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TRESPASS
Red
canyon walls ended abruptly. I stepped over sagging barbed wire into
aspens and cottonwoods and came to a house in a clearing and a new
corral made of freshly milled planks set on squared-off posts that had
been treated with pentachlorophenol. A sorrel and two bays stood in
the hot stink of the penta, looking me over. A raggedy, newly-planted
lawn glowed like fresh paint on mud. An irrigation ditch diverted some
of the canyon's lively creek to a hay field where a man was working
with a shovel, irrigating. At the fence near him, a small motorbike.
I
stopped in aspen shade for a while, ate a sandwich, went down the
driveway to the county road. The irrigator noticed me, hurried to his
bike and fired it up. We met at my pickup where he accused me of
sneaking onto his place and then hiding. I explained that it had been
necessary to cross his property line in order to ask permission to
cross. Funny, eh?
No,
not funny. He lectured me. Maybe it was different back east...he'd
noticed my New York plates...but out here in the west, property rights
are taken seriously. I told him Wyoming was my home state and I
understood all of that very
trace
to puzzle over, a stone whose shape or color makes you stop and pick it
up, a weather-carved view across miles of rock upheavals and dry
plains. Travelling like that is addictive. Is it acceptable, then, to
take whatever means possible to satisfy the need? No, not if trespass
means trashing your way through somebody's crop, or antagonizing their
animals. Don't even ask the question, back off. Each situation is
different. All I'm saying is that "No Trespass," or "Private Property"
does not always end speculation.
One
time, remembering grand sweeps of privately held prairie lands in Chase
County, Kansas, I wrote that trespassing was my favorite way of travel.
That was a bit of a stretch, careless writing; I wanted to toss a dart
against bone deep rev-
erence
we re all supposed to feel toward property and its rites of fee simple
and lawyerly priestli-ness. Timber beasts and real estate barons use
that reverence in their backlash against those of us who work to make
enough habitat space for all of us beings, human and the others. I
thought, and still think, that one of the big problems begging for
solution is the problem of curvaceous lines of ecological domains vs
the rectilinear lines of human priority. Various evasions of the
Endangered Species Act...well documented...are interesting models of
how those straight lines trump habitats of not only lowly snails and
darters, but more respectable beings like lynxes, wild horses, wolves,
grizzlies, eagles.
well.
He
as much as called me a liar, then cooled a bit, shifted his anger to
hunters, complained about the never-ending task of defending a small,
private holding in a sea of public (Bureau of Land Management) land. We
settled down to ordinary talk. I learned that the winter had been late
in leaving, had been followed by drought; the alfalfa would be hardly
worth cutting; too late to do much about that, not enough time for
anything; life a constant commuting between town work that produced the
real revenue, and the ranch. His wife held down a regular job too, and
had her own pet project that took up too much of her time.
I
drove away feeling sad. This couple, I wanted them to be getting a
grand kick out of their privileged place. I wanted to imagine them
saddling horses for a ride into wild mountains or rough desert. I
wanted them to show off the place to friends, or even a casual drop-in.
Tree shade and sounds of dashing water, aromas of cottonwood and aspen
and sage, moon rising over redrock canyon. Get rid of those penta
posts, quit trying to make a lawn in the desert. Enjoy!
I
once thought the solution was simple: abolish private property, hold
everything in common. That was youthful enthusiasm grabbing grand
abstractions, evading realities of my particular, somewhat peculiar,
homeland, these United States of America.
Reality,
then, let's grab a handful. At one extreme families work and live on
small land holdings...there are still some of those...and at the other
extreme absentee zillionaires use land as a counter in big corporate
games, or for tax dodge, trophy home, high-end recreation. Presidents
and vice presidents play those games too. We're all obsessed with
possessions, because that happens to be the way things are organized,
in these times and on this continent. The more you possess in the way
of objects or land or animals or
Another
day, another cattle range, the ranch house vacant, no one to ask for
permission. I walked along the fenceline, trying to identify
sparrow-like birds that were using fence posts as launching pads for
forays against aerial insects. Returning, I met the rancher and
confessed to trespass and birdwatching. Showing not the
money,
the greater your prestige and security and the good things a measure of
security offers you and yours. The American Way, a distinctive culture,
enfolds that obsession. We're all in on it. No one of us is free of it.
I
remember an afternoon during what we now call "the first Gulf War," a
few families gathered for food and sociability, one of the
conversations turning to state intervention in land management, a
landowner ranting, "I'm not about to let anybody tell me what I can do
on my own land." About an hour later he and a friend, shotguns in hand,
went rabbit hunting, with a parting thought for the rest of us: "Maybe
we'll shoot an Iraqi."
I'm
not saying that those two attitudes are directly connected, but I do
think they signify two American character traits in these 21st century
times: private ownership whose flip side is disdain for public
responsibility, and a simple-minded nationalism that can't help but see
other people in other lands like Iraq or Serbia or Korea as outsiders
not blessed as we are with God's special attention.
slightest
resentment, or interest, he went into standard spiel against
government and environmentalists. And prairie dogs, who were the ones
responsible for overgrazing the range. I learned that he lived
somewhere else, spent the winter in the sunbelt. Whether owner or
renter, that rancher's identification with the land was minimal and his
rant wasn't doing him much good.
Hey, is anybody happy out there? Anybody at home on the range?
Some
public lands are hard to get to, sometimes impossible unless you cross
private holdings. I look at those places longingly, sometimes I cross.
One
July day, west of Independence Rock, I decided to not use up time
finding a ranch headquarters for access permission, because the sun was
way past noon. Not a good idea to get caught in strange terrain after
dark. I walked a mile or so of livestock grazing to cross a broken-down
boundary fence. The country rose, opening reluctantly. Brush, thick and
tall, grew from niches in a style of rock outcrop that was monumental
and unfamiliar. A few trees reared upward and outward from deep
crevices. I found a stain of water on sun-glazed rock, and a pool that
gathered that water in a slow faint dripping and that pool fed into
another, partly shaded by rock overhang. The banks of those little
oases were only inches wide, covered thickly by mosses and low plants I
didn't know the names of.
I
stayed for a while in water sounds so faint as to seem almost imagined.
That's one kind of concentration. Another is the choosing of the next
stretch of travel. Sometimes you get it wrong and backtrack and judge
again. This way and that, you gain, maybe reach a summit ridge, maybe
not. You find things, an animal
Wendell
Berry, an experienced and sensitive defender of private ownership,
promotes "authentic cultural adaptation to local homelands." He
believes that secure title to a patch of earth can nurture that
authenticity, along with a sense of stewardship. But, he says, the
human character also needs wilderness (e. g. an unused woodlot) to
create "a practical deference toward things greater than itself." He
calls this a "religious deference," ("Another Turn of the Crank,"
/Counterpoint,/ 1995)-
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