Writing by Liz Townsend
Epiphany 2: The Defense of Jon
Other Writing:
» The Alabama Hills
» On Nature
Epiphany 1: A Bucket of Water
In the Pacific Northwest, where I was raised, water falls from the sky as though it is the corner to which Mother Earth turns to weep. It is a comfortable, soothing place. She pulls her hair from her sticky cheeks. She unplugs her hands from her eyes and releases her tears, shielded so long from the dry, dry majority of the American west.
The majority. This is where I am now: Owens Lake, south of Lone Pine, California, east of the Sierra Nevadas. Here it rains only in the mountains in the heart of winter. This is where I am, and the abundance of water and my expectations for it have been demolished by a scolding that only I could have ever given myself.
I sit on the side of the road running east of Owens Lake, a memory of my privilege leaking into my attention span, tracing the stain on my thigh. It runs clean across my knee making what appears to be a bad tan line. But the slightly darker, redder, blotchy discoloration drips down the inside creases of my knee and up my leg, encompassing an area larger than my two hands. What a pot of boiling water spilled on my leg last March, the three streams that ran nearby were plentiful and arrived in Nalgenes brought carefully yet boundlessly by friends. The lush, Californian Redwood coast brought me, as though on a conveyer-belt, free water to poor continuously for twenty minutes, soothing my hot, fleshy, pussy, and raw wound.
One hundred miles, back to my spot east of the Sierra Nevadas, Owens Lake sits like a gaping wound in the Owens Valley, fermenting in the sun. I stand up from the side of the road, and within a short car ride I am ushered to the center of the dry lake. My classmates and I are led out onto stiffened mud hardened in the shape of wide, heavy tire tracks. Twenty-five pairs of feet crunch down on eggshells made of cement—thin crusts of bubbles crushed with the weight of careless steps. Salty minerals cementing gravel also pungently pierce the air. Sharp, elongate pebbles hinge straight up towards the sky, reoriented, alert, exposed like the back of a pin cushion. I am one of many who trudge out onto the open lunar landscape, uncertain of this sight never seen before. I feel sorrow. I feel sick standing on the bottom of this lake, the stench of brine coagulating in the stagnant, ninety degree air. Alluvial fans sweep towards Owens Lake, remnants of a great reach, a great release. A man bent over, hands on his knees, weak in the moment of complete loss. Rock and soil spill from his aging eye creases through deep valley ducts in the mountains. Swelling slowly, choking on the trickle of fall rains; he is surprised by the absence o the cistern in which he used to dip his hands in order to re-wash the sky
The small, square pools of wet Owens Lake sparkling by the spit of sprinklers remind me that the cycle here is only damaged, not broken, and I feel less sorrowful for the thirsty man. But the feeling is still heavy as I continue to pick the scab with my scraping toes. Crunch, crunch. The wound still feels fresh, and there is a part of me that feels as though it were my fault. I feel as though it is my burned on behalf of a people afflicted by thoughtlessness—a quality often forgiven. But this quality has led to an excess of millions of beings, west coast Californians, mostly; blind to the valley from which they steal, and I have to wonder how thin forgiveness can be spread. These west coast people are not bad people, but their thoughtlessness, forgetfulness, and wastefulness is common. I would know. I am their congresswoman, their representative. I speak on their behalf.
I became the peoples’ representative on September 6, 208. Camped on the south shore of Pyramid Lake, 30 minutes north of Reno, Nevada, I had awoken early to help cook breakfast for 23 hungry friends. My task: heat three bucket pails of water, one giant teapot of water, and one eagerly anticipated, gurgling pot of coffee. I filled these containers with the end of the hose. A cool stream of fresh water emerged from the nozzle. I had to fiddle around with this point source to open the valve, but soon water poured bountifully into bucket number one. I dropped the running hose into the bucket and meandered off, distracted by other imminent kitchen duties.
“Bucket overflowing!”
The stern voice pierced my field of preoccupation. Instantly deflated, I ran to the bucket and glanced at the water source: an opaque, plastic tank in the back of our truck. The water in the tank stood four inches deep, just below the faucet where the hose attached to the tank. I stood very still, filled with regret, and stared at the bucket, now sitting in a ring of mud. I felt sloppy. Sloppy and untrustworthy, I though, glancing back at the water tank. Thoughtless, forgetful, wasteful—I felt it deeply, now seeing with a clarity slapped into my face how superfluous I had been in filling the water of all the buckets so high. I had wasted the water, had stolen it. And that shook me. It was as though I had been treating our study of water resources in the interior west as a surreal dream. The guilt swelled up and around my heart. I don’t know how many faces watched as I lay down my reckless hands and walked away.
How easy it is to walk away. When the life of water seems so transient, so simple—when you see the water as pouring from the nozzle instead of disappearing from the tank—it is easy to see how the General Manager of the California Department of Water and Power walked away from the Los Angeles bucket feeling as though he had completed a “job well done.”
But what if Los Angeles could see Owens Lake from the kitchen window or the back door? If individual people could breathe in the brine of a scabbing, blistering wound with every bath, every cup of hot tea? Would they feel sorrow? Would they feel sick, soaking there, faced with the consequence of a collective action? Would they feel the way I did when I took all the water?
Or would they turn their eyes blind?
Leaving Owens Lake I sit silent in the back of the car, tracing the stain on my thigh. Drawn back to that cold morning in March on my lush coast of privilege, I watch a close friend run to the river as my leg lay open, exposed and raw. She returns with a cool pail of water. But she stops. She hesitates a few feet away. She brings the pail to her lips slowly, satisfied, dribbling onto the dirty ground. She turns her head and looks away.
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Epiphany 2: The Defense of Jon
Rambling down a rocky, dirt road, I roll my eyes over and out the car window. Sun spotlights sprinkled across the crumbling Nevadan hills show me what I know to be true: the majority of the public lands of Nevada are littered with brown patches of earth trampled thin, concentrically around watering troughs by cattle grazing, a practice that has been sustained by ranchers for over one hundred years; streams on public lands have become incised and their ecological productivity diminished due to the trampling of native vegetation by chronic cattle grazing; and cattle fencing—around both private land and public land allotments—allocate where native animals must stop, struggle, or die when attempting to cross these barbed wire boundary lines.
I am remembering my romantic idea of the west, but as hard as I try it simply will not fit into the reality of what I see. Like most Americans who have grown up outside of the interior west, outside of the ranching culture, my image of the west arises mostly from paintings of western art depicting great, open landscapes, as well as the mythology of ranching through literature and television. Although much of my idealism for the west originates from representations of cattle ranching, my image hinges on the perception of a beautiful landscape with abundant wildlife and healthy streams. I am willing to bet that the image of the west for the majority of Americans hinges on the perceived health and beauty of the landscape as well. Ranched, sure, but not ruined, not devastated, and certainly not dying.
This extreme disparity between the imagined, “pristine” west and the actual west is precisely what Jon Marvel, the executive director for Western Watersheds Project intends to dissolve. In order to accomplish this—to make the reality of the land meet the perceived and desired value of the land0—Jon uses litigation. By suing the Bureau of Land Management for poor management of public lands, he hopes to take ranching off of at least 50% of public lands. What does he wish to come out of all this? “I want to see pronghorn antelope able to run for three days without running into a fence,” says Jon. That is his image of the west.
One criticism of Jon Marvel’s method is that removing ranching from public lands will diminish the presence of ranching culture and values, a critical piece of the western American image. This criticism reveals that the vision of Jon Marvel and the vision of the ranchers are fundamentally different. Perhaps the root of the difference lies in the interpretation of the word “public” in public lands. For Jon, the word “public” indicates that as a member of society, he is part owner of the lands. Therefore, as part owner, how can his vision for the land hold any less value than the vision of ranchers?
Ultimately, Jon Marvel is incriminated for sticking up for his values through the disparagement of litigation and accusations of confrontational, absolutist, and non-collaborative behavior. These criticisms ignore the political role power plays in this kind of battle.
Jon Marvel does not have leverage against the rangers. He faces the power of the entire ranching community—a power that reaches far beyond the Cottonwood and Boise ranches. He faces the power of subsidizations: money filtering in to continue a business that would fail economically without the help from a government invested in sustaining it. Jon Marvel faces the power of industries such as gold mining executives who are invested in maintaining the ranching image as the dominant image in the west to hide their own environmental failings. They thus will maintain huge cattle grazing operations on public lands at an economic loss to themselves. Jon Marvel faces the power of ranching as an aspect of American identity. He appears as a threat to perhaps one of the most defining images of the United States. Lastly, Jon Marvel faces the power of bureaucracy. In order to bring litigation against the Bureau of Land Management concerning specific ranching allotments on public lands, Jon Marvel has to gather photographic evidence of poor management practices within a two-week window to make public comments when management renewal permits arise for each allotment. Because management renewals operate on a rolling basis, the number of allotments Jon Marvel must visit within two weeks in order to appeal is overwhelming.
Due to these forces of power, litigation is effective because it places Jon Marvel and his opponents on an equal playing field. Even though litigation is confrontational, the importance of being confrontational is absolute. Tamara Naumann, U.S. Forest Service botanist reminds us that the voices government responds to are the loudest voices. Imagine, then, how loud Jon Marvel has to yell in order to be heard above ranchers who compose the majority of the voices heard by local government. Imagine the number of years Jon Marvel will have to continue shouting and standing up for a vision of the west which is, yes, fundamentally different from those of ranchers, but is perhaps more accurate and condusive to a traditional, beautiful, and lasting American landscape.
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The Alabama Hills
Granite pillars fall toward the Sierra Nevadas, then away. Standing as though frozen, caught mid sway in a strong wind supplanted with strange abilities to perhaps frighten the granite fingers stiff. I can see they are caught, barely forcing themselves above ground, stabbing into the air with the greatest determination, searching for an out. Oh how I want to reach down and grasp their hands—to pull their great bodies through, not hopelessly but with the resignation to the outcome of what comes out when a soul is resolved to kick her feet and force the land to sustain her.
But perhaps I assign the granite statues of Owens Valley too much design on their shape. So who can be faulted? The wind and the rain, without care or intention of construction, slowly reveal the resting pluton.
An isostatic decision discovered. A body put forth to displace shallow, ground. Miles away Iron and Magnesium crack and spread with greater power than the weight of the ocean.
There is relief in equilibrium. I bring my hand back to my side and let the hills be.
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On Nature
Nature meets no standards. Nurturing itself, its systemic properties are elemental, ephemeral, yet easy in a repetition predictable and ultimately taken for granted. Nature dissolves expectation. It presumes nothing of me. Even when I ask it to exude simplicity, there is no response.
Like shouting at a wall. Have you ever shouted at a bush? A tree? Inspire me! Grant me passage through your dark, overhanging hallways—bookshelves pulled thin from the bows. Yet there is no response.
I want to tell you what I have learned, to pass some wisdom through a word, a metaphor. But I cannot. It is not coveted. It is not made of exclusion, and I wish not to tell you how I saw the column of granite fall away from the rock’s face. It was a moment unclothed by the mere presence of seeing eyes.
For the catastrophes are ours. And when I tell you of the tragedy—light thrown away by a setting sun, discarding its leftover exclamations before resigning to twilight—I want you to know that I made up this story for you. For the last time I was allowed to walk lightly through the forest, un-weighted by expectation, unburdened by imminent judgment, I walked untimed, fast then slow, un-followed and following no one until I had walked away from influence, away from power—yours and my own. Powerlessly I came to a place where I stood for a minute, sucking deep breathes of air, crinkling my face, hands on my knees, crumpled in a stance of near defeat. I looked up to the fall evergreens and demanded they turn and face me in my fight. But instead, the trees simply stood there, looking nowhere, faceless, in shattering silence.
Shattering silence? The trees? No. It was the shattering of my spirit, and the silence of my thoughts. For the forest presumed nothing of me. It met no standards. I asked it to exude force. There was no response. And although I still want to grant it qualities, its transience can hold on to a name for itself in so much as I can stop time.
And so when I return from my journeys and supply you with definitions of nature, know that I am covering up for the moments in which I saw nature for all that it was, and was left to face no one, and nothing, but myself.
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