Motorhoming and Global Warming — page 4

Trouble Is... Being A Sierra Club Target

That is exactly what happened after I and my family with three children ages 8, 10, and 12 were the first to take horses 2,500 miles, from Mexico to Canada, pioneering the Pacific Crest Trail (the online book is at www.SearchForAShadowOfThePast.com ).  I guess my abrupt style in sharing, on my own time and un-reimbursed transportation costs, before a joint a Sierra Club/Bureau of Outdoor Recreation/and other paid experts conference as to how I felt the PCNST should be built, annoyed those whose livelihood depended on the Congressional plans for upgrading the treadway.

Having actually traveled thirty miles in California’s Desolation Valley Wilderness, over apparently what was a test of the “turnpike” system, and knowing the U.S. Forest Service had to remove trail signs to keep the wilderness from being overrun by flatlanders, my suggestion that back country wilderness is wilderness, because it always had been hard to reach —and leave it alone!— was not well received.  Spend the money instead —I said brightly— on acquiring missing chunks of PCT right-of-way connecting the historic California R&H, John Muir, 49’s pathways, the Oregon Skyline, and Washington Cascade Crest Trails—and the most important of all, strategically sited campgrounds!

Instead of listening to the free advice of one who had actually been there, contracts for a scientifically designed PCNST standard were let. Some miles of the PCNST cost over a million dollars. And, as the trail user count increased, guess who found themselves politically incorrect. Horses! The guys who actually built the trail!

Go anywhere in the West and you will find miner’s cabins, old bordellos, shoot-em-out full-of-it corrals, protected by law for being historic. So where are the plaques commemorating Charlie Horse, Pokey, No Name's, etc, —Cayuses all— role in trailblazing by picking —one hoof after another—the only way through, exploring the wilderness of the West.  Want to see Cayuses in somewhat of an old West setting? Go to a PAC pressured BLM round-up holding coral and save a colt from city style euthanasia by adoption. Make your heart cry? Know that real, non-corporate, family ranchers with a historic love of their life, and an understanding of the balance of nature, cry also. Damn those whose black-hatted scheme was all about destroying another endangered species —the much-maligned cowboy— for their own ecological gain.

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