Jack Burns Lives!

Allison and I are both looking forward to another late September trip to the Four Corners region this fall. It was perhaps Abbey’s favorite region, although Ed was also known to call several places “favorites” from time to time.

Four Corners basically has everything. The golden aspens and towering mountains of the Southern San Juan’s. The red rock country and historic sites galore.  Arches, Canyonlands, Canyon de Chelly, Mesa Verde, Monument Valley. It’s pretty much all there, except for grizz, which used to be there until we killed ‘em all.

The last definite grizz in the area was the infamous Pagosa Springs grizzly killed in 1979. However, Doug Peacock and others believe there is a remnant population still active. Doug Petersen published an article in 1997 and a book, Ghost Grizzlies, in 1998 detailing evidence that grizzlies continue to exist in the Southern San Juan’s. Researchers cite “hair samples collected by Round River searchers and identified by an independent forensics laboratory as grizzly; several finds of huge, grizzly-like tracks; two highly credible sightings, including a female with three subadult cubs observed closely with binoculars by rancher Dennis Schutz in 1990 (“I’ve seen hundreds of bears,” he’ll tell you, “and these were definitely grizzlies”), and a large adult that bluff-charged a hiker in 1995; one fuzzy photo of a big blond bear that most experts believe is a grizzly (1993); and other intriguing, albeit inconclusive evidence, including a fresh bear dig, definitively grizzly in conformation, photographed in 1993.”

Despite continued reports, including one in 2006, The Colorado Division of Wildlife won’t say for certain grizzlies exist in Colorado, but they are firm in saying they shouldn’t be reintroduced. Why? Because they’re apparently stupid and more interested in protecting ranchers and hunters than non-humans.

Myself, I choose to believe they are there. Just wise and well hidden.

“Some of life’s most exciting moments are spent near the middle of the food chain rather than on the top.”-Richard Nelson

Grizz killed by Gen. Custer in the 1874 Black Hills Expedition

We haven’t been to the area since 2006.  Since then, we’ve been paying college expenses for our kids and seeing other places.  California, Arizona and Texas and a few jaunts back east to the Smokies.  But the Four Corners has been calling me back this year, and in my mind, mid to late September is the best time of the year to go. The aspen are turning gold, the temps are very nice across the region, and you’re past the height of the summer tourist season.

The big issue is how to get there. I loathe flying. It’s not terribly expensive (about $380), but just the thought of flying and having to deal with getting through the airport ruins the experience. It’s likely the airline will lose your luggage, and of course the plane could crash. Crashes aren’t likely, but they’re never far from my over-imaginative, PBR soaked brain.

Drive? Well, it’s 1400 miles to Moab, so you have to really want to see the place to drive 2800 miles, round trip.  Of course, we could break it up into an interesting road trip. Take two weeks and take our time. Trouble is, Allison isn’t too keen on long car trips and for some good reasons. RA isn’t the sort of illness that lends itself to cooperating with such endeavors. We’d need to stop about every 200 miles, but I’d rather do that that have some TSA goon probing my body and rummaging through my shit.

And there’s the fuel issue. We’re burning up the planet burning the stuff, so I feel guilty about long trips. But I rationalize it as psychiatric therapy.  Twice annually, required to get me out of my fundamentalist dominated, racist, violent, noisy home and preserve what’s left of my sanity.

When we get there we hike. Nearly every day we’ll  hike to some remote spot to enjoy the quiet and the solitude only nature provides. I study the native flora and fauna, take photos and enjoy a picnic lunch, sometimes at spectacular places like Blue Lakes.

Or maybe somewhere in Arches.

Either suits me just fine. And regardless of where we end up, I almost always think of Ed Abbey at some point along the way. Since, after all, it was Ed’s writing that got me interested in hiking, backpacking and exploring in the West.  I tend to believe Abbey would be vastly disappointed in us if he could see what’s happened to the West, since all of his predictions have more or less come true. Even in 2010, twenty-one years after his death, his words ring true. Truer than ever, in fact, as we are now apparently headed toward the world the foresaw in Good News.

I think the long drive will also provide me time to ponder a few things and make some decisions. I worry daily about our planet. About humans and non-humans, rivers, mountains and mesas. All the life under attack from expanding industrialization and from the greedy, self-absorbed despots that run the world.  And while I’ll always be a proud Southerner, I generally seem much happier in the West. Although my heart is Southern, my spirit is Western. It’s time to finally decide if I’m going to move to the West and how it’s to be accomplished. I’m nearing fifty, so I figure it’s now or never.

Well, here we come. Maybe we’ll get lucky and see a grizz or even find a home.

…and gets a good review from the eastern elite. And of all places, in Forbes.

Stills from the 1962 film Lonely Are The Brave, based on Abbey’s 1956 novel, The Brave Cowboy. Starring Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau and Carrol O’Conner. Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo.

Stills from the movie Fire On The Mountain. Based on Edward Abbey’s book of the same title and released in 1981. Starring Buddy Ebsen and Ron Howard.

I’ve read the history. I know more than I wanted to know about how this country came to be.  It’s an ugly history, one of genocide, misogyny and racism. There’s no denying what happened and what continues to happen.

For some reason, Dances With Wolves continues to evoke the deepest emotions.  I watched it again this afternoon and once again feel a deep sense of despair over what happened to the rightful possessors of this continent. I despair over what was lost.

Things are difficult now. I’ve tried to improve myself over the past eighteen years or so, but now I feel it all slipping away. I’ve tried to be someone committed to peace. To non-violence, to helping others. But now, I feel I’ve lost all hope.  I feel mostly alone in the world, helpless to correct the wrongs I see. Alone in finding anyone that’s willing to stand with me against the ugliness. Abandoned by friends. Tolerated by others, but misunderstood.

And maybe it’s because I seem to have no answers. I believe peaceful resistance is futile, but also believe violence serves no purpose other than to create more violence.  Yet, I find myself fighting the urge to strangle every rich fucker that has preyed upon the less fortunate and benefited from their misery.

If I can’t find a way out of the meaningless existence I now find myself in, I wish I could ride like Dunbar across a field, chest thrust forward, arms spread wide and hope a bullet pierces my body and ends it all.

What the fuck. Nobody reads this shit and no one cares. I live only to protect my wife and my children but pray for revolution.

Dozens of trucks of all shapes and sizes moved slowly up and down the newly cut, winding road. At the bottom of the canyon, four Komatsu 575 A dozers, moved massive piles of rock and dust into towering monoliths while a monstrous backhoe hoisted piles of coal into the awaiting beds of heavy haulers.

It was a perpetual motion machine of mass destruction where haulers continuously moved in and out of the canyon to obtain and deliver the precious commodity.

Looking southward from the ridge was a lone rider, sitting tall in a Mexican saddle. The morning sun reflected off its conchos, piercing the canyon like a laser. He was tall and lean, with a hawk-like hose, narrow eyes and a bandana hanging loosely around his weathered neck. His black hat was covered in dust, as were his faded and slightly torn Wrangler jeans. He wore a leather holster containing a Colt Single Action Army pistol, a nickle-plated .45 with a 7-1/2 inch barrel.  Attached to the right side of the saddle was his scabbard. It held a cherished possession, a Winchester lever action rifle, Model 94 .30-.30, purchased in 1962 from a friend in Duke City, New Mexico.

He looked down at the operation with disdain, even hate. Yes, he hated these people. Money grubbin’ rich folks with their mindless lackeys despoiling the land. And all for what? For even higher production levels and even greater profits, regardless of the real costs. The cost to the land, to humans and to non-humans. Especially non-humans….

But now he was an old man with limitations. It had been nearly fifty-five years since he’d first come west, and in those fifty-five years he’d seen unspeakable horrors. He’d witnessed the rape of the land first hand. How the industrial metastasis gradually moved in and around nearly everything, rapping its poisonous tentacles around the mountains, the canyons and the desert, slowly choking the life out of everything.

The nagging cough coming from deep within his lungs told him he didn’t have much time. Perhaps only enough time to do one more good thing before his bones became snacks for coyotes.

An old friend once told him “Jack, sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a thousand books.”

Yes, one more brave deed.