Writing by Abby Chapin
Epiphany 2: Cinderalla's Stepsisters were Bitches
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Epiphany 1: Granite
Terror strikes me with a smooth flat hand.
Stern and tall, she guides me. Protects me with bruised fingers and nicked knees.
In seizing my body, she saves it; shelters me from imminent crumble.
She is not alive in air conditioning or sofas. To exist without her is easily done. We live in a country of cuisinarts and sidewalks, carpet and imported fruit. To know her, we must attempt the impossible, balance on that which is already falling, place faith in the dexterity of a pinkie toe.
She keeps us alive through demonstrations of death. For it is only when we fall to the brink of existence, that we truly value the neutrality of a blank surface or the mandated rhythm of breath.
By robbing us of security, she bestows serendipity. For it is only when we escape ourselves and our routines that we are overcome by the majesty of height and scale.
In paralyzing our bodies, she nurtures them. For only through involuntary stillness, can we fly.
Through her we scale sheer surfaces. Through her we cling to sharply flat walls. Through her we defy our physical limits of fingers and gravity.
Those who have not felt her grip will never understand the clarity of thought that accompanies shortness of breath. Those she does not awe with regal teeth and majestic faces, will never behold that cradle of a friend’s hand. Those who cannot lean on her harsh lines and exacting edges, will never hear their hearts beating in their earlobes.
She does not dwell in ice makers or oven mitts. She has no sympathy for locked doors or bicycle helmets. You will not find her in a boquet of daffodils or a bride’s maid’s dress. And though she screams, bites, and weeps throughout water crises and feed lots, she is silenced by those more interested in cost and convenience.
To find her, you must bind your life to that of another. You must trust an invisible line of safety. You must go high, too high. You must abandon your notion of pain; for pain is not the absence of comfort, but the absence of bliss.
You must dare. You must jump. You must fall.
And terror, she will hold you up.
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Epiphany 2: Cinderella's Stepsisters were Bitches
While most believe that ranching is an occupation based on a working landscape, it is in fact an occupation of values. And not just run of the mill Jesus versus Yahweh shenanigans, but a wicked mix of social, environmental, and economic principles. This dilemma excludes the potential for objectivity, for implicit within each side’s argument is fundamental ethical integrity. Ultimately, ranching lacks one measurable solution because it lacks one clear problem.
This is, of course, unless you ask John Marvel. As Executive Director of Western Watershed Project in Hailey Idaho, he minces few words when it comes to he and his project’s goal to eradicate public land ranching. In his opinion, he has the clear moral high ground, for he represents the interests of the economy, citizens, and the environment at large. He does not however, represent or respect the social value of ranching.
His opinion strikes many chords, however they differ from the harmony created by the ranching community. The Boise Ranch in Northeastern Nevada created a collaboration with an adjoining ranch and federal agencies including the Department of Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. This collaboration takes a progressive stance on how cattle should interact with the landscape they inhabit. They argue that their presence aids people, the land, and the environment while providing invaluable on site monitoring for the public lands they administer, and simultaneously maintaining one of the formative cultures of America.
This problem culminates, in a tangled appeal to a BLM management plan. To Mr. Marvel, this plan would allow for looser goals with less enforcement necessitating environmental loss. For the BLM and the Boise Family, this plan allows the freedom necessary to experiment with a variety of ranching techniques so as to discover the most mutually beneficial management plan. On either end, parties argue that they have the most economically sustainable solution. However, their interests are mutually exclusive: Western Watersheds wants to eliminate public lands ranching, and the Cottonwood and Boise Ranches depend on it.
How does one argue one priceless value versus another? There is no statistic, scale or flow chart that could accurately quantify society versus the environment. The conclusion drawn from this wicked dilemma is ultimately a question of values.
As such, I conclude that the Boise and Cottonwood ranches are managing the lands with an eye on many priceless values. Based on their tour, they apparently value their livelihood and the culture it maintains. They are doing this however, while balancing ideals of ecological health and societal values.
In talking to Steve Boise of the Boise Ranch, he explained to me the value he places on the land. He showed me the riparian vegetation he was attempting to nurse. He discussed with me alternatives of grazing patterns and cattle size. He demonstrated concern and frustration for the exclusivity that John Marvel’s plan necessitates. He was clearly conflicted in the way that he handled his land, his family, and his career. The wickedness of Public Lands Ranching was alive in him.
I hope that the collaboration could include preservationist thinkers. I also hope they could find a market for the quality of beef they produce so as to afford raising fewer cattle and finishing them on their own land. And I hope that absentee ranchers and John Marvel activists alike will truly understand the twisted morality of ranching in the arid West.
A wicked problem necessitates a wicked answer. While a tidy compromise to such a convoluted issue would certainly arrange things nicely, it would diminish the problems it attempts to solve. Public Lands Ranching is ultimately a question of moral worth. To sway opinions requires a sway of morality. The only way to change the current arrangement is to ignore statistics, dismiss graphs, and to educate one version of morality versus another. Perhaps it does just boil down to Jesus versus Yahweh.
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Prickly Things
Cacti Granite
Abrupt Endings
Sagebrush
Uneven Toenails
Grandma’s Dry Elbows
Love that Broke in Unequal Proportions
Chapped Lips
Gravel Driveways
Limbs that Fall Asleep
Firewood
Doctor’s Needles
Earrings Unreturned Phone Calls
Barnacles
Barbed Wire
New Beards
Change
Splinters
Pineapple
Lava Rocks
Airports
Scars You Thought Were Healed
Pinecones
Tabasco in Your Nose
Snow Angels After a Hot Bath
Serrated Knives
Long Silences
Tears Drying on Hot Cheeks
Freshly Mowed Grass
Wool Sweaters
Dad’s Leg Hair
A Friend’s Distant Sob
Ants on Skin
Tree Bark
Sunburns
Radio Static
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Islands
It is easy to love islands. The same way it is easy to love gold or anything scarce. Islands are an abbreviated paradise. By definition a craving: something necessary but rare. It is not so easy to seek out islands, for in so doing we surrender ourselves to their theoretical existence. We recognize that our reality depends on theirs.
When I first came to the islands near my Seattle home, I was afraid. I could not control the deep subtleties of the ocean’s desires. Her cryptic needs confused me as my once stable kayak swayed uneasily atop white caps and eddy lines. I felt the only way to appreciate the islands was to tame the oceans: to schedule the tempests and smooth the chapped surface. I poured over charts and tables, hoping for some hidden knowledge that could give light to behaviors unknown. Believing that this mad place with its black water and knife edged waves would drown me; I attempted to drown it in expectation. I wept, I asked for help, I petitioned answers from some unseen Power, I pleaded with maps and tide lines; but they were unsympathetic.
After fruitless attempts to manage the sea, I realized that only through the indefinite terror of oceans, do islands realize their dynamic beauty. Islands are not beautiful because of their land; they are beautiful because of the oceans that surround them. The sea’s spontaneous crevasses and harassing winds create an overwhelming backdrop to contrast with the ultimate serenity of islands. Without the ocean, they would be nondescript chunks of dirt and trees. It is because of the merciless sea, that islands are so merciful. They are solace.
My first impression of the desert was similar to that of my first encounter with the ocean. I felt suffocated in open space. I needed to modify and shape the desolation I found in this unremarkable edge of a setting. I needed shade and topography and vegetation and greenery and animals and not just snakes and scorpions but mammals for Christ’s Sake and water; flowing, seamless water. This arid plain of rock reeked of failure and struggle. Nothing could survive here I believed. I needed to change and assist this barren place.
The desert islands snuck up on me. At first clandestine, these circles revealed layer after layer of evolution and resiliency. Their soft pools of water, quiet and tranquil, they seemed at ease. They comforted me. The quaint purple flowers unassumingly blooming in the impossible soil. Lizards darting from their moist homes. These islands give peace to the desert, a sense of crookedly artistic balance.
This desert, blanketed in sand, was once an ocean. Fossilized seashells and cliff waves testify that over 50 million years, the World moves rather slow. In this preserved sea, we search the distinct, the rare. We look for moisture in a scorched landscape. In a place changed incessantly by wind and weather, we seek the static. We search for the same in islands of land: stability and stagnation, in an otherwise tumultuous landscape.
I demand islands. I mandate landscapes tenacious enough to deserve islands. I need burnt sand and white waves, moisture sucking rock and abrupt currents. I require the fear necessitating islands and the harsh places they inhabit. I insist upon the majesty that lies in scarcity.
I came to the desert overwhelmed by land. I now leave overcome by water.
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