I've lived in Colorado for about a year and a half now, but I've never been to Denver. Really. Unless you count a few stops in Denver International, which most people say is in Kansas anyway, I've never spent time on the Front Range. I'm neither terribly proud nor ashamed of this, but it has led to a some embarrassing situations---I've had to admit I had no idea that the Broncos won the Superbowl.
So I don't feel entirely qualified to write about Colorado politics, since I've never even been to the state capital (that's capital, Stiles, not capitol, OK?) But I do feel nearly qualified to write about western Colorado politics, and this is the point. The West Slope should be part of Utah, and not just because we get the Zephyr over here, too. When we have a particularly bad windstorm, the sky turns an eerie shade of pink, thanks to the slickrock on the other side of the Uncomphagre Plateau. You're not that far away, as the dust flies. But we've also got our own redrock, our own Fat Tire Festival (in Fruita), our own LDS churches (everywhere), our own mysterious liquor laws ... and, yes, a few of our own dead-from-the-neck-up politicians.
And our own wilderness battles, just in case you don't believe the comparison yet. The Colorado Environmental Coalition has been working away at their citizen's proposal for wilderness, which now includes 1.1 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land throughout the state. Most of that, as you might guess, is on the West Slope, far from the Rocky Mountain timber country managed by the Forest Service. These are the places where we take our day hikes and our weekend backpacking trips. Much of it rivals Utah's canyon country, in beauty if not in scale. And in comparison to the big numbers tossed about by the good folks at SUWA, the Colorado activists' proposal looks downright reasonable.
But not to most West Slope politicians. In December, U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat who represents Denver County, introduced a bill which would give wilderness status to nearly all of the Colorado Environmental Coalition's proposal, as opposed to the less than 400,000 acres recommended by the Bureau of Land Management. It faces the same uphill battle as wilderness bills from other states, and it immediately drew a fire-breathing response from U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, a West Slope Republican.
"This bill is being jammed down our throat from Washington, D.C.," he told an audience of county politicians and others at a meeting in early March. "Diana DeGette is playing to special interest groups in her district like the Sierra Club and Earth First!. These groups want to take away multiple use of our public lands."
Then he added, "I don't mean to be negative."
This is the person who's called Yellowstone National Park "one of the great wonders of man." I had the good luck to run into him in the Denver airport over the holidays last year, when I was on my way to a family reunion and he was on his way to impeach the president, and I made a plea for mercy. Let's just say I couldn't do much to convince him of the error of his ways, and I bet I'd strike out on the wilderness issue, too. But if you ever meet him in the airport ... well, maybe that participatory democracy thing could work after all. (P.S. He flies first class.)
This is not to say that all West Slope politicians are bad news. San Miguel County commissioner Art Goodtimes, our lone Green representative on the county level, has been livening up stodgy county commission meetings for three years now. He's also a member of Club 20, an association of 22 West Slope counties. Club 20 has always been an unabashed booster of economic development at any cost, and Goodtimes must be the only member who records poetry on his outgoing answering machine message.
"It's a good forum for people to deal face to face," says Goodtimes. "Scott McInnis' rhetoric really doesn't work anymore. People cheer him, but they also realize he's being divisive." With Goodtimes and the High Country Citizen's Alliance from Crested Butte now on board, times may be changing in Club 20. We'll see.
On top of the wilderness bill, we also have a proposal to turn the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument into a national park---the nation's smallest national park, in fact. The bill, sponsored by Democratic-turned-Republican senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, was introduced into the Senate in late January, and McInnis is sponsoring a companion bill in the House. If it passes, 9,000 acres of BLM land will be turned over to the Park Service, since national parks need to be at least 30,000 acres. The bill would also establish new park and BLM wilderness areas in and around the canyon, but it doesn't include water rights for the park; some environmental groups think the bill has room for improvement, and they're wondering if Campbell is just trying to put the little-visited Black Canyon on the map.
Although wilderness and other public-lands issues sometimes seem to overwhelm the political scene here, just like in Utah, there are some other issues on our plate. Growth and development arguments continue to dominate county commission meetings, with a controversial ski area expansion proposed in Telluride and housing prices on the rise almost everywhere you look. We've even got our very own celebrities buying ranches and ranchettes here. Ralph Lauren has a little spread on the Dallas Divide between Ridgway and Telluride, and it's said he has the nicest fence on the whole West Slope. That's fine, but I just want to know if his cowboys wear chinos.
Joe Cocker lives in Crawford, pop. 250, and two years ago he and his wife Pam opened the Mad Dog Cafe in the middle of town, complete with a reserved parking spot for Pam's motorcycle. It's caused some grousing about the "Cockerization" of Crawford, and Pam must have heard about it---in the April Fool's edition of the local paper last year, she advertised plans for the Mad Dog skyscrapers ("my little gift to Crawford.") Funny---I hope.
A few of our towns are large enough to attract the interest of chain stores, and Wal-Mart in particular is stomping its way into Western Colorado. The town of Silverton has successfully opposed a proposed Wal-Mart in its valley, but a new breed of supercenters have shown up in Cortez, Durango, and, most recently, Montrose. There already was a Wal-Mart in Montrose, and you'd think 80,000 square feet would have been enough. But in spite of outcry from the Western Colorado Congress and a local group, Citizens for Responsible Growth, Wal-Mart plowed ahead, and the 200,000-square-foot store opened last year. Now, the old store and its gigantic parking lot sit empty, while the supercenter does a booming business nearby.
I admit, these stores are incredibly convenient. I've shopped at them. We're a long way from nowhere here, and it's tempting to just take a trip to Grand Junction and cruise the clean, efficient, well-stocked mall stores for goodies that cost twice as much locally. So if nothing else, the Wal-Mart carcass in Montrose is a good reminder that shopping close to home is worth the price.
Shopping locally is a bit more of a challenge these days, though, thanks to other sorts of development issues. In my town, signs reading "Coal Miner Proud" and "Hug a Miner, Not a Tree" have appeared in storefronts (the latter sign in the window of our only liquor store, making me think hard about the evils of monopolies). It's not exactly the good-versus-evil controversy you might expect, though. We don't have Andalex waiting in the wings, wanting to slice a chunk out of the Kaiparowits Plateau. In fact, there's not much mining going on in western Colorado---like southern Utah, we're making the switch to a recreation-based economy, like it or not.
But what we do have in the North Fork Valley are two active underground coal mines within a few miles of town, both of which represent a relatively small but significant part of the county's economy. For the most part, they're accepted by non-miners, and they may even be one reason why this place isn't a chi-chi resort town like ... oh, well, never mind that (I know, we also don't have enough snow or good rapids or bike trails). I heat my house with coal; it's cheap, and its about as local a product as you can find around here, if you don't count the cherries and pears. Delta County has also shown a disturbing interest in hog farms and prisons, and the mines may be one way to keep that enthusiasm in check.
But a recent push to expand the mines here has a lot of people worried--- the plans don't sound quite so innocuous---and our normally harmonious town has started bickering more bitterly than Moab, the window decorations being just the beginning. The federal agencies have developed layer upon layer of collaborative groups and meetings to keep everyone talking to each other, a good idea as long as we don't get so confused and/or sick of meetings that we give up altogether. And it can be frustrating. When I sit down at the table with one of our town councilmen and ask how long the coal reserves will last ---a question that could have easily come from a miner---he fixes me with a glare, takes in the type of shoes and the brand of jeans I'm wearing, and says, "You should have thought about the mines before you moved here!" I think about all the conflicted feelings I have about the mines, and I know I can't explain them. I want to put my head on the table.
A high school student I know, the daughter of a miner, says "Why don't we just say, look, if we didn't have coal mines, we'd be in the dark, and if we didn't have environmentalists, we'd be living in a dump? I'm just sick of it!" I'm pretty sick of it, too. I have to remind myself that at least we don't have a tram up the side of the mesa.
So, are you ready to take us in? I know, we've got Scott McInnis and all those Wal-Marts and some coal mines hanging around, but we're not all that different from you, what with Chris Cannon and the Main Street Taco Bell and the Pene brothers. Maybe we could team up: you could send SUWA to give McInnis a talking-to about some REALLY big wilderness numbers, or we could invite Moabites to the Montrose Wal-Marts so you could see what might lie ahead. It might be ... how did Walt Dabney put it? ... the true completion of Canyonlands.
Or just the start of a beautiful relationship. See you in Utarado.
Michelle Nijhuis broke down and went to Denver recently, but she won't let it happen again. She lives in Paonia, Colorado and is the West Slope correspondent for the Canyon Country Zephyr.