By Jupiter, I was a cute little feller, wasn't I? What in the hell happened? How did I get from there to here in just a few blinks of the eye? How did any of us?
For this issue I have been looking at hundreds of old photographs and reclaiming dozens and dozens of memories from the dusty corners of my own brain. It is amazing how many images survive.
As Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim used to say, I can almost become 'unstuck in time' when I allow myself to fall deeply enough into an old album or into that maze of memories.
I have spent so much time with Herb Ringer's pictures, I often feel that I was there with him. Sometimes I think I was. I'm sorry to tell you that Herb is really struggling these days. He moved out of his old Smoker trailer last summer, on the eve of his 85th birthday, and it hasn't been easy. That trailer was his home for 40 years and its contents, the many chapters of his own remarkable life. Now those mementoes are in boxes in closets.
But what a life he has had. I found the picture of three year old Herb (that appears on the cover) not long ago. The photograph was taken in 1916 near Colorado Springs. I might have to admit that he was even cuter than I was. In the intervening years, Herb has seen more of the beauty of America than anyone I know.
Herb once confessed to me that he had never been interested in sports or watching the game of the week on tv. "I just liked to be with nature and with animals," he said. And then, with an almost worried expression he asked, "Do you that was a mistake?"
"Herb," I said, "I wouldn't change a thing."
I had another memory shaken loose recently. I had stopped by a new store on Center Street, Walkabout Travel Gear, to talk to the owners about an ad. Brad Boyle introduced himself but then advised me that we had actually met before.
Really, I said.
"Yeah," he grinned. "...You arrested me."
It all came back to me slowly. And with the slow dawn of recollection I could also remember what a complete dork I have been at various times in my life. Brad Boyle was the first recipient of a ticket from Wrathful Ranger Stiles. I think I was about three weeks into my first season at Arches. My uniform was still crisp...I even had creases in my loden green Levis. And I looked like I was about twelve years old. But full of righteous indignation.
Full of something, that's for sure.
I spotted Brad and his friends on a road that had been closed for 'scenic restoration' and I decided right then and there that these violators were going to pay the price. At the time, the federal judge in Salt Lake City hated the federal government with such a fervor that he automatically threw out of court any and all NPS citations. To get around this obstacle, we were deputized in our respective Utah counties which gave us the authority to write tickets for violations of state laws. Somewhere in the state code, believe it or not, was a regulation about the destruction of natural features, so I cited Brad for heinous crimes against the plants and grasses of Arches National Park and advised them to follow me into Moab, to the Grand County Courthouse, where they had to post a bond.
Old Heck Bowman was sheriff at the time. There wasn't much that riled Heck and it seemed as if just about everything amused him. Heck thought I was pretty amusing. I had delivered Brad and his co-conspirators to the Dispatcher's office and Heck stuck his head in the door...
"What's goin' on here? Who are you fellas?" he asked as he examined my creases. He was already grinning.
"I'm a ranger out at Arches and I caught these guys. They're here to post a bond."
"What'd they do?"
"Well they drove off the main road and...uh...rode over the...the flora."
"The...the what?"
"You know...the plant life. The---"
"You got these boys in here because they drove over some o' them wildflowers? Is that it ranger?"
"Well...yeah...you see---"
"Hey fellas," Heck called to the other deputies, "This here young ranger has hauled these fellas in here fer runnin' over some wildflowers out to the Arches." Heck turned back to me. "Well hell son," he asked, "Why didn't you just shoot 'em? Or at least put the cuffs on 'em. Runnin' over wildflowers...I don't know...maybe we ought to jes' lock 'em up and throw away the key."
So it was like that. Brad paid his $35 and I left there humiliated. I didn't write another ticket for three years.
Life in Moab, Utah has changed some since Herb Ringer first pointed his camera up Main Street in 1948. Even since Heck Bowman was sheriff. It's a different world. And while I know change is inevitable, I can't help but cling to those memories. 'Hopelessly' clinging, as I recall.
In the wake of our most recent land development controversy, i.e. the grandiose river road plans of Robbie Levin and Colin Fryer, I can't help but think how different things might have been. I even hesitate to call this issue 'controversial' because in the apathetic deadfromtheneckup activist climate of 1998, nothing seems to generate any outrage or indignation in Grand County. Unless, of course, the issue is garbage collection.
It is apathy and complacency that put us here in the first place and, oddly enough, I have a difficult time sympathizing with some of the last minute protestations of many Grand County residents when they were so deadly silent six years ago. Their indignation might have made a difference then; it's an exercise in frustration and futility now. Seriously, did anybody really think the current Grand County Council would suddenly go schizophrenic on us and vote to restrict or limit growth and development? Or even to agree to a moratorium?
We elected these guys. With the exception of one, there is not a sitting councilman who has any desire to consider restricting individual property rights for the rights of the community. And that ultimately is what the battle to limit growth is all about. I realize that in the American West of 1998, that is a controversial topic and one that few politicians are willing to confront. But there was one governing body in Grand County in recent memory that would have addressed that and other issues critical to our future, if we had only given them a modicum of support. We elected those guys too. But then we abandoned them.
The first Grand County Council, elected on February 9, 1993, was apparently a group of mutants, because I doubt if we will ever see their like again around here. I've lived in Moab for 20 years and I cannot recall a finer, more dedicated, more responsible group of citizens to serve the people of this county. None of them had a hidden (or not so hidden) agenda or a bone to pick. They sure didn't do it for the money. They came to serve and they served us well.
They ran for office with the promise to shut down the Grand County Special Service Roads District which was promoting the $100 million Book Cliffs Highway project (about as goofy and grandiose idea as anyone could conceive) and they stopped it. They promised to bring fiscal responsibility back to the courthouse and they did. Refusing to spend money they didn't have always ruffles a lot of feathers and they ruffled their fair share.
They considered and implemented ideas that most of the town thought were insane and proved themselves to be right. To the horror of many longtime residents, the Council supported a plan to greatly reduce the use of Malathion in the county's mosquito abatement program. They hired a scientist, Bob Phillips, to tackle the problem and his non-poisonous approach to mosquito control was so successful that even his most rabid opponents eventually congratulated him.
In short order they fulfilled their campaign promises and were ready to look ahead. The future loomed large and frightening in Grand County six years ago; signs of rapid and runaway change were everywhere. But there was still time to grab the tiger by the tail while it was just a kitten. All they really needed was the encouragement and support of the citizens who elected them.
Nothing. Month after month, the councilmen came to meetings only to be confronted by the last election's sore losers. Six of them were forced to endure (they survived) a recall election. They were hammered relentlessly by whiny special interest groups in Moab who were accustomed to special treatment by former governing bodies.
Some of their biggest opponents, citizens and businesses who thought the new council was anti-growth and anti-tourism are today some of the biggest opponents of river road development. And yet their last best chance to preserve the river corridor most likely rested with the Original 7.
And where was the majority that elected them? We went to sleep. We left them to twist in the wind. I really believe they were prepared to re-invent government itself if only we had been there to encourage them onward. They were the first elected councilmen of the new seven member council form of government we had approved by referendum the previous November. It was an exciting time...or it could have been. Our county could have become a model for other small rural communities in the West who refused to allow their futures to be shaped by anyone but the community itself.
But we abandoned them and we relinquished a golden opportunity as well. Even with the recent election of two new councilpersons (women at last), the pro-growth members still hold the majority view. I hope that at the very least, new Councilwomen Schappert and Mayberry establish themselves as passionate and vocal defenders of what is apparently a minority view: that not ALL growth is good. And that reckless and unplanned economic growth can damage and even destroy the very fabric of a community.
Money is not a cure-all.
And just to pay one last salute to the Original 7: to Ken Ballantine, Peter Haney, John Hartley, Bill Hedden, John Maynard, Paul Menard, and Charlie Peterson...
Thanks guys.
I was completely sickened and disgusted by news of the death of Matthew Shepard last month. He was 21 years old and he was gay. One of the killers claimed that he was embarrassed when Shepard made a pass at him. So he and his buddy lured him outside, drove him to the edge of town and beat him to death. Leaving him lashed to a rail fence like some ranchers display dead coyotes. They were embarrassed so they killed him.
What is wrong with people? How is it that we humans always have to find someone to hate? It never ends.
I heard a pundit say recently that calling Shepard's murder a 'hate crime' was somehow giving it too much credit. He suggested that ignorance, more than anything else, is what motivates such senseless violence. Maybe so. But don't confuse ignorance with education. Even in my own family I have seen people who know better, people who have college degrees and have traveled the world, who preach the same kind of hate that Aaron McKinney (one of Shepard's killers) was spewing just days before he bashed in Shepard's head.
That is why I hope none of us ever forgets that this act of horror could have happened here. Or in any home town in America.
I hope none of us forgets that every week, in a cafe, on the street, at the market, or even in our own homes, we hear the kind of hateful rhetoric that contributes to such senseless acts of brutality.
I hope that none of us ever forgets that by tolerating the ugly rhetoric, we contribute by our own silence to the violence.
I hope that none of us ever forgets that we have an absolute obligation to not tolerate bigotry.
We all hope for acceptance and approval. How can we ask for it if we only selectively offer it?
This is a hope for myself as well as for everyone else. I hope we don't forget Matthew Shepard.