Ryan ensure the future of the planet. remarks about Native Americans. When ty is shown in some of the user-generat- Hudson, who is The film gets off to a promising start asked if he’d considered actually showed content near the end of the 43-minute black, was there with its mention of Native Americans ing Native Americans and other people film. The National Park Service should with the team, but and their belief that this country’s of color onscreen, MacGillivray said, “If have known better, yet it allowed a was only briefly “natural wonders belong to no one, they my crack research team had found a project to be executed with blatant racial shown onscreen. COURTESY OF MACGILLIVRAY belong to us all.” But to go from that character with a more diverse story, we ignorance. FREEMAN FILMS. utterance to Springsteen’s version of would have considered using one.” The agency hasn’t delivered on its PHOTOGRAPHER: BARBARA MACGILLIVRAY the Woody Guthrie classic “This Land Here’s one his team might have pre-centennial promises to ramp up ©VISITTHEUSA.COM is Your Land” renders most everything found: Ryan Hudson may not be Conrad diversity efforts. Its ranks remain 82 percent white, about the same as its visitation, in a country that is 38 percent nonwhite and growing fast. Even the National Park System Advisory Board found that “despite ongoing efforts to address diversity gaps, the Park Service is perceived by stakeholders as neither diverse nor inclusive.” National Parks Adventure attempts to herald the national parks road trip as quintessentially American, but instead proves the conceit as quintessentially white American. When Springsteen belts out, “This land is your land,” a much too significant portion of this country is forced to disagree. In essence, MacGil- livray’s work reflects too closely the history of the agency it celebrates. And as a film, it joins a cinematic legacy long dominated by sci-fi flicks that rarely consider the presence of people of color in anyone’s future. WEB EXTRA To see all the current Writers on the Range columns, and archives, visit hcn.org Writers on the Range is a syndicated service of High Country News, providing three opinion columns each week to more than 200 media outlets around the West. For more information, contact Betsy Marston, [email protected], 970-527-4898.

36 High Country News March 7, 2016 People hike in Fiery Furnace at Arches National Park in Utah, le . A wooden ladder leads to a cli dwelling in Frijoles Canyon at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico, right. NPS/ANDREW KUHN; NPS/SALLY KING Writing the next chapter for our park system The National Park Service’s 2016 cen- and as our understanding of the con- The Wonder of It All, compiled by tennial got off to a rocky start. tours of that experience expands, the the nonprofit Yosemite Conservancy, On Jan. 2, militants occupied Or- agency’s mission grows with it. “Today takes a different approach, collecting egon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge we contemplate the effects of a chang- 100 short anecdotes and testimonials in a sustained attack on the very legality ing climate against the benchmarks of to the parks’ transformative powers. of public land — the philosophical and these protected places,” Galvan writes. They’re stories of first jobs, true love, political foundation upon which the na- “The story and contributions of en- encounters with bears and wolves and tional parks and other reserves (includ- slaved people, once invisible, are now stars, and the sudden flare of a light ing wildlife refuges) are built. told.” in a child’s eyes. The Wonder of It All Then, in mid-January, came the The book’s academic and in-agency demonstrates both the charms and galling announcement that one of the contributors strike a measured balance flaws of anthologized amateur writing, A Thinking Person’s system’s flagships, Yosemite, is chang- between celebration and constructive but its stories exude a heartfelt passion Guide to America’s ing the names of well-loved landmarks criticism. The critiques mostly revolve that complements and sweetens the in response to a legal dispute with a around the agency’s slowness to come to administrative efficiency of A Think- National Parks concessions company that managed to terms with America’s history of oppres- ing Person’s Guide. Bob McConnell’s edited by Robert trademark park imagery and institu- sion and diversity. These brief essays recollection of a night enjoying opera Manning, Rolf Diamant, tions for its own marketing purposes. show an agency eager to attract young with veteran seasonal Yosemite ranger Nora Mitchell Neither is the sort of publicity that people and what we’ll soon enough need Carl Sharsmith, who died in 1994, offers and David Harmon the agency hoped to receive from this to stop calling minorities — the demo- an intimate portrait of one of the many 304 pages, softcover: anniversary, which was supposed to re- graphic core of whatever future support indispensable volunteers who make the $24.95. ignite the enthusiasm of the American the parks may enjoy. parks tick, while Rebecca Bailey learns George Braziller, 2016. public in a yearlong campaign called Population is increasing faster than that the less-than-flattering “green “Find Your Park.” park attendance, even as the system and gray” uniform is no deterrent to More in line with the message, grows to meet its audience. The chal- unsolicited male attention in “How to surely, are two well-timed new books. lenge is significant, and no book, how- Talk to a ‘Girl Ranger.’ ” (“Respectfully” A Thinking Person’s Guide to ever gorgeously illustrated (this one has will do just fine, thank you.) Anybody America’s National Parks is an almost 300 glossy color photos), is likely to be who’s ever worn that iconic flat hat, or painfully earnest re-assessment of the the magnet that draws new visitors into daydreamed of doing so, will likely enjoy national park system at the century the parks. these stories. mark. Its 23 chapters dissect the parks But for anyone already invested, Both of these new books serve as — why, and for whom, they exist. The A Thinking Person’s Guide makes an invitations to the national parks — a book reflects the evolution of the agen- excellent armchair roadmap to the Park reminder that it’s not enough to sup- cy’s approach to conservation, recre- Service’s more than 400 sites and its port the idea of the parks; we need to ation, inclusiveness, sustainability and many priorities and pursuits, which visit them in person and get to know other facets. Between Ulysses S. Grant’s range from community farming part- them. As timeless and unassailable as creation of Yellowstone National Park nerships within the Ebey’s Landing they may seem, the parks are the tip on March 1, 1872, and Barack Obama’s National Historical Reserve on Whid- of America’s public-lands iceberg, and designation, in February, of three new bey Island, Washington, to the Kaibab if recent history shows anything, it’s The Wonder of It All: national monuments comprising 1.8 Paiute Tribe’s leadership in preserving that they require our constant protec- 100 Stories from the million acres of California desert, the dark skies at Arizona’s Grand Canyon- tion. Plenty of folks are fighting hard National Park Service National Park Service has expanded Parashant National Monument. You to find new ways to exploit our natural edited by the its horizons generally from the West to might think of the book as an illus- and scenic resources. For now, “We the Yosemite Conservancy the East, from scenic to historic, from trated catalog of the nation’s grandest People” have the stronger claim. We’d be 306 pages, softcover: wilderness toward urban areas. “The common holdings, and an eloquent (if remiss, and we’d be lessened, if we failed $18.95. national parks are the American experi- indirect) defense of the principles and to exercise it. Yosemite Conservancy, ence expressed in place,” writes former benefits of public land managed for 2016. Director Denis Galvan in the foreword, public use. BY BRAD TYER

www.hcn.org High Country News 37 Turn on, tune in, and hop out with New Belgium Citradelic Tangerine IPA. Set adrift on a kaleidoscopic wave of hoppiness brought to you by a mystical marriage of Citra hops and Tangerine. Elevating each sip onto a plane of pure tropical, fruity pleasure. DOWNLOAD THE BEERMODE APP FOR ACCESS TO EXCLUSIVE CONTENT AND EVENTS NEAR YOU.

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38 High Country News March 7, 2016 Turn on, tune in, and hop out with New Belgium Citradelic Tangerine IPA. Set adrift on a kaleidoscopic wave of hoppiness brought to you by a mystical marriage of Citra hops and Tangerine. Elevating each sip onto a plane of pure tropical, fruity pleasure. DOWNLOAD THE BEERMODE APP FOR ACCESS TO EXCLUSIVE CONTENT AND EVENTS NEAR YOU. A view of Sahale Mountain, Park DOWNLOAD Creek Ridge and Mount Buckner in North Cascades National Park, from the Stehekin ESSAY BY ANA MARIA SPAGNA River Valley. Unpeopled places DEBY DIXON/ NPS

EnSSAY the late | B1980s,Y ANA I worked MARIA at aS visitors’PAGNA center in a trailer at to “bag” peaks and “score” campsites. We elbow in, believing I the entrance to the Needles District of Canyonlands National we’re more deserving because we are locals, or because we’ve in- Park, a still relatively unknown place then, a kind of secret. To vested more time or money into our vacation, or because we are get there, you had to drive 35 miles off the highway through stronger and more willing to take risks, or because, well, we’re slickrock and green sage, hazy mountains on the horizon and wearing a uniform standing behind a desk. cottonwoods along the creeks, as startling a landscape as you’d I didn’t want to win the competition. I wanted to avoid it. find anywhere. Cars arrived at lazy intervals, and when people So I found another relatively unknown park, North Cascades, reached the desk, the conversation was often the same. joined trail crew, and headed for the unpeopled places. That was the most beautiful drive we’ve ever taken, they’d All my best memories are out there: watching peaks float say. Now, how do we drive out? above clouds from a meadow thick with flowers — paintbrush, The same way you came in, we’d say. lupine, columbine, lily — sleeping in old-growth to the patter Sometimes they’d complain loudly. Sometimes they’d mask of raindrops on duff, steeped in cedar and smoke, cross-country their disappointment. Rarely did they show enthusiasm. It was skiing past a boulder in a river from which a lone otter track both exasperating and the stuff of comedy, but part of me could slid into an ice-hemmed pool, and, on one off-season trip, sitting sympathize. alone beside the Colorado gazing up at the distant forested When I was a kid, my family took cross-country trips and North Rim. stopped at national parks — Zion, Bryce, Mesa Verde, the Still, I’m uneasy. Grand Canyon. Were we finding solace in wide-open spaces? For one thing, I now realize these supposedly unpeopled If we told people Uh, no. Our parents were just showing us all they could — on places were actually well-known and often cared for by indig- about the secret the way from one place to another— through the windows of an enous people. Then there’s the fact that working for the Park un-air-conditioned station wagon. Once, we kids refused to get Service took me far away from people who were different from places they out of the car: No more rock formations, we chanted. I sounded me. I’ve often said that I’m more scared of a subway than a cou- ungrateful, yes, but I was also getting hooked. gar. Which is telling. What if, when I say I like to get away from wouldn’t be CITRADELIC I remember standing on the North Rim of the Grand Can- people, subconsciously I mean certain types of people? There secret anymore. yon, thinking: Someday I’ll go down there. The idea felt foreign was a time I’d have denied it vehemently. Now, I am not so sure. but giddily within reach, like reading a book that opened a new Still, I’m hooked. world. When I finished college, I went straight to volunteer in a Here’s the truth. I long to be in unpeopled places, and when TANGERINE IPA national park. I find them, I’m often overcome with aching loneliness. I miss At the visitor center desk, the second set of questions was the people I love. I desperately want to share these places, even nearly as predictable as the first: Where can we camp with no if it means re-entering the fray. one nearby? What hike does no one know about? Not long ago, I visited Yosemite in early spring with my If we told people about the secret places, I wanted to say, mom. Parking lots were under construction, requiring muddy they wouldn’t be secret anymore. Duh! But I also knew that too-long walks for her, and calendar views hid behind a stub- part of me wanted them to stay secret so they could be mine born veil of clouds. We drove in and out in a single day, but alone. So I sighed and pointed out some less-popular trails and stopped at a lone roadside picnic table where new blades of campgrounds. grass showed between melting snow berms. No one else stopped TUNE IN. HOP OUT. There are a thousand reasons why I was a lousy visitor while we ate our string cheese and apples and listened the center ranger. I don’t like being indoors. I bristle at toeing a charge of distant running water and smelled wet pine and NEWBELGIUM.COM party line. I wear a uniform poorly –– “unkempt,” read one of my asphalt. For a moment, the clouds cleared, and we had our own

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www.hcn.org High Country News 39 U.S. $5 | Canada $6

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY BETSY MARSTON

WYOMING CALIFORNIA It must have been a terrifying few moments How do you sell 117 boxes of Girl Scout cook- for the three snowboarders. The young men ies in two hours? Just park yourself outside were traversing a cliff in rugged country near a medical marijuana dispensary, reports the the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, when the Los Angeles Times. That’s what 12-year-old going became increasingly icy. Losing control, Danielle Lei and her mother did, near a pot they slid toward the edge of the cliff and then outlet called Green Cross, in San Francisco. tumbled over, falling 200 feet into the snow They got so busy that 45 minutes later, they below. Two were seriously injured, and rescue had to call for more cookies. “I’m not saying was difficult because they landed in a narrow go out in the streets and take marijuana,” area; they were flown out by helicopter, dan- said Lei’s mother. She added, though, “I can gling in stretchers, reports the Jackson Hole be a cool parent for a little bit.” Because all News&Guide. One guy wore a helmet that the money stays in local chapters, each one probably prevented a more serious injury; it makes decisions on how to run a program, and was found in the snow, “shattered in the fall.” Lei’s chapter said it had no problem with her location. Girl Scouts of Colorado, however, OREGON UTAH Oregon Dunes National “Wreckreation” said that it disapproved of the “situation” in Area? RICHARD LEBLOND The Salt Lake Tribune makes no bones about San Francisco, adding that Girl Scout cookies it: It occasionally lacks respect for the state must not be sold in the Centennial State near Legislature. This February, the paper called tion Committee. Meanwhile, Idaho Republican pot shops, liquor stores or bars. Incidentally, politicians “seriously deluded” if they think Rep. Tom Loertscher has his own explanation for Green Cross happens to sell a new variety of Utah has a prayer of gaining control of the 31 global climate change, reports the Idaho Falls marijuana it calls “Girl Scout Cookie.” million acres of federal land within the state’s Post Register. “We get climate change four times borders. In fact, said a recent editorial, a bill a year,” he said. “It’s called the four seasons. I IDAHO from Republican Rep. Mike Noel “might just think we’re pretty vain if we think we can con- Wolf hating might be considered a religion in as well be titled the Utah Public Lands Fairies trol the climate.” Idaho, says one longtime resident, who prefers and Unicorns Act, for all the chances it has of to remain anonymous owing to the extreme actually setting the rules for any territory.” Noel THE NATION emotions the issue provokes. She looked into argues that his bill outlines a plan for ranking “Clueless” is just one of the harsh words a former one charge against the animals — that wolves priorities for managing those lands. “It’s not a press officer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser- feast on too many elk — and talked to several drill rig on every piece of ground,” he insists. “I vice chose to characterize the Interior Depart- outfitters. Most told her they weren’t convinced don’t see that happening.” The editorial board ment’s recent “share your love” campaign. No wolves were to blame for spotty hunter suc- doesn’t see it happening either, because Noel’s sentimentalist, David Klinger, who worked for cess. One had his own theory: “It’s not easy bill is merely an “illusion.” Still, it concedes: “The the federal agency from 1977 to 2012, said that to haul yourself thousands of feet up into the dog that keeps chasing cars should probably be by asking online for couples’ videos of their mar- mountains,” he told her. “Plus you need to be praised for making a plan for what to do with riage ceremonies and “bachelorette blowouts on stealthy, not sucking wind. The primary reason the first one he actually catches.” federal lands,” the Interior Department de- that hunters fail to bag an elk has nothing to do means the “sacredness” of the nation’s parks and with wolves. It’s because more hunters are out IDAHO refuges, which are not “enlarged platforms for of shape. Or, to put it bluntly, fat.” Science is really as easy as pie: Just ask an Idaho private partying.” Klinger allows that he might state legislator. Worried about the impact of fos- be old-fashioned, “but I regard Yosemite as the WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see sil fuels on the world’s climate? “Listen to Rush public’s Sistine Chapel of American conserva- hcn.org. Limbaugh once in a while,” advised Republican tion, not an inexpensive and tawdry wedding Rep. Dell Raybould. “He’ll tell you that this is chapel.” Undaunted, the Interior Department Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and just a bunch of nonsense.” Raybould’s skepti- shared some of the public-land-based love sto- often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag cism is particularly interesting because he is the ries and videos it received at www.facebook.com/ photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram. chairman of the House Resources and Conserva- USInterior/videos/951270304926651/

High I believe in intact ecosystems. Country I believe hard science trumps News “ For people who care about the West. superstition and false facts. High Country News covers the important issues and Andrew Gulliford, in his essay, “Wolves belong back home in Colorado,” stories that are unique to the American West with a from Writers on the Range,” hcn.org/wotr magazine, a weekly column service, books and a website, hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or [email protected], or call 970-527-4898.

40 High Country News March 7, 2016