A Weird and Perfect Wilderness in Southwest Oregon, a Desolate Landscape Offers Lessons on the Modern Wild by Kate Schimel November 28, 2016 | $5 | Vol

High Country ForN people whoews care about the West

A Weird and Perfect Wilderness In southwest Oregon, a desolate landscape offers lessons on the modern wild By Kate Schimel November 28, 2016 | $5 | Vol. 48 No. 20 | www.hcn.org 48 No. | $5 Vol. 28, 2016 November CONTENTS

Editor’s note Solace in wild spaces

The weekend before the presidential election, I went into the Raggeds Wilderness, a few hours outside of Paonia, Colorado, hoping to fill ym elk tag. I sat shivering on a ridge in the predawn dark, watching the stars of Orion wheel over mountains some 70 million years old. Then, as light broke across an aspen grove half a mile away, came the faint chirping of cow elk and the soft bugle of a bull. Through binoculars, I watched the elk drift out of the timber like ghosts, heading to a well-watered meadow beyond the trees. In that moment, I felt myself a part of something whole and beautiful — billions of years in the making, perfect in every detail: me, the cold, the elk, the mountains, the dawn. Then the election happened, and I found myself the citizen of a country where at least 60 million people, for one reason or another, cast their vote for a man whose campaign was built on ignorance, intolerance and lies. What that Jill and Gabe Howe evaluate trail projects in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness. Zach Doleac means will be debated for years to come, but given the uptick in hate crimes, publicly displayed FEATURE swastikas and brazen slurs by emboldened racists, I suspect our country is in for some rough years. 16 A Weird and Perfect Wilderness Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Donald Trump will surprise us and try to build a society of tolerance In southwest Oregon, a desolate landscape offers lessons and prosperity and happiness. By Kate Schimel on the modern wild But until that happens, you can expect High Country News to keep up thorough reporting CURRENTS on an administration apparently hostile to On the cover environmental protections and regulations, 5 The Bundy family, on trial Their Oregon court date is over. skeptical of climate change, and in favor of Jill Howe, ax in hand Now, the Nevada one looms. for the trail work unfettered extraction of public-land resources. ahead, walks amid 6 The disappearing Bonneville Salt Flats In Utah, a changing landscape Or so it seems. It’s hard to tell, given the number the burned-over trees brings an uncertain future for land speed racing of contradictory statements we’ve heard this on the Kalmiopsis campaign. In any case, we’ll find out. 7 The pipeline that wasn’t For 40 years, Alaskans have dreamed of a Rim Trail in In the meantime, let us not lose sight of the big Oregon’s Kalmiopsis pipeline to deliver the North Slope’s gas reserves to market Wilderness. picture. The value of the West remains its wide-open Zach Doleac 7 The Latest: A new job for Nancy Fernandez spaces, its vast public lands, and its rich natural 8 Out stealing snakes In Arizona, reptile poachers slip through the cracks and cultural resources. In places like the Raggeds, we find solace, as well as common values across 8 The Latest: Greater sage grouse cultural and political divides. And so this issue features both news and perspective. In our cover DEPARTMENTS story, Kate Schimel, the magazine’s digital editor, visits a scarred and tangled wilderness, asking what 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG it means to love such a place. Correspondent Sarah Tory takes us to the Bonneville Salt Flats, where a 4 LETTERS piece of Americana, 12,000 years in the making, Complete access 10 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends is crumbling away. Essayist Peter Friederici and to subscriber-only photographer Peter Goin examine our complicity, via content 12 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE Gift ideas for people who love the West Glen Canyon, in the realities of climate change. And HCN’s website 24 MARKETPLACE Contributing Editor Jonathan Thompson asks what hcn.org presidential policy can actually do in the face of a Digital edition 27 WRITERS ON THE RANGE global energy market. hcne.ws/digi-4820 When it comes to energy, Trump’s promises are empty By Jonathan Thompson We must continue to explore these and other ESSAYS fundamental questions, even as we face a new Follow us political reality. For the years ahead will test our 28 By Leath Tonino The Anthropological Aesthetic values, and our willingness to defend them, as By Peter Friederici, Photographs by Peter Goin  30 A place between never before. @highcountrynews 32 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Brian Calvert, managing editor

2 High Country News November 28, 2016 From our website: HCN.ORG Never miss a story. Sign up for the HCN newsletter at hcn.org/enewsletter. ★ ELECTIONS 2016 ★ Greens prepare for battle Trending Environmental leaders were stunned by Dealing with a presidential election that defied the the divide polls and put into power a man who calls Columnist Maddie climate change a hoax and has vowed to Butcher writes from do away with the Environmental Protection her divided town, Man- Agency, take the United States out of the cos, Colorado, about Paris Climate Agreement and cancel the what to do following Clean Power Plan. While President-elect a polarizing election. Donald Trump’s stances on energy and The answer? Step outside of your typical climate change policy remain murky, his circles and listen. victory has galvanized GOP leaders who Butcher writes, “In my hope to undo President Barack Obama’s small town in south- climate legacy — and environmental western Colorado, leaders who say his pronouncements those who did not cannot change the fact that the planet is vote for Donald Trump heating up. “This election, nobody went seemed numbed and stunned by the result. to the ballot box voting for dirtier air and … Maybe it was a dirtier water,” says Anna Aurilio, D.C. shocking result. But if director for Environment America. “So we these folks had visited have to mobilize.” outside their circles, Elizabeth Shogren if they’d tried to get a More: hcne.ws/greens-react fix on what makes the Donald Trump holds a pro-coal placard during an October rally in Pennsylvania. As a candidate, longtime locals tick, Michael Brochstein via ZUMA Wire Trump made pledges to save both coal and natural gas. they might have had a better sense of what was to come.” Who won? What passed? Minimum wage Arizona, Colorado and Washington Maddie Butcher, approved minimum wage increases. Op-Ed A Western roundup. You say The Senate California Attorney General Health care Colorado struck down a statewide Kamala Harris beat Loretta Sanchez, both health-care system but approved a right-to-die law, Nathan Wind: Democrats, in California. In Nevada, Catherine joining California, Oregon and Washington. “Reminds me of where I live, here in Cortez Masto, D, defeated Republican Rep. Joe Wildlife Oregon voted to ban trade in exotic animal Heck. Republican Sen. John McCain retained Oakland, California. parts within state boundaries. Montana rejected an People move into the his seat in Arizona. In Utah, Republican Sen. animal-trapping ban on public lands. Mike Lee defeated Misty Snow. neighborhoods that Energy Washington rejected the nation’s first carbon are less expensive Congress Denise Juneau, head of Montana’s tax. Monterey County, California, became the state’s and get mad when public school system, lost to Republican sixth county — and first oil-producing one — to ban neighbors play loud incumbent Ryan Zinke. In Colorado, Republican Kamala Harris, on the campaign trail in fracking. music 24/7 and when Rep. Mike Coffman beat Democrat Morgan California, was one of three women of color people are up all night Carroll. elected to the Senate, bringing the total to Education Oregon voters approved a measure to outside. ... If you move four. Kamala Harris for U.S. Senate allocate funds for outdoor education. to a new place, don’t State and local elections Joe Arpaio lost the expect the place to California: gun control, taxes and more A gun bid for his seventh term as sheriff of Maricopa change for you.” County, Arizona. The GOP gained control of the Montana Land Board. control measure passed that bans large-capacity ammunition magazines and requires background checks for ammunition. Cigarette tax increased by $2 a Blake Osborn: “I’m Marijuana California and Nevada passed recreational marijuana use— pack and voters opted not to repeal the death penalty. Arizona was the only state (of five nationwide) to strike it down. Montana and from rural Colorado, North Dakota approved medical use. Lyndsey Gilpin More: hcne.ws/Election16-roundup but one thing I discovered while living on the Front Range for a few years is that it is much ‘cooler’ to “We are the watchdogs of Wallace Latinos voter surge — How Latinos voted in presidential election live in the mountains. Stegner’s geography of hope, and we take in the West, at least 100 In today’s landscape, Republican 2008 2016 Democrat 2008 2016 transplants are of a that job very seriously. You can expect Leading up to Election Day, a historic increase 80 certain demographic.” in coming weeks and months ferocious in Latino voter turnout seemed possible, and while Latino support for Democrats waned, Steve Underwood: watchdogging of the new administration, that hypothesis proved true. According to Pew 60 “Maddie missed the which, by all indications, will not Research, national exit polls suggest Latinos beauty of Mancos prioritize environmental protection or did make up a larger share of voters in the past, percent 40 in this story, instead address one of the greatest threats to the although more went Republican than in the past. focusing on the Nationwide, 65 percent of Latinos supported 20 troubles of the rest of planet, and especially our corner of it: Hillary Clinton, while 29 percent voted for the world. We all view climate change.” our world through Trump. Compare that to 2012, when Obama won 0 —Brian Calvert, HCN managing editor, in his 71 percent of the Hispanic vote (Mitt Romney Arizona california colorado Nevada rose-colored lenses.” secured 27 percent). Compared to the rest of the piece “What we learned this election” More: hcne.ws/ hcne.ws/rural-voter country, though, Latino voters in Western states Hispanics, though, wasn’t enough to flip the divided-town and voted resoundingly for Clinton over Trump. In state, as some analysts predicted. Arizona went to Facebook.com/ Arizona, 84 percent of Latinos voted for Clinton Trump, 50 percent to Clinton’s 45. highcountrynews Help us report on the West: Tell us what stories (compared to only 56 percent of Hispanics Paige Blankenbuehler you want us to cover. hcne.ws/story-tip voting for Obama in 2008). The growing clout of More: hcne.ws/Awakened-giant

www.hcn.org High Country News 3 Letters Send letters to [email protected] or Editor, HCN, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428.

High Country News REAL REPORTING FOR A DIVIDED COUNTRY Delta County for me represents the best Executive director/Publisher ideals our country has to offer. Paul Larmer Editor’s note: Following the election of Donald Trump, High Country News Publisher Stephen Koenigsberg MANAGING Editor Brian Calvert Paul Larmer wrote a letter to readers about the challenges ahead. It reads in part: Denver, Colorado SENIOR EDITOR “There remains a profound divide between rural and urban people in this country. Jodi Peterson This notion that some hotel/golf course Art director My county, Delta, voted 70 percent for Trump, as well as for the conservative developer from New York City is going to Cindy Wehling congressman who represents our district. It is one of the most impoverished counties be the savior of blue-collar whites in the Deputy editor, digital in the state, with an average per capita income of $23,890. Two of the three area coal Kate Schimel West and Midwest helps shed new light mines have closed in the last couple of years. Associate EDITOR Tay Wiles on why the workingman is struggling I often get asked why High Country News ... is based in a place like this. Why Assistant EDITOR so. Suffering, starving, getting hooked Paige Blankenbuehler not Boulder or Portland? Because, I say, you can’t really understand the West, or on opioids, the blue-collars were all too D.C. Correspondent the nation as a whole, if you don’t understand its rural communities. And you can’t ready to blame their problems on the Elizabeth Shogren really understand rural communities unless you live in one.” WRITERS ON THE RANGE brown folks across the way, especially editor Betsy Marston Many readers responded. Here is a sampling of the comments. Read Paul’s entire when encouraged to do so by the indus- Associate designer Brooke Warren message and all the comments, and join the conversation at hcne.ws/divided-country. trialists and their Republican pawns in Copy editOR government. Diane Sylvain This gullibility, along with the quick You and many others really missed the Contributing editorS Have to bristle a bit at your claim that retreat to tribalism when the chips are key to why Trump was elected. The Cally Carswell, Sarah to understand the West (or the nation) down, is the rich loam in which the seeds Gilman, Ruxandra Guidi, thing that resonated with the rest of Glenn Nelson, one must live in a rural community. No of our coming neo-fascist administra- the “real world” was that of the loss of Michelle Nijhuis, monopoly on understanding there. If tion and disembowelment of American Jonathan Thompson jobs and lower pay for blue-collar work- we, as you say, now need each other now democracy were sown. There’s no turning CorrespondentS ers in America. As these jobs moved to Krista Langlois, Sarah more than ever (and I agree with that back now, and the blue-collars will find other poorer countries (Mexico, Asia) Tory, Joshua Zaffos proposition), let’s not undermine the they’ve lost something else: access to Editorial Fellow people here lost their jobs, benefits and discussion by claiming that those who their soon-to-be-privatized public lands. Lyndsey Gilpin reside outside of rural areas can’t really retirements. Blue-collar union workers Intern Anna V. Smith understand the West or the nation. once were the base of the Democratic Jim Scarborough Development Director Party. But that party moved on to more Bellingham, Washington Laurie Milford John DeVoe Major Gifts Officer important issues of race, global warm- Alyssa Pinkerton Portland, Oregon ing, globalization, etc. The builders of I’ve lived for 35 years along the Rio Development Assistant America were forgotten. We can’t con- Grande in northern New Mexico in a Christine List These have been tough days since the tinue to move forward with the great en- village of about 100 people. It went 70 Subscriptions MARKETER election, but I’m hoping we will learn to JoAnn Kalenak vironmental issues until we find a way percent for HRC. The degree to which listen to more people who are different WEB DEVELOPER Eric Strebel to both reduce the loss of basic jobs and Trump has insulted and degraded His- Database/IT administrator than us as a result. There are many Del- protect our wonderful, beautiful country. panic people was reflected in this vote. Alan Wells ta Counties around our nation, and we I don’t buy into the “righteous anger” DIRECTOR OF ENGAGEMENT Richard Chambers must reach out to them with better news shtick that some comments reflect. Get- Gretchen King for their families and futures. Green Rancho Palos Verdes, California FINANCE MANAGER tin’ all riled up is just about the easiest Beckie Avera energy can offer them the jobs they have thing a person can do. I’m just not all I was raised in a lumber town of 735 Accounts Receivable lost, and I feel that the environmental that sympathetic to folks who have de- Jan Hoffman people in the ’50s when a workingman’s movement, which wants fossil fuels left spoiled their land and their water and Circulation manager wages funded the American Dream: a in the ground, should also be in the van- want to blame “ecoliberals” for pointing Tammy York home, a car, and college for your kids. Circulation Systems admin. guard of helping these communities tran- out those uncomfortable facts. Kathy Martinez sition into new jobs and prospects. Why is that mostly gone? Read The Circulation Betrayal of the American Dream by Meg Scherch-Peterson Kati Johnson, Pam Peters, Colleen Cabot Bartlett and Steele, which pins the theft Pilar, New Mexico Doris Teel San Jose, California on every president and Congress since Advertising Director Carter, both parties. Now we’ll see if President-elect Trump has stated that David J. Anderson Environmentalists should get to know Ad Sales Representative President Trump can keep his promise he is in favor of retaining public-land Bob Wedemeyer hunters, ranchers and farmers better. of returning the middle class to prosper- ownership and management under the GrantWriter Janet Reasoner Don’t hunters want to preserve the ity. He’ll have to deal with Republican federal government. We must not depart [email protected] Western landscape and maintain access majorities who have talked that talk, from the “multiple use” philosophy that [email protected] to it? An abhorrence of guns and hunt- [email protected] but never walked the walk. underpins the management of our public [email protected] ing has prevented some environmental- land. That includes energy and mineral Robert Nein [email protected] ists from making this connection. I’ve extraction. As someone who enjoys wild FOUNDER Chewelah, Washington Tom Bell met some environmentalists who have and scenic rivers, wilderness and monu- Board of Directors bigoted opinions of rural people. That, ment designation, I also understand John Belkin, Colo. You can’t really know someone until you too, has prevented a connection. To pre- that ranchers, farmers and every other Chad Brown, Ore. go over to their home and have dinner. Beth Conover, Colo. serve public land, and access to it, we’ll American should be able to enjoy their Then they become real people with plans Jay Dean, Calif. do better if we’re inclusive. land too, and power local economies. Let’s Bob Fulkerson, Nev. and dreams and families like everyone unite and do this together as Americans Wayne Hare, Colo. Jeff Cross else. Too many of us live in a “bubble.” Laura Helmuth, Md. Salt Lake City, Utah who love the outdoors for many reasons. John Heyneman, Wyo. You think you know about stuff outside Osvel Hinojosa, Mexico your bubble, but you really don’t. The George McCloskey Samaria Jaffe, Calif. fact that a journal like HCN is located in Mackay, Idaho Nicole Lampe, Ore. Marla Painter, N.M. Bryan Pollard, Ark. Raynelle Rino, Calif. Estee Rivera Murdock, D.C. Dan Stonington, Wash. High Country News is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Printed on Rick Tallman, Colo. High independent media organization that covers the Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post offices. recycled paper. Luis Torres, N.M. issues that define the American West. Its mission is POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All Andy Wiessner, Colo. Country to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Florence Williams, D.C. News region’s diverse natural and human communities. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155 | hcn.org 4 High Country News November 28, 2016 CURRENTS

if government informants were present at the standoff, prosecutors may find that The Bundy family, on trial an added challenge: Revealing informant identities can compromise other ongoing Their Oregon court date is over. Now, the Nevada one looms. investigations. Jurors will likely be cho- sen from the southern Nevada division By Tay Wiles that includes Las Vegas — unless defense attorneys get the judge to expand the pool, as they did in Oregon. n Oct. 27, in federal district court, a kinds of people we wanted: rural people, Still, Nevada attorneys have a differ- O jury delivered a not-guilty verdict for pro-gun or gun owners,” says attorney ent case to make: In April 2014, protesters Ryan and Ammon Bundy and five other Robert Salisbury, who ranked 200 poten- and federal officers faced off directly, unlike defendants, on charges stemming from tial jurors for favorability. “We also want- in Oregon, where occupiers arrived at the their 41-day armed occupation of Oregon’s ed people who would be able to think for refuge when no employees were present. Malheur National Wildlife Refuge early themselves,” and not be swayed by previ- In Nevada, standoff participants inter- this year. The verdict came as a shock to ous media coverage of the standoff. Nine- fered with federal agents’ attempts to im- many on both sides of the issue, with even teen of 20 of the final jurors and alternates pound the illegally grazing cattle. Bundy some defense lawyers predicting a convic- were among Salisbury’s top choices. supporter Ryan Payne told reporters that tion. But several factors, including the Finally, the defense team managed he helped plan “counter-sniper positions” diffuse nature of the Bundys’ movement, to bring an FBI informant to the witness against federal agents. In Malheur, occupi- strategic jury selection by the defense and stand, through what Schindler calls “some ers seemed to be more focused on spread- the difficult-to-prove conspiracy charges, kind of investigative miracle.” The appear- ing their ideology, rather than physically Cliven Bundy doomed the government’s case. ance of an informant led to the government thwarting a specific federal action. holds a bouquet In February, the Bundy brothers will revealing that nine occupiers were actually Seventeen Nevada defendants’ charg- of scrub in April again face a jury, this time with their fa- informants. “You can’t be part of a conspir- es do include conspiracy to impede federal 2015 near his ranch ther, Cliven, over their April 2014 standoff acy if it’s you and a government informant,” officers. But unlike in Oregon, they’re in Bunkerville, with federal agents attempting to round Schindler says. One juror told Schindler also charged with obstruction of justice Nevada, during a up illegally grazing Bundy Ranch cattle that this information swayed a fellow juror. and assault on a federal officer. The case celebration of the one-year anniversary in Nevada. If prosecutors in Nevada learn The conspiracy charge was always is not a slam-dunk: Prosecutors must do of his standoff from their Oregon counterparts’ mistakes, going to be difficult to prove, but simply more than just show that federal officers with the Bureau of it could help them bolster their case. “The charging the occupiers with trespass, a felt threatened; they have to definitively Land Management. government had a practice run, and they misdemeanor that doesn’t always result prove that the defendants’ actions were He’ll be in federal know what they did wrong and did right,” in a jail sentence, likely would have been unlawful. One Malheur juror emailed the court on charges says defense attorney Shawn Perez, ap- an equally embarrassing outcome for the Oregonian: “Doesn’t (the public) know surrounding the pointed to represent Bundy supporter Department of Justice. that ‘not guilty’ does not mean ‘innocent’?” Nevada standoff Richard Lovelien in the Nevada trial. But All these factors could come into play in Whatever the outcome, the February trial in February, along first, prosecutors have to grapple with just Nevada, complicated by whatever changes likely will not be the last time the nation with sons Ryan and Ammon. what went wrong in Oregon. occur in President-elect Donald Trump’s confronts the Bundys and the movement © David Becker via The Malheur occupation movement’s departments of Interior and Justice. And they represent. ZUMA Wire leaderless nature challenged prosecutors from the start. Ammon Bundy certainly inspired the militants, but as news spread to networks of sympathizers via social media, the occupation took on a life of its own. With no clear leader in charge, especially when it came to people outside the refuge in the town of Burns, pinning responsibility on any of the seven defendants was difficult. Prosecutors had planned to use testi- mony from federal employees and locals who felt threatened during the occupation. But in August, defense attorney Matt Schindler filed a motion to limit the government’s ability to use some of those wit- nesses. “There was no evidence connected to anybody in this case,” Schindler says. The defense also argued that people’s feelings didn’t prove the defendants’ intent to intimidate them — key to the conspiracy charges the government sought to prove. The defense attorneys’ aggressiveness in shaping the jury also paid off. Federal cases usually draw jurors from within 100 miles of Portland. But the defense team requested that the jury pool include the entire state. “We ended up getting the

Associate Editor Tay Wiles writes from Oakland, California.  @taywiles

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 the event for the third year in a row. Condi- The disappearing tions improved, but just barely. In places, the crust was less than an inch thick, al- lowing the underlying dirt to seep into the Bonneville Salt Flats racetrack and increasing the danger. Eventually, Youngblood’s car came In Utah, a changing landscape brings to a stop, but her heart kept racing. Al- an uncertain future for land speed racing though Youngblood believes the spin’s cause was mechanical, the thinning salt By Sarah Tory did not help her confidence. “You never know how a piece of mud might dislodge something on the underside of your car,” p A vehicle is li Youngblood sat in the driver’s seat of the precise cause remains unknown, the she says. hauled to the A her blue Ford roadster, inching toward changes have revealed the surprising fra- starting line at the a start line drawn across the Bonneville gility of the landscape — and raised ques- he crust’s decline began in the 1960s, Bonneville Salt Salt Flats. It was day four of Speed Week, a tions over whether or not it can be saved. Tand Utah racers have long blamed the Flats, outside of series of speed trials held on the glittering On the start line, Youngblood had oth- century-old potash mining industry, which Wendover, Utah, in August, where white plain every August, and Youngblood er things to think about. After two seasons removes salt from the Salt Flats as part of racing speeds can wanted to set a new record. plagued by cancellations, she was just its extraction process. But the mine opera- exceed 420 mph. Youngblood, 44, is one of the world’s thrilled to race again. tor, Intrepid Potash, replaces all the salt it top female land speed racers, a tribe of When the starter’s hand dropped, removes, as required under the terms of its q Larry Volk, amateur racecar drivers made famous by Youngblood floored the accelerator until permit with the Bureau of Land Manage- founder of the Utah Salt Flat Racing the 2005 film, The World’s Fastest Indian. the car’s turbo-charged engine was rev- ment. Last year, for instance, the company Association, uses a Land speed racers from around the world ving at 170 miles per hour. “Such an ani- put back over 500,000 tons of salt — far pick to demonstrate have long flocked to the Salt Flats near mal of a car,” she thought, feeling the wind exceeding the amount it removed, though the quality of the salt the Utah-Nevada border, whose 30,000 whipping over the open cockpit. Then, still short of the 1.3 million tons that the at the Bonneville acres offer a perfect testing ground for suddenly, she spun off course. Her speed previous mine owner restored voluntarily Salt Flats near their specialized cars and motorcycles. had caused the car’s back wheels to lift each year from 1997-2000. Wendover, Utah, For the last couple of years, however, most just enough to lose traction — a common Racers would like the BLM to increase where Speed Week of the races have been canceled due to occurrence on the crunchy, snow-like sur- the salt-restoration requirements to meet resumed this year poor conditions. The sturdy salt crust that face. Youngblood prayed she wouldn’t flip the older target, and many have been peti- after its cancellation racers rely on is deteriorating, and though tioning the agency to update its 30-year-old for the last two, due as her car spun one 360 after another. to wet weather and Salt Flats management plan. “We feel that he Bonneville Salt Flats formed rough- if they increase the amount of salt they put rough salt. Correspondent Sarah Tory writes from Paonia, Rick Bowmer/ ly 12,000 years ago in the waning days down, the salt flats will come back,” says Colorado, covering Utah, environmental justice T The Associated Press of the last ice age. The massive lake cover- Dennis Sullivan, president of the Utah and water issues.  @tory_sarah ing central Utah began drying up, leaving Salt Flat Racing Association and chairman behind a vast expanse of salt. By the early of the Save the Salt Utah Alliance. 1900s, speed enthusiasts had begun test- Still, that may not solve the problem, ing their cars on the hard wide-open sur- says Brenda Bowen, an associate profes- face, and over the years, faster cars were sor of geology and geophysics at the Uni- built and new records set. versity of Utah. Wetter springs and sum- But land speed racing remained large- mers have grown more common in recent ly a niche sport. There’s little prize money years, preventing the evaporation that or sponsorship, so most racers have regu- regenerates the salt crust. Add the in- lar jobs. And aside from the Bonneville creasing number of people driving across Salt Flats, there aren’t many places where the Salt Flats, and it’s not surprising that they can practice. For the fastest cars — the conditions are changing, says Bowen, those capable of going over 400 mph — the noting that land speed racing also impacts only comparable spot is a dry lakebed in this sensitive environment. the middle of the Western Australian des- For Youngblood, the changes offer a ert. Not surprisingly, most racers prefer hard lesson. “We’re really at the mercy of Bonneville. mother nature,” she says. After a storm Lately, however the once-dependable blew in at the end of September, the fi- cycle that regenerates Bonneville’s salt nal racing event for 2016 was canceled. “I crust has faltered. Right before Speed keep joking with my dad that we need to Week this year, the crust was so slushy come up with a new sport where we race and thin that race officials nearly cancelled remote control boats.”

6 High Country News November 28, 2016 was to spearhead it himself. So in 2014, he ran for the governor’s office on a pro- The pipeline that wasn’t pipeline platform — and won. By this point, Alaska already had a For 40 years, Alaskans have dreamed of building a pipeline state-owned gasline corporation partner- to deliver vast gas reserves to market. Has its time come? ing with several oil companies. Walker’s administration kicked it into high gear. Nancy Fernandez By Krista Langlois Shortly after his election, the state paid presents a climate $65 million for TransCanada’s 25 percent change study that stake in the project. The corporation hired was conducted at n the summer of 1970, Bill Walker was the pipeline for nearly 90 percent of state National Park Service a new CEO with a $550,000 salary, and hanging around the Johnson Trailer revenue. Even if oil prices bounce back, the sites in Oregon and I a state agency estimated that extracting Court in Valdez when he was offered a state’s financial future remains hitched to Washington. North Slope natural gas could soon be job building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. a declining, volatile commodity. But Bill Glenn Nelson more profitable than injecting it to stimu- Walker had completed a year of community Walker believes there’s an obvious path late oil wells. Things looked promising. college but was out of money and couldn’t to prosperity: Build another pipeline, this THE LATEST That changed in August. Cheap natu- afford to keep taking classes. The pipeline time to transport the 34 trillion cubic ral gas had flooded the global market, and felt like his ticket to a better future. feet of natural gas stranded beneath the Backstory the energy research firm Wood Macken- Engineered to carry crude from the frozen North Slope. The National Park zie concluded that the Alaska LNG Proj- Service has long roadless North Slope to ports on the The proposed gasline and accompany- ect’s $45 billion price tag made it one of struggled to diversify southern coast, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline ing liquified natural gas (LNG) plant could the least competitive proposals of its kind its mostly white and brought jobs and revenue to the 49th state, bring 15,000 jobs and a flood of revenue, worldwide. ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips male workforce. transforming it from roughshod frontier which Walker hopes could be used to de- and BP abruptly backed out. During its centennial to global energy powerhouse and lifting velop other industries, such as mining, re- Industry analysts predicted that with- this year, the agency Walker and others from poverty along ducing the state’s dependence on oil. But confronted its out the oil companies’ backing, the proj- the way. Walker used his earnings to put given the current fiscal emergency, a grow- difficulties recruiting ect was dead. But Walker saw this as an himself through college, then law school. ing number of skeptics wonder if the new young, diverse job opportunity for the state to assume full At 27, he became the youngest mayor of pipeline will be a boost — or a blunder. candidates and control of it. Walker believes that by the Valdez. He founded a law firm specializing connecting with mid-2020s, as the global oversupply di- communities of color. in oil and gas issues. And in 2014, the life- he idea of moving natural gas from minishes, Asian countries will be again Nancy Fernandez, long Republican ran as an Independent to the North Slope to a plant where it T hungry for gas. He’s hoping to find outside 25, a bilingual become Alaska’s 11th governor. can be liquified and shipped overseas was investors, such as Asian utility companies, Latina, exemplifies Yet Walker’s tenure coincided with a first proposed in the 1970s. But because to fund the gasline. the problem; she financial crisis. Oil prices have plummet- re-injecting gas into oil wells to bring up completed three Yet many Alaskans and analysts re- ed, thousands of Alaskans have lost their greater quantities of crude proved more internships at main skeptical. “I think investors will be jobs and the state faces a $3 billion budget profitable than shipping it to market, the national parks but very reluctant,” says Larry Persily, who deficit. Meanwhile, many North Slope oil gasline never materialized. Instead, the could not land a has worked on Alaska oil and gas policy wells are slowly drying up. The pipeline project hovered like a mirage — tantaliz- permanent position, for 20 years. He points out that the state thanks to the arcane now carries just a quarter of the crude it ing, but just beyond reach. has barely begun the regulatory process, federal hiring system once did, and the U.S. Energy Information For years, Walker worked behind the creating uncertainties that may dissuade (“Why has the Administration predicts that if production scenes to convince oil producers of the investors. “You don’t know how much the National Park Service continues to drop, it could be decommis- plan’s merits. “I watched all these other project is going to cost or when they’d gotten whiter?” HCN, sioned as early as 2026. LNG projects be developed around the make first deliveries,” he says. 8/22/16). That’s a devastating prospect for Alas- world,” he says. “But ours was like milk Plus, lawmakers are concerned about kans, who depend on oil pumping through with no expiration date — it never got Followup the cost of state involvement: Every dol- to the front of the shelf.” Finally, he be- In early November, lar spent on the pipeline is a dollar that Correspondent Krista Langlois lives in Durango, came convinced that the best way to get Fernandez achieved doesn’t go toward schools, law enforcement Colorado, and frequently covers Alaska. the pipeline built was for the state to take her goal — a full-time or other services. “The budget is strapped,”  @cestmoiLanglois over, and the best way for that to happen job with a federal says state Sen. Cathy Geissel. “Alaskans land agency. She are very concerned about going this alone.” had clocked enough If three major oil companies consider the internship hours to project a financial gamble, she adds, why earn noncompetitive would it be any different for the state? employment status, Still, Persily and Geissel believe that giving her an edge in though the timing isn’t yet right, the a hiring system that favors veterans. Her gasline will one day be built, and they’re status was just about prepared to be patient. But as a mid-term to expire, however, governor forced to make unpopular cuts to when the U.S. Fish education, transportation and social ser- and Wildlife Service vices, Walker doesn’t have time to wait for made her an offer. As a market shift. “Politically,” Persily notes, an urban ranger at “I’m not surprised that the governor has Savannah National said this is the right time.” Wildlife Refuge along the Atlantic Coast in Georgia and South The Trans-Alaskan pipeline, which carried Carolina, Fernandez 2,145,297 barrels of oil daily in 1988, now will focus on carries about 500,000 barrels. Alaska Gov. community outreach Bill Walker, I, has plans to build a natural and managing gas line across the state to refuel the jobs and volunteers. revenue that have been lost during the drop Glenn Nelson in oil production. U.S. Geological Survey

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 that’s simply part of business overhead. Meanwhile, the difficult task of proving Out stealing snakes that a snake was poached falls upon the authorities. In Arizona, reptile poachers slip through the cracks Nor are twin-spotted rattlesnakes the only targets. Arizona boasts 107 species By Tim Vanderpool of native reptiles — 49 lizards, six turtles A male greater sage and 52 snakes. Eleven of them, including grouse. Alan Krakauer, highly coveted Gila monsters and Arizona cc via Flickr ave Prival picks his way across a tum- a few high mountains in southern Ari- ridge-nosed rattlesnakes, are protected by bledown slope, carefully peering into zona and northern Mexico, and climate state law, arguably driving up the price THE LATEST D crevices among the broken rocks. We’re change has already taken a toll. Less and adding to their allure. Backstory alpine-high on a southern Arizona moun- rain means fewer spiny lizards to eat, Internationally, the black market in tain range that shall remain nameless, while rising temperatures force the wildlife is a multibillion-dollar industry, Greater sage grouse numbers have for reasons you’ll soon understand. It’s snakes to move higher up. Now that believed to rank only below drug traffick- plummeted over been another year of crackly drought, and they’ve reached top elevations, there’s ing in the amount of the money it gener- the past decades as wildlife is feeling the heat. That includes nowhere else for them to go. Prival’s re- ates. In turn, the illegal reptile trade may housing and energy the twin-spotted rattlesnakes that Prival search population probably took another be second only to habitat loss as the great- development destroy and his small crew of fellow herpetologists hit from the enormous Horseshoe Fire est threat to species survival. It is a thriv- the bird’s habitat. have been catching, measuring and mark- in 2011. He estimates that perhaps 70 ing subculture, with the animals sold on- When the U.S. Fish ing each July for the past 18 years. The twin-spotteds still dwell on this slope, line, at herp shows and, covertly, in shops. and Wildlife Service snakes are drawn to this vast scree patch down from an estimated 86 in 2009. That provides a strong motivation to re- announced in 2011 by their primary prey, Yarrow’s spiny liz- Poaching is only making it worse. “If plenish inventories with poaching junkets that federal protection ards, which dart before us in flashes of just seven of those snakes are taken by to the Southwest. was warranted, collaborative green. Although the lizards are abundant, poachers,” he says, “that’s 10 percent of “Southern Arizona is a hotbed for conservation efforts the snakes have experienced a slow but the population right there.” that kind of activity, especially with the kicked into high undeniable decline. Although collecting twin-spotted rat- montane snakes,” says Joshua Hurst, di- gear to avoid an Suddenly, sensing movement, the sci- tlesnakes is illegal in Arizona — and a rector of the Arizona Game and Fish De- Endangered Species entist drops to a squat. Perhaps it was federal law called the Lacey Act prohib- partment’s Operation Game Thief. But no Act listing. Last just a trick of the light. But it could have its buying and selling protected wildlife one knows just how many reptiles are be- September, the been a twin-spot: “As soon as they see you, — there’s little chance that thieves will ing snatched each year. “It’s one of those feds announced they dive,” he explains with a sigh, adjust- be caught. Even if they are, they likely unknown things,” Hurst says. “We don’t that the bird ing the leather welder’s gloves needed for won’t pay more than a few hundred dol- have a clue.” would not be listed (“The Endangered catching venomous snakes without be- lars in fines. For commercial dealers, who And bringing poachers to justice is a Species Act’s biggest coming a statistic. He looks around, to see can earn thousands from a single animal, heartbreaking challenge. “The amount of experiment,” HCN, if anyone’s watching. 8/17/15). Western twin-spotteds are hardly the biggest rattlers, barely two feet long and Followup thin as a thumb. But they’re pretty, with In early November, parallel, rust-colored dots trailing down federal officials their backs, and sleek, almond-shaped released a plan to heads, and that makes them highly prized gather data about among collectors. As does the fact that the 500,000-square- taking them is prohibited by Arizona law. mile sagebrush On popular internet reptile-trading sites habitat that sage such as kingsnake.com, a prime twin-spot grouse and 350 other species depend can easily fetch $1,500. on. This blueprint And snake poachers know about Pri- for science-based val’s long-running research locations. As decisions is a major a result, his crew spends much of its field step in Interior time chasing off guys who lurk around Secretary Sally Jewell’s with snake hooks and canvas bags. “Ev- 2015 strategy to eryone will say they just want to photo- reduce the size and graph the snakes,” Prival says. “So I’ll say severity of rangeland to them, ‘Hey, this is a protected species. fires, check the spread of invasives Can you leave your collecting gear in the like cheatgrass, and trunk?’ But some people, when they think restore ecosystem I’m not looking, will go take the gear back health. “This is the out of their trunk.” biggest systemic effort Occasionally, his team even inad- to learn more about vertently helps the thieves. “Sometimes those ecosystems that a snake will get away from us, and now we’ve ever seen,” John we’ve shown them where a snake is,” he Freemuth, professor of says. “It makes it pretty stressful.” public policy at Boise State University, told The twin-spot’s range is limited to the Associated Press. Jodi Peterson Tim Vanderpool is a Tucson-based journalist who writes about politics, environmental issues and the U.S.-Mexico border.

8 High Country News November 28, 2016 effort it takes to catch somebody doing to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service re- that is unbelievable,” he says. “We change vealed only a single illegal-take violation our tactics, and they change their tactics.” for all species of wildlife over the past Ploys have included the use of decoy Gila three years across the Western states, monsters, chilled down to immobilize including Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, them and placed beside roads frequented California, Utah, Nevada and Colorado. by nighttime thieves. “Then the poach- But that case involved a violation of the ers became privy to that,” he says. “They Endangered Species Act, rather than the reach down and touch the (Gila monsters) Lacey Act. to see if they’re cool or not. If they are cold, Gene Elms is law enforcement branch the poachers just get away from it and chief for Arizona Game and Fish. When leave.” asked about the dealer’s assertions, he Thieves often place stolen reptiles in pauses. “If they are collected illegally, ice chests and stash them in motel rooms that label follows them throughout all the or even roadside shrubbery for later re- states,” he says. “But this shows the diffi- trieval. Sometimes, newly caught animals culty of tracing the trajectory of these rep- are quickly handed off to inconspicuous tiles, and proving that the person who is associates, perhaps an innocent-looking actually in possession of them knew they family driving down the road. were stolen.” Another complication comes Still, from July 31, 2013, to Oct. 13, with the patchwork of state laws across 2016, a 16-member Game and Fish team the nation, which are often more lax than wrote 31 citations for illegal reptile taking those in Arizona. in southern Arizona’s poaching hotspots. There lies the rub: The nation is a mé- While that may not sound like much, lange of reptile regulations, and poachers Hurst notes that each citation can contain know them intimately. They also under- a fistful of violations, raising the stakes stand that once they make it out of one for thieves. Oftentimes, the cases are sim- state, like Arizona, they’re not likely to ply resolved with fines and never make it see that state’s laws enforced anywhere to court. else. To bring states’ laws more into sync, It helps when the federal government the Tucson-based Center for Biological Di- gets involved. Unfortunately, that’s not versity has started a campaign to clamp often: Cosme Lopez, a spokesman for the down on the rampant turtle trade. That U.S. attorney for Arizona, couldn’t recall a could spark more consistent protections single reptile case prosecuted by his office. for all reptiles, according to the center’s And a Freedom of Information request herpetofauna attorney, Collette Adkins. “It’s slowly becoming a domino effect,” she says. “Many states are beginning to restrict the sale of native reptiles, and Maria Felix, who oversees the Pima Coun- p Dave Prival those states are now putting pressure ty court. “But until the state Legislature measures a twin- on other states that don’t have the same finds a reason to change them, it’s not go- spotted rattlesnake protections.” ing to be taken seriously.” as part of a research International enforcement is even However, there have been some victo- project that’s lasted 18 spottier. The World Wildlife Fund esti- ries, such as when a dealer was nabbed years. Poaching has reduced the population mates that some 9 million herps (reptiles with one of Dave Prival’s twin-spotted of the snakes he and amphibians) are exported annually rattlesnakes in 2006. On the dealer’s in- researches. from the United States. But only a small ternet ad, the snake’s tell-tale research Tim Vanderpool number of species are regulated by a glob- markings — each rattle segment is paint- al accord called the Convention on Inter- ed a different color — were still visible, national Trade in Endangered Species of proving conclusively that the reptile had Wild Flora and Fauna. They don’t include been illegally taken in Arizona. It was, the twin-spotted rattlesnake. however, a bittersweet triumph: The Even in Arizona, state prosecutors South Carolina dealer faced a mere $525 rarely take up poaching cases. And when fine. The snake was eventually returned they do, judges are often blasé. “We try to Arizona, where the Game and Fish De- to educate the courts,” says Gabriel Paz, partment used it as a public-education t Daniel Marchand, Game and Fish’s law enforcement pro- tool. curator at the Phoenix gram manager for southeastern Arizona. Prival believes that only tougher fed- Herpetological “But all of our cases in recent history were eral laws, such as one prohibiting the sale Society, introduces misdemeanors.” Misdemeanors don’t get of any live wildlife — along with more visitors to Fredrick, much attention on crowded court dockets money for enforcement and education — a Gila monster that — a fact professional reptile thieves count will significantly reduce the illegal reptile was rescued from an on. trade. In the meantime, he says, the occa- apartment complex But this may be starting to change. sional bust can have a ripple effect. “The in Scottsdale, In 2012, southern Arizona welcomed the collecting community is pretty tight-knit, Arizona. The Phoenix Herpetological Society nation’s first Animal Welfare Court, de- and when you catch somebody, they hear works with Arizona signed to adjudicate animal abuse and about that sort of thing. So if you catch Game and Fish to wildlife cases. While the court has yet to enough people that it becomes a hassle, confiscate illegally hear a poaching case, game officials hope collectors may say, ‘Well, Arizona is not a caught animals and to use it as a future tool. “We do what we good place to go.’ I think that really is the give them temporary can under the state statutes,” says Judge hope.” homes. Brooke Warren

www.hcn.org High Country News 9 THE HCN COMMUNITY

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10 High Country News November 28, 2016 DEAR FRIENDS

Río: A Photographic Journey Dorothy Nelson | Littleton, CO Down the Old Rio Grande Dale & Barbara Nichols | Boise, ID Come to our Melissa Savage, editor Soren Nicholson | Fort Collins, CO 144 pages, $29.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2016 Bob Nordstrum | Albuquerque, NM open house! Roy O’Connor | Missoula, MT The Río Grande snakes its way through the Southwest, telling the long, rich history of the Puebloan, Spanish, Mexican and Anglo set- Gary & Kathy O’Neal | Portland, OR As a nonprofit newsmagazine, High tlers who lived and worked along its banks. In Río, geographer and Donald Paine | Glenwood Springs, CO Country News has always been dedi- conservationist Melissa Savage has assembled a tribute to the river Diane Panozzo & Dan Hooper | Tie Siding, WY cated to independent reporting about and its people. James & Cynthia Pardikes | Aurora, CO the West and its communities. A big The book follows the course of the 1,900-mile-long waterway, Bill & Joan M. Parker | Springville, CA thanks to all our supporters and donors exploring floods, crossings and cultivated fields, ultimately confront- Michael Pfeil | Union, WA for helping us continue to dig deep into ing the river’s end at the Gulf of Mexico. A variety of essayists help Robert Polk | Snowflake,A Z important stories. We’re going to be illuminate the black-and-white photos, which document river life from the 1800s through the 1900s. Mabel P. Pool | Gresham, OR listening to and relying on our readers Río is a celebration of place, of how the people who lived there Lorraine Potter | Tacoma, WA more than ever, and we now have a tip shaped the river, and were in turn shaped by it. As Savage writes in Stephen Powell | Central, SC form online: hcne.ws/story-tip. the preface, describing her own experience living by the river in north- William Porter | Las Vegas, NV In other news, Gretchen King was ern New Mexico: “I have become who I am because of where I have Myron & Lamona Price | Dove Creek, CO recently promoted to director of engage- been.” Anna V. Smith David Primrose | Broomfield,CO ment; she’ll keep on leading social Rob Przybylo | Wheat Ridge, CO media and impact strategies and devel- Two women from San Juan Pueblo, now known as Ohkay Chuck Reiber & Diana Davis-Reiber | oping media partnerships. Our current Owingeh, clean baskets of wheat by submerging the grain in an Grand Junction, CO editorial intern, Anna V. Smith, will stay

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www.hcn.org High Country News 15 16 High Country News November 28, 2016 FEATURE By Kate Schimel | PHOTOGRAPHS BY ZACH DOLEAC

A Weird and Perfect Wilderness In southwest Oregon, a desolate landscape offers lessons on the modern wild

ot many people visit the Kalmiopsis Gabe kicks the stump again to show its frailty. Wilderness. Situated at the intersection When Jill, a small, dark-haired woman with a of the Siskiyou and Klamath ranges, it is capable air, tells him to knock it off, he mimes an inhospitable, almost unapproachable urinating on it. place. Most of its ridges rise just a few His anger spent, he retreats to the side of the thousand feet, and many of its 180,000 trail and pulls out a bag of Cheetos. acresN remain scarred from a massive fire that This isn’t my first time in the Kalmiopsis. burned through its scrubby forest of Douglas fir, I’ve experienced its brutality before, and every Jeffrey pines and manzanita over a decade ago. time I think of it, I get an odd, dusty taste of fear It’s a brutal place, whipsawed by the seasons and in my mouth. But I can’t forget about it, either. still barricaded by deadfall from the fire. Only a I’ve come back to understand why people like the handful of trails breach the wilderness border, Howes — and people like me — care about the and even fewer cut to its heart. The shortest Kalmiopsis, and whether it matters that we do. backpacking trip becomes a thorny, prickly, dangerous endeavor. My first trip here was inspired by a college But despite — or maybe because of — its chal- professor, a native-plant enthusiast who pointed lenges, Gabe and Jill Howe have built their lives me to the work of Lilla Leach — the Oregon around the Kalmiopsis. Their daughter, Azalea, is botanist who, in 1930, identified the elusive named for one of the area’s flowering plants, and Kalmiopsis leachiana, the fragrant and secretive their son, Carter, for one of its creeks. They spend flowering shrub from which the wilderness draws their vacations clearing its brush and swimming its name. She spent weeks deep in the Kalmiopsis in its rivers. They founded the Siskiyou Mountain each year, botanizing while her husband, John, Club, and with the help of a small trail crew, they managed their burro team. In a speech at a gar- have beaten back overgrowth and cut through den club meeting, Leach described coming upon a thousands of fallen logs in order to reopen a few patch of Kalmiopsis leachiana: “Before us, beside paths into the wilderness. the trail, lay a patch of low evergreen bushlets, On a dry September day, I get my first taste simply covered with deep rose flowers, vividly of their oddball devotion. We’re five or so miles pink in the sunshine. Thrilled? We were!” She put down one of the routes they’ve cleared, stand- that first specimen in a plant press and wrote ing on a bare ridge at a fork in the trail. The next to it: “#2915. June 14, 1930. Gold Basin — right-hand trail will take us to the far side of the the only flower on the whole ridge.” wilderness. The left cuts across the ridge and The place had a long history of human habita- down to a defunct dude-mining operation known tion by the time the Leaches arrived. The North- as Emily Camp. Pointing the way to Emily Camp west tribes came first, leaving traces hikers have is a freshly carved sign hung on a stump by one found along the high ridges, followed later by of the Siskiyou Mountain Club volunteers. To my miners and homesteaders. John and Lilla Leach eyes, it’s a helpful marker in a landscape almost are part of a small tribe that knew the place’s devoid of them. But Gabe, a round and ruddy- nasty side and loved it anyway. In a 1966 Christ- faced man in his 30s, is enraged, kicking the mas letter, reproduced in the book The Botanist stump and threatening to knock it down. Speci- and Her Muleskinner, John Leach writes, “We fications, he tells me: In order for a trail sign to worked Yellowstone, Yosemite, Death Valley, meet Forest Service standards, it needs to have a Crater Lake, Glacier and some other parks ... but post four feet tall and a sturdy base made of piled Curry (County, home to the Kalmiopsis) is and rocks. This graying stump is liable to fall down has always been our love. At one time, we were as it decays, or be buried in snow when winter looked upon as knowing that territory better than comes. He says it makes the already-scrappy Sis- any other persons. (The locals) called us the mule kiyou Mountain Club look like an amateur outfit. people.”

Jill Howe, ax in hand, hikes through young Douglas-fir on the Babyfoot Lake Rim Trail in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness. www.hcn.org High Country News 17 It isn’t a place for the faint of heart. It’s“ a place you’ll go and scratch your head and ask why you’re here. —Barbara Ullian, Friends ”of the Kalmiopsis For a century, logging and mining a half-million acres burned, much of it had nibbled at the edges of the area. The within the bounds of the wilderness and Leaches’ botanizing helped prove that surrounding roadless areas. Following its desolate-looking hills harbored some the burn, the Forest Service, nudged by remarkable habitat: On maps of the President George W. Bush, planned sal- Pacific Coast, it is one of the most signifi- vage logging and associated road building cant swaths of protected land between in areas that advocates had hoped would Olympic National Park and the Mexican be added to the wilderness. Years of fierce border, a rare intact area of lowland for- controversy and environmental push- est that offers a potential safe haven to back ensued. Eventually, the promise of plant and animal species whose habitat revenue from logging sales evaporated, is threatened by the warming climate. curtailing much of the planned logging It is also part of one of the most diverse and road building. The Kalmiopsis largely ecoregions in the Lower 48 states, home receded from the national dispute over to one of the most diverse temperate coni- land use. fer forests in the world, and a continental Visitor numbers, which had never hotspot for, of all things, snail species. been high, dropped even lower, and the The rivers that flow out of it help provide trails, built by previous generations clean water to towns like Gasquet, Cali- of miners, loggers and Forest Service fornia, and Brookings, Oregon, as well as employees, continued their slow slide into to the salmon that draw fishermen. impassibility. The wilderness, left alone, Because of these virtues, the Forest slowly recovered from the Biscuit burn. Service set aside a portion of the Kalmi- When I graduated college with a degree in plant biology, my partner, Ethan Linck, and I followed in Leach’s footsteps, heading south from Portland, Oregon, to the Kalmiopsis. The days that followed were remarkable for their isolation: We saw no other cars at the trailhead, and only one other person in five days of backpacking. On the second afternoon, we followed a trail to the banks of the Illinois River. Here, near an abandoned homestead, the water pooled in a white stone bowl rimmed with submerged green plants, providing a home to water snakes and salamanders. For two glorious hours, we swam in the cold water, diving off the rocks again and again, watching these creatures wriggle in the verdant growth, and waiting for the heat to dissipate. But this moment of pure enjoyment was followed by several days of bushwhacking, mostly uphill, through peeling manzanita bushes, fallen trees and poison ivy. After three days, we turned tail and made for home. But I carried the pleasurable memory of that pool with me, and, far opsis as a “wild area” in the 1940s. In from the wilderness, more enjoyable rec- Kalmiopsis and moved his family from Kalmiopsis leachiana, 1978, Congress expanded that protected ollections began to outshine those of the California to southern Oregon. namesake of area, designating a total of 179,817 acres bushwhacking and the heat. The relationship between the Kalmi- the Kalmiopsis as wilderness. This fell far short of some After that trip, we gradually entered opsis and the people that surround the Wilderness, in a burned area. advocates’ hopes; at the time, as many as the small crowd of Kalmiopsis devotees. wilderness is far from straightforward. Michael Kauffmann/ a half-million acres were without roads, I learned that emails about trail condi- “It isn’t a place for the faint of heart,” backcountrypress.com meaning they could potentially be desig- tions, treasured spots and damage done Ullian says. “It’s a place you’ll go and nated as wilderness. Many of those acres to the wilderness circulated among a scratch your head and ask why you’re remain roadless, and in the decades since, dozen or so “Friends of the Kalmiopsis,” here.” both advocacy groups and the Depart- the name of both an advocacy group It’s a place that tends to draw people ment of Agriculture have proposed desig- and an informal collection of inter- on the edge: people who go seeking rare nating some or all of them as wilderness. ested parties. These include Gabe Howe; flowers, carrying just enough in their But the Kalmiopsis Wilderness has Steve Marsden, a former Forest Service packs to survive a few nights of sleeping remained at its originally designated size, employee and activist who now spends under bushes; people who commandeer a in part because of the Biscuit Fire. When weeks travelling off-trail along the wil- forgotten corner to grow pot; people who it raced through here in July of 2002, it derness’ bare ridges; and Barbara Ullian, head for the harsh, serpentine hillsides was the largest recorded wildland fire the daughter of a fisherman who chanced to escape the troubles of the human in the continental United States; nearly upon the clear waters that flow out of the world. Gabe Howe tells a story of a man,

18 High Country News November 28, 2016 clad only in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, on a winding trip, from one edge of the bare slopes, but it also nurtures a group The “moonscape” of who took a left where he should have wilderness to the other on the 26-mile of rare plants uniquely adapted to it. the Kalmiopsis, created gone right and ended up spending eight Trans-Kalmiopsis Trail, newly cleared by Earlier, we were shielded from the full by the 2002 Biscuit nights wandering the wilderness. Months the Siskiyou Mountain Club. sweep of the wilderness by the ridge. Fire, which burned after he was rescued, one of Howe’s crew It was a proposal we couldn’t resist. Now we can see, in every direction, the most of the wilderness leaders, deep in the wilderness, hap- But once we hit the trail, the romance dreary, sunburned planes of the Kalmi- area’s 180,000 acres of Douglas-fir, Jeffrey pened across the fruitless “HELP” he had was over. opsis’ low mountains. The ridge is dotted pine and manzanita. spelled out in stones. with Jeffrey pines, recognizably conifer- Fire suppression My own frustrating experience gradu- Our group consists of Ethan and me, ous but exotically warped and twisted. A efforts and salvage ally softened in my memory. Ethan and Gabe and Jill Howe, and Tom Piel, a characteristic species of the Kalmiopsis, logging, including the I talked often of going back, and argued volunteer and donor for the Siskiyou they were untouched by the fire. Though now-closed logging about whether any other wildernesses Mountain Club. Piel, a local kayaker, they provide something to look at, they do road seen here, took an came close to its oddly alluring rigor. is scoping out a route to the Chetco little to block the sun. additional toll. We daydreamed about moving to a town River. After Gabe’s battle with the trail Still, I miss them as we descend the nearby and spending more time with the marker, we take a right turn and head ridge’s north face, through what the Kalmiopsis. Several times we skirted its up a breezy ridgeline of serpentine soil. Howes call “the moonscape.” We are back edges on trips to more hospitable places. This red-tinged, nutrient-deficient layer amid burnt widowmakers, the occasional Finally, Gabe Howe invited us to join him creates the wilderness’ characteristic low-growing laurel the only groundcover.

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 I see a single wildflower, a small purple- twists down the slope. Jill is nowhere in it to.” He thinks for a moment. “Except if blooming creeper a few centimeters wide. sight. Dark possibilities creep into my they were really into plants.” I dawdle in this barrenness, watching mind: Did she head downhill from the the others crawl over logs and pick their stream, deep into the trackless valley? Jill and Gabe Howe both grew up on way toward a wide bowl carved by a Did she trip over deadfall and knock her- the east side of Portland, Jill out in the long-gone glacier where, Gabe says, a self out? Did she stop, thinking I’d appear triple-digit streets at the edge of the city homestead once stood. There, we regroup soon, and start looking for me just as I and Gabe in the town of Boring, just by a spring nearly filled with Darlingto- started looking for her? outside Portland’s city limits. They were nia californicum, a Gabe tells us to stay put, and runs both drawn south to Ashland, where they rare plant native to back down the trail. We watch him walk- met as students at Southern Oregon Uni- southwest Oregon ing back and forth in the bowl, calling versity. Initially, the region didn’t take; When faced with and the California her name. He turns the corner out of after their first year, they dropped out mountains, which sight, and his calls fade. When he doesn’t and returned to Portland for what they miles of bushwhacking, resembles a curved return, Ethan and I discuss contingency both describe as “having a good time.” jade scepter. plans. Unsure if there’s an emergency But they ultimately sought a way back to Gabe and Jill Howe Comforted underway, we’re paralyzed, our dilemma the woods. Gabe worked as a cook for an by the water and made worse by the menace of this empty Appalachian Mountain Club family camp did not turn back, greenery, we smile, place. The sun bakes the bushes around in New Hampshire, while Jill stayed in joke, wade in the us; we retreat as far into the shade as we Portland. They returned to southern Or- but crawled ahead, water, fill our can and wait. egon to visit and, one summer, took a job bottles and head And then I see Jill, walking briskly caring for an isolated ranch on the Rogue their feet only rarely back up towards in our direction with Gabe in tow, and River. One evening, Gabe turned over a another ridge. I’m my fears ebb as they make their way up map of the region and saw that a single touching the ground. the caboose again. the hill. When Jill reaches our packs, she diamond-shaped wilderness filled nearly A few yards down says she went the wrong way, tricked by the entire other side. He was drawn to the trail, I see Jill’s the moonscape. She retraced her steps the Kalmiopsis, captivated by the notion backpack leaning against a log. Bathroom nearly back to the crest of the last ridge that it was an unconquered frontier. stop, I think, and move on. I catch Gabe before she realized her mistake. A half- “Some people still have that explorer in and Ethan and fall into conversation. But hour and a mile’s diversion, but unnerv- them,” Jill says. Jill, the fastest hiker among us, doesn’t ing for all nonetheless. In 2009, after their first few forays reappear. I tell Gabe that I saw her back- As we begin to walk again, I stay close were thwarted by bad trails, Jill and pack some distance back, but he seems on Ethan’s heels. Like Gabe and Jill, we Gabe decided to try to get as far as Carter unconcerned. She knows this place better have a love of this place entwined in the Creek, where we eat lunch the first day. than most. We slow down anyway. Then fibers of our shared life, but neither of They started at Babyfoot Lake, one of the we pause, call her name, walk. Wait, call us can say why — especially right now. few obvious entry points. They skirted her name, then move on. “I’ve spent five years of my life thinking the lake on a relatively well-maintained Finally, we reach a high point. Below about this place,” Ethan says as we walk trail. But within a couple of miles, they us is the bowl that holds the Darlingto- through sun-beaten brush. “But I can’t encountered a forbidding wall of manza- nia spring, and we can see the trail as it think of a single person I’d recommend nita and other shrubs. What happened

20 High Country News November 28, 2016 The Howe family at Babyfoot Lake, near the start of the Trans-Kalmiopsis Trail. From left, Gabe comes up for air; Jill swims below the shimmering reflection of burned trees; Jill spots as 3-year-old Azalea, named for one of the area’s flowering plants, readies for a plunge.

next helps explain why Gabe and Jill the Kalmiopsis, was taken aback. “It’s trash.” He has focused on the physical are so well-suited to the Kalmiopsis (and rugged and remote and hot, and there work of trail maintenance rather than probably each other): When faced with are rattlesnakes and all manner of things the politics of wilderness expansion or miles of bushwhacking, they did not out there,” he says. “I was worried about roadless-area protection, and his trail turn back, but crawled ahead, their feet them being out in the backcountry if an crew is populated with logging types as only rarely touching the ground. When emergency situation arose.” But he says well as young environmentalists. His they headed back the next morning, they the Siskiyou Mountain Club has become right-hand man is a logger named Luke began clearing the trail, work that would a reliable and much-needed partner. Long Brandy, whose motto is “red meat and come to dominate their lives. believes the number of people visiting the board-feet.” “Everything grew from this trail,” Jill wilderness has grown since Gabe and Jill These days, Gabe fields a dozen or so says. began their work, although there’s no offi- trail crewmembers, as well as a few dozen Gabe and Jill founded the Siskiyou cial count. “I’ve definitely seen an increase volunteers, in a professional trail-clearing Mountain Club the following year with in people coming into the office or giving and maintenance operation. They’re fund- a half-dozen volunteers, mostly friends me a call asking me about going into the ed in part through donations and grants and family. Neither had ever built trails wilderness,” he says. Long used to discour- and partly through work with the Forest before. They thought it might take them age people from visiting the Kalmiopsis Service throughout southwestern Oregon. two seasons to clear a path from Baby- when they called his office. These days, he Jill, who has had her hand in every part of foot Lake to Vulcan Lake, 10 miles as points them to the trails Gabe has cleared. the organization, has stepped back to care the crow flies on the other side of the For Gabe, the Siskiyou Mountain for their kids, Azalea and Carter, 3 and wilderness. The first summer, they got as Club’s work marks a return to the 5, and hold down the family’s steady job. far as the confluence of Slide Creek and Kalmiopsis’ history as a logging region. Gabe, meanwhile, after five years spent the Chetco River, where we camp on our When his crew began operating, few local working to clear the Trans-Kalmiopsis first day. It was only in 2014, five years trail crews knew how to run a crosscut trail, now dreams of creating an enormous after they started, that they finally broke saw or do the other handwork required loop that connects all the spots where through at a place called Box Creek for wilderness trail maintenance. The Kalmiopsis leachiana can be seen. Canyon, which we reach by sunset on the Forest Service lacked the staff: The They are proud of the crew’s prog- second day. agency’s budget for trail work nationwide ress, of course, but still, that sign — that Those early trips gave them momen- has atrophied over the years, as wildfire sign! — sticks in Gabe’s craw. We’re miles tum. “At first, there was an imperative spending has increased and other issues, away, and he’s still cursing the volunteer to clear,” Gabe says. “We made mistakes. like permitting, have drawn the agency’s who installed it. “How far have we fuck- But out here, there’s no one to see them.” limited funds. With little knowledge of ing come?” he grumbles, as we descend a He points them out to me, whacking his own and few teachers to turn to, Gabe slippery hillside. roughly trimmed manzanita stumps and took trail-skills classes, and sought out stomping on poorly graded stretches of old-timers and crewmembers from other It’s lunchtime on the second day trail. areas to learn what he needed. when we reach Taggarts Bar, hot, sore When Gabe first filed the paperwork When Gabe started the club, he felt a and scratched from the bushes that required to do trail work in the wilderness, class divide between himself and many still encroach on some stretches of trail. Brian Long, who oversees recreation in local environmental groups: “I’m white There’s a wide flat bench that’s home to the Forest Service districts encompassing trash,” he says. “East Portland white a pile of old dishes, an old bulldozer head

www.hcn.org High Country News 21 and a rusting metal barrel, topped with Club, Gabe says, he “got pushback from the more abstract needs that Zahniser de- a sun-cracked leather boot. A little trail people who said, ‘No humans in the wil- scribed. “It’s exactly what we need in the goes down to a rocky back and a narrow derness.’ ” The Kalmiopsis’ intrinsic eco- age of the Anthropocene,” Landres says. beach, where the Chetco widens out into logical value was enough to satisfy them. “We can feel we’re a small part of this a pool a dozen feet deep and perfectly On the other hand, there’s a cost to letting larger universe. That reinforces the feel- clear. Across from us, the opposite bank this corner of the world lapse into inacces- ings of humility and restraint,” feelings, he drops into the water, but the cliff has a sible hillsides of manzanita and burned says, we need now more than ever. narrow ledge and a stumps. Since a legal wilderness desig- The Kalmiopsis is also a superlative nub to climb up and nation can be undone by a simple act of example of wilderness’ role as an ecologi- There’s a cost to letting jump off. Congress, even formally protected wilder- cal safe harbor. “Wilderness is the best (The rivers of the ness needs a constituency. And wilderness place and maybe the only place that evo- this corner of the world Kalmiopsis really offers something to human visitors: not lution can go on its merry way,” Landres are its oases. The only recreation but also an opportunity for says. As the climate changes, disrupting lapse into inaccessible creeks are welcome, scientific research and discovery, as the ecosystems along with it, those pockets of too — scrubby Leaches found, as well as access to places intact landscape where non-human life hillsides of manzanita and breaks from the where we cannot help but be reminded of can adapt are increasingly precious. The burned-out hillsides our smallness. Howard Zahniser, architect Kalmiopsis, he says, is a perfect example burned stumps. Since a legal — but the rivers are of the Wilderness Act and former head of such a place. It’s rare to find a swath of perfect. Bordered by of The Wilderness Society, wrote that low-lying hills as intact and protected as wilderness designation smooth river rocks, wilderness was intended to serve “a need these among the alpine and desert areas gravel beaches and to maintain an awareness of our human that make up most legally designated unburned forest, relationships to all life, the need to guard wilderness areas. And the region’s plant can be undone by a their cool shallows ourselves against a false sense of our own diversity is off the charts. and colder depths self sufficiency.” Places humans never visit The boundaries of the Kalmiopsis simple act of Congress, distract me at my do not meet that need. may shift. A group of organizations, in- desk months later.) The Kalmiopsis will probably never cluding the Friends of the Kalmiopsis, is even formally protected We ditch our provide the kind of blissful recreational advocating for a mining exploration and packs gratefully. experiences portrayed in outdoor-equip- development withdrawal on more than wilderness needs a We swim, bask on ment catalogs. Zach Collier, a river guide 100,000 acres around the wilderness, the rocks, and swim who occasionally runs trips on the Illinois which would temporarily halt two pro- constituency. again. We nap and and the Chetco, told me that he grills his posed nickel mines and prevent further read and eat. It prospective clients. “When people call me mining development around its fringes. turns out that Jill to book it, I actively try to talk them out Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Gabe have another bag of Cheetos, of it,” he says. “It’s physically demanding has introduced several bills that would and they offer some to Ethan and me. and not much fun.” extend more permanent protections and Tom reads and dozes in the shade. But Peter Landres, an ecologist with halt mining on a 17-mile stretch of the The fact that so few people come here, the U.S. Forest Service and an expert in Chetco River. And there are whispers some say, makes it an ideal wilderness. In wilderness studies, says the very difficulty about expanding the wilderness, of real- the early years of the Siskiyou Mountain of visiting the Kalmiopsis helps it fulfill izing the dream early defenders had of a

22 High Country News November 28, 2016 Trail work on Babyfoot Lake Trail, where progress is measured one felled log at a time. From left, Gabe uses a wedge in the early-morning hours; Jill and Gabe use leverage to move a heavy chunk of tree Gabe had cut earlier that day. Below, the Howe family has breakfast at their campsite near Babyfoot Lake. From left, 5-year-old Carter, named for a creek within the wilderness, Gabe, Jill and Azalea.

half-million acres of relatively untouched rocky outcroppings and landslides high on as possible. It’s been a game of evading landscape away from the sprawl of the some of the slopes, rather than just flat the lingering effects of the burn. But as Willamette Valley and the San Francisco planes. The trails are loose and covered in we climb, we get a glimpse of what the Bay Area. charred bark, fire-touched branches and Kalmiopsis might have been like before Meanwhile, Gabe crankily straddles other blackened tree bits. By the river, I the Biscuit Fire. We pass through small two visions of wilderness, objecting to fell in love with this place anew. Now, I’m gullies that avoided the worst of the burn. both human-free wilderness and indus- backpedaling. It’s so plain, so unappeal- Tiny sapling conifers share the under- trial tourism. The Kalmiopsis is not an ing, so scarred. I’m tired and discouraged. growth with happy-looking shrubs. The untouched ecological preserve: The scars I wonder if I’m just a fool, drawn to this plants are all green, not red and oxidized of the Biscuit Fire prevent purist think- place by Gabe’s tall tales and passion. Is from the sun. Leaves and twigs litter ing, as do caches of old mining equipment there any point in caring about a land- the trail, rather than charcoal and fallen and the old road cuts built for mining and scape like this? I ask Tom what he thinks logs. From the woods come the sound of logging that sometimes form the basis for of it. “Not enough trees,” he says. He bird trills and chatter, whose absence I’d today’s hiking trails. wishes he’d gotten here before the fire, registered but not understood in the past But even though he is proud of his when the trees were still standing. days. I feel relief, at ease for the first time trail work, Gabe says he’d be fine if the I mention my doubts to Ethan as well. since we entered the wilderness. wilderness had no signs, and people had The son of two conservationists, he chides And then we break treeline, walking to rely on experience and old-fashioned me, pointing to the Kalmiopsis’ vastness out on to one of the Kalmiopsis’ serpen- route-finding to navigate its trails. He and ecological uniqueness. tine spines where almost nothing grows. favors a bit of a Goldilocks approach: Just I mull his response as we trudge up Here, the land falls away in wide, flat enough trail to get in, but not enough to towards the ridge above Taggarts Bar. planes, and I can see for miles into the get around easily. A few hundred yards from the top, Gabe heart of the wilderness and beyond to its “It’s kind of a birthright as an Ameri- passes me. I trail along behind him. edges. It’s very like the view I saw on the can to be able to see frontier,” he says. Then I walk through an aromatic cloud first day but only now, refreshed from the In the Kalmiopsis, he has found a place of sweet peppermint. Ceonothus, Gabe greenery, do I appreciate it. Here, before that defies domestication and clings to says. These bushes grow throughout the me, are the plain, ugly pyramids of the its frontier essence; this, he says, is the wilderness, germinating after the fire, wilderness, and trees or no trees, I decide: k c n i wilderness quality he values the most. many thousands of bushes that shade my I do love this place. I’m reminded of the L

“There’s a boundary around it, a wil- meandering course across the landscape. value of loving wild things that can’t love n tha derness boundary,” he says. “That’s politi- For me, it’s a breath of fresh air, a rebuke you back — the elk that passed our tent E cal but that doesn’t make it wilderness. to my dark musings. on my first trip, the bears whose spoor Kate Schimel is the It’s wilderness because it’s ugly, rugged The next day, we pack up camp for the Ethan and I followed then, and the moun- deputy editor-digital and remote.” last time and begin the final climb, up to tain lions whose traces we never saw, the at High Country News. the complex of ridges that will take us to salamanders and the warblers and snails,  @kateschimel As the day drags on and the midday Vulcan Lake on the wilderness’ western and all those who share these scarred heat leaves the air, we load up and begin side. For days, we’ve been weaving up hills and valleys. There, in the unrelent- This story was funded the 1,500-foot climb out of the river can- and down burnt ridgelines. Our camps ing sun, with the bare soil at my feet, I with reader donations yon. We can see hillsides with live trees have been tucked by springs, out of the stand humbled — just one of the many to the High Country still growing on them. We can also see wind and as far away from widow-makers beasts to have passed this way. n News Research Fund.

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Trucks and heavy equipment sit idle in Hobbs, in New Mexico’s Permian Basin, where oil and gas production has declined due to low energy prices. © Roberto E. Rosales/Albuquerque Journal via ZUMA Wire When it comes to energy, Trump’s promises are empty

On the day after Election Day, the big- President-elect Trump promised to been shut down. The curtailments came gest newspaper in the oil and gas patch “lift restrictions on … energy reserves” from settlements with the Environmen- in northwestern New Mexico ran a and to dismantle environmental regula- tal Protection Agency over Clean Air Act story headlined: “Trump win has energy tions. But will the drill rigs go back up as violations, and because California didn’t industry leaders hopeful.” a result? No. Will laid-off energy workers want to buy coal power anymore. Killing Most of the local industry folks get their jobs back? No. Regulations have the Clean Power Plan — even elimi- quoted by the Farmington Daily Times nothing to do with this bust. Commodity nating the EPA — won’t restore these said that President-elect Donald Trump booms and busts are driven by supply plants to their former smog-spewing, would relax regulations on drilling on and demand, not regulations. coal-burning glory. public land. Meanwhile, over on Face- The only way to kick-start the falter- While the environment and the OPINION BY book, energy workers were ecstatic, con- ing industry would be to increase oil and people who live near the rigs are getting Jonathan vinced that a President Trump would put natural gas prices. And the only way to a break during this bust, the economic

La Folie®, Transatlantique Kriek®, Le Terroir®, New Belgium® and the bicycle logo are trademarks of New Belgium Brewing Co. Thompson them back to work almost immediately. do that is to curtail supply or increase pain in the oil patch these days is real, They should know better. demand — no easy task with a global and deep. Individuals who just a few The San Juan Basin’s energy-reliant commodity. years ago were raking in $80,000 or communities have been hit especially Natural gas supply and demand, and more per year are struggling to hang on. hard in recent years. The first blow came therefore prices, would be somewhat eas- City, county and state governments have in 2008, after horizontal drilling and ier to manipulate, since the commodity is watched revenues plummet. It’s the sort multi-stage hydraulic fracturing opened regional, not global, meaning we export of malaise that breeds resentment and up huge shale formations in the East. and import very little of the stuff. A pres- that spurs people to vote for the likes of Shortly thereafter, oil prices sky- ident could boost demand by subsidizing Trump. rocketed to as high as $150 per barrel, a nationwide fleet of natural gas-burning It is maddening and tragic to see prompting drill rigs to pop up again long-haul trucks, which might make gas these people put so much hope in one all over North Dakota’s Bakken forma- drillers happy, but not the oil drillers person, particularly when that person is tion and, a little later, in the San Juan (since it would displace gasoline-burning clearly so unequipped to deliver on his Basin’s Gallup shale. The fossil fuel mojo trucks). He could ram through liquefied promises, and so likely, in the long run, was back, until it wasn’t. As global sup- natural gas export-terminal permits, to make their lives more miserable by re- ply increased faster than demand, prices opening up foreign markets to domestic moving what few social safety nets exist. started dropping, and OPEC declined to natural gas. If foreign demand was high What will they do after Trump has cut production. In 2014 prices crashed, enough, that might do the trick, but finished rolling back all the regulations, and the oil boom busted. Trump’s promise to kill the Trans-Pacific dismantling the rules that keep us safe It’s a simple equation. When demand Partnership would damage, not help, ef- and our environment healthy, and they outpaces supply, prices increase. When forts to sell natural gas overseas. still don’t have a job? Who will they prices get high enough to make drilling A president could regulate power blame then? profitable, companies invest in develop- plant emissions in such a way that For nearly 20 years, the much celebrated Wood Cellar at New Belgium has ment and put people to work. When all encourages utilities to replace coal with Jonathan Thompson is a contributing that drilling increases supply, prices natural gas in the electricity generation editor at High Country News. He is pioneered traditional, wood-aged sour beer in the United States. Today, the crash, as do the drill rigs. Today, oil mix. Oh, wait, that one’s already in the currently writing a book about the 2015 largest wood-aged sour beer program in the country continues its quest to prices are stubbornly stuck below $50 works. It’s called the Clean Power Plan, Gold King Mine disaster in Colorado. per barrel. which Trump has pledged to repeal. bring world-class knowledge, creativity and experience to your glass. WEB EXTRA Just one rig is working in the San The San Juan Basin is also coal Writers on the Range is a syndicated service of To see all the current Juan Basin, and the vast equipment country, so at least the workers at the High Country News, providing three opinion col- Check out the latest at NewBelgium.com/Sour Writers on the Range yards in Farmington and Aztec, New mines and two massive power plants umns each week to more than 200 media outlets columns, and archives, Mexico, are crammed full of idle rigs. will get to go back to work, right? Wrong. around the West. For more information, contact visit hcn.org Thousands of workers have lost their jobs. Coal-burning units at both plants have Betsy Marston, [email protected], 970-527-4898.

The Anthropological Aesthetic On the captivating word-magic of a dry, dusty academic text

Over the past couple of months, I have late Arizonan writer Charles galloped across Comancheria with the Bowden: “memories of the Texas Rangers, discovered lost Epicu- future.” rean manuscripts in the company of the Renaissance humanist Poggio Bracciolini, I found Miwok at a yard endured a raging snowstorm conjured sale three years ago and by Tolstoy, and contemplated the cloud- bought it for a dime, mostly reflecting Yangtze with ancient Chinese because the cover — a poets. black-and-white photograph I am an omnivorous reader: sonnets, taken in 1880 of two painted, satires, you name it. I’ll read and read, deadpan, headdress-wearing regardless of subject, so long as the words fellows — was intriguing and observing sing to the heart and the lines snap a little spooky. Over the past handful of the tattooing of an adolescent girl, together in the mind like puzzle pieces summers, I’ve explored what once was these allow for the most expansive, im- — so long as it’s “good” writing, painstak- the core of the Sierra Miwok’s territory, portant and enlivening thought a person ingly crafted to create some intellectual- a huge swath of “Gold Country” running ... why not can think: There are other ways emotional movement within me. from around Mariposa in the south to to live. Our way right now, Strange, then, given my appreciation around Placerville in the north, but I something with its glowing screens of literary artistry, that the best book I’ve never intended to study the landscape and nature-deficit dis- with pictures encountered in some time is a monoto- or its people. The book was one more order, its drone strikes nous, encyclopedia-style academic text volume on a crowded shelf, that’s all. and La-Z-Boys, its of obsidian originally published in 1933 as part of the Last winter, needing something to Trumps and Clintons, is decidedly obscure Bulletin Of Milwaukee browse at the breakfast table — and why blades, deer- not the only way. That Public Museum series. Miwok Mate- not something with pictures of obsidian bone awls, rial Culture: Indian Life of the Yosemite blades, deer-bone awls, soaproot brushes, Region, written by a pair of University willow cradles, and dance skirts made of soaproot of California anthropologists and based magpie feathers? — I gave Miwok a try. brushes, on interviews with “Native informants,” To my surprise, I was swiftly transported should be a total snooze, right? Outside to a strange and vivid world, one that willow of a few ivory tower-dwellers, primitive- sprang from the empty spaces between skills enthusiasts, and families descended the dry-dusty facts. cradles, from Miwok stock, who cares that a decoc- Women wearing hide skirts chatted tion of skullcap was utilized as a wash as they milled nuts in a bedrock mortar, and dance for sore eyes? Or that acorn mush was golden sunlight on their bare shoulders. skirts made “regarded as insipid” without an accompa- An entire hungry village circled a mead- niment of seed meal? Or that the Plains, ow for a grasshopper drive, beating the of magpie Southern, Central and Northern dialectic insects towards pits and smudge fires. groups each had their own unique terms A hundred pairs of hands worked sinew feathers? for the twined burden basket? and milkweed fiber and grapevine withes It turns out that I care, intensely, and and steatite and soil, crafting from the if you’re a bibliophile, that’s big news. raw earth a richly nuanced way of life. There’s a certain aesthetic at work in Manzanita cider. Miwok — what I’ve taken to calling the Walnut dice games. Anthropological Aesthetic. This is über- Shamans shaking butterfly-cocoon nonfiction, nonfiction that goes so far into rattles. reality it becomes a unique subspecies of Come evening, the book was finished art, a poem-myth about skills, knowledg- and I was exhausted, most every page es, possibilities. Not only is it beautiful, dog-eared and exuberantly underlined. it’s useful. I don’t want to oversimplify things Wanting to better understand the by saying that the American Empire is word-magic of the Anthropological Aes- crashing, taking much of nature down thetic, I picked Miwok up recently and with it, but I can’t deny that, looking read it once more, cover to cover. As with around, absorbing the news and the the fantasy and sci-fi stories that capti- sights, it often feels as though I’m falling. vated me as a kid, for the better part of What to reach for? The Russian masters? 24 hours I inhabited an alternate reality. Vanity Fair? How about a book that But here’s the wondrous thing: It’s a Figure 24 — Baited snare gazes forwards and backwards at the real reality, not a make-believe realm. same time? To borrow a phrase from the Visiting the quarry at “Lotowayaka,”

28 High Country News November 28, 2016 Essay | By Leath Tonino

may seem obvious, but it’s depressingly relentless iterations: X was stone-boiled does it feel to stare for hours into a swirl- easy — and dangerous — to forget. or roasted in ashes, whereas Y was ex- ing eddy, waiting for a shadowy piscine Other ways? Sweet blessed breath of clusively boiled, whereas Z was parched, flicker? And what is it like to snap awake, fresh air and perspective! Miwok provides pounded and eaten dry. the trance of focus broken, a rainbow what Malcolm Margolin, publisher of the On the other hand, what this survey trout glittering in your fist? To find out, magazine News From Native California, of material culture omits (along with Miwok insists, we must wade into the has described as “glimpses of almost for- characters, plot and similar devices) is current ourselves. gotten aspects of our own selves.” any commentary on the meaning of the Still, the question remains: How does artifacts and techniques documented. As mentioned earlier, the highest a basic text — not a masterfully told nar- I’ve come to believe that this absence of pleasure of reading is, for me, a syn- rative or entertaining yarn — cast such a interpretation — this vacuum around the choninzed movement of the intellect and compelling spell? The answer lies, I think, bare, skeletal facts — is actually integral the emotions — that’s when we’re truly in in another quote, this from the Montana to the functioning of the Anthropological the current. The epiphany of “other ways” writer William Kittredge: “Listings are Aesthetic. is primarily mental. What, then, of that attempts to make existence whole and George Saunders, a much-lauded juicy red muscle beating inside the chest? holy in the naming.” contemporary fiction writer, says he cuts In the early pages of Miwok, a truth The no-frills Miwok — essentially everything he can from a story so that most of us would rather avoid forces itself a 150-page ladder of paragraphs with the reader is forced to fill in the gaps and upon the heart with words like “disrupt- rungs labeled “Salt,” “Ear and Nose Pierc- engage. In Miwok, the novelist’s im- ed,” “impacted,” “depleted,” “vanished,” ing,” and “Dogs,” to mention but a few — perative “show, don’t tell” is pushed to an “replaced.” Of the numerous California is surely meant to be consulted, browsed, extreme. For example, the section “Taking tribes decimated and displaced by white not read straight through. When we do of Fishes” offers a tantalizing reference settlers and military troops, we learn read it page by page, though, its thou- to rainbow trout “caught by hand in the that the Sierra Miwok were arguably “the sands of super-specific details form a holes along the banks of creeks and riv- greatest sufferers because the principal pattern of daily life, cycling seasons and ers.” That’s it. No glimpse of interior life, gold-bearing regions lay in their territo- humans in place. This survey of mate- of a real person standing motionless in ry.” It’s a familiar story, one of intricately How does it rial culture isn’t limited to tools and cold water, performing what most of us textured inhabitation and catastrophic ornaments, but encompasses everything today consider an impossible task. violence. Miwok doesn’t tell it outright, feel to stare from the proper technique for harvest- Critics might accuse a book like this instead moving briskly along to the for hours into ing Pinus sabiniana’s cones (twist them of draining a culture’s vitality by pre- fire drills and arrow straighteners and off when they’re green), to how people senting its flutes instead of its tunes, its coyote-skin pillows, but the story haunts a swirling should treat their hair during a period bead necklaces minus the ceremonies the margins of each page nonetheless. of mourning (cut it and bury the locks they adorned. But this spare treatment I encountered this very ghost during a eddy, waiting alongside the deceased). There’s a is precisely what can spark a whole and summer backpacking trip in the Stan- for a shadowy hypnotic, incantatory quality to the holy existence in the imagination. How islaus National Forest, on the Sierra’s western slope. Douglas firs, granite piscine flicker? outcrops, northern flickers galore — these ridges and valleys were once also home And what is to an animal called Homo sapiens. Now they’re a federally protected wilderness it like to snap area where a guy needs a permit to walk awake, the and sleep. Times change, as they say. And cultures, for sometimes ghastly reasons, trance of focus disappear. On that trip, there were moments broken, a charging uphill when I felt as if my heart rainbow trout might explode. It’s just the exercise, I told myself. But then, upon reaching some glittering in incredible vista, I’d want to both weep and laugh: for the beauty of the land and your fist? for its sadness, for the memory — and the future possibility — of people living on it and with it and as part of it. At those moments, I pulled out a certain dog-eared, exuberantly underlined book, took a seat, and read a page at random. Brush assembly house. Digging stick. Warriors in grass caps. Thank you, I said aloud, remembering that morning at the breakfast table, the cover falling open to reveal a whole and holy world I didn’t yet know that I badly needed to read, and read again. Snowberry. Moccasin.

Grizzly bear. Images: Book photos: Thank you, I said, standing up, shoul- Brooke Warren; MIwok Basket: Ernest Amoroso, dering my pack, pushing deeper into the National Museum of range — into that world and this world the American Indian; Snowberry and grizzly and the next world, all at once. bear, NPS.

www.hcn.org High Country News 29 Essay By Peter Friederici A place between Photos by Peter Goin

hat are we supposed to do with our knowledge that we live at the end of nature, that the driver of the Earth’s powerful cycles has become us as much as it is the other thing? WWe have to grieve, of course. And celebrate. It would be a way of acknowledging a truth that we have tried to shirk. Too often when we use the word nature, we employ it as a sort of armor to protect ourselves from blame. Natural disasters come with no blame, no guilt. They just happen: because of the black- box workings of weather, geology, God. Studies have shown that people feel less panic and dismay about natural disasters than about human-caused ones. Somehow the lack of mindful causal- ity behind a fire or flood removes all those difficult questions of guilt. Despite Job’s travails, “Why me, God?” remains an easier question to deal with than “Why me, neighbor?” or, worse, “Why me?” Nature has been an easy out. Let’s say that previous droughts that slammed the American West — like that of the 1890s that killed millions of head of

We have to wrestle with the knowledge that we are not only in a tough spot where practical action is needed, but that we have to understand our own complicity.

cattle and spelled the end of the open range, or that of the Dust Bowl — were natural events. Many of their effects on particular places were the result of particular, often unwise, land uses, but the raw fact of dryness itself, the aching failure of the sky to deliver moisture year after year, we might call natural. Calami- tous, yes, but lacking an ethical edge. The current drought that has caused so much of Lake Submerged green chair, Cedar Canyon. Powell to vanish into clear air is in a different category. It is nature intertwined as thoroughly with human agency as the main stem of the Colorado River merged imperceptibly with its myriad tributaries as the reservoir filled, forming a single that much of what fueled the Powell Expedition’s almost manic whole on which you could sometimes no longer tell just where dash down through the canyons of the Colorado River was a the river had flowed. And so we have to wrestle with the mingled sense of mystery and destiny: the conviction that it was knowledge that we are not only in a tough spot where practi- only by embracing a dangerous unknown that a fledgling coun- cal action is needed, but that we have to understand our own try could grow into what it surely ought to be. complicity. We have fought against nature for so long, spent so much n any timeframe meaningful to people alive today, Glen energy and ingenuity in trying to run the show as gods. Now we Canyon will not house a mountain-fed stream running have succeeded, only to find that the job is so much less clear- through a pristine canyon. cut than we’d thought, more a tangled web of Olympian intrigue Nor will it be managed purely by human intention, as than an easy monotheistic exercise in omnipotence. theI construction of Glen Canyon Dam was. Web Extra But this mess is our new terrain. This is our new task. Rather, the place that we have called Lake Powell is likely to For more Peter Goin I do not wish to diminish the seriousness of the job before be governed by a murky combination of human and natural fac- photographs from us in dealing with a drier West, or a melting Arctic, or erod- tors, and to constitute a huge in-between zone in flux between A New Form ing coastlines. I do not want to gloss over the innumerable and water and land. Much of Glen Canyon is likely to be, for the of Beauty, see inevitable casualties that are going to accompany the too-fast foreseeable future, a place between: between flood and drought, hcne.ws/glen-canyon. changing conditions of our planet. But I do want to point out water and land, human and natural. It will be a liminal place,

30 High Country News November 28, 2016 Maybe the fact that so many places need to be reinvented will enable us to break out of the old forms and make a new start.

ed or improved its setting, the two forces have almost always been viewed as distinctly twain. The result is the logjam we’ve seen in our political system, a grinding paralysis that has made it almost impossible to do anything meaningful about the climate change problem. Maybe what we need instead is the ambiguity that is the new Lake Powell. Maybe the fact that so many places need to be reinvented will enable us to break out of the old forms and make a new start. The Hopi farmers who live on arid mesas not far from the Colorado say they have been experiencing the effects of climate change in striking parallel with the predictions of climate scientists. Less snow falls in winter to soak into the ground. The growing season is longer, the spring winds are worse. And when rain comes in summer, it is less likely than before to come softly. Instead, it comes in torrents that erode the fields and run away in the arroyos without nourishing the roots. The same amount of water might fall, on average, but still the farming is harder. This is known; this is seen. And the Hopi know why. Yes, they have heard what the scientists say about fossil fuel emissions and the greenhouse effect. But the real reason for climate change? It begins, not ends, with human behavior. The climate is changing, according to some Hopi people, because of a failure of prayer, of humility. That is the ultimate reason for the physical changes. And just as the river we see on the ground and the unseen river flowing upstream in the atmosphere above us form a single unbreak- able whole, the torn bond that has sundered prayer from precipitation cannot be made whole again without a proper attitude. Maybe what we need to do, then, is to embrace this new ambiguity, to accept that we are as gods but far from omnipo- tent, that we are rather co-creators, that we are as much nature as what we once labeled as nature because it seemed outside ourselves, but that with this new promotion comes new responsibility that might truly be labeled what has become one of the most clichéd words in American English: awesome. It cannot be downplayed that this acceptance of our new role will be at least as hard as the task that faces the water manag- Anchor chain, Iceberg Canyon. ers in the face of diminishment. It will be akin to the drawing back that young people face as they embrace adulthood, a recog- nition that the unbridled use of new powers without responsibility results only in disaster. constantly in the process of becoming — whether what’s being Some people never manage that. And maybe some societies created is water or land. never manage that. But “never” is not an option anymore. It will be a place of mud and sand and swept-away roots, a Accepting our new role, and responsibility, will be a matter place where the scent of decay might just carry a waft of fresh- of finding poetry in a new mud flat where speedboats once raced ness about it, like a volcanic field that reminds us of the intri- — or in the muddy, debris-filled broth caught in the branches Excerpt from A New cate ever-locking dance between destruction and creation. of drowned cottonwood trees after a wet winter. There will not Form of Beauty: That ambiguity will be hard for many of us — whether be much easy majesty to our way of seeing. Maybe the light Glen Canyon Beyond water managers, tourism advocates or rank visitors — to deal will be flat, the shorelines barren, the red rock stained white. Climate Change with. In purely practical terms, it’s hard to manage a place that (University of Arizona Lake Powell has already been a good place to practice this sort Press). unpredictable: Where will the boat ramps go, and the camp- of sight, with its innumerable rockbound coves that in the stark sites? Should visitors plan to boat, or to hike? How will they get light of noon appear lifeless and abandoned, as if some calam- Peter Friederici is an through the mud flats? ity had already swept away most of life. We will have to gain a award-winning envi- The canyon country has for a long time been one of the layered appreciation of complexity, and of flux. And of our own ronmental journalist purest examples of the human-nature divide that characterizes limitations. who directs the Master much modern American understanding of our surroundings: the of Arts in Sustainable I don’t have a good recommendation for precisely how to do Communities Program wild river subject only to itself, the tame reservoir locked up by that, but I am fairly certain that getting out into the mud — at Northern Arizona engineers. Whether you believe that Glen Canyon Dam degrad- into some mud, somewhere — is a necessary step. University.

www.hcn.org High Country News 31 U.S. $5 | Canada $6

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY Betsy Marston

THE WEST MONTANA “The gun hidden in my back pocket is dying In West Yellowstone, at the Grizzly and to meet the gun in your purse” might be Wolf Discovery Center, captive grizzles the motto of a new dating website for the get to work at fun jobs testing stor- “carry firearm community.” Singles who age containers that are designed to be share a passion for the Second Amend- “bear-resistant.” In the last 10 years, ment might just kindle one for each other, grizzlies, including “the infamous or so goes the expectation of Concealed- Kobuk the Destroyer,” have “brutalized” CarryMatch.com. 425 containers, reports the Jackson Hole News&Guide. Only about three THE WEST out of five bins survived an hour with If you’re an ambitious woman living and Kobuk and his cohort, which is the of- working in the West, it’s entirely possible ficially sanctioned success standard for that you’ve examined your paycheck and a container. But a problem has devel- wondered, “Am I fairly paid compared to oped: “The grizzly bears responsible for CALIFORNIA that slacker, Joe, who does the same job, The U.S. Border Patrol keeps a close tearing containers to shreds are getting watch on the birds. Jim West and do I have any shot at moving up in bored and depressed.” If they can’t this male-dominated company?” Accord- bang around bins because the contain- ing to 147wallst.com, which worked with every hour. They focused on bears living around ers are built to stay firmly seated on the Center for American Progress to collect the Durango, in southwestern Colorado, because the ground, said Forest Service bear expert Scott data, the answers to those questions might well the college town is expanding into prime bear Jackson, “they just lick the bait off the outside be “no” and “no.” Julie Anderson at the Institute habitat — just like Glenwood Springs, Aspen, and leave them alone.” for Women’s Policy Research looked at four key Colorado Springs and Boulder. While the indicators of gender inequality in all 50 states, researchers never figured out exactly how the MONTANA and when it came to the wage gap between wom- bears spent their time, they learned a lot about In other ursine news, what looked like a teddy en and men working full time, six Western states these highly adaptable bruins, and what they’ve bear picnic of 13 grizzles was spotted by the ranked close to the bottom. Wyoming ranked found out might change the state’s policy on pilot of an airplane flying above a ranch in the dead last in the nation, with women making only nuisance bears. For example, researchers found foothills of Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front. 64.4 percent of what men earned, followed by that though bears often visit developed areas Wayne Kasworm, a biologist with the U.S. Utah, fourth lowest, North Dakota, fifth lowest, when they need a food boost, the animals don’t Fish and Wildlife Service, said he’d never seen Montana, sixth lowest, Idaho, eighth lowest, stick around and become addicted to human that many bears in one place; he thinks they and South Dakota, which came in at 20th. It garbage. This new notion of urban-food-as-snack included mothers and daughters “and possibly is a dubious distinction that these six Western challenges the state’s two-strike policy, which even a grandmother.” So why were male bears states also showed up among the website’s “10 calls for killing bears that have been reported missing from this family reunion? Kasworm worst states” when it came to the percentage of more than once for becoming habituated. The said that when the males leave home, they go management jobs and legislative seats held by Denver Post reported other interesting find- farther afield than females, who tend to adopt women. And although 42 states now fund pre- ings from state wildlife officials: While older part of their mother’s turf. At 1,000 bears, the school slots for 3-to-4-year-olds, none of those six bears can thrive in a city, cubs are likely to get population of grizzlies in the Northern Conti- Western states do so, which makes it difficult for hit by cars, since they’ve never had a chance nental Divide Ecosystem, which includes the women to stay in the work force. For the record, to learn to dodge them. And if separated from Rocky Mountain Front, is now the largest in the Mississippi scored as the very worst state for their mothers, cubs are liable to mistake “power Lower 48, and growing, reports the Great Falls working women seeking gender equality. poles for trees, leading to regular electrocutions.” Tribune. Meanwhile, in 2015, there were 1,200 reports of COLORADO “problem bears” across the state, and hunters WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see What we don’t know about bears could kill them, killed more than 1,000 bruins. The allowable kill hcn.org. so Colorado wildlife managers began tracking has doubled over the past decade, and research- Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and 85 bears starting in 2011, using radio collars ers now say that the bear population in south- often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag that told them exactly where those bears were western Colorado is decreasing. photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram.

High Call me a purist —which, indeed, I am, when it comes Country to environmental tinkering — but I think species News “ For people who care about the West. belong where they belong. High Country News covers the important issues and Sandy Wilbur, in his essay, “The case against condors in Hells Canyon,” 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.

32 High Country News November 28, 2016