A collection for those who love the Southwest

July 5, 2021
Sarah Fox

In the late spring of the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, as catastrophic drought warnings began looming across the western United States, I received in the mail an edited collection of poetry and prose written “to speak love to water.” It could not have come at a better time.

WEST: AN ANTHOLOGY OF WATER POEMS AND PROSE

WET: An Anthology of Water Poems and Prose From the High Desert and Mountains of the Four Corners Region is available at Cliffrose Garden Center, and Cliffrose on Market, in Cortez, as well as Absolute Bakery in Mancos, Colo. For more information about ordering online, contact Laurie Hall at info@montezumafoodcoalition.org, memo line WET INFO.

WET: An Anthology of Water Poems and Prose From the High Desert and Mountains of the Four Corners Region is a comprehensive volume, the product of a collaborative ef­fort spanning the Four Corners region. Spearheaded by editors Gail Binkly, Sonja Horoshko, Renee Podunovich, and Native American Literary Liaison Michael Thomp­son (Mvskoke Creek), WET is published by Laurie Hall at Sharehouse Press, a project of the Montezuma Food Coalition.

The first in a four-volume series, WET is a project, in Horoshko’s words, of cre­ating “anthology from the earth up.” This remarkable book speaks with many voices, Native and non-Native, and in five languag­es: English, Diné, Spanish, Mvskoke Creek and the language of the Haak’u Acoma. Each of the 30 con­tributors writes from their particular angle of vision, creating an axis of literary water energy trickling from the Rocky Mountain snowpack surround­ing Telluride, Colo., through the dry land watershed and the town of Cortez, into the tribal lands of the High Desert region. The writing evokes many different ways of knowing water, places, and greater-than-human communities over time and across space, sharpened by the contemporary scar­city of water in the region, and made rever­ent by the care that scarcity demands.

WET opens with Haak’u Acoma activist and writer Maurus Chino’s “Swimming in Clouds”: a series of journal entries docu­menting morning walks to visit the river near his current home in Albuquerque, and the events and memories these walks reveal. Originally published to social media in the first spring season of the pandemic when many of us were hunkered down under stay-at-home orders, Chino’s entries are generous, written to share the river with others. He names the pair of wood ducks he often sees there, describes the reflec­tion of the sky on the water, recounts the Chuna, a stream that flowed near his home in Ak’u. Some entries end with his urging to “Make this day a good day. Be safe,” and so it is with this feeling of care and atten­tiveness that the reader is launched down­stream into the poems, prose pieces, and essays that follow.

The theme of making journeys to water in arid landscapes — and the knowledge and labor necessary to locate it and bring it where it is needed — are major currents in this volume. They run through L. Luis Lo­pez’s delightful poem on his grandmother’s instructions for bring­ing water from the ditch to nourish her flowers, “Fifteen trips it always took.”

Ed Singer (Diné) offers the reader a meditative piece on his childhood trips to a hidden spring in a canyon near his family land at Gray Mountain, “Under the Rock at Tséyaa Tóh,” where his family stored a shovel, a bucket, and fixings for tea and coffee. The water in the spring “was chilly, delicious and clean,” and every year the Singer family rebuilt the sweat lodge “with debris deposited during the runoff, the same that swept away the one we built the year before.” Tséyaa Tóh is also the Navajo name for the town of Cortez.

In Tina Deschenie’s “My Take on the Water Rights Settlement,” and researcher Dana Powell’s “Riparian Sensibilities,” themes of water access raise questions of environmental injustice on the Navajo Na­tion, where generations of coal and ura­nium industry have depleted and contami­nated precious water sources. Deschenie (Ta’neeszahnii, born for To’aheedliini) re­calls herding sheep to a windmill near her home as a young person, but being forbid­den to drink that water herself; for drinking water, her family brought tanks to a public well. “Trying hard as I might I don’t ever re­member seeing any White people parked in line at the water well back then even though we lived in the Checkerboard Land area… Were we Navajo the only ones hauling wa­ter back then and even today still?”

These deep understandings of scarcity underscore the joyful, describing times of abundance, rituals of renewal, and possi­bilities for growth, change, and justice.

David Feela writes that “When rain falls in the desert/ fragrance flash-floods the senses/unbraids itself like a garland/com­pelled to become a garland.” Gail Binkly recounts the life cycle of spadefoot toads, who can mature in as little as two weeks, making use of small, intermittent pools formed after sudden rain.

Renee Podunovich describes feeding blossoms to the Dolores, “River of Sor­row,” and finding there an experience of mercy and evidence of constant momen­tum and change.

There are dozens of extraordinary au­thors and pieces in this book. I urge you to obtain a copy and encounter its richness for yourself. This is a collection for people who love the Southwest, and for people who care about interdependency, about the ways our lives and places are tangled together.

I live in the Pacific Northwest, a guest on lands the Duwamish, Suquamish, and Muckleshoot have called home since time immemorial. This is a region defined over millennia by its abundance of water, yet as I write this review, record heat waves are buckling the highways, heating the rivers, and endangering the next generation of salmon.

In this era of cli­mate change and global pandemic, spurred on by the rapacious, entwined systems of colonial­ism and capitalism, we would all do well to spend time think­ing about the impor­tance of water and relation.

I look forward to introducing my stu­dents to this volume, and the forms of sto­ry and wisdom these Four Corners writers have so generously committed to the page. “Be safe. Do your best,” as Maurus Chino entreats us.

Sarah Fox is the au­thor of Downwind: A People’s History of the Nuclear West (Univer­sity of Nebraska Press 2014, paperback 2018). She is a Killam Doctoral Scholar and a Ph.D. student in history at the University of British Columbia. Her current research examines the contested terrain of ecological restoration, remediation, and environmental justice in the Pacific Northwest, and the way these projects engage (or ignore) Indigenous sovereignty and local, experiential knowledge about histories of environ­mental change.

Published in Breaking News, Prose and Cons

Tour de farce

July 5, 2021
David Feela

Most readers are familiar with the phrase tour de force, which identifies a feat displaying great strength, skill, or ingenuity. A tour de farce, however, is quite different, referring to an empty or patently ridiculous proceeding, act, or situation that prompts a person to smile, hopefully later even to laugh after the individual safely survives its circumstances.

So conjure up this dilemma: Returning home from a camping trip, I failed to use suf­ficient force to properly seat the ball mount into the hitch coupler on our little Scamp trailer. 30 miles down the road, at highway speed, a bump disengaged the trailer from the vehicle. If not for the attached safety chains, it would have careened off the road into a ditch like a produce wagon full of wa­termelons. Instead, the tongue dropped and hung by its chains slightly above the pave­ment, bouncing, glancing off the road sur­face, igniting a trail of sparks. Let’s just say the entire incident scared the hell out of me!

Absurdity pops up in everyone’s life like a jack-in-the-box, but if I’m distracted — es­pecially in matters of the heart — I forget to pay attention. Adults blame youthful in­experience for foolish behavior, while young people think slipping along the gradual slope toward Medicare explains it all. In the end, life only offers a tour, be it forced or farced, a teeter-tooter where the whee is followed by a sudden impact when the laughter unex­pectedly climbs off.

Recently I lived on the road while my best friend underwent a laborious series of medi­cal procedures to save her life. Nothing about the experience leaned toward farce, except for briefly thinking we’d overpacked for a five-day stay. It ended up being five weeks before we managed to return home. Hospitals co-opted our existence, along with a near-lethal dose of worry every day about how things might work out. I learned more about ill­ness and treatment than any person needs to know, but now as I glance in the rearview mirror I can appreciate how the occasional farce ultimately sustained us.

One long afternoon I stretched out on my best friend’s hospital bed while she oc­cupied the bathroom to experience what she claimed might be a first organic animated mattress. It wiggled and sagged and adjusted itself continuously while I occupied the bed. As I settled in, a cicada-like buzzing came to life and my right hip started rising without me having to flex a muscle. It rose in such an awkward way that I feared it might toss me out of bed and to the floor.

Over my head, where spiritual help al­legedly resides, a single ceiling tile shouted in bold letters, CALL, DON’T FALL, but I misread the message, thinking it said CRAWL, DON’T FALL. Color, text size, and positioning directly above the bed made it impossible for the patient to claim she hadn’t noticed the directive. Even with my eyes closed, the words seared themselves like a branding iron into my memory.

To complement the effectiveness of this three-word commandment, an alarm in­stalled on the bed could not be turned off by anyone except a nurse who knew the secret passcode. If a patient absentmindedly stood up, the bed erupted into such an audible commotion a visitor might think a fire alarm had just been pulled, so when she returned from the bathroom we repeated with the stealth of Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom her carefully choreographed simulta­neous exchange of positions, and I crawled off the bed toward the safety of a nearby chair.

People normally receive their nutritional supplements from fruits and vegetables but while in hospital her surgeon prescribed enormous nasty tasting pills, one of which burned a meteoric path down her throat and esophagus, swelling her face and throat. She complained but he insisted.

“Couldn’t I just eat bananas for my po­tassium?” she asked. The surgeon replied, “You’d have to eat a thousand bananas to equal what’s in one of those pills.”

Eventually she said no, she wasn’t tak­ing the pills and the only thing she would miss was the swelling. The surgeon looked puzzled until she added that they made her face swell so much her wrinkles disappeared, and then he burst out into a hearty laugh, the kind of laugh only a heart surgeon can appreciate.

I could go into more escapades about how she managed to turn the collapsible barf bag into a waterproof sleeve to cover her fresh stitches before taking a shower, or how her midline port for IV transfusions which stayed stubbornly in place for nearly a month simply fell out of her arm on the day of her discharge. Everything about this woman’s sense of humor in the face of a po­tential disaster might keep a reader smiling, but you’d have to have been there to appreci­ate the whee of it all.

David Feela, an award-winning poet, essayist, and author, writes from Montezuma County, Colo. See his works at http://feelasophy.weebly.com/

Published in David Feela

The name of the gain

July 5, 2021
Zach Hively

Welp, it finally happened. After 15 months, I finally had to put on pants.

Technically I did not HAVE to. No one made me drive to Albuquerque for the first really-real not-in-someone’s-kitchen pants-required tango milonga in these parts since about the time the “Woman Yelling at Cat” memes started dropping. And I very nearly did not go at all, because my pants very nearly did not fit.

Now I’d like to think this happened be­cause I spent the greater portion of the pandemic working on getting my quads into Marvel shape. Sadly, though, it hap­pened because I spent the pandemic get­ting older.

Granted, I am lucky that the lockdowns — both the first, shorter, government-imposed one, and the second, longer, let’s-be-honest-it-was-personally-prescribed one — aged me only a year and change. That cat-meme template got a lot older, a lot quicker. And I am lucky that I could still close my pants with some corsage-in­tensity tightening, and that they stretched throughout the evening to accommodate my legs. Most of all, we are all fortunate that the fasteners held, because I had to choose between tucking my shirt in and wearing underwear.

Inadvertently opening my dog house would have been the least of my social faux pas that night, however. Because my brain aged more than my body, I for­got everyone else’s names.

In my usual daily life, I don’t need to be good with names because I rely on a mnemonic de­vice called “Avoid Interactions With Other Humans At All Costs Except By Email.” Most people’s names are on their email addresses these days. This makes remembering names eas­ier, unless the people are those who share email addresses with their spouse and/or are still using Yahoo! Mail with a self-ap­plied nickname followed by their PIN.

Normally one need not remember names in the tango world. It’s much more important to remember who wears enough perfume to share with the class, or who has lifted your toenail with his shoe in the past. But the tango world usually gets to­gether more than once per calendar year. So everyone wanted to hug hello, and they wanted us to greet on a first-name basis, which admittedly took my worry away from the sense that I was camel-toeing it in my once-loose tango pants and invested it heavily in stoking my fear of calling some­one in three-inch heels by the wrong name. Even if they called me Josh first.

So! I have decided I will not see others in person again until these pants fit me as fluidly as ever before. I am not one for fad diets, so I won’t be doing some crash diet or lose-fat-gain-muscle-by-working-out snake-oil quick fix. I want more than a trimmer waist; I want trimmer thighs, too. Oh, and also a change in lifestyle so I am more resilient the next time I am left home alone with a tray of Oreos.

However long it takes to achieve these goals, I’m in. If you care to join me in my tried-and-true, just-invented regimen, here is the free and easy strategy so far:

STEP 1: TAKE IT EASY. There is no point in pulling a muscle or embarrass­ing myself by trying to do too much too quickly. “Rome fell one step at a time,” as the axiom goes, so let’s really linger on this first step. Congratulate yourself for even thinking about working out today. To­morrow. Every day, until you feel ready to graduate to:

STEP 2: IMAGINE EXERCISE — I MEAN REALLY IMAGINE IT. I read once about neuroplasticity, the science of how our brains can change and grow and distort anything we please. This study de­scribed how one group learned to play an actual piano, and the other group learned to play a fake piano in their minds just by pretending, and at the end they held a re­cital where both groups played “Hot Cross Buns” equally painfully. So you can imag­ine yourself leg-pressing a Kenworth and expect real results. Science!

STEP 3: BE MORE ACTIVE. Getting back in shape and back in our own pants is all relative. What does “more active” look like to you? What­ever that is, you do it. Do it with pas­sion. Do it with pride. Do it during commercial breaks, or when Netflix asks you if you’re really still watching and you hit “yes” and then the spinner spins for a moment while your show continues to load. “The road to heaven is paved one step at a time,” so just by making it this far, you are closer to godliness.

There! By the time we complete this reg­imen, which I intend to name after myself, we will have had time to remember every­one else’s names. Or at least my own.

Zach Hively is an award-winning writer in Abiquiu, N.M. He can be read and reached through https://zachhively.com and on Twitter @zachhively.

Published in Zach Hively

Bean hope

July 5, 2021
Carolyn Dunmire

With the stop-and-start re-opening and seeing friends and neighbors in person for the first time in a year, I feel like we are in a bittersweet period. So sweet to see and hug folks again. But so bitter to hear of hardship and loss, sickness and death experienced by those same folks during the pandemic. As we enter “the new normal,” I find myself searching for the right action and appropri­ate response to the uncertain and quickly changing circumstances that we encounter every day. Or as one philosopher noted, to know your mind, “pay attention to what you are paying attention to.”

SPROUTING BEANSHere’s what I noticed on my trip home from the grocery store the other day:

  • The dry beans are sprouting! What a miracle to see these beauties up out of the red dirt in a time of ex­ceptional drought. I am elated that the farmers took the risk to plant and the beans found the moisture to sprout.
  • There is a new flag waving over our neighbor’s gate: “F–k Biden.” Feels like a gut punch.
  • I notice the canal is empty in spots as it is at the end of the ir­rigation season, usually in October. This year it is mid-June. I feel fear of the unknown fu­ture and the depth and length of this drought. Are we going to just dry up and blow away?
  • A doe leaps in front of my car and I brake and look behind her to see twin spotted fawns. A sign of a fecund spring and hopeful future for my wild neighbors.

My mind and heart are experiencing emo­tional whiplash from elation to fear and loathing with what I see within a mile of my home. How to find solace and hope in these bittersweet moments?

I suggest looking to the wisdom of the bean. (Perhaps a new bumpersticker – Be the bean?) With its compact, durable, and beauti­ful shape and color, the bean holds the po­tential for future life and bounty. Beans have been grown in my neighborhood for centu­ries. They hold simple and deep knowledge on how to respond to dry and uncertain times if we just stop and listen. Here’s what I think the bean would say to us:

  • Focus on the present. Work with the resources you have now and thrive where you are planted. Reach out to the moisture below you and the sun above you to create a new hope and life. Don’t worry about the future or regret the past. There is nothing you can do about them now. You can only en­joy the present of the present. Unwrap it slowly and joyfully.
  • Embrace new ways of growing. Things have changed because of the pan­demic – even in small-town America. I still grumble when I have to call ahead for an appointment for services when I used to walk in and get immediate satisfaction. I try to be respectful of the em­ployees and other patrons all operating un­der the new rules of social distancing and public health priorities. Even the farmers’ market has changed; some of my favorite vendors have opted out this year.

But that doesn’t mean I have to give up on quality local food. I must embrace a new way of purchasing it. Most of my favorite vendors are selling their produce through the Southwest Farm Fresh Cooperative (https://southwestfarmfresh.localfoodmar­ketplace.com/Inde). Each week, a huge va­riety of local food products are available at their on-line market. Then I can pick up my purchases Wednesday or Thursday at one of the locations near my home. While I miss the instant gratification of a farmers’ market purchase, the variety is greater at the SWFF market, and prices and quality are the same as always. I didn’t know I could buy local mushrooms, duck pastrami, and sushi. I can even buy beans at reasonable prices without fear of “sold out” signs if I am late getting to the farmers’ market.

  • Live in beauty. The key to finding hope is to look for the beauty in all things, peo­ple, places, and circumstances. The Navajo tradition of “Walking in Beauty” is a local example of this practice. For me, living in beauty is about finding balance in all that I do. Fear is not beautiful. So, when I find my­self caught in a cycle of worry and panic, I intentionally stop and smell the roses. Liter­ally, smell the amazing roses growing outside my door or even the restaurant patio. Who knew that a dry spell brought out their fra­grance in such a sweet way?

The bean’s wisdom is not offered here to be trite or demeaning of the hardships and difficulties we all are facing in these dry and uncertain times. Rather, it is offered as a com­pass to find a direction for hope and trust as we lurch into “the new normal,” whatever that means. It is going to take a long time to rebuild community trust after the divisive and troubling times we are experiencing with the twin challenges of exceptional drought and pandemic. Past communities have sur­vived and thrived through the same chal­lenges with the wisdom and bounty of the dryland bean. I believe we can too.

Carolyn Dunmire is an award-winning writer who lives, gardens, and cooks in Cahone, Colo.

Published in Carolyn Dunmire

Ginger ale and my Best Worst Week

July 5, 2021
Katharhynn Heidelberg
KATHARHYNN HEIDELBERG

Left, the face of delayed care: Katharhynn Heidelberg on May 2, hours before going to the ER. Right, a much-improved Katharhynn in June.

Ginger ale, that refreshing, slightly spice-kicked drink, came our way sometime in the 1840s. But this isn’t about ginger ale, except tangentially: in a roundabout way, ginger ale may have saved my life.

Not because of any healing properties, but because my request for a friend to bring me some led to her urging me to the emer­gency room in May. Which led to me receiv­ing life-saving care, although I did not appre­ciate that in the immediacy of it all.

Surely, calling paramedics was being “ex­tra” — they are for emergencies! Surely, go­ing to ER on their recommendation was not necessary. Surely, I was just dehydrated and tired; it had been hours, after all, since I’d vomited all that blood. Surely, I absolutely would not be admitted to the hospital, even though my hemoglobin was less than half what it should be. What’s that? A … heli­copter? I am being transferred to another hospital by helicopter?!

Surely, I was about to be bankrupt. Blood. A CT scan. Not one, but two ER admissions. And a chopper ride for 60 miles — then a four-day hospital stay, with blood transfu­sions and procedures to stop a severe GI bleed. Throughout, my mind was on the money. I was not in pain. I wasn’t even scared. But I laid in that bed that first night, half-hysterical over how I was going to pay for it all.

Money was a good part of the reason I did not call 911 when my problem graphi­cally presented itself all over the floor. Cost was why I did not obtain the screening pro­cedures that were recommended before the emergency.

Ironically, what I had been experiencing before it reached an emergency — which I later learned was a bleeding ulcer that pen­etrated the gastro-duodenal artery — had hit the point that I was going to bite the bullet and pay for a CT scan. I had planned to make the call the next business day, a Monday. I began hemorrhaging that Sunday. I got the CT scan, though. In the emergency room. It found nothing — had I just booked one, I would have spent the money, but maybe not had an answer.

But, wait! What about insurance? Well, I have insurance. It’s just that the deductible I had to meet before anything — even an office visit — would be covered at all was prohibitively high. And I didn’t think that I would be able to pay for care if something was found to be seriously wrong.

So I did not get the tests. So I had a life-threatening emergency. So the cost to both me and my insurance company is much, much higher than a CT scan would have been.

The cost worry is not unique; neither is the reality of someone — whether an individual, an insurance company, the government, or hospital charity write-offs — paying more in the long run when care is delayed.

According to an access and affordability study by Peterson Center on Healthcare and Kaiser Family Foundation, 1-in-10 adults with insurance reported delaying or going without care because of costs in 2019. For uninsured adults, it’s worse: 1-in-3 reported going without due to costs.

Further, adults with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty line were found to go without more often than those with incomes above that level. The unin­sured are more likely to use urgent care or emergency services. This is obviously more expensive, but without insurance or money, they lack access to less expensive options. The same is true for those with insurance but an income that is disproportionate to the costs. [[(Pssst! That’s most of us.)

To put it more directly than Peterson-KFF might be inclined: People gamble with their lives because our health care delivery system puts profits ahead of people.

This is not a slur on the providers of that care — who deserve respect, gratitude and, yes, to be paid for their work — but is a criti­cism of the profit-driven system.

The system means even someone em­ployed full-time, with insurance, with sup­plemental insurance, even, and with some savings (me!) is leery of seeking care beyond an office visit, and is reluctant even to do that, since without a copay arrangement un­til that magical deductible number is hit, the cost is about $200 per.

The system causes someone who is bleed­ing out on her bathroom floor to reason that she can maybe sleep it all off and rehydrate with some water, ginger ale and Gatorade, since even in her altered state, she can still manage simple math. (Here’s a little bit: A basic cremation is about the same price as what I paid just for coming into the ER. And, yes. People do think that way. They have to.)

The system puts others in an even more precarious position. At least insurance plans have out-of-pocket maximums each year and because of that, I am — miraculously — not going to have to seek bankruptcy protection because the bill to-date exceeds $160,000. Qualifying for sliding-scale fees also helped immensely.

So there is an entire category of people who are insured, but cannot afford to use that insurance for much preventive care. When circumstances give them no choice, they have to get creative and/or “lucky” enough to hit their out of pocket max, at which point insurance kicks in everything. Lucky is a relative term as, again, they gam­ble their lives, too.

There is yet another subcategory of need to consider: The people who make too much, on paper, to qualify for any aid, but who do not have insurance, because it isn’t available through their work and they cannot afford premiums on the marketplace. (And they don’t qualify for the subsidy under the ACA or Colorado’s health care exchange.)

I know such people. One of them even brought me ginger ale, and, oh yes, saved my life. You also know people in this situation, even if you don’t realize it.

What do they do, when they look into getting insurance, and are quoted a figure of $750 a month? Naturally, that is just the premium; it is not a buy-in for all expenses paid when there is a problem, and medical insurance is not their only expense.

What do they do when a member of their family winds up needing life-saving surgery, and the bill is $100,000, and they are deemed as making “too much money” to qualify for even the hospital’s in-house charity dis­counts? What about when someone in the family has a chronic condition, requiring pricey medication to manage?

Here are some of the things people in this situation do: They either ignore the bills and just let the collections process happen, or they file bankruptcy, or they lose every asset they have to pay a big medical bill — or they ration their medication.

Consider Jesimya David Scherer-Radcliff. He was diabetic. He could not afford insulin. His family buried him in 2019. He was 21. Equally as awful, he was not the only person to chance rationing his insulin and lose.

It is baffling this manifestly amoral health-care delivery system continues without sig­nificant changes. It is simply bizarre that the scare word “socialized!” has staying power when it comes in front of the word “medi­cine.” It is bizarre, because, but for a minor­ity of anti-tax zealots, “socialized” does not precede words like police force, or schools, or trash collection, or road and bridge de­partment.

Nor does it precede the words “fire dis­trict,” which where I live operates the am­bulance service, too. Since I did not take the ambulance to the ER that day in early May, there was not a charge for one. (My friend drove me — care was literally across the street the whole time, but might as well have been a few thousand light-years, because I could not get there without help.) As for the paramedics coming into my house and as­sessing me? I’ve yet to see any bill for that.

So, why do we accept that so many of our vital services are subsidized by taxes, but draw the line at medical care (except for Congress)?

Most of us who are not entirely empty of compassion do not object to Medicaid help­ing the very poor, or to Medicare, to help older Americans, even if we might worry about the programs being abused.

This is all absurd. People are dying be­cause of it, and they will continue to die be­cause of it. I do not pretend to know the answers, but if I did not appreciate the prob­lem before, I certainly do now.

Right now, health care is rationed in America. As someone else once noted, it is rationed by ability to pay. At present, health care in America is, although imperfectly, ac­cessible to certain categories of people:

The very poor. The very rich. And the very lucky.

We can do better. We have to.

So far, I am falling into the “very lucky” cat­egory — I went from being flown to medical care on May 2 to, one week later, sitting with my mother at a meal. So far, there are only a few unknowns as to insurance payments.

But the systemic problem with our health-care delivery method isn’t just about me.

It’s not about a week in my life that objec­tively was one of the worst, but that subjec­tively, because of the astounding outcome, has me calling it “My Best Worst Week.”

And, no. It isn’t about ginger ale, either.

Katharhynn Heidelberg is an award-winning journalist in Montrose, Colo.

Published in Katharhynn Heidelberg

Environmental assessment release for Salter project

July 5, 2021
4cfp

The Dolores Ranger District of the San Juan National Forest has released the Salter Vegetation Management Project Final En­vironmental Assessment, Finding of No Significant Impact, and the Draft Decision Notice. The objection period opened June 23, for those who have previously submitted comments regarding the proposed project.

The Salter Vegetation Management Proj­ect is located on the Dolores Ranger District in the vicinity of Salter Y, Plateau Creek, Carlyle Point, Turkey Knoll, and Boggy Draw. The analysis area covers approximate­ly 35,000 acres of forested areas on mesa tops and canyons within the Dolores River watershed. The Forest Service is propos­ing to treat approximately 22,346 acres of the ponderosa pine-Gambel oak vegetation type to 1) improve resilience and maintain the resistance and adaptability of forest eco­systems in an effort to increase protection against epidemic insect and disease out­breaks, 2) increase the structural diversity of the ponderosa pine forest represented across the landscape, and 3) provide eco­nomic support to local communities by pro­viding timber products to local industries in a sustainable manner. Proposed activities in­clude a combination of timber harvest, tree planting, and activity fuel burning to achieve the project purpose.

The final Draft Decision Notice, Final Environmental Assessment, and Finding of No Significant Impact are available online at the project webpage. The project web­page is also where electronic objections may be submitted: https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=57671. These documents are also available for review at the Dolores Ranger District office.

As described in the Draft Decision No­tice, it is the responsible official’s intent to implement Alternative 2 (Modified Proposed Action), which is described in the Environ­mental Assessment for the Salter Vegetation Management project. Objections will only be accepted from those who have previously submitted specific written comments re­garding the proposed project during scoping or other designated opportunities for public comment. Issues raised in objections must be based on previously submitted specific written comments regarding the proposed project, unless the issue is based on new in­formation that arose after the opportunities to comment. Objections, including attach­ments, must be filed (electronic, regular mail, fax, email, hand-delivery, express delivery, or messenger service) with the appropriate re­viewing officer within 45 days following the publication of this legal notice on June 23 in the Cortez Journal. Objection instructions can be found on the project web page.

For additional information on the pro­posed Salter Vegetation Management Proj­ect, contact David Casey with the Dolores Ranger District at 970-882-7296 or by email at david.casey2@usda.gov. All offices on the San Juan National Forest are currently conducting business and providing services virtually. For information on the San Juan National Forest, call 970-247-4874.

Published in July 2021 Tagged

A special guy

July 5, 2021
David Long

Like the ripples when a stone is tossed in water, the impact of well-lived lives is more obvious close up, but they are far-reaching, if less easily seen, as time goes by.

The late Russ Brown, my former boss as the owner of the Cortez Newspapers who died in May, was one such person. He had a positive influence on many of his fellow trav­elers, and most certainly on my own journey.

So this is my goodbye and many thanks to him, with one personal anecdote that shows just what a kind and generous person he was.

A job offer at his papers – the Cortez Sen­tinel and Montezuma County Journal – is what brought me here, where I’ve now lived more than three decades, the first of which spent working for Russ as a reporter and colum­nist. Fresh out of J-school at the University of Southern Colorado, where I attended as what was then gently referred to as an “al­ternative (old) student,” I was looking at a probably bleak future, since middle-aged cub reporters were not in great demand and print journalism was even then starting a gradual decline as “social media” crept into our lives like a chronic head cold.

Employed – temporarily I hoped – as a ditch-digger in Pueblo, I’d spotted a tiny help-wanted ad in the Pueblo Chieftain that ran for one day seeking a person, who, as then-editor Byron McKelvie told me dur­ing the job interview, could “hit the ground running,” which meant being able to churn out copy and opinion pieces along with two other reporters to fill the considerable news holes of the thrice-weekly papers.

Mac, who seriously hated to interview ap­plicants, as I later learned, briefly pe­rused my clips from the school paper and those I’d writ­ten as an intern, and hired me in about a half-hour, causing me to erroneously congratulate my­self for impress­ing him so quickly. I was to start in a few weeks, and re­turned to Pueblo to wrap up my life there.

Several days later I got a call from Mac. It seemed Russ was a bit more dubious about his prospective new hire, since Mac had asked me almost nothing about my back­ground – like, was I a convicted felon, or did I have other undesirable qualities that might reflect poorly on the papers’ credibility?

No, I told Mac, I’d never done hard time, although I wasn’t being totally forthcoming, since my past was a little checkered here and there.

After that phone call, I was formally hired and arrived in Cortez full of anxiety, living in a motel room while I saw if I could make a go of it.

Of course, I had little idea of just how con­servative a community Montezuma County was, and my weekly liberal opinion pieces on such seemingly benign topics (ha, ha) as gun control and the war on drugs soon generated outraged letters to the editor demanding I be run out of town or at least canned.

But these seemed to amuse Russ more than anything. He would occasionally give me a few words of encouragement as I set­tled into my new routine and gained a little confidence.

Then one day as I was passing his office, he called me in and handed me some docu­ments in an envelope, saying only that he had no use for them.

Inside were some old court records. It seemed one of my severest critics had dog­gedly researched my past and discovered I’d been busted for marijuana during a much-earlier attempt at higher education. Roger (we’ll call him that, since it was his name) had ferreted this out and sent the informa­tion to Russ, certain this would end my job at the paper.

No way – Russ never even asked me for details. He had by then seen that my report­ing was accurate and my columns were actu­ally being read, though not always loved.

It was easy to tell that he genuinely wanted me to succeed. I hope I served him well.

Russ wasn’t a reporter himself, but he loved and stood up for journalism.

On May 29, 1998, when Cortez Police Of­ficer Dale Claxton was gunned down and killed and two other law officers were seri­ously wounded, it was huge news that drew attention nationwide. The Journal/Sentinel were publishing three days a week.

When three suspects in the shootings were identified, the announcement came just before one of our “off” days. It meant that other papers and media, such as the Denver Post, would have this news, but we wouldn’t be able to publish it until a day after them. (Newspapers weren’t yet on the Internet.)

A few of us reporters talked it over and I was assigned the task of approaching Russ to ask him to do something very unusual: publish a special edition the next day. There wouldn’t be time to get many ads to pay for it; it was just something that would be done in the public interest.

He said sure.

And so we came out with an extra (you’ve heard of newspaper extras in old movies – “Extra, extra! Read all about it!”). It may have the last one ever published in this country.

Russ was a special guy.

David Long is a co-owner of and writer for the Four Corners Free Press.

Published in July 2021 Tagged

Remembering Russ Brown, a supporter of journalism

July 5, 2021
4cfp

Russell Dewey Brown, former publish­er of Cortez Newspapers, passed away in Farmington, New Mexico on May 13, 2021. He was 92.

Russell was born to Dwight and Mildred Brown in 1929. After graduating from Cor­tez High School, he joined the U.S. Navy and spent time on the USS Missouri. He gradu­ated at the top of his class and had a choice to serve anywhere he desired. His choice was to see the world on the USS Missouri.

RUSSELL D. BROWN

Russell D. Brown

After completing his service in the Navy, he attended Western State University, where he met and married Patsy Howard in 1953. They moved to Columbia, Missouri, where Russ received his degree in journalism. Russ and Patsy returned to Gunnison, Colorado, where Patsy finished her education. They moved back to Cortez, where he was able to revive a struggling family newspaper and turn it to a very successful newspaper enter­prise in Southwestern Colorado.

In 1962 Russ and his family took an ad­venture to Anchorage, Alaska. Russ started as an advertising salesman and shortly was promoted to the advertising manager. While in Anchorage, the family witnessed the 1964 earthquake. Russ was able to hitch a ride with a military helicopter surveying damages of the earthquake. One of Russ’s pictures was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Again the family newspaper called and Russ re­turned to Cortez to help with the newspaper.

After setting the newspaper on the right path, Russ was able to pursue many business interests, and was responsible for bringing cable TV to Cortez. He was an accomplished pi­lot and accumulated an extraordinary amount of flight hours for a private pilot.

Russ felt obligated to the people who ad­vertised in the newspa­pers and strived to give back through commu­nity service in organiza­tions such as the Cortez Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club.

Russ was preceded in death by his young son, Michael Clark Brown, who passed away in 1961, and his wife, Patsy Ruth (Howard) Brown, who passed away in 2018. Russ leaves behind his pres­ent wife and caregiver, Peggy Marie Traller, his son, Charles Brown and his wife Janice Brown, his daughter, Tammy Kingman and her hus­band Steve Kingman, 5 grandchildren-Treona, Courtney, Casey, Carly and Randy and 5 great-grandchildren-Brooke, Charleigh, Callan, Raelyn and Clay.

Published in July 2021

Diversion for most: Five locals charged with harassment in a January incident in Cortez will have those charges dropped if they complete the court’s requirements

July 5, 2021
G and D Binkly-Long

And then there was one.

Five of six suspects charged with harass­ing members of the Justice and Peace coali­tion in downtown Cortez in January have agreed to write letters of apology and enter a diversion program operated by the 22nd Judicial District, in lieu of facing prosecu­tion.

The sixth suspect will go to trial.

Appearing in front of Montezuma Coun­ty Judge Jennilynn Lawrence on May 26, Sherry Simmons, 60, of Lewis, pleaded not guilty to being part of a group of “Mont­ezuma County Patriots” who allegedly bul­lied and intimidated five Justice and Peace demonstrators in downtown Cortez on Jan. 2. Her trial is set for Sept. 22.

Four other Patriots – Tiffany Ghere, 42, of Cortez; John Teitge Sr., 48, of Cortez; Earl Broderick, 70, of Road N; and Edward Bracklow, 57, of Cortez – have all accepted the district attorney’s offer of entering the diversion program rather than going to trial or pleading guilty, according to Assistant DA Will Furse.

A fifth suspect, John Anselmo, 69, of Road P.8, who was disavowed by the Patriot group, had been charged with harassment in the Jan. 2 incident and also for his ac­tions at a demonstration Jan. 6 in Cortez during which he allegedly threatened then-President-elect Joe Biden. He also accepted the offer of entering the diversion program with the same conditions to address both charges.

The diversion program used to be called deferred prosecution, Furse said. It involves an agreement in which the accused persons agree to do certain things in exchange for the charges against them eventually being dropped.

“We want a recognition of wrongdoing if they do write an apology,” Furse said.

Diversions are not tantamount to a sim­ple dismissal of charges, or a plea bargain, he said. “The suspects are acknowledging wrongdoing, but it’s not the same as a guilty plea. They make a statement of wrongdo­ing and a statement of fact but are not re­quired to plead guilty.”

The offenders pay a fee to the diversion coordinator, which helps fund the program.

Diversions are intended for low-risk of­fenders without criminal histories, Furse said.

After three months, the court does a re­view to see whether the individuals have done what they were supposed to do. If they have, the charges will be dropped.

If they have not, the DA’s office will file a motion to revoke the diversion agreement and the prosecution will resume as if it were a new case, Furse said.

“The diversion program is a voluntary one we have had for some time,” Furse said. He said it has been in place locally for eight or nine years and is one of the larger pro­grams in the state.

“There is a very low recidivism rate,” he said. “This is something we hope these de­fendants will take full advantage of.”

The suspects do not incur court costs or a fine unless they are unable to fulfill the diversion agreement.

The diversion program is frequently of­fered to people who have been driving without licenses, first-time DUI offenders, or some with low-level drug offenses, Furse said. In those cases, they may be required to take classes under the diversion agreement.

However, he said taking classes is not be­ing required of the offenders in this case because “there are not really therapeutic options we see as relevant to the case.”

The basis of the charges rested mainly on a 34-minute video taken of the Jan. 2 inci­dent by Raleigh Marmorstein, a leader of the Justice and Peace coalition, and sent to the police, as well as an eyewitness account by Cortez Mayor Mike Lavey.

In 2020 and early in 2021, downtown Cortez was the scene of some confronta­tions on Saturdays, when members of the Justice and Peace coalition would hold signs and march silently along Main Street in sup­port of Black Lives Matter and social jus­tice.

The Montezuma County Patriots also would have lengthy motorized demonstra­tions on Saturday mornings in which nu­merous vehicles drove along Main Street bearing flags in support of America, Don­ald Trump, the Three Percent militia move­ment, and the Confederacy, the occupants often yelling imprecations at their perceived foes.

Generally the Patriots stayed in their ve­hicles, but there were occasions when some of them would confront the Justice and Peace marchers on the sidewalks. There are videos of several different occasions in which people hooted, insulted, and yelled obscenities at the peace marchers, who were told to remain silent in response.

There were also incidents in which the Patriots were yelled at by bystanders, but the actual Justice and Peace marchers al­most always stayed silent, and there are no reported incidents in which a group of peace supporters surrounded and intimi­dated members of the Patriots.

On Jan. 2, five Justice and Peace march­ers were having what they called a “flash mob” on Main. They had been trying to avoid the Patriots and had set their event for noon, after the Patriot parade was over. At that time they walked to the corner of Main and Elm streets.

Videos of the incident posted on social media showed about 20 Patriots, some armed, walking toward the peace group, shouting at and insulting them. None of the Patriots were wearing masks, although the pandemic was still at a peak, and they stood close to the peace supporters, who were masked.

Comments shouted at the peace group included, “All lives matter, you fucking idi­ots,” “Fuck Black Lives Matter,” and “You idiots, anti-American bastards, get down on your knees.”

However, there was no physical contact, and police who were driving by did not stop to intervene, seeing no crime occurring. Police later said they were also busy with some urgent calls, including one regarding children walking on the ice on a pond in a city park.

When the peace marchers decided to leave and walk back to St. Barnabas Epis­copal Church a block away, some of the Patriot group followed and continued to harangue them. The act of following was the actual basis of the harassment charges.

Police Chief Vern Knuckles ordered an investigation after he viewed a video of the incident.

Cortez Police Officer Steven King was as­signed the investigation and found grounds for charges after watching the video and in­terviewing the suspects and witnesses.

Some of the Patriots seemed eager to claim that the mayor’s wife, Gail Lavey, had threatened them with a can of insect spray.

During her interview with Officer King, Ghere told him Gail Lavey had pointed a can of wasp spray at her, causing her great concern. Teitge made the same accusation, claiming she had “barged through their group” waving cans of insect spray.

Simmons also falsely asserted that the mayor’s wife was the “first person from the Peace and Justice group to show up” at the downtown demonstration, according to King’s report, and had “barged through their group with bear spray.”

In fact, Gail Lavey was not even at the demonstration. A different, masked woman was later identified as the person carrying the insect spray, though she did not use it and was not charged with any offense.

Ghere later publically apologized for spreading the untruth about Gail Lavey.

Published in July 2021 Tagged ,

Pondering twists of fate: A local author finds that things have a way of working out

July 5, 2021
Gail Binkly
PLOT TWIST BY BETHANY TURNER

Bethany Turner

2020 was a year in which it was a little dif­ficult to believe in happily-ever-afters.

But Bethany Turner has never stopped be­lieving in them and writing about them.

The Cortez resident just released her first novel for Thomas Nelson/Harper Collins, Plot Twist. It followed three novels published by Revell/Baker Publishing Group. All four are romantic comedies that look at the bright side of life.

The third of her novels, Hadley Beckett’s Next Dish, was released in May 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was surging.

“It was a horrible time to release a book,” Turner said in a phone interview with the Four Corners Free Press. Her public appear­ances for that book were canceled as soci­ety was locked down. And Turner wrestled with the issue of publicizing a rom-com at a time when the whole world was suffering horribly.

“What I struggled with the most person­ally was I didn’t know how to promote my writing in a way that didn’t seem insensitive. ‘You may lose your job or health, but here, wrap your head around this romantic com­edy.’

“But we need to laugh and to escape a bit. I think it’s okay to just write a story that people have fun with, that doesn’t have to change your life.”

Plot Twist indeed offers the opportunity of escape from grim reality. Well-written and replete with humor, it tells the story of Olivia Ross, who has a chance encounter in a coffeehouse with a handsome man who in a whimsical manner helps save her from the annoying come-on attempts of another man.

Ross is a writer of greeting cards who dreams of finishing a screenplay. Her res­cuer is an aspiring actor. When they part, they make a half-joking promise to meet each other in the same coffee shop in 10 years to see how well they succeeded with their dreams.

They forget to exchange names, but Olivia later sees a movie with an actor named Hamish MacDougal, and she identifies him as her cof­feehouse com­panion. As the years go by, ev­ery Feb. 4 brings odd encounters and coincidenc­es – yes, plot twists. Olivia dates men and develops serious relationships, but they never seem to quite work out. She plugs away at her screenplay but can’t finish it.

However, MacDou­gal seems to be skyrocketing to fame. She doesn’t even want to hook up with him on their 10-year anniversary. But fate seems to keep bringing him into her life in unexpect­ed ways.

Turner said that it was only 10 or 12 years ago that she plunged into writing seriously.

“I was working in banking. It was a stress­ful time. I wrote late at night after everybody went to bed and I just got hooked.

“I always enjoyed writing but never had done it just for fun. At work, if somebody need­ed something written better, they’d bring it to me.”

When she produced a nov­el and sought to have it pub­lished, she got rejections from agents and pub­lishers. Finally she submitted her book to a manuscript sub­mission service to be consid­ered for their list, even though everything she’d read about such services said they were a waste of money.

“But it was 13 days before I heard from the ones that went on to be my publisher for my first three books,” Turner said. “It feels amazing to be published. It was hugely exciting.”

Suddenly her writing became real, she said, when before, “it just felt like a hobby.”

“It still does sometimes, but there are contracts, there are expectations. It got real very fast. To be able to pursue this dream I’d never known I really had was wonderful.”

Turner said her love of romantic com­edies came from movies she saw while com­ing of age in the 1980s and ’90s. She’s always been a reader, too, and is particularly fond of Jane Austen, whose books she re-reads frequently.

“Almost every great romance out there today, she already did it,” Turner said. “I do love rom-coms. Probably Bridget Jones’s Diary is my favorite. A great romance that makes me laugh – there’s nothing better.”

When she began writing seriously, she never considered not writing a romance.

“That’s what I love. Telling those love sto­ries and the ridiculous things that go along with falling in love, staying in love, falling out of love.

“I do consider myself a romantic. There is so much to be explored within a romantic relationship.”

Turner’s belief in romance has been bol­stered by her own marriage to Kelly Turner, general manager of KRTZ/KVFC radio in Cortez.

Bethany, who was born in Covington, Ky., met Kelly in an Internet chat room. They hit it off and were married in 2001.

“The honest-to-goodness truth is he in­spires everything I write,” she said. “Our life is not a romantic comedy, but I write about heroes who ultimately are guys worth spend­ing your life with. That comes from him.

“We’ve been married 20 years now. He never ceases to amaze me. The support he gives me. Just on the practical side I literally could not do it without his support. This is a guy willing to take care of the dishes because I am on deadline, and he helps with these things even when I’m not on deadline. None of it would be there if it wasn’t for him.”

One of the things Turner found most difficult about writing Plot Twist was creat­ing the lines from greeting cards that begin each chapter – lines presumably written by the main character, Olivia, and reflective of what was going on in Olivia’s life at the time.

“As I was editing and as chapters changed a little bit, I had to revise the theme. This was the hardest part of the edit,” Turner said. “I’ve never written greeting cards – nor shall I ever.”

The COVID period threw something of a monkey wrench into Turner’s writing ef­forts, what with everyone being mostly at home.

“In my writing I definitely struggled. I have a designated creative spot in my house and I was there all the time. It just kind of sucked the creativity out of the setting for me. I didn’t write for a while, possibly six solid months.”

2020 was also difficult for her and Kelly’s children, two boys, both now in high school. Like many children, they found it difficult to be out of school and cut off from their peers. But now that the worst of the pandemic appears to be over, Turner is hopeful about the fu­ture and believes she learned some lessons.

“I feel like I got some new ownership of the writing and different aspects of it all,” she said. “I came out knowing myself a little better.”

On June 26, she had her first in-person book event since February 2020, an after­noon tea on the lawn at the Farmington Public Library. “It was fun,” she said.

Turner is not a stranger to personal strug­gles. At the age of 17, she had one ovary removed because of cancer.

“I was told having kids would not be easy, that it would take medical in­tervention,” she said. But when she and Kelly were married, their two sons came along without such intervention. “They were healthy kids. We could not be more grateful.”

Her second son had to be delivered by C-section. During the operation, a tumor was found on her remaining ovary, which had to be removed.

It was decided later that she should have a hysterectomy, and yet another tumor was found on her appendix. It also was removed and now she appears to be clear of cancer.

“Life is short, life is miraculous,” she said. “You don’t know what’s coming and you need to get the most out of what you’ve got. To have these miracle kids – to know that if it wasn’t for one of them, I wouldn’t have had this diagnosis – it shows me there’s more at play here and I need to do what I can with the life I’ve got and I’m going to give it my all.

“I love it. I have the opportunity. There’s no chance I don’t want to make the most of it.”

Turner is currently doing edits on her 2022 release, The Do-Over, which will be out next March.

“It’s very hopeful,” she said. “It has noth­ing to do with the pandemic. It’s about a woman re-evaluating her life for a bit.”

In the meantime, she’ll be promoting Plot Twist, a book she did not find it difficult to plot out.

“At the time I don’t really know that I was writing plot twists,” she said.

“In all my stories, I love keeping you on your toes just a little. There will be a happily-ever-after, but I keep the reader guessing how we’re going to get there. That’s just kind of how my brain works. I like to go down the slightly less-traveled path.”

Turner is eager to hear from her readers.

“I love connecting with them via social me­dia or reader events. It’s been the best part of this whole journey – connecting with people through the power of story.

“I’m grateful for people who want to read the stories I tell.”

Published in July 2021

Left high and dry: A severe drought has definite and unfortunate impacts on wildlife

July 5, 2021
Janneli Miller
LOW WATER AT MCPHEE RESERVOIR

Water in McPhee Reservoir is at a very low elevation and the Lower Dolores River was dry in places at the end of June. Photo by Gail Binkly

In mid-June, a 2-year-old male bear was wandering the streets of Dolores at night, tipping over trash bins that weren’t latched to find himself a meal.

Dolores is the only town in Montezuma County to have an ordinance “requiring all trash containers to be bear-proof and re­quiring all trash to be stored in bear-proof containers.” Sheriff Steve Nowlin told the Four Corners Free Press that he’s already issued four citations to Dolores residents who have failed to secure their trash.

“Just keep your trash locked up until the morning of trash collection,” he said. “We’ve got more bears coming in and we’re going to have continued problems.”

BLACK BEAR

The drought is helping drive more bears into towns as the bruins face shortages of food and water in the wild. Photo courtesy Warren Holland/BearSmart Durango

Nowlin said the bear was finally caught on Merritt Way at the end of June. It had been trapped and relocated last year, but found its way back to Dolores again this year. So it was doomed.

“It’s not the bear’s fault,” said Nowlin. “Just because he’s hungry and I can’t get people to take care of their trash, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) had to put him down. The only thing I can do is to try to educate people.”

Nowlin, who was upset about the bear’s fate, told the Free Press that there are more bears in town now, which he believes is be­cause of the drought.

“The natural foods aren’t available right now, and lack of water doesn’t help. Wher­ever they can find water they’re going to go, and they do come to the river – that’s the natural water source for everything.”

Nowlin said bears are not “true predators” but opportunistic omnivores that will return to a reliable food source once they find it.

“People can avoid these conflicts with these bears,” he said, by making sure they do not feed bears and removing things that at­tract the bruins, such as trash, bird feeders, and unclean barbecue grills.

The combination of drought, which limits food sources and the nutrient value of for­age, and increased human visitation on public lands and national forests has in­creased the chances that some wild­life may move into human-occupied areas in search of both food and water.

For many people, one of the attractions of living in a rural area is the proximity to wildlife, but “we just don’t want to have them get habituated with humans,” contin­ues Nowlin. Most animals know where the water sources are.

“Birds and other wildlife will definitely come to water,” he said. But what happens when their regular water sources dry up? Some animals, like bears, will venture into human-occupied areas, but others, such as elk and deer, may not.

Brad Weinmeister, wildlife biologist with CPW, told the Free Press that “one of the big things is that there is not the forage that there used to be for wildlife.”

He said it’s difficult to determine the total impact of drought. For example, if there’s a heavy snow and hard winter, it’s relatively easy to find a deer carcass and note that the animal didn’t survive the winter. But the im­pact of drought is harder to see.

A dry year followed by a wet year allows the plants to regrow, but extended dry years take a toll.

“I’m not sure how they’re making it through some of these years with the poor-quality forage – we haven’t got any new re­growth on winter range and they’re feeding off the same stuff for two years in a row,” said Weinmeister.

Animals need food, water, cover and space. “With drought you take away wa­ter, food, you take away their cover – so it’s impacting three of those four main compo­nents of habi­tat. You have poor forage conditions, so the nutrition quality is poor and the ani­mals aren’t as healthy,” Wein­meister said.

There is in­creased preda­tion on stressed animals, which are likely to be weaker. Wein­meister said that in drought conditions animals will concentrate around seeps and springs, which then makes them more vulner­able. “They’re still using the same areas, but they’re just more suscep­tible to disease and predation,” he said.

But with the increase in the number of recreational users of the forest as well as houses being built in what is called the “Wildlife Urban Interface” (WUI), “they’re losing their space too,” Weinmeister said.

Thus it is difficult to tease out specific in­fluences on wildlife. “What we’re seeing with elk is that they are reproducing, but the calf numbers are down – the calves aren’t surviv­ing,” he noted.

Most people in the Four Corners region are probably well aware that our area is suf­fering from an extended “millennial” or “mega” drought – meaning that this is the driest period on record since the 1100s, when the Ancestral Puebloans left, most likely because of extended drought condi­tions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines drought as “a period of abnormally dry weather long enough to cause a serious hydrological imbalance.” The “hydrological imbalance” means that drought brings many risks – direct and indi­rect – to our daily lives.

Food systems for humans, including ag­riculture and livestock production, are im­pacted, but drought also brings ecological risks, including fire, as well as economic and political instability.

Mami Mizutori, special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for disaster risk reduction, has compared the impact of drought to that of a pandemic, stating in the 2021 Global Assessment of Risk Special Report that, “As with Covid-19, droughts affect all societies and economies – urban and rural. The cost of drought to society and eco­systems is often substantially underestimated – drought has been the single longest-term physical trigger of po­litical change in 5,000 years of recorded human history.”

The local drought has indeed brought “political” changes to our region, ex­emplified by regional entities enacting restrictions on hu­man activity. The San Juan National Forest went under Stage 1 fire restrictions as of June 15, which prohibit “ig­niting, building, maintaining, or using a fire outside of a permanent metal or concrete fire pit that the Forest Ser­vice has installed and main­tained at its developed recre­ation sites.”

Stage 1 restrictions do not prohibit the use of firearms or chainsaws, and smoking is only allowed inside of a vehicle or in a developed recre­ation site. Stage 2 restrictions are a bit more restrictive, while Stage 3 prohibits any entry into the restricted area.

Mancos instigated an in-town fire ban on June 16, and also has mandatory watering restrictions allowing outside watering only between 6 and 10 a.m. and p.m., with even-numbered addresses only allowed to water on even-numbered calendar days, and odd on odd days.

Dolores implemented voluntary watering restrictions starting on June 28, suggesting that watering be limited to a total of 2 hours and not at all between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. Similarly, the City of Cortez has voluntary water restrictions in place between April 1 and Oct. 31 that prohibit watering yards and gardens between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. The city uses the same even/odd system as Man­cos. Additionally, Cortez has permanently banned irrigation watering between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. from May 15 through Sept. 15 every year.

Yet even with these restrictions, people are most likely to have enough water to sur­vive – something not guaranteed for wildlife. Bears will come into human-occupied areas, as will some predators. Mountain lions will follow their prey, which are mostly deer. Weinmeister noted that “the animals that are out on the natural landscape – the national forest – are more impacted by drought. The animals staying on alfalfa fields, or in town or in places with irrigation, are having better reproduction than the animals on the forest. A deer staying on an irrigated alfalfa or hay field has good cover and good nutrition.”

But then the predators enter.

Nowlin told the Free Press, “We’ve had mountain lion sightings in the town of Do­lores, on several occasions – a female with kittens is coming in.”

What about fish?

Jordan Fenner, fishing guide for Telluride Outside for the past five years, told the Free Press, “We’re really self-regulating for the health of the trout.”

CUTBOW TROUT IN THE DOLORES RIVER

A “cutbow” (a cross between a rainbow and a cutthroat trout) caught on the Dolores River in July. The river is so low, anglers are being asked not to fish between McPhee Dam and Bradfield Bridge after noon on any days. Photo courtesy Jordan Fenner

This year is the second dry year in a row, and Fenner said “last year we shut down our fishing from the West Fork down to the con­fluence [of the Dolores], because of how low the water was.”

Low water flows mean higher water tem­peratures. Fenner explained that trout “are really finicky. They’re an index species be­cause they need their environment to be pretty perfect and it’s a small window for them – between 50 and 60 degrees. I carry a thermometer and pay attention to that.” He said he definitely is aware of the impact of the drought on the fish, and that this impacts how he guides.

“Last Sunday on a section of the Dolo­res near the Roaring Fork, it was beautiful, amazing really, but the water was so shallow. We got all that rain and the water came up – maybe we got some more time to fish, but it was so skinny and there were many places we couldn’t fish. We started off in a place we normally fish and moved up river looking for water we could fish. We knew where the pools are, but it was a little scary to see how rapidly it dropped out.”

Fenner said heat de-oxygenates the water, which makes it less desirable for the fish, which follow plant life and insects for their sustenance. He can tell the fish are stressed because of how they “habituize,” meaning they have fewer places to hide and are defi­nitely harder to fish because you have to be a better caster and use smaller flies.

“When it’s really hot and really low I just know enough to leave them alone.”

But Fenner said his clients don’t really un­derstand these nuances. “All of our clients now are from out of state – large urban ar­eas in Texas or Arizona – or out of coun­try, which has changed be­cause of Co­vid. If you told them we’re in a drought, they can’t tell. They’re from these large ur­ban areas and don’t under­stand the cycles of nature and how things are being affected,” he said.

Fenner hasn’t noticed a drop in clients, but under the current drought conditions his company has started to move over to the Gunnison River to fish instead of the Dolo­res or the San Miguel, primarily because of the low flows. It’s logistically more difficult, but better for the fish, he said.

NATIVE FLANNEL MOUTH SUCKERS IN THE LOWER DOLORES RIVER

Native flannelmouth suckers converge for spawning in the Lower Dolores River in 2006. The suckers are one of three native fish species in the Dolores whose status is of great concern, and the drought won’t help them. Photo courtesy David Graft/Colorado Parks and Wildlife

The Durango CPW district has put vol­untary fishing advisories on some of the waters, including the Animas, in order to keep the fish a little less stressed. A healthy trout may be able to survive the catch-and-release technique utilized by fly fishers, but a stressed trout may swim away when released, only to die downstream due to the stress of being caught.

A voluntary fishing closure on the section of the Dolores River from McPhee Reser­voir down to Bradfield Bridge from noon through the remainder of the day is cur­rently in place. CPW says it may implement an emergency closure to all fishing if condi­tions don’t improve.

As of June 30 the dam-regulated flow was 10 cubic feet per second, which is not sus­tainable for fish. The Dolores River in Do­lores was at 25 percent of its average flow during the entire runoff this year, with the Animas, San Juan and other rivers also low.

At the end of June and in early July, the Dolores River was completely dry at Bed­rock, upriver from its confluence with the San Miguel River. The flow there was at 0 cfs, accord­ing to the U.S. Geological Survey.

That’s al­most certain to have an adverse effect on three native fish spe­cies in the Do­lores — the flannelmouth sucker, blue­head sucker, and roundtail chub — about which water managers have been greatly concerned. If the fishes’ numbers nosedive, there is the potential for one or more of the species to gain an endan­gered listing, which could affect how water is allocated.

The drought also could potentially affect hunting.

Weinmeister told the Free Press he hasn’t really noticed an impact on deer- or elk-hunting due to the drought. However, “last year I noticed a change with bighorn sheep. They were down in lower elevation in tim­bered areas, instead of staying above timber­line, possibly finding seeps in the timber. For sheep hunting, when the animals are down in the timber, it may be harder,” he said.

Mountain sheep, elk, bears, deer, fish, and mountain lions are all definitely affected by the drought, and changes in their behaviors are beginning to be noticed by humans. But what about other, less-noticeable wildlife?

Reproductive rates and the numbers of young in birds and bats are down, but there’s not a lot of long-term data available. Rab­bits, squirrels, and other smaller wild ani­mals can’t survive as long without water as larger game animals can. And their numbers are not tracked so the long-term effects of drought remain largely unknown.

One recent news report from an Arizona network said large birds of prey were “drop­ping from the sky” due to the consistent high temperatures over 115 degrees Fahrenheit.

We do know that as serious the drought is for humans, it is worse for wildlife. How that will change human interactions with the wildlife we love is unknown.

Locally, because of the pandemic and eco­nomic incentives promoting tourism, there has been an uptick in visitors to the local area, many of whom come to enjoy our na­tional forests, rivers and wildlands. Hunting and fishing are also major reasons people come to the Four Corners area, and so far the drought has not seriously impacted these activities.

Yet the combination of an extended drought along with an increase in visitation to natural areas is stressing our wildlife.

“Multiple years of drought are definitely going to have an impact on animals,” said Weinmeister, “but it’s hard for us to measure what the total impacts are to wildlife are.”

“There’s a lot of human activity on the forest lands, and it definitely has an impact on wildlife,” Nowlin agreed.

You might be excited or afraid to find a bear or a mountain lion in your backyard, but that is not the animal’s usual habitat, and chances are the creature is trying hard to survive. Liv­ing in the rural Southwest means we have to accommodate our wildlife. It’s OK to put out water for animals and birds, but feeding wildlife is illegal and can lead to dire circum­stances for both humans and animals. While it may seem helpful to put out hummingbird feeders, they can actually cause more harm by attracting bears. If used at all they should be hung at least 10 feet above ground level.

Interested citizens are encouraged to find out more about what they can do to help drought-stricken wildlife by perusing the CPW, Forest Service and Bear Smart websites.

“Wouldn’t it be a shame if we didn’t have these animals around?” asked Nowlin. “We’ve got to have human participation to keep both humans and wildlife safe.”

Published in July 2021 Tagged

Two MCHS grads discuss the lunch clubs

June 10, 2021
Gail Binkly

Support for the LGBTQ2S+ community has sometimes sparked controversy in Cor­tez and Montezuma County.

In February of this year, a member of the Montezuma-Cortez Re-1 School Board, Lance McDaniel, was recalled for reasons that had little to do with any of his actions on the board. One of the frequent criticisms of him on social media was what was called his “involvement with the Rainbow Club,” a group of students that met at lunch time once a week in Cortez Middle School. There were other such groups in Montezuma-Cor­tez High School, Southwest Open School, and Mancos.

McDaniel’s involvement consisted of dropping off pizza for the meetings, which offered an opportunity for students with concerns about bullying to gather in a safe setting. These meetings were not exclusively for LGBTQ2S+ students, though they were sometimes regarded that way because of the use of the term “rainbow” in some of the clubs’ names.

At its meeting May 11, the Re-1 school board heard a number of public comments about the lunch clubs. There was nothing on the board’s agenda regarding the clubs’ fu­ture, but the formal meeting that night had been preceded by an executive session “for the purpose of receiving legal advice about student groups.”

Critics of the lunch groups who ad­dressed the board said the children were be­ing “bribed with money and pizza” and that the meetings caused kids to “question their own identity” at a time when their sexuality was still being formed. One woman claimed numerous parents were considering pulling their kids out of school because of the exis­tence of the clubs.

However, other people voiced support for the groups, citing statistics showing that LG­BTQ2S+ youth are more than three times as likely to attempt suicide as heterosexuals of the same ages.

The school board heard the comments but took no action regarding the lunch clubs.

Two MCHS graduates who used to attend meetings of the high-school club, which was called the Rainbow Alliance, say the group helped them through difficult times.

Both spoke to the Four Corners Free Press on condition of anonymity. Per request, the Free Press is referring to one of them by the term “they” because it is gender-neutral.

One, “Blake” (not her real name), who graduated from MCHS in 2020, said she at­tended meetings her junior and senior years.

“I didn’t go to very many my junior year,” “Blake” said. “It was every Monday, so every other Monday or once a month in my junior year I’d go, and then senior year I tried to go every Monday

“I more publicly came out my senior year, so it was way more important that year. There was some bullying from different teachers. It felt like everyone was watching me.”

“Blake” said she knew in her mid-teens that she was gay, but had sensed it long before that. “When I finally came out to myself and realized it, I was 15, but look­ing back I’ve always liked women, so I have always known.”

She felt fairly isolated. “I mostly felt un­accepted. I didn’t have really any support. Mostly the only support I got was from that group.”

During the first semester of her senior year, “Blake” was startled by a remark a male teacher made.

“I had a girlfriend at the time. I was in his class and we were doing a project. He was talking to one of the other students. I wasn’t really paying attention. I looked up because he said something about alphabet people, and I thought, ‘What does that mean?’ He was saying the alphabet people are taking over [which she realized was a reference to LGBTQ people].”

“Blake” later confronted him and said the remark wasn’t appropriate, but he didn’t back down. “Blake” threatened to report him to the principal, she said, “and he threatened to out my girlfriend to her parents.”

They reached a standoff, “Blake” said. “He agreed I wouldn’t report him to the principal and he wouldn’t out my girlfriend. Later my girlfriend came out, so I was going to go to the school board.”

“Blake” tried to gather testimony from her classmates and approach the administration, but ultimately she couldn’t persuade people in positions of authority to listen, “Blake” said. She did get support and help from the club facilitators, especially Annie Seder, she said, and the meetings of the Rainbow Alli­ance were helpful in many ways.

“It’s hard to find other gay people here unless there’s a specific place to meet them. That’s the only place I could meet with other people like me, people who weren’t judging, who actually understood who I was.”

The lunchtime meetings, which generally involved fewer than a dozen students, most­ly consisted of socializing, “Blake” said. “Some days we might have a presentation on the gender spectrum. Other times we’d just eat pizza and hang out.”

Not many straight people knew about the gatherings, she said, so most attendees were LGBTQ2S+, but others were welcome. “We had a lot of allies come. So it was very inclu­sive to everybody. If I had a close friend, I would bring them.”

Another graduate, “Alex” (not their real name), also went to gatherings in 2019 and 2020. “Alex,” who does not identify as being of a specific gender, doesn’t think society is tolerant of people who are not traditional heterosexuals.

“I would say it’s not tolerant at all and I used to resent it so much. The Rainbow Alliance was the only tolerance I ever dis­covered. The only potential for not being hated.”

“Alex” said they were “one of the only openly visibly gay people in high school.” In addition, “Alex” was born in Mexico, which was another strike against them.

“I’m brown before anything else. You can see that before anything else,” “Alex” said. “I’m brown and fat and I have ADHD. Peo­ple mostly bullied me about weight and race and my tattered clothing.”

Their last year in school, “Alex” said, “people would give me a lot of shit because I walked through halls holding hands openly with my girlfriend. People were bullying me and my girlfriend separately, too.”

One of their teachers “wanted to out me to my parents,” “Alex” said. “I got it from my teachers and some of the students.”

Going to the club provided a breather, “Alex” said.

“I started going in October 2019 and I went every week unless I was out of town, but I only missed about two meetings. We went to the virtual ones after COVID. The free lunch was nice because I didn’t have much money. It was very enticing, eating pizza, I never missed that.

“I got to get new friends and talk about things I didn’t get to talk about in a teacher-student setting. It felt good.

“It was like a little tea party every week. Nice to get a break, a breath of fresh air.”

“Alex” was in middle school when they identified as “gender-fluid,” “Alex” said. “I’ve known since I was 3 maybe that some­thing was off.”

Both “Alex” and “Blake” said the idea that the club would influence their sexuality or gender identity was wrong.

“I think that argument is dumb, frankly,” “Alex” said. “They’re trying to create barri­ers to keep someone in. It doesn’t matter if someone’s gender changes every week.”

“Blake” expressed a similar sentiment. “I think that’s a really uneducated argument that it’s going to make people gay.”

“Blake” said her father truly does not care about her sexual preferences. However, her mother “was freaked out about it and a bit ashamed.”

“Alex” did not tell their parents, who are both pastors, until “Alex” was almost out of high school, they said.

“About two weeks before I graduated, I decided to open Pandora’s box, so to speak,” “Alex” said. They had just suffered their “first-ever gay heartbreak” and felt they had to tell their mother. “Alex’s” mother said she already knew.

“My dad has a big issue with it, my moth­er does too somewhat, but they tolerate it,” “Alex” said.

Both graduates told the Free Press they don’t want to remain in Cortez.

“It’s been my dream to direct movies,” “Alex” said, adding that they like to paint, create jewelry, and make clothes as well. “I always wanted to move to New York City. But while I’m here I figured I’d do my best to try to help it [the local area] because I don’t hate it where I’m from. But I want to move to a big city.”

“Blake” said she will definitely go some­where else. “I don’t like it here very much. I don’t feel the community is very welcoming. People who are like me won’t want to move here, so I’m not going to meet anyone like me. If I want to have a better worldview I have to move somewhere else because ev­eryone here is so small-minded.”

“Blake” said she would advise younger stu­dents like her to join the club in their school. “I think joining the group is a good start because of leaders like Annie, who help so much.” Later, she said, they should “get out of Cortez because there are places other than here. There are way more resources to help people who are transitioning or coming out.”

Though things are better for LGBTQ2S+ people than they were in the past, the two said, there remain many problems and ob­stacles.

“Every day it changes,” “Alex” said. “There’s a new gay governor [in Colorado] but there were days when the president was trying to take away rights just casually. It’s like a game of tennis every day and I’m the tennis ball.”

When the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in 2015, “Alex,” then just a young teen, cried tears of joy. “I was so hap­py for Robin Williams’ character in The Bird Cage [a movie] – that he could potentially be married now.

“I think we’re moving forward every day. It’s 2021. I’m not going to shove my identity down your throat, but if I need to show it, I will. I want to be able to be as open in every space as I can. I’m not terrified of that as I would have been when I was younger. I’m ready now.”

“Blake” said the fact that gay marriage is legal does not ensure tolerance.

“I think because there are things that are legal now on paper, it says we are equal, but there’s still a lot of prejudice that exists and a lot of dangerous things. There are still peo­ple who are being killed and abused because of their identity. Just because this is on paper doesn’t mean prejudice goes away. It doesn’t change people’s minds.”

Published in June 2021

A matter of pride: Cortez, Mancos pass proclamations celebrating the LGBTQ2S+ community

June 10, 2021
Gail Binkly

For the first time, the Cortez City Council has passed a proclamation declaring June as LGBTQ2S+ Pride Month.

The acronym stands for lesbian, gay, bi­sexual, transgender, queer or questioning, two-spirit and any other possible sexual ori­entations and gender identities.

The idea of June as Pride Month report­edly stemmed from riots on June 28, 1969, that broke out following police raids on the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Greenwich Vil­lage in New York City. Although different governmental entities have recognized Pride Month for years – President Clinton offi­cially declared it in 1999 – this is the first time Cortez has formally supported such a designation.

The Town of Mancos has also passed a proclamation designating Pride Month.

The proclamations’ passage comes 20 years after a 16-year-old Navajo who was gay or transgendered, Fred Martinez, Jr., was murdered in Cortez. The brutal crime drew national attention to the area, although the district attorney at the time resisted the idea of calling the murder a hate crime.

Aspen Emmett, who was one of the re­porters covering the story for what was then the Cortez Sentinel, wrote an article for the Four Corners Free Press in June 2011, the 10-year anniversary, describing the events. “The day the authorities released Fred’s name, I went directly to the high school with a year­book in hand, on a mission to find out who Fred was,” Emmett wrote.

FRED MARTINEZ

Fred Martinez, Jr., a teenage Navajo who was “two-spirited,” was murdered in Cortez 20 years ago this month, on June 16, 2001. The man who committed the crime bragged to friends that he had “bug-smashed” a homosexual. File photo

“A group of girls gathered on the steps of the school at lunch provided me with my first glimpse into Fred’s world. Without hesi­tation, they told me that Fred was ‘different’ because he carried a purse, tweezed his eye­brows and wore makeup on a daily basis.

“They were quick to say that he’d been made fun of at school, and was the butt of many jokes. His sexuality made him stand out, and his differences made him an easy target for bullying, or worse.”

After Emmett’s reporting on the students’ comments, “The District Attorney’s office issued only a brief statement that it wasn’t appropriate to speculate on whether Fred’s sexual­ity was a motive for the murder because ‘all crimes were hate crimes’.” Emmett wrote in the Free Press.

“However, the Associ­ated Press picked up the story, moving his sexual orientation to the forefront and thrusting the small-town murder case into the national spotlight.”

Eventually a Farmington man, Shaun Murphy, was arrested for the crime after evidence emerged that he had bragged to his friends about “bug-smashing” a gay man. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. In 2019, Murphy, then 36, was pa­roled to northeast Colorado after serving 17 years of his sentence,

A documentary about Martinez’s life and death called Two Spirits was re­leased in 2009. It showed that Martinez, reportedly a gentle soul, was bullied be­cause of his non-traditional behavior. He considered himself nadleeh, a Navajo word meaning a person with both male and female traits. In previous times, two-spirited people were embraced in Native American cultures.

Two Spirits was widely viewed, including by members of President Obama’s adminis­tration, and won numerous awards.

The Cortez City Council passed the proc­lamation about Pride Month 5-0 on May 25. (One of the seven council members recently resigned, and Orly Lucero was absent.) Prior to the vote, during citizen comment, the council heard from four people supporting the proclamation and two opposed to it.

“This past year has been full of a lot of hateful rhetoric, bullying and even some threats made to LGBTQ people and their allies,” said Matt Keefauver of Cortez, a for­mer council member. “I believe that signing the proclamation should be seen as poten­tially the first step in healing a divided com­munity.”

“This proclamation is suicide prevention for our community members,” said Raleigh Marmorstein of Road 21. “This proclama­tion means we all matter here.”

“Discrimination has no place here or any­where else. Love is love,” said Rebecca Busic of Dolores.

But Sherry Simmons of Lewis urged the council not to support the measure. “To celebrate something like this is very hurt­ful to Christians,” she said, continuing that “to suggest a community celebrate or be proud of a lifestyle which God condemns is shameful.”

She indicated there are already enough pride months. “We already have Black His­tory Month, we have Asian Month, stop that. We are all humans and all made in the image of God,” she said.

Simmons also referenced the destruc­tion of two cities as described in the Bible. “Sodom and Gomorrah were two cities well known for their homosexual practices. God destroyed them both,” she said. “Don’t hang this label on Cortez.”

Tiffany Ghere of Cortez, speaking via Zoom, said she supported Simmons’ stance. “I have a first cousin that identifies as gay and the only male able to carry on our fam­ily name and that is not a choice he chose to make… I don’t care if a person is het­erosexual, bisexual, or gay, but what I see is division coming for this decision.”

Ghere said if there is to be an LGBTQ Pride Month, there should be one for het­erosexuals. “If this proclamation is signed, will the city council now sign a proclama­tion for Heterosexual Recognition Month?” she asked, adding, “You need to have a het­erosexual month, a Christian month – how many months in the year do we have?”

But Jim Skvorc of Cortez, a former high-school history teacher, quoted Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran pastor in Germany who was interned in the Dachau concentra­tion camp during World War II until it was liberated by American forces.

“First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out, for I was not a social­ist,” Skvorc read from one of Niemöller’s speeches.

“Then they came for the physically and mentally deficient, and I did not speak out, for I was neither.

“Then they came for the homosexuals, and I did not speak out, for I was not ho­mosexual. . . .

“Then they came for the clergy, which was me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Skvorc concluded, “I appreciate you pass­ing this tonight and speaking out for people there was no one else to speak out for.”

Mayor Mike Lavey told the Four Corners Free Press that the language in the lengthy proclamation – which includes a comment that the city “lies on unceded Ute and Pueb­lo land” as well as a reference to Martinez’s murder – was the result of a group effort. “One of the other council members con­ferred with some of the people who were affected – gays, LGBTQ people,” he said. “The language was given to me.”

He said that in addition to the comments at the meeting, the council received around 50 emails about the proclamation. The emails ran about 4 or 5 to 1 in favor of its passage, he said.

Lavey told the Free Press that although this was the first time the city had passed an LGBTQ2S+ Pride Month designation, “It won’t be the last.”

Published in June 2021

‘Montezuma’ and ‘Cortez’: Why are they so called? The story behind the names, and the names behind the stories

June 10, 2021
Austin Cope
The City of Cortez at one time had a conquistador as its logo, as seen on this sweater. But the conquistadors reportedly never came to what is now Cortez.

The City of Cortez at one time had a conquistador as its logo, as seen on this sweater. But the conquistadors reportedly never came to what is now Cortez. Photo by Gail Binkly

On a cloudy, windy day in late May, the Montezuma Heritage Museum in Cortez opened the doors of its new building to the public for the first time. Local histori­ans, elected officials, and other community members milled about the mostly-empty space, its wood floors and bare walls soon to be filled with photos, documents, and first-person accounts of the region’s natural, eco­nomic, and social history.

According to Ann Brown, chair of the Montezuma County Historical Society, one of the interior doorways contains wood from an irrigation flume built during early Anglo settlement in the region.

The exhibits, which are scheduled to open in the late summer or early fall of 2021, will contain a section about the Sundance Kid, an outlaw who lived in the region for four years, plus discussions of the natural forces that have shaped the region, the resources they used, and the complex stories of the people who came.

The name on the front of the museum, and the name of the town in which the mu­seum is located, also tell a complex story. Why Montezuma County was named after the emperor Moctezuma II (also spelled Montezuma) who ruled the Aztec empire from its capital of Tenochtitlan, in the site of modern-day Mexico City, from 1502 until his murder in 1521 – is based on speculation and indirect historical associations.

And why the town of Cortez was named for Hernando Cortés, the Spanish leader who arrived on the American continent in the early 1500s, took credit for conquering the Aztec empire, began a process of col­onization that would lead to the slaughter and enslavement of millions, and never set foot anywhere near Southwest Colorado – is rarely discussed locally. And despite the modern contradictions, the stories behind the names highlight the fraught history not only of European settlement in southwest­ern Colorado — but also of the Americas at large.

Early namings

After the ancestors of the modern-day Pueblo people left the area now known as the Montezuma Valley in the late 1200s, most of the area’s Ute, Navajo, and other In­digenous inhabitants did not live in perma­nent, named towns or bordered settlements. When 18th-century Spanish explorers like Juan de Rivera and, later, the friars Silvestre Escalante and Francisco Domínguez, trav­eled through the region, they designated landmarks like the Dolores River and the La Plata Mountains. However, they did not give a formal name to the dry sagebrush-filled plains in the bottom of the valley.

Local historic documents don’t refer to the Montezu­ma Valley until the 1870s, when Anglo European people began to explore the region in search of ar­cheological sites, agricultur­al opportunities, and silver in the nearby mountains. One of the earliest refer­ences to the valley’s nam­ing occurred in the journal of Lewis H. Morgan, an anthropologist from New York who traveled through the region in the late 1870s. In an entry dated July 27, 1878, Morgan’s journal stated that General James J. Heffernan, a former of­ficer in the Union army who lived in Animas City (located several miles north of present-day Durango), “named the Mon­tezuma Valley.”

Though Morgan’s note is brief and lacks other details, a more specific reference to the valley’s naming occurred in several issues of the Durango Herald from October 1887, ar­chived by local historian Fred Blackburn.

In a series of letters to the editor, Mont­ezuma Valley resident Robert C. Schneider referred to accounts by local settlers that the area had previously been called “Shirt Tail Valley” (possibly after an early settler named William Shirtz). Schneider wrote that “this valley was not known by the name Montezu­ma until February [1877] when in company with Gen. J.J. Heffernan and Mr. Joseph Sheek, I suggested the name it now bears.”

Though other letters from Durango real estate developer E.H. Cooper initially dis­puted Schneider’s account, Cooper eventu­ally backed away from the argument.

The first historical reference to the town of Cortez is even less definitive. Though the name was in regular use by the time Mon­tezuma County broke off from La Plata County in 1889, primary sources don’t iden­tify an exact person who established the town. Cortez’s settlement began in the late 1880s, when the Montezuma Valley Water Supply Company began construction of irrigation infrastructure from the Dolores River. Company funds paid for a large part of the town’s initial development, which housed company workers and provided ba­sic necessities.

The company’s chief engineer, M.J. Mack, platted the initial layout of the town and named some of its main streets in 1886, and the town was formally designated as the county seat in 1889.

The company, which was financially insol­vent and lasted only a few years before be­ing replaced by other enterprises, was led by James W. Hanna, who served as its general manager. Several books and articles about the area give Hanna credit for naming Cor­tez, but no primary source has been found to prove the claim.

Local government and historical archives do not contain the town’s original founding documents, and the archives of Montezuma Valley Irrigation Company, which took over some of the valley’s earliest water infrastruc­ture, contain no original material written by Hanna or Mack about the naming of Cortez. Few other details about the men exist, and neither appears to have stayed in the area following the company’s disintegration.

How Montezuma met Cortez

Regardless of when and by whom the lo­calities were named, local historians and ar­ticles about the region generally agree that early settlers developed the names based on the assumption that the archeological sites in the region had been built by the Aztec peoples.

June Head, local historian and founding member of the Montezuma County Histori­cal Society, said in an email in August 2020 that she saw this as the most likely explana­tion.

“I have heard the early settlers of our area thought the ruins in our area were from the Aztecs and therefore, the name[s] Cortez and Montezuma were used,” she said.

Evidence from that time period corrobo­rates Head’s belief. Many Durango Herald and Montezuma Journal articles published in the 1880s and 1890s refer to the dwellings as being inhabited by ancient Aztec peoples, and speculate on the sites’ connections to the emperor Montezuma and earlier Meso­american civilizations. Landmarks, such as Aztec Divide and Aztec Springs (including the archaeological site later re-named Yucca House), were named by expeditions that came slightly before.

A post office called Toltec – a reference to the Indigenous peoples who pre-dated the Aztec civilization – operated for less than a

year at a site several miles south of Cortez in 1887, according to local historian Patri­cia Lacey. References to Mesoamerican cul­tures dropped off by the early 1900s, when archaeological studies drew more accurate links to the modern-day Pueblo people in Arizona and New Mexico.

Understanding why the town of Cortez was named after Moctezuma’s enemy is more difficult. “There’s speculation among some people that Cortez was named because he was a leader; Montezuma was also a lead­er, but Cortez defeated Montezuma in the Aztec world,” said Brown, though she cau­tioned that her answer was only speculation.

Barbara Stagg, capital campaign man­ager for the Montezuma Heritage Museum, agreed that it is difficult to find an explana­tion for “why” the localities were named.

“Maybe Mr. Hanna only chose Cortez for its relationship to the Montezuma Val­ley name without really thinking of the irony that Cortes killed Moctezuma,” Stagg said in an email. “I really think both names simply relate to the assumption in those times that the ruins in the area were Aztec – and neigh­boring New Mexico was already using Aztec as a place name and ruin name.”

Some of the answers may lie beyond the local level, according to Matthew Restall, professor of History and Latin American studies at The Pennsylvania State University and author of the 2018 book When Montezu­ma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History.

“There’s a fascinating history that can be unlocked simply by those names,” Restall said in an interview. “That history is not just about Mexico, but about the whole of North America.”

He said earlier settlers’ knowledge of the region was likely influenced by national nar­ratives of the Mexican-American war, when the United States invaded Mexico between 1846 and 1848 under president James Polk. Through a series of annexations, battles, and treaties, the U.S. Army seized over 900,000 square miles of Mexican territory, which stretched across most of the present-day American Southwest and opened the door to Anglo-American settlement in later de­cades. Restall called the war an act of “naked aggression.” The captured territory included the portion of southwestern Colorado that would later become Montezuma County.

Restall explained the United States gov­ernment used various forms of propaganda, especially an overarching narrative of “con­quest,” to justify the war.

Much of that narrative was based on a popular book by William Prescott, written in 1843, which chronicled the Spanish coloni­zation of Mexico through a lens of Spanish religious and cultural superiority over Indig­enous peoples. Restall explained the United States justified its invasion of Mexico by claiming the Spaniards paved the way for the Americans to bring civilization and democ­racy to the territories.

That propaganda likely influenced the region’s early Anglo-European inhabitants a few decades later, according to Restall. But he said the settlers were likely skirting around complex issues relating to how that land became part of the United States, as well as the multiple cultural layers of civiliza­tion that already existed in the region.

“Naming the county Montezuma and say­ing it’s because this is where the Aztecs came from is an interesting act of appropriation,” he said.

Prescott’s narrative, as well as other texts that drew upon Spaniards’ accounts of their arrival in the Americas, also still influences many people’s perceptions of the story today, according to Restall. Many people still think of the “conquest of Mex­ico” as an incredible victory over millions of Aztec people by several hundred Span­ish explorers, led by Cortés, culminating in the downfall of the empire and the death of Moctezuma.

But according to Restall, that narrative doesn’t hold up to present-day scrutiny. Modern explanations of European cultural, technological, and civilizational superior­ity over Indigenous peoples don’t take into account actual historical evidence, which generally shows the Spanish colonists as disoriented, maladjusted to the climate and landscape, and reliant on violence and coer­cion rather than diplomacy or strategy.

Cortés and his contemporaries’ accounts of the events were heavily embellished in order to impress Spanish leaders. And their arrival, rather than culminating in a clean takeover or conquest of the territory, instead led to a general destabilization of the exist­ing political structures and the inordinate slaughter and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of people.

Even Moctezuma’s murder, commonly credited to Cortés, may have instead oc­curred at the hands of other Aztec peoples, according to Restall’s research.

“This ‘glorious conquest’ by the Spaniards wasn’t two years by three hundred people; it was 30 years by thousands and thousands,” Restall explained. “It was only done through the collaboration and cooperation of Indig­enous rulers, who did not see themselves as Indigenous or as Indian, but saw themselves as people from a particular local area.”

Present-day talks in the ‘Halls of Montezuma’

Today, Montezuma Avenue runs through the center of Cortez. The Montezuma-Cor­tez High School song opens with the line, “From the Halls of Montezuma,” sung to the tune of the U.S. Marine Corps Hymn. (Incidentally, the Marines’ use of the line refers to a battle in the Mexican-American War.) The city and county names are en­shrined permanently on maps, government documents, and in over a century’s worth of local, regional, and national references. Lo­cal businesses, non-profits, and government institutions bear various versions of the names, and words like “Montelores” have even been created to identify the broader region.

But the names represent the only local traces of the historical figures. No statues, plaques or other depictions of Moctezuma or Cortés exist in public spaces, though city stationery and printed clothing included a depiction of a Spanish conquistador at one time in the past. The municipal golf course is also named for a “conquistador,” though it doesn’t include Cortés’s name.

When asked about the town’s earliest founding documents, Cortez City Clerk Lin­da Smith, who has worked in local govern­ment for over three decades, said no one had ever asked her about the history behind the town’s name.

Les Nunn, Montezuma Valley Irrigation Company board member and lifelong coun­ty resident, also said he had never heard lo­cals talk about the names’ origins, even when growing up in the area.

“Back then it was just assumed that this was the Montezuma Valley and the town of Cortez,” he said. Local historians in­terviewed for this article said they hadn’t thought much about the names’ origins, and that their classes in school had only briefly discussed the historical figures.

The Ute language also demonstrates a complex relationship to the labels. Accord­ing to tribal elders Helen Munoz and Alfred Wall, Jr., their language contains unique words for the city of Cortez, as well as names of other towns and municipalities around the region. This adoption occurred after the U.S. government pushed Ute peo­ple onto reservations and permanent settle­ments following the 1879 Meeker Incident in northwestern Colorado. The southern di­alect of the language, which the elders have been compiling to create a dictionary of over 20,000 words, refers to Cortez as kwati­is, and also contains words for other towns around the region such as Mancos (maakis), Durango (turaakuh) and Denver (tiapih).

The town name of Towaoc, which was es­tablished as the tribe’s first permanent settle­ment in the late 1800s, translates to “thank you” or “it’s ok,” they explained. According to Munoz, the Ute language doesn’t contain a word for Montezuma County.

Restall said when he learned of the names for Montezuma County and Cortez while writing his 2018 book, he “wasn’t surprised,” and was “kind of amused.” He said locals should see the only county in North Amer­ica named Montezuma – and containing a town named Cortez – as a claim to fame.

But he said the multiple layers of history are also a teaching opportunity.

“This is a good place to begin [the] story. And the story isn’t just about what hap­pened 500 years ago, but how it has been perceived for the last 500 years,” he said. “People who live there should treasure the names, be proud of them, but also under­stand how complicated [they are],” he said. That story, he explained, “is going to be in­terpreted differently by people of different backgrounds.”

As regional depictions of Spanish colo­nists spark criticism, debate, and occasional removal or replacement – and as the nation and the world come to terms with the vio­lent legacy of European colonization, the names for Cortez and Montezuma County could still outlast the area’s current inhabit­ants. But the multilayered histories behind those names – and how we come to terms with those histories— can allow us to re­flect more deeply on the places we also call “home.”

Published in June 2021

Honoring those who came before: The Montezuma Heritage Museum is slated to open in Cortez this autumn

June 10, 2021
Janneli Miller

A locally crafted quilt hanging in the new Montezuma Heritage Museum in Cortez depicts scenes from the area’s history. The museum is tentatively scheduled to open this fall. Photo by Janneli Miller

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”

— Edmund Burke (1729-1797) British philosopher

“Those who cannot remember the past are con­demned to repeat it.”.

— George Santayana (1863-1952) American philosopher born in Spain

“Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it

— Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

This oft-quoted idea has many attribu­tions besides those cited above. Whether it would be doom, condemnation or destiny is uncertain, but a dedicated group of Mont­ezuma County residents are determined that local residents will not be repeating the past.

The finishing touches are being put on the former Montgomery Ward building at 35 S. Chestnut, the home of the new Montezuma Heritage Museum in Cortez. Interested resi­dents were given a “sneak peek” on May 22 as a part of the 11th Annual Cortez Historic Preservation Day activities.

The museum will serve to educate and in­form visitors about the historical heritage of Montezuma County – so the past will not be forgotten.

The idea for a local history museum has been kicking around the region for a while. No one can really remember when or who originally thought of the idea, said Barbara Stagg, museum development director.

However, the idea for a museum is clear­ly a result of the work of the Montezuma County Historical Society, which, according to their most recent newsletter, “has been working for several decades to educate, en­rich and inspire our residents and visitors through the preservation, presentation and interpretation of the county’s rich and di­verse history.”

Historical Society Chairwoman Ann Wil­son Brown explained that the “history mu­seum will add to the cultural and economic life of this place we all love.”

“My heart is just so full with all the com­munity support we’ve had,” she said.

The museum is the result of concerted efforts by many community members who have been involved in fundraising, build­ing renovation, exhibit planning, and even quilting! A feasibility study was conducted in 2018, which indicated that the commu­nity would support the effort, and that year Montezuma County Commissioners Keenan Ertel, Larry Don Suckla and James Lambert approved the donation of the 4,800-square-foot building – which used to be the Social Services building – to the historical society on a no-charge lease.

The Save Our History-Tell Our Stories capital campaign began in 2019 with a gen­erous donation from Robert Longenbaugh, who died in October 2020 at the age of 84. Longenbaugh was a descendant of original pioneer families, growing up in Cortez and learning how to irrigate with a shovel when he was 8, in the early 1940s.

His father was Harry Longenbaugh, which is also an alias used by the notorious robber Sundance Kid – who is thought to have lived and worked on a ranch near CR 23 and L. Robert’s father was not Sundance, yet perhaps the name helped foster his life­time interest in the area. He told museum staff that Montezuma County and its people were dear to him and helping to make the dream of a historical museum come true meant the world to him.

The capital campaign, co-chaired by Joe Keck and Ed Merritt, had a goal of $350,000, and at press time over $380,000 had been raised. This includes a challenge grant from Colorado Housing & Finance Authority, as well as other grants from the Colorado De­partment of Local Affairs, USDA Rural De­velopment, Onward! A Legacy Foundation, and El Pomar Foundation, plus donations from the Gates Foundation, many local banks and businesses, and more than 200 in­dividuals. As of May 21, 38 percent of funds raised were from individual gifts, 56 percent were grants and the rest came from corpora­tions, businesses and City of Cortez grants.

The Montezuma Heritage Museum is located in the old Montgomery Ward Building at 35 S. Chestnut, Cortez.

The Montezuma Heritage Museum is located in the old Montgomery Ward Building at 35 S. Chestnut, Cortez. Photo by Janneli Miller

More money was needed because of some necessary “hidden” building renovations and increased costs of building supplies. Lumber prices have risen as much as 50 percent since April 2020, according to the Bureau of La­bor Statistics.

The pandemic also put a halt to museum fundraising efforts, according to Stagg, who told the Free Press that “we took a break from fundraising because of the human needs of the non-profits due to the pan­demic.” She said the museum didn’t want to compete for funds when so many were in need of essential services.

Fundraising efforts also included the Montezuma History Quilt completed by the Blocks Without Borders Art & Landscape Group. The quilt, currently and permanently on display in the museum’s meeting room, has 20 historical-themed blocks, including 1870s cattle ranching, 1910 Calkins School, the Galloping Goose, Escalante Pueblo, Sleeping Ute Mountain, and McElmo Gold Medal Fruit 1904 World’s Fair, among oth­ers. Sponsorship opportunities at $250 per block still remain, and interested parties should contact Stagg.

The museum will be a state-of-the-art fa­cility. It includes energy-efficient geothermal heating and cooling, accessible restrooms and entryway, an outdoor patio, parking, a large exhibit space and several other spe­cialized rooms. The Robert Longenbaugh meeting room is open to the public and includes a private bathroom and kitchen as well as whiteboard and electronic facilities. The meeting room has already been used, and community members and organizations are encouraged to call Stagg to reserve the room.

There is an archive room in the back where materials not on display will be housed, along with a curation room for work on exhibits. Donations of both objects and photographs have been piling up at the county’s historic collection currently stored at the Lake Vista Grange Hall. Volunteers, curators and archivists have been sorting and cataloging the collection in preparation for display in the museum exhibits.

An AV room will show a film – yet to be created – that will loop daily, introducing visitors to the museum and the region. Mu­seum staff are in the process of searching for a filmmaker. Another goal for the audio-visual aspect of the museum includes some kind of listening facility where the public can hear the actual voices of original settlers.

Michael Williams, who was curator at the Anasazi Heritage Center (now called the Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum) for 25 years (now retired), is an informal consultant for the exhibit design team.

He told the Free Press, “The thing that stands out to me is the richness of our oral histories – we have some real amazing oral histories.” He envisions some feature where visitors could view a photo and listen to the individual telling a story in their own voice, but the details of how to provide the pub­lic access to the tape archives is still in the works.

Stagg agrees that the oral history archive will set the museum apart, telling the Free Press that Anna Flora Robison taped and transcribed over 60 oral histories in the 1930s for a WPA project, which the muse­um now holds. More recordings took place in the 1950s and 1970s, so the museum de­velopment team is excited about making this unique resource available to the public. The genealogy archive of the Montezuma County Daughters of the American Revolu­tion will also have a space in the museum’s archives, which will be open for researchers by appointment once the museum is in op­eration.

When entering the museum, visitors can see a desk that was built using portions of the McElmo Creek Flume. The flume is lo­cated along Highway 160, which is a part of the San Juan Scenic Byway and Trail of the Ancients, near the Montezuma County Fairgrounds. It was Flume No. 6 out of 104 flumes constructed in 1892, as part of the Highline Lateral, which delivered water from the Dolores River to the Ute Mountain tribal reservoir north of Towaoc. Its preservation was a concerted effort of the Cortez His­toric Preservation Board, which succeeded in getting the flume listed on the National Register of Historic Places and generating funds for the preservation. Colorado State Historical Funds were awarded, which en­abled the stabilization of the flume’s founda­tion and piers as well as repair of the wood­en trough, and since the flume is located on both CDOT and Montezuma County lands, funds were also generated for an interpretive stop on the Trail of the Ancients, including a parking lot.

The flume is just one remarkable piece of the region’s water history, which enabled early settlers to make their livings in this semi-arid country. Water is essential to life, and the story of how water was delivered to residents is one of the first stories to be told concerning the county’s heritage.

People making crates for packing fruit in McElmo Canyon, circa 1900.

People making crates for packing fruit in McElmo Canyon, circa 1900. Courtesy of Jude Scheunemeyer

The main exhibit room will be dedicated to telling the story of Montezuma County’s past, and has been divided into eight themes, which will be organized in a sequential dis­play route encouraging visitors to follow along a chronological pathway that illustrates what happened when and who was who.

The primary themes are The Natural Forces that Shaped Us, The Natural Trea­sures that Defined Us, The People Who Came, The Towns and Communities We De­veloped, The Problems that Challenged Us, The Livelihoods and Social Interactions that Sustained Us, and The Future We Worked Toward. Williams told the Free Press that these themes were developed through a col­laborative effort of members of the histori­cal society, museum development committee and interested volunteers and community members.

“There were about 20 people in the room and we brainstormed – wrote ideas on the white board and flip pads, and then boiled it all down,” he said.

There were a couple of these meetings, and then professional exhibit designer Dani­elle Covatta Riva was hired to come up with specific exhibits based on the community’s ideas.

“Her function is to take what we throw at her and throw it back to us in a coherent way,” said Williams. “A museum is telling a story, and there’s a surprising number of in­teresting people here.”

He emphasized that the exhibit designer can only work with what she gets from the community. “She ultimately will pick out the photos and the text, with 100 percent input from us,” he said.

To this end the museum is still accepting historical photos – originals are preferred – as well as objects that could be placed in exhibit cases. Stagg mentioned that photo­graphs of people involved in activities are especially needed, since they provide more historical information than individual or family portraits.

The natural forces theme includes – not surprisingly – the landscape, which includes the mountains, high desert, sage plains and canyons, as well as climate, water, the loess soil, and natural resources such as timber, uranium, coal, oil, and CO2. The natural treasures theme includes the benefits of the region, including the rich grasslands, dryland farming, rivers, plant and animal life, indig­enous residents and artifacts, available land and mineral and timber resources. Another important feature is the spectacular scenery.

The People Who Came Here theme will cover all the occupants known to have lived here, beginning with the paleo-archaic hunter-gatherers and ancestral Puebloans. However, Stagg told the Free Press that the Montezuma Heritage Museum will not fo­cus on what is already covered in other local museums, such as the Canyons of the An­cients National Monument Visitor Center and Museum near Dolores.

Moving forward through time, the mu­seum will include information on the first hunters, trappers, explorers and settlers, as well as others who may have passed through but left their mark, such as outlaws, early ar­chaeologists, and religious leaders, as well as early business endeavors including newspa­pers, medical practitioners, land developers and engineers, and so on.

The theme addressing the towns and communities will focus on our main settle­ments, such as Mancos, Cortez, Dolores, Dove Creek, Towaoc and Rico, but will also include information about gone-but-not-forgotten places which were key to early settlements such as Big Bend, Sylvan, Ack­man, McPhee, Yellow Jacket, Pleasant View and others.

Problems aren’t usually thought of as something to include in a historical museum, but community members felt that some of the early conflicts led to circumstances which created the communities we live in today. These include climate challenges like extreme drought or extreme winters, out­laws and rustlers, isolation, ethnic conflicts beginning with the troubles between original Native American residents and European settlers, water conflicts, and a lack of educa­tional, medical and economic opportunities.

Our livelihoods and social interactions – up to contemporary times – are a result of the combined impacts of the land and the people. The indigenous peoples were origi­nally hunter-gatherers, who then developed dryland farming so successfully that the population of Montezuma County in the 1100s is thought to have been greater than it is today. However, extreme drought forced those early inhabitants to leave.

When early European pioneers arrived, they first got involved in ranching and log­ging. Farming, including orchards, increased after water and irrigation systems were de­veloped. Then came miners, traders, rail­roaders and eventually the service industries necessary to support increased inhabitants.

But not all of life is work, so of course the museum will include information on com­munity bands, social clubs, music and danc­ing, gardening clubs, fairs, rodeos, athletic competitions, church and grange activities, as well as literary and academic achieve­ments.

Montezuma County is located in a region between the mountains and the Colorado plateau. It is a region with great geographi­cal diversity, and which has functioned as a crossroads through time and even into contemporary times. Williams told the Free Press, “It’s on the edge of everything – the edge of the mountains, the edge of the des­ert, the edge of the San Juan and Colorado river watersheds, the edge of Colorado.”

Often descendants of early pioneer set­tlers like to mention the hardships they en­dured compared to contemporary life. They talk about climate extremes, the world wars, the Depression, and the absence of ameni­ties current residents take for granted, such as telephones, highways, grocery stores and schools. While they did endure hardships ek­ing out a living in a rough and remote area, it fostered a commitment and character that has become part and parcel of our identi­ty today. Hard work, dedication to making dreams come true, vision, determination and resilience are still important components of local residents. Museum staff want to make sure that the features which make Montezu­ma County special are highlighted.

To that end, an important part of the museum’s efforts will be education. The museum will sponsor workshops, lectures, walking tours, film programs, and collabora­tions with local schools so that students can participate in field trips to the museum or create storytelling and artistic activi­ties. A mural will be painted on the north wall of the building, visible from Main Street. An artist will be selected and the hope is that local school students or burgeoning muralists can be involved in creating it.

In the words of Ann Brown, “We’re especially excited about finally being able to offer regular edu­cational activities to school children of all ages. They need to learn more about Mont­ezuma County’s heritage and understand and value the diverse peoples who were and are part of that heritage.”

As more people come to discover our area, it will be important to have a heritage museum available for both locals and visi­tors to discover the past and learn how Mon­tezuma County came to be what it is today. If all goes as planned, museum exhibits will begin to be fabricated this summer, once the exhibit themes, artifacts and photos are finalized by Riva and approved by lo­cal museum staff and volunteers. The mu­seum will also have a gift shop where visitors can purchase books, t-shirts, art­work and other me­mentos.

The hope is that the museum will be open to the public by the fall of this year, but there is much work still to be done. Interested individuals are encouraged to contact Barbara Stagg if they want to get in­volved. Seeing history come alive is certainly a good way to ensure that the past is not re­peated, as locals build on what brought them here and continue their innovative and adap­tive response to our local circumstances.

Published in June 2021

The papers are in the mail — really!

June 10, 2021
4cfp

In May, we received a number of calls and emails from our readers asking, “Where’s my paper?”

The short answer to the question is, we really don’t know where some of those papers went.

It’s growing difficult to find places with printing presses, as more and more people turn to Facebook or similar sources for their “news.”

The Four Corners Free Press is now printed in New Mexico and shipped to us via FedEx. In May, however, our papers wound up in a warehouse in Phoenix, Ariz., for some reason still unknown, and they languished there.

Eventually we did get a whole new press run sent to us by the printer, and we also got the Phoenix papers at last, so we had a generous supply of copies of last month’s edition.

But the problems didn’t end there.

Every month, we hustle around and mail our papers to our sub­scribers as soon as we get them. Our subscribers are our top prior­ity. Normally the local subscribers receive their copies the day after they’re mailed. The copies that go out of the area have to first go to Albuquerque and they take longer to arrive, but usually show up within a week.

But last month some subscrib­ers, even in the local area, didn’t get their Free Presses for quite some time. Again, we don’t know why. And the out-of-town papers seem to have been delivered even more slowly. A subscriber in Alabama said he got his paper on June 1. To this day, there are some of our subscribers who may still be missing their May issues of the Four Corners Free Press.

You may be wondering why we don’t just put everything online and forget the printing. That’s always a possibility, but a lot of our readers prefer a hand-held, print edition. Also, we don’t have the resources right now to develop a snazzy web­site complete with electronic ads and a pay wall; our website is provided to us through the kindness of Pixel Right. (And, by the way, our website is a great archive of news stories, with an excellent search feature.)

None of us are web or computer experts – we’re reporters, writers, editors and/or ad designers, that’s it.

If you didn’t get your May paper (or if you don’t get this month’s), let us know and we’ll send you one first-class. You can call and leave a message at our office, 970-565-4422. We aren’t in the office all the time, but we check messages regularly.

We’re sorry about the problems that happened in May, and we hope all will go well this month. Thanks for your support.

Published in Editorials

The next bright idea

June 10, 2021
David Feela

The light fixture in my bathroom blew a bulb. To fully illuminate the mirror it re­quired three. Instead of just replacing the single burned-out bulb and waiting like an audience for the cho­rus line’s next kick, I splurged and bought 12 LED replacements.

When I opened the box I was disappointed. The bulbs looked like an ordinary carton of Large Grade A eggs nested in a cardboard coop, though according to the colorful pack­aging, LEDs are the “best” choice for both saving money on utilities and for saving the environment. I changed out the entire row and I didn’t hear a squawk.

This episode took place in 2018. At that time I paid a shocking price for the replace­ments until I factored in their advertised av­erage lifespan of 9-22 years. I’d be well into my 7th decade before I’d need to replace another bathroom bulb. By then scientists might have invented a roll of toilet paper that lasts 20 years.

Too soon, however, the hype fizzled. Three months into one bulb’s first birthday, a flicker developed for about 5 seconds ev­ery time I flipped the switch. This continued for weeks (though it felt like months) until the bulb simply gave up. I replaced what must have been a defective product with one of the hallowed nine standbys until a month later (though it felt like a year) a different bathroom bulb quite suddenly went dark. I was down to eight. And because lightbulbs in a chorus line all look the same, and be­cause LED technology burns relatively cool compared to incandescent, I decided to in­scribe a tiny indelible “2018” near the base of the last bulb standing. Like a lightbulb, I’d be screwed if I could remember which one was the sole survivor a decade later.

Fast forward to 2020: I bought my second LED 12-pack. In two years the price had come down a little, but how time burns. The advertised life expectancy must be calculated like dog years, each actual year an equivalent of seven LED years.

I should also mention that my brain has a tendency to run a bit medieval, like in 2007 when the U.S. government phased out incan­descent light bulbs I wondered if we might be heading toward another dark age, but an international ban on this older technology did not dim the world’s lights. Quite the op­posite. Consumers simply chose an alterna­tive technology for their lighting needs.

 

The “ban” on incandescent bulbs never made selling them illegal. They still show up in thrift stores, and the dark alleys of black market smuggling hasn’t emerged because selling used lightbulbs for profit is obviously not a bright idea. The change was ushered in with a simple law that required manufac­turers to deliver a product which met better energy use standards, and as any adult living during the transitional period knows, solu­tions often illuminate new problems.

Halogen bulbs, for example, use 28 per­cent less energy but they burn hotter than comparable incandescents, which not only increases fire risk but also reduces the bulb’s longevity to a year or two.

CFL (fluorescent) bulbs provide a 75 per­cent energy-use savings and a much longer life, but the inferior quality of light they pro­duce persuaded me to avoid them. I’ve also noticed that hotels and motels use these bulbs almost exclusively, which might be explained because customers aren’t tempted to steal them. Still, the deal-killer for me is a danger­ous neurotoxin called mercury, turning their use and disposal into potential health issue.

The flaws in these alternative technologies explain why LEDs have rapidly dominated the marketplace. Besides being dimmable, directional, suitable for many design applica­tions, shatter-resistant and more affordable, an 85 percent energy-use reduction is what the world needs. As for the accepted belief that each bulb lasts a long time, the jury is still out. To compensate for my disappoint­ment I’ve adopted a new goal: to outlive my lightbulbs.

Other toxic technologies like coal, oil, auto emissions, pesticides, aerosols, certain plas­tics used in manufacturing food containers and bottles, chemicals in cosmetics, antiper­spirants, dry-cleaning, and nuclear waste need to be legislated out of existence, a legacy that makes living a long life also worthwhile. Meanwhile, I have a few bulbs left in my sec­ ond box of LED replacements. I’ll surely buy another box before the end of the year.

As you can tell, I admire all forms of il­lumination. The very word reminds me that medieval scribes spent much of their lives elaborately decorating manuscripts with ink, paint, and gilding the panel with silver and gold. Not many of these masterpieces sur­vived, and those that did are rare museum artifacts, salvaged from history, perhaps by serfs who pilfered them from wealthy estate bookshelves but could not get them to burn as efficiently as wood.

David Feela, an award-winning poet, essayist, and author, writes from Montezuma County, Colo. See his works at https://feelasophy.weebly.com/

Published in David Feela

Buckle up and get uncomfortable

June 10, 2021
Zach Hively

I know this will be tough to hear, coming from someone as infallible as I am, but you deserve to hear it from me: sometimes, I rub people the wrong way.

I wouldn’t say I offend them, exactly, be­cause that makes me sound bad. But there are times people don’t see the world as clear­ly as I do, and that’s okay. For instance, one letter-writer last summer took me to task for the phrase “dreadlocks that looked like the inside of my shower drain” because not all dreadlocks look like that, even though I was referring only to the specifically Drano-worthy ones. Then there was the man called “Pops,” who seemed put off that I included him in a piece even though he is my dad.

Such are the differences that keep life fla­vorful. And I accept that some people will disagree with me and my art, because that is the risk with creating, and we can’t all be Tom Hanks now, can we.

That said, after my last piece, I received an email, my first from — and I say this without disparaging trolls in general — a troll that sounded like the inside of my shower drain. Let’s call him “Bob Taylor, Amarillo, TX” because that is how he signs his emails. Bob Taylor of Amarillo, TX felt personally at­tacked because my writing referenced “some old white dude” as shorthand for “the domi­nant, prevailing worldview in our Western culture, which would benefit from an in­fusion of valuing other perspectives.” Of course, understanding that subtext would require critical reading skills, or any reading skills at all.

However, Bob Taylor, Amarillo, TX, rath­er proved my point for me. I’ll include the relevant portion of his email here, in part because he would love to know he helped pad my word count:

“Why was it necessary to make the brunt of this article an old white dude. Do you dislike old people? White people? Men? Especially if some­one is all three? I know it is currently popular to dispar­age older, white men just like it was once socially acceptable in some places to dis­parage black people but to do either is immoral.”

Now, let it be written that I did not dispar­age some old white dude (one white dude in particular, I might add) because it is popular. I did it because, frankly, he deserves it — as does everyone else I disparaged, including Marie Kondo, Danish people, myself, literal­ly everyone on the planet, dog food supple­ments, and medieval Lego knights.

But Bob Taylor, Amarillo, TX, did not ac­knowledge that full list when I sent it to him. “So you judge people based on their age, the color of their skin, and their gender,” he wrote back.

Part of being infallible is assessing oneself when one has potentially made an inadver­tent mistake. “Wait a moment,” I self-as­sessed at this point. “Am I, as an eternally-aging white dude myself, unjustly smearing already-old white dudes? Could I be more charitable in my understanding? Should I consider the feelings of those who cannot stand being shown they are anything less than faultless?”

And then I proceeded to the end of Bob Taylor, Amarillo, TX’s letter, where he signed off “ESAD.”

This, I had to look up. It is an acronym, and it requests that I consume feces and cross the Rainbow Bridge, presumably in that order.

My final response was simple: “I am will­ing to engage in dialogue, but not with people who close their letters with wishes of copro­phagia and death. Particularly when they do so so often that they must save time by em­ploying an acronym. Please do not contact me again. I mean it.” And to his credit, Bob Taylor, Amarillo, TX, has not responded.

If this piece were an after-school special, this is the segment where I, a typically light­hearted character, would get serious about doing drugs or hitting your little sister. Or, about human communication. Because I must lead a sheltered life. I truly believe that no one I associate with would track down a stranger in another state to pick a fight over email. And I believe none of them have the need to save keystrokes by acronyming their unoriginal insults. But you know what? I am also a white man, and therefore endowed with shields against so much abuse. So very, very much abuse. My friends of other gen­ders get hateful messages in all sorts of forms, direct and implied, far more often. So do my friends of other colors and back­grounds. The ones neither white nor male must catch it exponentially.

And I? I cannot imagine living with that constant emotional shrapnel. Heck, I catch it once, and I turn around to air it in the news­paper. Talk about a fragile white man. But we fragile white men need to feel uncom­fortable about our place in the world. It’s the only way we’ll ever consider scooting over to make more room up here.

I say so not because it is popular, but be­cause the world deserves it.

Zach Hively, an award-winning writer, lives in Abiquiu, N.M. He can be read and reached through https://zachhively.com and on Twitter @zachhively.

Published in Zach Hively

The lady jackwhacker

June 10, 2021
Midge Kirk
Olga Schaaf Little, burro packer

Olga Schaaf Little, burro packer

Olga Schaaf immigrated to the United States from Germany with her family in 1885 at the age of 2. The family settled in Southwest Colorado somewhere near Du­rango. She attended the Spanish school in Chama for a short while. This was her only formal education. By the time she was 14 she was being recognized as an exceptional horsewoman and she began breaking horses for ranchers in the area for $5 a week. On occasion she led hunting expeditions into the LaPlata mountains.

While she was still a teen, Frank Rivers, owner of the Ruby Mine way up in the LaPlatas, asked her if she could take a string of burros packed with supplies up to the mine and bring back ore for the smelter. She immediately refused, saying, “I can’t. I know nothing about packing.”

Rivers said he would pack the burros and then she could just lead them up to the mine. She figured it was a way to make some good money in a short amount of time and she finally accepted the offer. This began her al­most 40-year career as a “jackwhacker.”

This particular journey took her all day, ar­riving at the mine after nightfall. She discov­ered that there were no accommodations for women, and why should there be? She cer­tainly did not want to sleep in the bunkhouse with the miners, so she stayed up all night and made her return trip down the mountain at the crack of dawn.

Schaaf was a tiny woman, but it was said she was full of grace and grit. At 5-foot-4 and 130 pounds she was for­midable dressing in boots, jodhpurs and a cowboy hat. Despite her diminutive ap­pearance she was able to lift a 70-pound pack onto the backs of her burros, one on either side and one on top. On her return trips, she carried between 80- and 125-pound sacks of ore. She had a bond with those animals and always treated them gently, with love and respect, never cursing at them or whipping them. They responded to her in kind.

On one occasion when a burro skidded down a ravine and was trapped by the deep snow, she regularly delivered him hay for months, keeping him fed and alive until the snow melted and she was able to retrieve him.

In 1912, she saved the lives of 18 starv­ing miners from the Neglected Mine, who were stranded in a blizzard. She tucked each one between each of her burros, ad­vising them to hold the tail of the animal in front of them for dear life. She led them all on an ardu­ous seven-mile journey down, un­harmed but perhaps a bit cold and frostbitten, to safety through miles of darkness, thirty below tem­peratures, 10 feet of snow and ice. They left at 7:30 in the morning and arrived at 11 p.m. She was 29 years old at the time. The follow­ing year she married a miner, Bill Little.

During her illustrious packing career she visited almost every high country mine in the LaPlatas. Olga packed in lumber, ce­ment, coal, rails for mine tracks, cook stoves, heating stoves, ammunition, dynamite, to­bacco, mail, medicine and food. She packed out valuable ore concentrates worth as much as $5,000 a load. She charged $20 a ton for hauling freight and could pack a ton on 10 burros.

Olga always brought a treat for the miners and they spruced themselves up to greet her when she arrived. All the miners held her in high regard and recognized her as their life­line year-round, but especially in the winter.

A writer for True West Magazine said, “Dressed in men’s clothing to withstand the rigors of mountain life, full of good humor, unlike her fellow pack-train drivers, (she) never spoke a cuss word in her life.”

In 1981, Donald J. Orth, executive sec­retary for the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, wrote, “I may be wrong, but I don’t think there is a feature in the country named for a woman muleskinner. If proposed, I hope the name will be an interesting one.” Two years later, an unnamed La Plata peak became Olga Little Mountain.

For more information contact Andrew Gulliford at The Center of SW Studies at Fort Lewis College. He is an historian and an award-winning author and editor who has written much about Olga. Reach him at andy@agulliford.com.

Margaret “Midge” Kirk is a slightly eccentric artist, writer, bibliophile, feminist scholar and hobby historian who lives in the SW corner of Colorado. She can be reached at eurydice4@yahoo.com or visit her website www.herstory-online.com.

Published in Midge Kirk

Those guys

June 10, 2021
Valerie Maez

June 20th we celebrate Father’s Day. A few years ago, I dedicated a May column to my Mother, and this year I decided to write one for my Dad. He passed away while I was still in college, but the lessons he imparted were of the caliber that last a lifetime. Partly due to the fact that the life he experienced prior to my arrival made him one of those guys. Tested by the Great Depression, World War 2, and the rise of America as a super power, there wasn’t too much he hadn’t seen and heard by the time I became sibling number six of seven offspring.

My Dad was definitely one of those guys. The type of guy who could meet any chal­lenge life threw at him, which became the archetype for the Greatest Generation mon­iker. In the 1950s, he accepted a job with Dayton Power & Light, after turning down the opportunity to be the Sheriff of Shelby County. At that time Sidney, Ohio, was a Re­publican area and my Dad was known to be a staunch Democrat. In that era, skills mat­tered more than politics, and the Republican hierarchy was willing to clear a path for my Dad to administer law and order, because he was one of those guys.

Dad believed in the labor movement. He believed that unions were necessary to provide a counter-balance to the totalitarian tendency of some industrialists that used government and Wall Street Banks to alter the playing field of collective bargaining. Dad was active in the union that represented the electrical workers. Dad continued, unof­ficially, to represent “the guys” after he be­came management. Yet, when the union ini­tiated a strike in 1971, he told them flat-out that it was a mistake. Not, because he was management, but rather he considered the issues as union posturing. His advice was ig­nored. Shortly after the strike began, it was discovered that the Strike Fund, which my Dad and a bunch of other guys paid dues to for decades, was depleted. Gee, how does that happen? Despite what union history claims, the strike cost the rank and file more than it did DP&L. The strike only lasted about a month before workers had to return to work due to the inability of the union to compensate the strikers for being on strike. The company cut a summer work program for employees who had children enrolled in college. The annual Christmas dinner and party that lavished gifts on employees children and bonus payments to employ­ees while not canceled, were scaled down. The company asked for and received a rate increase from the Public Utilities Commis­sion. To my knowledge, no union official ever faced consequences for the depleted strike fund. My father was one of those guys who called them as he saw them and he ex­celled at being able to distinguish truth from the optics of just about every situa­tion. In a singular event in the early seventies, he advo­cated for the bury­ing of the power lines where feasible, as a move that while initially expensive, would pay divi­dends in less main­tenance costs in the future. Again, his advice was ignored. Mostly because my Dad didn’t have a col­lege degree, and DP&L was hiring a bunch of upper managers with degrees that were fixated on mergers and acquisitions. Today Dayton Power and Light is no more. It was acquired by Applied Energy Service Corpo­ration (AES) in 2011, after decades of poor decisions that resulted in a heavy debt load and other questionable management deci­sions. AES is a global energy consortium. Lessons learned.

I look around today, and I can spot guys like my Dad. Yep, they are still here, al­though its been a long road for many of them. They believe in America, they believe in their families, and they believe in securing their children and their children’s children, the same rights and opportunities they were given against some formidable challenges. Most of all, they believe that America is a beacon for freedom and justice for all.

I had the good fortune to have had long walks with my father before going off to college. That quality time spent with him, gave insight that allows me to think that if he were alive today, he would find kin­dred spirits with the Patriots of Montezuma County. Some are trying to frame the Patri­ots as bullies, harassing peaceful demonstra­tors. If my memory serves, it was the Black Lives Matter protesters who came down to Main Street after the Patriots began to use it for their demonstrations. Up to that point, the BLM folks were marching down Mon­tezuma Avenue. It was a BLM sympathizer who attempted to knock Tiffany Ghere off the back of a motorcycle. Another sympa­thizer took a walking stick to Sherry Sim­mons’s truck at the dedication for Veteran’s Park. What about the videos of a man driv­ing recklessly in and out of traffic? What about all the profanity being screamed at children riding with the Patriots? What about the plastic bottles being hurled as ve­hicles pass by the peace folks? The Cortez Rotary has decided against sponsoring the Rodeo parade! Oh well, never mind.

My Dad was a Master Sergeant in World War 2, which he almost never talked about, and never in any detailed manner. Conver­sations with him left clear impressions that he considered that war, like most wars, a situation that resulted in a failure of good character by far too many people. Dicta­tors and con artists flourish by using money, psychology and propaganda to win over converts. Failure to stop evil is when good people, after the con becomes obvious, do nothing. He often said he had no respect for the French because they did nothing to defend their country. I have lost count of how many executive orders Team Biden has issued that are of questionable Consti­tutional validity. My Dad would have taken the time to talk to the Social Justice/ Black Lives Matter folks marching the streets of Cortez to ascertain how they arrived at some of their professed beliefs. Dad would kindly point out to them there is a right way to complain about things, and a wrong way. Aligning yourself with folks who destroyed major urban areas and demanding all kinds of financial reparations for possible wrongs of years gone by wouldn’t impress him. He probably would nod his head and say be­fore walking off, you are certainly entitled to your opinion, and you absolutely have a right to be wrong but you might want to take off those rose colored glasses and see the world the way it is, rather than what you believe it to be.

If my Dad were alive today he would be displeased by the current situation in Amer­ica. My Dad was no fan of appeasement for the purpose of avoiding hard truths. He saw the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and the sur­render of French leaders to the Germans as appeasement to avoid dealing with issues. Today’s situation in America is in many ways reminiscent of those days. He wouldn’t sit around and bitch about it though. He would start organizing. I can hear his baritone voice booming from the sidelines, ride Patri­ots ride, because he was one of those guys.

This Father’s Day, I am planning on a movie marathon. I am going to watch George C. Scott in Patton. Alec Guinness and William Holden in The Bridge On the River Kwai. Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci in The Irishman. Because I am my fa­ther’s daughter and I too, can be one of those guys.

Valerie Maez writes from Lewis, Colo.

Published in Valerie Maez

Zed’s Hamper (June 2021)

June 10, 2021
Duane Abel

Published in June 2021

Accepting the exceptional

June 10, 2021
Carolyn Dunmire

 

We are living, gardening, cooking, and eat­ing through another period of exceptional drought. This is the second or third time this has happened in the past 20 years de­pending on how you measure drought. What defines an exceptional drought? The official determination of exceptional drought or the highest level of drought established by the U.S. Drought Monitor “corresponds to an area experiencing exceptional and wide­spread crop and pasture losses, fire risk, and water shortages that result in water emergen­cies.”

Focusing on our local water supply, the Dolores River, the current drought is de­fined more precisely by the Dolores Water Conservancy District (DWCD). In a May 24, 2021 press release, they defined cur­rent conditions as follows, “The Dolores River is once again headed toward record low runoff, on the heels of an abysmal 2020 water year.The Dolores Water Conservancy District and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, primary users of Dolores water flow, said this circumstance places the burden of two horrible years on the Dolores Project users, who will only see a 5 – 10% supply.” Sta­tistically, the Dolores River is “producing” exceptionally low levels of water as reported by DWCD in the press release, “That places 2021 dropping towards the 4th worst runoff after 1977, 2018 and 2002. With 2020 pro­viding the seventh worst recorded runoff, McPhee Reservoir carryover was only 4% of the active capacity.”

While I agree these conditions are abys­mal, I find it hard to call them “exceptional” given the frequency and intensity of the cur­rent drought conditions. I believe we need to recalibrate our drought measures and scales. We are living in a place that is getting hotter and drier. Perhaps it is time that we adjust how we live, garden, cook, and eat to this new reality. It may not be easy, but I believe if we accept this new reality together as a community with compassion and tolerance, we can even thrive during these exceptional conditions. The key to this path will be es­tablishing priorities for our water needs not based on past weather conditions but on an unbiased view of what a hotter, drier future will bring in terms of water resources. How would we allocate water if this year’s drought were not exceptional, but the new normal?

Like other gardeners, I have taken ad­vantage of the longer growing season to extend my garden and its water use earlier in the spring and later into the fall. I gen­erally select vegetable varieties that I like to eat or that have a special flavor rather than consider watering requirements or drought tolerance. I usually use drip or soaker-type irrigation and minimize watering during the hottest hours of the day. But if I am going to have any production from my garden, it is going to need water, especially during the hottest, driest times of the summer. If I were to look at this from a “greater good” perspective, maybe I am not the gardener that should be growing much during these dry times. Perhaps a more efficient, produc­tive gardener should receive my water al­location to grow “my vegetables” in a way that uses less of our precious water reserve. Although I would certainly miss the joy and frustration and writing material that my own garden offers. Jokes aside, market gardeners this year are facing difficult decisions with the forecast of severely limited water sup­plies. Can they meet the market demand profitably with less production or lower-quality produce? Some are deciding to skip the Farmers’ Market altogether rather than risking the time, effort, and investment in­volved in selling local produce.

Similarly, this scales up to agriculture such as alfalfa hay production, one of the larg­est consumers of the Dolores River. While these water users hold senior rights to this water, it might be time to consider if this is the best use for the greater good and com­munity. It is true that the approximately 30,000 acres of irrigated alfalfa hay fields in Montezuma County have a measurable eco­nomic impact on our community. Based on data available from the State of Colorado, ir­rigated alfalfa hay sales amounted to about $25 million, or about 2 percent of income in Montezuma County in 2019. This year, most local alfalfa hay producers are facing tough decisions about how to manage 1 inch of water in fields that were established to produce hay with at least 22 inches of water. Under a new normal, should our community be considering hay fields that can produce $25 million of income with only 10 inches of water annually?

Communities in Montezuma and Dolores counties have been living through exception­al droughts for thousands of years. Their success in surviving these droughts depend­ed, in part, on how the community joined together to allocate this limited resource. Today, we are exceptionally blessed by the foresight and investment made by previ­ous generations in water infrastructure and storage. Montezuma County looked quite different before the establishment of Mon­tezuma Valley Irrigation Company (MVIC) and DWCD to manage the water from the Dolores River for our community. But the time has come for our 21st century com­munity to face the reality that the Dolores River is no longer delivering the amount of water that it has in the past. We must learn to live, grow, cook, and eat with less water from this river. I challenge us to accept this drought as an opportunity to work together to create an exceptional community that will thrive despite drought and less water from the Dolores River.

Carolyn Dunmire gardens, cooks, and writes in Cahone, Colo.

Published in Carolyn Dunmire

Houston and Irvine capture pandemic moods

June 10, 2021
Mark Stevens

AIR MAIL BY AMY IRVINE AND PAM HOUSTONIt  began  as  a  nifty  idea  for  Orion  Magazine  in  late  March  of  2020  as  the  nation  entered  the  first  wave  of  stay-at-home  orders  in  re­sponse  to  the  growing  pandemic.  “Every  week  under  lockdown,  we  eavesdrop  on  cu­rious  pairs  of  authors,  scientists,  and  artists,  listening  in  on  their  emails,  texts,  and  phone  calls  as  they  redefine  their  relationships  from  afar,”  described  the  introduction  for  the  se­ries,  dubbed  “Together  Apart.”

First  up  were  Amy  Irvine  (Trespass,  Des­ert  Cabal)  and  Pam  Houston  (Deep  Creek,  Cowboys  Are  My  Weakness).  The  pair  of  stel­lar,  earth-conscious  writers  had  never  met.  Their  letters,  which  started  on  March  28  and  ended  on  May  7,  are  now  available  in  Air  Mail  —  Letters  of  Politics,  Pandemics,  and  Place  from  Torrey  House  Press.  The  163  pages  —  11  letters  each  way  —  offer  brisk,  tantalizing  exchanges  that  bristle  with  energy,  ideas,  and  insights  that  range  from  personal  to  regional  to  global.

“In  a  culture  defined  by  Twitter  and  the  twenty-four  hour  news  cycle,  writing  letters  felt  like  ritual  —  intimate,  ancient  —  two  barn  owls  calling  to  each  other  across  a  star­ry  sky,”  they  write  in  the  joint  introduction.  “Our  letters  became  a  life  raft  of  clarity  in  days  filled  with  increasing  numbers  of  the  dead  and  the  incessant  dismantling  of  our  government  from  within.  In  them,  we  could  rage  and  cry,  hold  each  other  up,  and  talk  ourselves  back  into  agency,  back  into  hope,  back  into  action.”

The  exchanges  —  which  do  read  like  old-fashioned,  stamped-envelope  letters  —cap­ture  the  surreal  time.  Air  Mail  is  far  more  than  an  epistolary  time  capsule,  however.  It’s  two  writers  connecting,  digging  deep,  and  generating  sparks.  The  letters  are  at  times  whimsical,  funny,  biting,  angry,  colorful,  and  touching.

In  the  opening  missive,  Houston  ac­knowledges  that  their  “sheltering  in  place”  situations  are  hardly  typical,  with  wilderness  right  out  the  front  doors  for  each  of  them.  “I’ve  been  thinking  about  the  wildlands  that  get  more  use  than  ours,  that  grapple  with  a  constant  onslaught  of  people,  and  are  sud­denly  emptied  out,”  she  writes.  “I  picture  the  animals  whispering  to  one  another,  Do  you  think  they  are  all  dead  down  there?  Then  I  picture  them  all  linking  arms  and  dancing  around  the  campfire.”

They  share  stories  and  thoughts  about  no-mask  encounters  with  strangers,  encoun­ters  with  bears  and  elk,  the  ongoing  flood  of  weird  messaging  out  of  Washington,  D.C.,  the  looming  election,  person­al  health  details,  abusive  parents,  previous  boy­friends,  current  partners,  each  other’s  books,  other  writers,  dreams,  medi­cines,  gun  safety,  and  the  future  of  the  planet.

“COVID  is  but  a  com­ing  attraction  for  what  the  climactic  catastrophe  has  in  store  for  us,”  writes  Houston.  “And  now  we  know  how  utterly  un­prepared  we  are  to  meet  whatever  Mother  Earth  might  serve  up  once  she  decides  once  and  for  all  to  shake  her  most  deter­mined  parasite  off  her  back.  The  decision  to  master  the  Earth  in­stead  of  love  her  was  made  long  ago  by  the  same  sort  of  men  who  are  using  COVID  as  an  excuse  to  steal  even  more  from  her.  And  yet  it  is  hard  not  to  notice  how  happy  she  is  without  us  out  there,  how  blue  the  sky,  how  shimmery  the  trees.”

Irvine,  in  one  powerful  entry,  writes  about  fear.  Both  Amy  and  her  daughter  Ruby  deal  with  medical  issues  that  require  inhalers,  so  she’s  keenly  concerned  about  the  airborne  virus  and  the  potential  damage  to  their  lungs.

There  is  rage.  There  is  love.  There  is  bitterness.  There  is  hope.

We  eavesdroppers  do  what  we  do  best.  We  lis­ten.  And  marvel  at  the  ability  of  Pam  Houston  to  Amy  Irvine  to  express  themselves  —  in  the  mo­ment  —  with  such  vis­ceral,  engaging  ideas  and  words.

Mark  Stevens  is  the  au­thor  of  The  Allison  Coil  Mystery  Series.  Book  three  in  the  series,  Trapline,  won  the  Colorado  Book  Award  for  Best  Mystery.  Stevens  also  hosts  the  Rocky  Mountain  Writer  podcast  for  Rocky  Mountain  Fiction  Writers.  He  lives  in  Man­cos,  Colo.

Published in Prose and Cons

She fought to practice medicine

May 20, 2021
Midge Kirk
HANNAH E MYERS

Hannah E. Myers

Hannah E. Myers was born to a Quaker family in Sandy Spring, Md., on May 30, 1819. She was the daughter of Samuel My­ers and Paulina Oden Myers and one of seven children.

When she was 14, the family moved to Ohio. Her father was a teacher at a Quaker School and the family espoused humani­tarianism and the equal education of boys and girls. They were also staunch abolition­ists, abhorring the use and mistreatment of slaves.

As a young girl, Hannah always loved science and closely examining small ani­mals and insects. She began to dream of a career in medicine. Of course, at this time in history it was an exceptional dream for a woman. Hannah studied for several years at New Lisbon Academy as her plan to en­ter Oberlin College to study medicine grew. Although her parents supported her com­pletely, those plans were delayed because of financial constraints.

In 1841, she married Thomas Ellwood Longshore, a teacher at New Lisbon Acade­my and a staunch supporter of social reform and women’s education. He also supported his wife’s plan to attend medical school. Her plans once again were put on hold with the birth of two children, Channing in 1842 and Lucretia in 1845. Shortly after Lucretia was born, Thomas lost his job due to his anti-slavery beliefs and the family moved back to his hometown of Attleboro, Pa.

Thomas soon found work at a local Quaker school. Hannah’s studies had been on hold for six years now. When Lucretia, her youngest, was 4, she began to study and serve as an apprentice to her brother-in-law, Joseph Skelton Long­shore, who was a ho­meopathic physician and shared his broth­er’s belief in educa­tion for women. Dr. Longshore encour­aged Hannah as well as his sister Anna to study his medical books and observe his work with patients.

To enhance their training, Dr. Longshore and other Pennsylvania Quakers established the Female Medical College of Pennsylva­nia in 1850. Hannah Longshore realized her dream of becoming a physician, enrolling in the college’s first class. She completed the training, along with her sister in law, Anna, and she received her M.D. in 1851. There were a total of eight women that year who earned their M.D. degree.

Two of her sisters, Jane Myers and Mary Frame Myers Thomas, were also physicians and graduated from Pennsylvania Medical University. Mary became a prominent physi­cian in Fort Wayne and Richmond, Ind. She was elected a member of the Wayne County Medical Society in 1875. She was president of the Indiana State Medical Society and worked with the Sanitary Commission dur­ing the Civil War. Mary was also a leader in the cause of prison reform, women’s suf­frage and operated a station on the Under­ground Railroad. Jane was also a renowned physician, suffragist, botanist and bo­tanical collector. Hannah’s daughter, Lucretia Mott Blan­kenburg, went on to become a proponent of public health measures in Philadelphia and active in women’s rights.

Dr. Hannah Longshore was one of the first women to hold a faculty position at an American medical school, where she taught anatomy. Eventually, she opened her own practice and was the first woman phy­sician to do so in Philadelphia in 1853. She met with much derision from the public and even from other physicians. Many doctors refused consultation with her and refused to fill her prescriptions. One actually advised her to “go home and darn your husband’s socks.” She resorted for a while to preparing her own medicines by hand.

She gave a series of public lectures on physiology and hygiene. Women’s rights leaders such encouraged her work. Dr. Hannah Longshore’s open and honest discussions of sexuality shocked conserva­tives, but won her praise by others as well as many pa­tients. At one point in her career she had around 300 families in her practice. This was a record met by few oth­er doctors in her day.

Margaret “Midge” Kirk is a slightly eccentric artist, writer, bibliophile, feminist scholar and hobby historian who lives in the SW corner of Colorado. She can be reached at eurydice4@yahoo.com or visit her website www.herstory-online.com.

Published in Midge Kirk

Zed’s Hamper (May 2021)

May 10, 2021
Duane Abel

Published in May 2021

Free Press wins four awards in Top of the Rockies contest

May 10, 2021
4cfp

The Four Corners Free Press received four awards in the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2021 Top of the Rockies com­petition.

The contest, which is for work done in 2020, includes different types of media outlets (including newspapers and radio) in four states: Colorado, Utah, New Mex­ico, and Wyoming.

The Free Press was entered in a division for small newsrooms, which included more than 20 other media operations. The awards were:

  • First place to Carolyn Dunmire for arts and entertainment/food criticism, for her “Foodie” columns.

Dunmire, who has placed first in this category for the past several years, was recognized for columns headlined “Sum­mer of love,” “In good taste,” and “Be­coming a red-dirt gourmet.”

In their comments, the judges wrote, “Carolyn Dunmire finds unique ways to write about food despite a pandemic. The judges enjoyed the ‘living like hippies’ ref­erence!”

• Second place to editor Gail Binkly for her editorials. The particular entries were headlined “Crying wolf,” “Our heads in the clouds,” and “A sorry chapter.”

• Third place to Janneli F. Miller in the agriculture and environment news cat­egory for her article about the drought. Titled, “Going dry?”, it was published in November 2020.

• Third place to Zach Hively in per­sonal/humor columns for his pieces titled “Running on empty,” “The word of the day,” and “His name was Phroomf.”

Published in May 2021

Harassment charges proceed against six locals

May 10, 2021
David Long
JANUARY 2021 CORTEZ PROTESTS

Dueling protests took place on Cortez’s Main Street throughout much of 2020 and into 2021. Six local residents have been charged with harassment for their behavior at a march on Jan. 2 of this year. Photo by Gail Binkly.

Note: This article contains some offensive lan­guage.

The cases against six suspects charged with harassing members of the Justice and Peace demonstrators last January in down­town Cortez are working their way through the court system, but as of press time, none had been resolved.

For the better part of a year since George Floyd was murdered in Minnesota, the Jus­tice and Peace group has been marching and standing vigil in Cortez on Saturdays, their signs calling for love, fairness and other vir­tues you would think would be embraced in what has been called a Christian nation.

Think again. After weeks of their low-key marches, which drew honks of support along with jeers and gestures of disdain, an opposition group calling itself the Mont­ezuma County Patriots began conducting motorized counter-demonstrations. They drove along Cortez’s Main Street, their ve­hicles bearing flags ranging from Old Glory to stars and bars, with myriad Trump ban­ners and some supporting police.

Not content with cruising the street, some Patriots began confronting the peace march­ers on foot, hurling insults at them. The incident that led to charges against six individuals took place on Saturday, Jan. 2. A half-dozen peace demonstrators were stand­ing with their signs on the corner of Elm and Main streets. A 34-minute video of the events shows the demonstrators by them­selves at first, but about 11 minutes into the video, they are surrounded by a crowd of shouting unmasked Patriots, one with a German shepherd. Some of their comments were:

“All lives matter, bitch.”

“Fucking idiots.”

“Are you scared or what?”

Cortez Police Officer Steven King viewed the video and conducted the investigation. After interviewing the suspects, King con­cluded the actions of six people constituted criminal offenses, according to the incident report.

Tiffany Ghere, 42, of Cortez; John Te­itge Sr., 48, of Cortez; Earl Broderick, 70, of Road N; John Anselmo, 69, of Road P.8; Sherry Simmons, 60, of Lewis; and Edward Bracklow, 57, of Cortez were subsequently charged with harassment, a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and fines of $50 to $750.

According to the report, when the jus­tice and peace group began walking back to St. Barnabas Episcopal Church on North Street, which is where they had gathered be­fore the march, the suspects and a few other members of the Patriot group began follow­ing them. After they reached the church, the Patriots remained on the sidewalk outside the church courtyard for a time before dis­banding.

Cortez Mayor Mike Lavey later told King that he’d been watching the events and that some of the Justice and Peace march­ers were visibly shaken afterward. Lavey expressed concern about protecting public safety as well as the constitutional right of free speech, according to the report, and said he was particularly worried because sev­eral Patriots were armed.

Lavey told King that after the Patriot group left the church, they confronted him “and began calling him names such as a communist, socialist, trader [sic], a disgrace to the community, and told him he should resign,” the report said.

Gail Lavey, the mayor’s wife, was ac­cused by several of the suspects of “barging through their group” waving a can of bear repellant and a can of Raid, just looking to spray someone, according to the report.

Teitge told King that this had raised ten­sions in the Patriot group and as a result “his mouth got out of hand.”

Teitge also expressed great concern that some of the justice marchers had labeled him and his dog as racist. According to the report, the officer assured him he had no reason at the time to believe this to be fact.

When informed she was going to be charged with harassment, Ghere also repeat­ed the tale about Gail Lavey pointing wasp-killer at her, and said she’d become con­cerned that a Patriot could be injured. Ghere had spoken to the Cortez City Council the Tuesday after the incident and publicly ac­cused Gail Lavey of wielding the spray.

However, it turned out that Gail Lavey was not at the protest that Saturday and was not the woman with the spray. At a later council meeting, Ghere apologized for her false accusation.

The woman with the wasp spray was later identified as Pat Coen, who told King that it was for her protection. Coen acknowledged she had been carrying wasp and bear spray but she denied pointing it at anyone or confront­ing any Patriots. She told King that Ghere had approached her with a “puffed-up chest” and began asking her questions, at one point sug­gesting she move to another town where she would fit in better. After this interview, King concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge Coen, and she was not cited for any violation, according to the report.

When contacted by King several days af­ter the Saturday confrontation, John Ansel­mo, who was not affiliated with the Patriots, at first denied being present at the Patriot gathering on Jan. 2. King pointed out to him that Anselmo had been cited for harassment at a demonstration in Cortez on Jan. 6 and for making threats against President-elect Joe Biden, which caused the Secret Service to be alerted.

King determined Anselmo was not actu­ally one of the Patriots, and others who were said they disapproved of his behavior, such as confronting a man with children. After further investigation by King, Anselmo was positively identified in the Jan. 2 video and cited for harassment. When contacted, Sherry Simmons also told King the false tale that the mayor’s wife had confronted the Patriots Jan. 2 with a can of bear spray on her waist.

Simmons maintained the Patriots’ contact with Mike Lavey was “peaceful,” according to the report, with the Patriots asking him why he was on the side of the Justice and Peace marchers, and him informing them he was on neither side. She accused the march­ers of constantly antagonizing the Patriots. (In fact, the peace marchers remain silent during their demonstrations, letting their signs speak for them.)

Broderick questioned the legality of being video-recorded and said unnamed people had been yelling profanities at his group. He was told to get good descriptions and report this to the police. He was then cited for ha­rassment.

Bracklow was informed his behavior on Jan. 2 constituted harassment. He acknowl­edged some Patriots had used foul language but said others tried to quell it. He admitted following the Justice and Peace marchers to the church.

The six accused are in various stages of the judicial process in county court. All have been advised in court. Some have requested pre-trial conferences with the district attor­ney in late May and others have requested public defenders.

Published in May 2021 Tagged ,

The harassment must end

May 10, 2021
4cfp

Like most of the nation right now, Cortez is deeply divided over politics. The division isn’t new, since it was ap­parent even before COVID-19 came along. But the pandemic and the 2020 election definitely worsened the rift.

Over the past year, people on differ­ent sides of the aisle have been guilty of some bad behavior – flipping off demonstrators they disagree with, engag­ing in rudeness on social media, those sorts of things. Most have been isolated incidents. But there has also been a recurring pattern of individuals ganging up with the apparent intent of intimidat­ing others, and this needs to stop.

Such an incident took place the night of April 13, when the Cortez City Coun­cil had its regular meeting. Some citizens were angry that they weren’t allowed into council chambers because they refused to don masks. They were allowed to speak to the council from another room, but they weren’t satisfied. After the meeting concluded, a group report­edly converged on one councilor, Amy Huckins, as she got into her vehicle on the west side of City Hall, and blocked her with their own vehicles so that she couldn’t get away for a time.

We couldn’t reach Huckins for com­ment, but numerous other sources told us this happened.

Soon thereafter, Huckins submitted her resignation from the council. She did not say that the incident was the reason for her leaving. However, in her letter she wrote that she strives “to be well in­formed and to make informed decisions for the betterment of the city.” Then, she continued, “My intention is to find a place within our community that I can use these attributes and also feel safe. ”

This was not the first instance of a group trying to intimidate. Throughout most of 2020, when Black Lives Matter protesters walked the sidewalks along Cortez’s Main Street and Trump sup­porters known as Patriots drove up and down the street, there were frequent times when people offended by the BLM marchers confronted and harassed them. In a video taken on Sept. 26, several men can be seen shouting at the marchers from across the street. One yelled, “You love black people, huh? Are you black? Does your life matter? Does your life matter? No, it don’t, not to them, you asshole.”

There are a number of videos taken on other days in which the BLM/Justice and Peace marchers remain silent while being subjected to harassment. And on Oct. 24, two of us on the Free Press staff saw a man shove a young woman holding a BLM sign on the corner of Market and Main. She decided not to contact police.

Then, on Jan. 2, there was more ha­rassment of the peace and justice march­ers, so much so in fact that it resulted in charges against the so-called Patriots group. (The article is on Page 10.)

Citizens have the right to gather and to express their views, but they don’t have the right to harass others. Elected officials, as well as people protesting, certainly should expect criticism and complaints, but they shouldn’t be made to feel unsafe.

Bullying and badgering is very low-lev­el behavior. It doesn’t win people over to your side – at least not intelligent, think­ing people. Make your views known, but don’t be vicious in doing so.

Published in Editorials

Eloquent as a brick

May 10, 2021
Zach Hively

A friend recently shared her summary of the writings of some old white dude with some old white-dude name. He posits, in a totally old-white-dude way, that animals can­not have thoughts because they do not have words to think them. I posit, respectfully, that he is an idiot.

As evidence to support my claim, I point to Legos.

Specifically, I point to the stack of Lego bins in my closet, which, yes, I still build with because Legos are timeless, ageless classics that I have to justify moving to every new house and apartment I’ve lived in since col­lege. If I don’t play with them, then they can’t bring me joy, and Mari Kondo will try convincing me to give them away to some child less fortunate, who would probably just lose the Lego pirates down the heater vent anyway.

[Side note: was anyone else an adult be­fore they figured out “leggo my Eggo” had nothing to do with the greatest toy ever in­vented?]

Here’s the scene: you’re building, because why not, a Lego Millennium Falcon staffed by medieval knights on horseback. You need a certain piece. You know how many bumps it has on it, and how thick it is. You shuffle through your bin of Legos, calling out to this piece with your mind. Let’s name this concept a “thought.” Then your best friend, who does not judge you for building Legos on a Wednesday af­ternoon, asks you what piece you’re looking for.

You freeze. You have no name for this piece. Leastwise, no name you can re­produce with your mouth. It just has a… a feeling. You balk at describing the piece, because there are so many complex facets to con­sider, all of which are encapsulated in that feeling but people would think you are crazy if you told them that a tall, straight, light gray, three-bumped piece with holes in it has a “feeling.” So you try to articulate the string of adjectives to your friend, who still comes back with the wrong shade of gray. Which is why it’s easier to play with Legos by yourself and not have any friends.

There is no word for that feeling. No word for that piece. Like, okay, maybe there’s a word for it at Lego World HQ deep in a hid­den volcano where Danes get paid to design Lego sets — it has to, so Malthe’s boss Freja can ask whether or not that Trebümpen­blokdesijn will be ready before their three-month national summer holiday. But in nor­mal-people land, where no one recompenses our bright ideas (like — get this — a Lego steam engine staffed by medieval knights on horseback), it does not have a name.

Therefore, thoughts exist without words. Therefore, Mr. Old White Dude, my dog has thoughts. Sure, most of them revolve around going o-u-t-s-i-d-e, which is why I spend my days diligently avoiding any trace of a hint of possibly moving toward the back door. It’s also why I’ve had to remove from my vocabulary all those phrases that can be mistaken for o-u-t-s-i-d-e, like “owl slide” or “mouse hide.” Soon, these concepts will be­come Lego pieces in my brain: ideas without functioning words to express them.

This is not a new phenomenon for me; in fact, I spend a good deal of my writing time staring at the texture of the wall, trying to identify the right words — sometimes even in the right order — to articulate a thought. I can have this thought clear as any Lego piece. It can even have a more nuanced emo­tional arc than many contemporary movies. But it has no words.

And I cannot be alone in this experience. If everyone had immediate words for every thought they had, we would all be terrified to learn what everyone was thinking all the time. I do NOT want to live in a world where the people I buy dog food from are privy to an eloquent, well-articulated, English-language interpretation of my thoughts as to how much dog supplements cost. (Hint: they cost even more than Legos.)

I’d much rather remain quiet, handsome, and mysterious — quite like my dog — so that they look at me and wonder what I’m thinking about deep in my soul. Or, if it’s the old white dude at the pet food store, if I’m thinking anything at all. Well, Old Mr. White Dude, you better be­lieve I am. I am thinking plenty of thoughts — I’m just all out of words to describe them. But I assure you, they are well-staffed by medieval knights on horseback.

Zach Hively writes from Abiquiu, N.M. He can be read and reached through https://zach­hively.com and on Twitter @zachhively. He placed first in the personal/humorous column category in the recent Society of Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies competition.

Published in Zach Hively

When in Rome

May 10, 2021
David Feela

International travel might be improved these days if a good witch loaned me a pair of ruby slippers. Back in 2013, before travel bans existed, our journey to Italy required three cramped jets and too many mind-numbing hours shuttling between Durango and the gates of Leonardo da Vinci Inter­national Airport. A new Pope had just been elected. It might have been a coincidence but he also decided against wearing the tra­ditional papal red shoes.

Much has been written about the rise and fall of the classical empires. Rome was a combination of the ancient, old, tacky, and modern all competing for the same space, much as it must have been back in Caesar’s heyday, much as cities deal with today. I can’t say I ever want to go back, but I don’t mean this as a criticism. The world is too large and one lifetime is too short. For me, Rome was built for one stay.

We rode trains and walked streets during our two-week visit, and it looked like half of Rome’s residents hung out around the Vati­can, hoping for a glimpse of the new Pope. That’s not counting all the tourists, who probably outnumbered the locals. My only chance to see the pontiff up close turned out to be when his life-size image on the back of a bus pulled away from the curb.

Easter had arrived, and things were com­ing back to life. In the courtyard next door to our rental the present-day Romans hosted a traditional passion play, staging the Last Sup­per on a long flatbed trailer beside an ancient church, singing hymns late into the night. The next evening’s drama turned out to be a faux crucifixion, with more singing. I stepped out­side to watch, but immediately lost the urge to view such a savage ritual being re-enacted for the sake of compassion and remem­brance. I bowed my head and hurried back inside.

Eight years later Pope Francis still displays staying power, despite disappointing many conservative Catholics by behaving in an unconventional manner, walking along with the crowd instead of being carried above them in a glass-enclosed chair, or riding to engagements in a tiny Fiat instead of being chauffeured in the papal limousine. He even opted to reside in a small apartment rather than occupy the Vatican suite, an display of humility that possibly confused his tradi­tional staff and clergy.

Since taking office, he has spoken openly on subjects too often barely audible as whispers, urg­ing the church to em­brace more women in leadership roles, speak­ing up for the poor, reminding listeners to have mercy, that humans make mistakes, and he’s even gone so far as to respond in a sympathetic way for the first time in 150 years of papal oversight to a question about homosexual­ity. He replied, “Who am I to judge?”

Recently the Pope spoke out against us­ing the death penalty, which sparked some controversy among his religious followers, many of them the same people whose walls are adorned with crosses that depict the crucifixion. Staunch Catholic death penalty advocates may be missing the incongruity.

Discontented liberals have complained the Pope has not taken decisive enough action to deal with priests under his watch who still prey upon the innocent, sexually exploit­ing young people they are charged to serve. He has not questioned the tenet of celibacy, nor has he suggested that women are as qualified as men to be ordained as priests.

Back in 2017 I read a headline about Pope Fran­cis that troubled me. He reportedly had only the second highest number of Twitter followers for any world leader. The one who had the most followers was our former White House resident and presi­dent, chief of discord and divisive politics, a sort of antithesis to what Pope Francis represents.

But when I think back to how ancient Roman society behaved at the coliseum, stirring up an enormous following at pub­lic spectacles of blood and gore, it reminds me that the coliseum served as the Twitter platform of its time. The crowd roared, the crowd booed. Gladiators were adulated or ridiculed. Animals baited and killed. Con­demned prisoners served up as bait. That old joke about the lions eating up all the prophets—a wordplay that’s still laughably true.

The games continue. A recent statement by the Vatican, approved by the Pope, de­clared the Catholic Church could not sup­port gay unions, which looks like a “thumbs down” in the arena of official opinion. Despite the Pope’s welcoming tone back in 2013, and again last year by advocating for civil union laws for same-sex couples, a gay lifestyle is still a choice it cannot condone. So Happy Easter to the LGBTQ communi­ty. You can be baptized as an infant without your consent. Who you love is also a matter for the church to decide, as if it has nothing to do with being born.

David Feela, an award-winning poet, essayist, and author, writes from Montezuma County, Colo. See his works at https://feelasophy.weebly.com/

Published in David Feela

Conservation?

May 10, 2021
Dexter Gill

“Conservation” – that seems to be the word for these days! You have heard me harp about the importance of conserving our wa­tersheds. After all, our water is one of the most important items in our lives along with air and food, so it is obviously important to “Conserve and Protect” it, right? Presi­dent Biden was to sign an executive order on Jan. 27 where in Sec. 216, “Conserving Our Nation’s Lands and Waters”, it directed the Secretary of Interior and Agriculture and others to make recommendations for steps “to achieve the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030,” and referred to as 30 X 30. Now that brings up a lot of questions, like what has the Soil Conservation Service (now Natu­ral Resource Conservation Service, NRCS) been doing for the last 86 years since it was established in 1935? What does “conserve” and “protect” mean? Those words mean dif­ferent things to different people. Who con­serves and protects and how?

Where are the 30 percent of lands that are alleged to have not been conserved and protected for the last 86 years? After think­ing about it, I found that the United States is about 2.27 billion acres, which is about 308 million square miles (30 European countries would fit inside the U.S.), and as of 2003, only 108 million acres or 4.5 percent has been fully “developed.” There are already over 623 million acres of federally held lands that are supposed to have been conserved and protected. That is interesting to contem­plate since it is not supposed to own ANY public land within a state, per the Constitu­tion. The new term being used is to “perma­nently protect” the lands. Protect what lands from what, nature or man? It should mean, protect from the government!

Looking a little closer, 30 per­cent of the United States’ 2.27 bil­lion acres comes to about 681 million acres. The federal government already controls 623+ mil­lion acres and grow­ing, so this raises the question, where is the 30 percent they are proposing to conserve and protect? Does that include the federally held lands? Where will the extra 58+ million acres come from? The private forests, ranches and farms have already been conserved and protected over the past 86 years better than the federal lands. Some tax-exempt environmental cor­porations are saying 50 percent of the land must be “conserved and protected.” Well, that would mean another 512 million acres to be removed from private land “conserva­tion” and agriculture production.

In reading some of the background pro­motions for this 30 x 30 directive, numerous corporations calling themselves environ­mental protectors have focused on saving life on the planet from climate change by removing or limiting access to and use of public lands and resources. This has actu­ally been happening for years by establish­ing special federal programs, like Wilderness Act, Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, National Monuments, National Parks, National Wild­life Areas, Endangered Species Act, Natural Study Areas, National Conservation Areas, Archaeological Protection Act and many more. Conservation and protection of the lands and resources within these designa­tions has been poor at best and even pro­hibited in many cases (i.e., wilderness areas). Now they plan to put 30 to 50 percent of the lands of the United States off limits for active management for conservation and protection of the watersheds? Why is there such a big push for more wilderness areas and other federal “designations” to “per­manently” lock out management and use of the watersheds for real “conservation wise use”?

Well, as you might guess, I have a theory. Today’s political battles in lands and natural resources are the result of programs started in the early 1990s at the Earth Summit in 1992 and referred to as “Agenda 21,” the goals of which were to be in place by this year, 2021. The overall goal was and is for the governments to be in control of the lands and resources, thereby easily control­ling the people for a “sustainable” utopian society. The foundation has been well laid and the new extended time line is for com­pletion by, you guessed it, 2030. One of the “tools” being used is the “Wildlands Proj­ect,” which is a group of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that lobby govern­ment agencies policies and actions, to “save the Earth’s ecosystems.” WHAT do they propose? Quoting their statement, “we must protect half of the Earth’s ecosystems and wildlife from destruction if the diversity of life, including hu­mankind, is to survive into the distant future. We are making progress, but clearly have a long way to go.”

One of their major projects affecting us is the “Western Wildway,” which is a desig­nated strip of land beginning down in Mex­ico and extending north generally along the Rocky Mountain chain with varying widths of 2-400 miles more or less up to the Bering Sea. Interestingly, in Colorado the eastern boundary is along the Continental Divide, not on the Eastern Slope, which explains the introduction of wolves to be only on the Western slope.

The goal is to gain ownership and/or control of as much land and water as pos­sible tying into federal designated parks, monuments, National Conservation Areas, wilderness areas, conservation easements, etc… Gaining full government control of the lands and resources is paramount to create the desired humongous wilderness/wildlife natural park devoid of man’s influence and use.

This seems kind of costly and expensive, but there is a central player that is a 501(C-3) non-profit environmental corporation, The Nature Conservancy, that has been referred to by some as the government’s real estate agent. The TNC is reported to be the larg­est non-government landowner in the world, with assets around 6.5 billion, and now has past Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell as a key board member, and a member of TNC working on the Colorado River Com­pact which will impact the future of agricul­ture and water rights of the entire state. My, what a tangled web has been woven while we slept.

Dexter Gill is a retired forest manager who worked for private industry, three Western state forestry agencies, and the Navajo Nation forestry department. He writes from Lewis, Colo.

Published in Dexter Gill

What lies beneath

May 10, 2021
Valerie Maez

The complexity of America has always been its people. This unparalleled experi­ment in a constitutional republic relies on its citizens to absorb complex information and reach consensus as to how we move forward as a nation in a violent, often unpredictable world of competing agendas. We accept that forces within and outside our country are al­ways working against the idea that as a free people, we decide what is in our best inter­ests. Bureaucracies/governments attempt to exert more influence that is contrary to free­dom simply due to the fact that they want to wield power rather than be told what is and is not their prerogative.

The calm water that America usually ex­udes can belie the roiling undertow beneath its surface. There is no unifying consensus from the recent election.

In the Washington Examiner, the column Washington Secrets (April 6-13, page 43) published credible polling data that delin­eates that divide. David Winston conducted a poll of 1,000 registered voters in February. In that poll, “Winning the Issues”, Winston asked respondents “did Trump and Biden get elected fairly or not.” Only 19 percent of the country believes that both Trump (2016) and Biden (2020) won their elections fairly. Sixty-two percent of Democrats believe Trump was elected “due to Russian interfer­ence”. Sixty-one percent of Republicans be­lieve Biden was elected through fraud. Both sides (87 percent of Democrats) and (82 percent of Republicans) felt their guy won fairly. The last two election cycles show that six out of ten voters are not accepting the results. A very slight majority of “indepen­dents” believe both men won fairly.

An audit of voting machines used in the 2020 election in Michigan found a wireless device on a computer board in multiple ma­chines. A connection to the internet was es­tablished, which is prohibited by law. Michi­gan is the only place where an actual physical audit of machines was implemented.

Douglas G. Frank is a highly accredited and respected scientific analyst, and presi­dent of Precision Analytical Instruments, Inc. On March 30, Dr. Frank was inter­viewed by Mike Lindell. In the YouTube vid­eo Dr. Frank explains his analytic of voter databases and phantom voters. Wiktionary defines a ghost voter as:

  1. An invented voter in an election, used as a fraudulent means to cast additional votes under an as­sumed name. Dr. Frank asserts that voting systems contained a seven-step algorithm that allowed computers’ data to be manipu­lated in the 2020 election. He cites the impossibility of the same statisti­cal anomalies that were overlapping throughout mul­tiple states as evidence. NBC news confirms that an independent analysis of Michigan voting systems proved that machines had been compromised in a report by Kevin Mo­nahan. The question to what degree these “anomalies” affected the actual vote tallies has yet to be determined. Forensic investiga­tions take time and a willingness to keep an open mind. Patience is a virtue that rewards.

Divisions within both the Democrat and Republican parties are indicators of the problem that is the malignancy affecting our elections. Corporate lobbyists that flourish in Washington D.C. have honed the concept of bi-partisanship into a highly lucrative art form. So lucrative, politicians of both major parties plow the road for them. Instead of focusing anger on “communists” and RI­NOs (Republican In Name Only), we need to start holding politicians that I have come to call “NORAs” (Negotiating Our Rights Away) responsible. Most of us vote to elect candidates that we believe will represent us and what we believe in. All too often voters in both parties watch these folks turn into swamp creatures, coming around at election time trying convince us they need more time to get the job done.

It probably doesn’t surprise anyone that both major political parties are seeing shifts in enrollment, only some of which can be attributed to open primaries. In Colorado, both parties have seen a similar net loss of registered affiliates since 2013. Constellation, a Colorado company that specializes in mar­keting analysis and research, has documented that while Republicans have left the party since Trump was elected, most was due to re-location out of state. They also note that much of Democrat losses are attributed to members joining the Re­publican Party. Primarily, Democrat women are leaving their party and joining the Republican Party due to Trump. This migration is reflected in the massive rallies that Trump, as a candidate in 2016 accomplished.

In a recent news story, the Wall Street Journal (April 13) documented how many pollsters sig­nificantly undercounted Republican strength in the 2020 election. This is why Trump will play large in future elections. I think what the “experts” are hav­ing problems with, is how, after four years of daily bashing, Trump is still relevant. Donald Trump saw the discontent of the American people and tapped into it. Trump voters see the vitriol directed at him as being directed at them. They see a stolen election because of what they value is seen as undesirable by a government/media/tech consortium that is suppose to respect them and doesn’t.

This country is running out of time as the cost of running a government spirals past our ability to pay for it. Wild-eyed socialism and crony capitalism have brought us to this point as NORAs pander to their donor base of corporate sponsors. Carve-outs in legis­lation and government policies reward the few at the expense of the many. America is fast turning into an oligarchy instead of a republic, with fascism as the in­evitable result. The New Republic (April 12, 2021) had an excellent article titled “How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines.” Re­gardless how one feels about COVID and the vaccines, the article chronicles how one in­dividual can control the government to reap billions.

Realistically, until there is a groundswell of outrage that topple the Bill Gates of the world, we need to act locally. It matters who we elect to boards and elected offices. It matters that our voices and our rights are respected by our institutions. Election integrity is what lies beneath.

Valerie Maez writes from Lewis, Colo.

Published in Valerie Maez

Acknowledging the land

May 10, 2021
Carolyn Dunmire

There is a new ritual that I have witnesse­d recently and perhaps now have participated in, called land acknowledgement. It usually occurs at the beginning of an event, espe­cially those sponsored by a university or cul­tural organization, and involves naming the Native peoples who lived on the land where the event is taking place. For example, if I were holding an event at my home, I would probably acknowledge the Ute people and maybe the ancestral Puebloans, though the acknowledgement rarely goes back that far into pre-history. The reason to acknowledge the land is to recognize and identify those people who lived and died and shaped the land where we live and work and play today. While some find this ritual a way to start righting the wrongs of Native American conquest, I find it a bit inadequate. While I have nothing against recognizing our ances­tors on the land, I believe it would be more effective if it helped to connect today’s resi­dents to the land. Perhaps even acknowledge the land itself and its other residents, such as animals and plants.

I realize there is a big difference between my neighbors (I have more deer neighbors than people) and those found on the Uni­versity of Arizona campus. But in the time­frame of land acknowledgment, there would be more animals and plants than people living in downtown Tucson. Even the Na­tive Americans themselves are altering their land references. The Zuni mapping project is identifying places by their Zuni names not only for cultural reasons but to identify the natural resources of the place. For example, Ft. Wingate has a Zuni name that means Bear Springs, which is much more useful to the current Zuni residents as a potential wa­ter source than remembering a conquering military man.

If I were to do a land acknowledgement for my home, I would probably skip the ad­dress assigned to my house, as it links it to an imaginary county boundary and the post office that delivers our mail (a rather quaint relic in this time of mobile digital commu­nication) and recognize some of the people who lived here before me. I live on what is known as the “Leslie Place,” which refers to the most recent settlers of this township. But who else to recognize?

Because the Utes and other people who moved across this landscape seasonally did not build permanent structures it’s difficult to confirm they were really here and deserv­ing of acknowledgement. Same goes for the herds of deer, elk, and even buffalo that moved through this landscape. Should they be penalized because they lived here without leaving their mark on “my land”?

If I were to map my land, I would fol­low the waters and identify my home as lo­cated at the head of an intermittent creek that flows directly into the Dolores River. Not Cahone Creek, which flows west and eventually joins the San Juan River. Or as the place where the elk herd resides before the winter solstice but not long after. If I were hosting a gathering of plants instead of people, would we acknowledge this land as the place with the deep red soil where the Cahone bean grows?

I also wonder what I need to do to be acknowledged with this land. Something as intentional as burying my ancestors’ bones here or as inadvertent as losing an earring? Should you acknowledge the place where you were born or the place where the bones of your ancestors are scattered?

Personally, I would prefer to acknowledge the beauty of the land and perhaps that is what we are doing by acknowledging the Native peoples who lived in harmony with the land for generations. Like the Navajo acknowledge walking in beauty as living in balance with/on the land. Naming places that instruct us on how to identify and man­age and enjoy a beautiful place would build a deeper connection to the land than a litany of mispronounced tribal names.

In keeping with my food theme in the col­umn, I propose we acknowledge the plants and animals (both native and introduced) that grow well in the place such as Holly-wood, Doe Canyon, or Blueberry Hill. You get the idea. Although I think we don’t need any more Deer or Bear Creeks. I challenge you the next time you find yourself day­dreaming through a formal land acknowl­edgment ceremony to enhance the list of people and cultures by adding some plants and animals and landforms that connect you to that place. May the beauty of the Dolo­res River inspire many future generations of people and animals and plants to live and grow and prosper in this place. Ho!

Carolyn Dunmire lives and gardens in Cahone, Colo. She placed first in the arts and entertainment/food criticism category in the recent Society of Profes­sional Journalists Top of the Rockies competition. (See article on Page 13.)

Published in Carolyn Dunmire

War and remembrance

May 10, 2021
Chuck Greaves

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BILLY THE KID BY DENNIS MCCARTHYIt’s been written that the outlaw known as Billy the Kid was born Henry McCarty in New York City in 1859. Or maybe his real name was William H. Bonney, or Wil­liam Wright, or Joseph Antrim. He moved with his family to Kansas in 1870, then to Santa Fe, and finally to Silver City, where his mother died in 1874, setting Billy, age 15, on a path of petty theft and cattle rustling. Or perhaps he was just a rowdy cowhand falsely accused of stealing horses. One thing for certain is that young Billy, following the mur­der of New Mexico Territory rancher John Turnstall in 1878, cast his lot with a group of Turnstall avengers known as the Lincoln County Regulators who took up arms in op­position to the “Santa Fe Ring” of corrupt power brokers fronted by local businessman James Dolan. The resulting conflict would soon escalate into the notorious Lincoln County War of 1878-81.

Billy’s role in the Lincoln County War end­ed in July of 1881when Sheriff Pat Garrett ambushed the young outlaw in the darkened Fort Sumner bedroom of rancher Pete Max­well, an incident Garrett would memorialize – some would say fictionalize – in his 1882 book The Authentic Life of Billy, The Kid, the Noted Desperado of the Southwest. In it, Garrett and ghost-writer Marshall Upson credited Billy with having killed 21 men before his 21st birthday, thereby gilding a gun-slinging legend that shines to this day thanks in part to hundreds of subsequent books, articles, and feature films including (and starring as Billy) Billy the Kid (Robert Taylor, 1941), The Left-Handed Gun (Paul Newman, 1958), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Kris Kristoffer­son, 1973), and Young Guns (Emilio Estevez, 1988).

A coda of sorts to Billy’s already-murky saga was heard in 1948 when a probate in­vestigator in St. Louis interviewed an elderly man named Joe Hines who not only claimed to have participated in the Lincoln County War, but also claimed that Billy the Kid, whose new identity Hines refused to dis­close, was in fact still alive. The investigator, William Morrison, tracked Hines’ intriguing story all the way to Hamilton, Texas, and a man named Oliver “Brushy Bill” Roberts, who eventually “confessed” to being Billy the Kid. According to Roberts, Pat Garrett had shot another outlaw named Billy Barlett that night in Fort Sumner, allowing Roberts to escape to Mexico. His motive for now re­vealing his “true identity,” Roberts claimed, was to secure Morrison’s help in finally ob­taining the pardon that had been promised him in 1879 by New Mexico’s then-governor Lew Wallace (the author, incidentally, of the 1880 novel Ben-Hur.)

Morrison published the results of his investigation in a 1950 book, co-written by Western historian C.L. Sonnichsen, titled Alias Billy the Kid. Roberts, how­ever, died shortly after the book’s publication, and the book’s claims were imme­diately and hotly disputed, but eventually found pur­chase in the popular culture thanks in part to the release of the 1990 film Young Guns II, again featuring Emilio Estevez as Billy, in which aged narrator “Brushy Bill” recounts his various exploits as Billy the Kid.

Just when you thought there was little more to be said or written about the legend of Billy the Kid, along comes The Gospel According to Billy the Kid, the debut novel of Santa Fe author Dennis McCarthy, brother of Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award recipient Cormac McCarthy. Based in part on the Brushy Bill legend, McCarthy’s novel provides a gripping first-person account of the Lincoln County War and of Billy’s asso­ciated exploits, which include various shoot-outs, jail-breaks, and gunfights as well as the fugitive outlaw’s escape from Fort Sumner and his life in post-Billy anonymity, all of it written in a uniquely unadorned but compelling prose style.

The Lincoln County War, and Billy’s central role in its prosecution, is an important and engag­ing chapter in the history of the American West, and The Gospel According to Billy the Kid (University of New Mexico Press) brings that conflict to life in ways to which history books can only aspire. Both propul­sive and poignant, it’s a novel worth reading, from a talented new literary voice worth following in the years ahead.

Chuck Greaves/C. Joseph Greaves is the author of six novels including Hard Twisted and Church of the Graveyard Saints. You can visit him at www.chuckgreaves.com.

Published in Prose and Cons

How can forest health be improved?: The Salter Y project has critics, but offers likely long-term gains

May 10, 2021
Janneli Miller

Part II of a two-part series

Read Part I

DAVID CASEY, JACKIE RABB, ROBERT MEYER DISCUSS CHICKEN TREATMENT FORESTRY TREATMENTS

From left, David Casey, supervisory forester with the Dolores Ranger District, Jackie Rabb, and Robert Meyer, chair of the Mancos Trails group, are on a tour in the Chicken Creek area near Mancos on April 25. This is an untreated area. Meyer is leaning on a stump cut in the 1920s wIth a two-man crosscut saw, which leaves high stumps. Photo by Janneli F. Miller

Sometimes in life we have to engage in unwelcome short-term behavior in order to get long-term results. To lose weight, for in­stance, we may have to give up desserts or big Mac’s for a time.

That sort of decision is being considered in regards to the Salter Y Vegetation Man­agement Project in the Dolores District of the San Juan National Forest.

The question is whether proposed short-term treatments, which include commercial logging and some prescribed burning, will provide long-term benefits that will outweigh the impacts of the treatments on recreation and the environment.

“The current need for mitigation on the Salter Y area is really due to the public,” not­ed Jen Stark, Dolores Town trustee, after at­tending a tour of an area near Mancos called Chicken Creek. The tour of a previously treated forest site was sponsored by the Do­lores Watershed Resilient Forest Collabora­tive (DWRF) on April 25 to help the public understand the possible impacts of the Salter Y Vegetation Management project.

The project, which is expected to last about 10 years, will take place on 22,346 acres of national forest northwest of Dolo­res, including the popular Boggy Draw area.

Stark explained that “public pressure on political spheres and government policy gen­erated a long-term fire-suppression strategy.” Historic extractive activities such as timber harvesting and cattle grazing combined with current drought conditions have had delete­rious impacts on local forest health.

According to Danny Margolis, DWRF coordinator, “We want to facilitate focused practical and meaningful dialogue about the project. The framing of the project is very much in line with the goals and mission of DWRF.”

The Salter Y project is aimed at improv­ing forest health, but it will change the forest experience for users while it is taking place.

The draft environmental assessment pre­pared by David Casey, supervisory forester for the Dolores Ranger District, explains that the purpose and need for the project is threefold:

  • to improve resilience and resistance to epidemic insect and disease outbreaks;
  • to increase the structural diversity of the ponderosa pine forest repre­sented across the landscape
  • to provide economic sup­port to local communities by providing timber products to local industries in a sustainable manner.

The draft EA proposes three alternatives: no action; the modified proposed action; and a large-tree-retention alterna­tive that limits harvesting to trees 20 inches or less in diam­eter at breast height (dbh).

Forest officials acknowledge that the project will have sig­nificant impacts on recreation, wildlife, vegetation, watersheds, soils, scenery and transporta­tion. The reasoning is that these impacts will be far less damag­ing to the forest than the im­pacts of major wildfires, insect infestation and overall declining forest health if nothing were done.

The area targeted for treatment is in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), the transi­tion between unoccupied land and human development. If left untreated the area in question could potentially be subject to de­structive crown fires, according to the draft EA.

The areas designated for treatment in this project are neither resilient nor diverse. There are very few large trees, many dense stands of same-age, same-size trees, and a signifi­cant amount of brushy oak undergrowth.

This forest structure inhibits seedling production and regeneration, since trees in tight clusters compete for water and sunlight and may become stressed. Stressed trees are susceptible to insect infestations or parasitic growth such as mistletoe, and are less likely to resist fire.

According to forest officials, removing weak trees and brushy overgrowth through tree-cutting, tree planting and prescribed fire improves the ability of the remaining trees to become healthier, produce seedlings and resist fire. More frequent, low-intensity fires are easier to manage and incur less damage.

In addition to the draft EA, a 73-page bio­logical evaluation describes direct and indi­rect impacts of all three alternatives to sensi­tive animal species such as the boreal toad, northern leopard frog, flannelmouth sucker, flammulated owl, Lewis’ woodpecker, and northern goshawk.

It addresses pollinators including Monarch butterflies, the Western bumblebee, and sev­eral species of bats.

Species of special interest are Abert’s squirrel, mule deer and elk, the hairy wood­pecker and some other bird species.

Many of the environmental impacts in both the draft EA as well as the biological evaluation are listed as “Finding of No Sig­nificant Impact,” meaning the treatment ac­tivities will not really impact the forest.

But some environmentalists disagree.

Jimbo Buickerood, lands and forest pro­tection program manager for the nonprofit San Juan Citizens Alliance, submitted com­ments saying, “We find the determination of a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) to be invalid being the EA provides insuf­ficient information on which to make that finding.”

Matt Sturdevant, district wildlife manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, acknowl­edges that there are a wide range of species in the proposed project area.

“The project area provides habitat for a multitude of wildlife species including elk, mule deer, black bear, mountain lion, coy­ote, fox, bobcat, and Merriam’s turkey, dusky grouse, Cooper’s hawk, red-tailed hawk, sharp-shinned hawk, northern goshawk and many other species,” he wrote. “The area contains valuable fawning and calving grounds for deer and elk, as well as critical winter range for these same species.”

CPW said it supports the project because it will improve forest health. “We recognize that short term impacts to wildlife may oc­cur from the construction and use of roads, as well as the mechanical and human distur­bance during vegetation thinning. However, we believe that the improved wildlife habitat offsets these impacts in the long run.”

 ‘Need to be patient’

The Dolores Ranger District is consider­ing 123 public comments it received during the comment period, which ended in March. District Ranger Derek Padilla explained that if comments fall within the prescription of the draft EA there will be no need to write a new EA and the project will proceed.

Citizens in support of the project ex­pressed an understanding that short-term disruptions to recreation, including camping, mountain-biking, hiking and hunting in the area, are undesirable but necessary.

“The intention behind this project is a good one. In order to promote forest health and resiliency, many of us will need to be pa­tient with closures, noise, traffic, changes in aesthetics, etc.,” wrote Robin Richard, local resident of 17 years.

But some people think otherwise.

“Although I understand the purpose of this project, I oppose it due to the fact this is a high use recreational area. The noise and pollution of the large trucks, as well as the falling timber would greatly affect the safety as well as the recreational experience,” wrote Gretchen Schmeisser.

The draft EA admits that economic im­pacts are unknown, but the project is expect­ed to boost local timber operations, one of its stated goals. It is uncertain whether log­ging’s benefits would outweigh the benefits of the burgeoning recreation industry.

The most frequent concern expressed in public comments was the disruption to rec­reational activities and the recreation econo­my. Other concerns were the lack of specific economic information, and the treatment activities and scope of the project.

Some commenters asked for retention of large trees and adaptive forest management strategies. Some expressed safety concerns, especially regarding the primary access road to the project, County Road 31.

“My number one concern is the paved road that leaves Dolores on the way to the Boggy Draw area and the Salter area. This road is already excessively traveled and not well maintained. This creates a hazard for the users of the road no matter what purpose,” wrote Mike Hill.

Seven environmental organizations (in­cluding SJCA, Center for Biological Diver­sity, and Defenders of Wildlife) urged the SJNF to adopt Alternative 3, which leaves larger trees standing (no harvesting of trees over 20 inches dbh).

Wildfire potential

The availability of companies to do some commercial logging is key to the project.

The thinking is that since there is now tim­ber industry in place, tree cutting can take place in a swifter and more economical man­ner than when the Forest Service cuts and then sells the harvested trees.

Casey told the group on the DWRF tour that he can “sell right off the tree,” eliminat­ing the need for decking and huge timber piles, which means less disruption to forest areas and a quicker treatment time.

The Montezuma County commissioners supported Alternative 2 in comments.

“We realize that there will impacts to all of the resources in the project area and that some of them will be negative for a short time,” they wrote. “However the long term benefits to all resources will out-weigh the short term inconveniences.”

While the project may impact recreation, they wrote, “The potential for catastrophic wildfire far outweighs the possible economic loss from recreation due to treatment. . . . We agree that we are trying to achieve a healthy, resilient forest that is resistant to disease, insect and wildfire outbreaks. However that does not mean that we envision some sort hands-off pre-Columbian forest condition.”

Dolores’s mayor and trustees also support Alternative 2, but voiced concerns. “There is not adequate language in the Draft EA ad­dressing the negative economic impact due to the temporary loss of recreational oppor­tunities,” they wrote.

They especially focused on impacts to hunting, stating that since big-game numbers are declining in the Salter Y area, it was “im­perative” the project not further impact big game.

The local economy

But it is not only hunters who provide eco­nomic benefits to Dolores.

Mark Youngquist, owner of the popular Dolores River Brewery in operation for 19 years, also noted potential economic impacts.

“There appears to be little mention of the possible economic impacts of trail closures both temporary and long term on the local businesses other than logging, as well as the impacts on the attractiveness of the vistas and intimacy of the camping experiences available in the Boggy Draw area,” he wrote.

Peter Eschallier, owner of Cortez’s Ko­kopelli Bike and Boards, which is opening a new store in Dolores, did not mince words in expressing his opposition: “I am concerned that this project would impact the Boggy Draw trail system negatively, reducing the number of mountain bikers that visit and use this area. We are committed to investing in our sustainable outdoor industry. . . Any in­terruption and negative impact to these trails would be disastrous to our business.”

Kokopelli co-owner Scott Darling agreed, writing, “This proposed logging could not come at a worse time. The trail expansion that was just finished may be altered, negat­ing countless volunteer hours of work.”

Dolores’ interim town manager, Ken Charles told the Free Press, “There’s no doubt that the recreation industry will be impact­ed,” but said the town was not taking a posi­tion.

The town encouraged the SJNF to work with the Southwest Colorado Cycling Asso­ciation on trail closures, detour routing and signage, and public education measures.

SWCCA is a local nonprofit committed to enhancing the mountain-bike experience by building and maintaining local trails, includ­ing those in Boggy Draw. They also host and sponsor local races including the upcoming 12 Hours of Mesa Verde, to be held May 8.

Dani Gregory of SWCCA included three pages of recommendations in her com­ments. “This project will result in temporary trail closures which will hurt local businesses, anger users and deter visitors,” she wrote.

SWCCA recently constructed 24.4 miles of trails in the Boggy Draw system.

Gregory said “there is not adequate lan­guage in the EA addressing the negative eco­nomic impacts due to the temporary loss of recreational opportunities.”

Approximately one-quarter of those com­menting recommended following the sug­gestions of SWCCA or mitigating impacts on trails.

Other specific concerns mentioned by Dolores town officials included the impacts to residents on 11th Street, which turns into CR 31. The town wants to have a designated truck route, to limit commercial traffic on 11th Street from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., and to ensure that contractors are aware that the in-town speed limit of 15 mph on 11th Street will be enforced.

This was mentioned by several people.

“The movement of heavy equipment to and from the proposed project areas requires that oversize machines and vehicles travel on local paved and unpaved county roads,” wrote Shaine Gans, who lives near Boggy Draw. “This poses an unnecessary danger to residents. . .”

In addition, Dolores officials wanted more information on potential impacts to water quality, and suggested that the Forest Service address effects to fisheries, erosion control, or possible spills.

But the Dolores Water Conservancy Dis­trict said the project would help protect wa­ter quality in the long term.

Mike Preston, former general manager of the DWCD, commented that the project “will avoid damage and disruption to water supplies by lowering the risk of catastrophic wildfire and the damage done by toxic run­off into the Dolores River from fire scars. These vegetation treatments will contribute to the availability and quality of Dolores River water flowing into McPhee Reservoir.”

Preston continued, “Areas that have re­ceived mechanical and prescribed fire treat­ments offer improved recreation and hunting opportunities coupled with significant reduc­tion in wildfire risks. The benefits that pro­posed treatments will have on water quality and availability are of profound interest to everyone that relies upon McPhee reservoir as their water source.” Forest products What about local logging companies and foresters?

The two timber companies mentioned by the Dolores District’s Padilla and Casey dur­ing the DWRF tour were Montrose Forest Products and the Ironwood group. The Iron­wood facility, located on County Road T out­side Dolores, was established in 2019, when owners from Oregon purchased and refur­bished the old Montezuma County plywood plant. The company produces wood pellets and plywood veneer.

Montrose Forest Products, LLC, which is owned by Neiman Enterprises out of Wyo­ming, uses beetle-killed ponderosa pine to manufacture studs, timbers and various shop grades cuts, pine boards, pattern, decking, and industrial, or shop, lumber.

Tim Kyllo, resource forester for Montrose Forest Products, wrote that “our 95 direct employees at the mill and approximately 120 people that make up our independent logging and trucking contractors are extremely sup­portive of any effort the San Juan National Forest makes to provide commercial timber for bid.” Timber products extracted from the Salter Y project area would be transported and marketed out of the area.

Kyllo’s comments focus on lessening re­strictions on logging in the proposed Salter Y project area. “We strongly urge the SJNF to not limit the construction of temporary road construction to access planned timber sale units,” stating that the landscape conditions require “the absolute need for purchasers to be able to build temporary road locations on pre-approved USFS locations as necessary to economically log and haul the timber to mill sites. This must be incorporated into the final decision without restrictions.”

Molly Pitts, Colorado programs manager for the Intermountain Forest Association out of Salida, commented, “Given that sev­eral of IFA’s members heavily rely on tim­ber output from the San Juan National For­est and have made substantial investments to help facilitate treatments, we are excited about the proposed Salter Vegetation Man­agement project on the Dolores District.” She agrees with the need to increase age class and structural diversity in the forest and sup­ports Alternative 2.

“We feel strongly that Alternative 3, with a diameter cap of 20 inches, will not achieve the desired goals and objectives and will put stands at risk from insects and disease and catastrophic wildfire. Furthermore, it will limit flexibility in creating the necessary habi­tat for wildlife.”

But some comments by retired foresters or citizens with backgrounds in forestry were highly critical of the proposed project.

Harold Ragland, of Ragland and Sons Logging and Stonertop Lumber, has 53 years of experience working in the forest. He be­lieves that “logging and recreation can oper­ate in a complementary fashion.” His prima­ry concern is with controlled burns, which he feels are a “complete disaster.” Fire dam­age turns a piece of wood that could pos­sibly could be used as valuable molding to dunnage which is nearly worthless, he said, and controlled burns decrease the value of the public’s timber by up to 100 times. He also said controlled burns do “cruel and in­humane damage” to wildlife.

William Baker of the University of Wyo­ming stated, “Reasons given for preferring Alternative 2 over Alternative 3 are not valid. . . . It is well documented that in ponderosa pine forests it is these large, old trees that provide the essential resistance and resil­ience to fire that is now particularly needed as fire is increasing with global warming. Large trees have the thickest bark, the high­est crown base height, and have the greatest ability to survive substantial crown scorch­ing and still resprout and survive. It is thus essential for the Final EA, if the goal is to include increased resistance and resilience to fire, to heed and remedy the serious de­ficiency in large trees as an essential part of the desired conditions for the project area.” Another critic, Dick Artley, a forester, sub­mitted 21 pages of comments. “Never be­fore have I heard of such ham-handed mis­management of the precious land owned by 332 million Americans,” he wrote.

Artley voiced concern about the proposed use of glyphosate on noxious weeds. He is concerned about the use of fire and logging to prevent forest fires. He said fire-preven­tion measures should instead focus on re­ducing the flammability of houses, planning evacuation routes, burying power lines, and zoning to reduce growth into WUI areas.

Public comments objecting to the proj­ect, or urging the Forest Service to mitigate impacts on recreation by preserving the trail system at Boggy Draw, ran about 3 to 1.

Buickerood told the Free Press the draft EA was one of the weakest he had seen, contain­ing little economic information. “I’m afraid that the economic piece is too tilted towards forest industry,” he said. “Frankly it seems to be giving industry some contracts, and they’ll make more money on the big trees.” He is also concerned about ex­actly where the economic benefits from log­ging will go. “It very well might be that most of that financial gain will go out of the area, if they are mostly purchased by Montrose.”

Buickerood said, “I think you can restore the forest and provide some economic ben­efit in the same time. There is short-term disruption, but can we figure out a way to minimize that? It would include cutting back on the number of days harvest is going on and the number of areas that are open at one time, and not roll over all the work that has been done.” Sam Bagge, who grew up biking these trails and has a degree in environmental and sustainability studies, wrote that “the meth­ods being proposed are detrimental to the ecosystem and biking community. There are less invasive management tactics that can be employed. While they will most likely be more costly and timely they are necessary to preserve the unique trail system and the eco­system it is in.”

Gail Binkly contributed to this article.

Published in May 2021 Tagged

Empire’s new rate structure, explained

May 10, 2021
Carolyn Dunmire

In an interview, Andy Carter answers basic questions about the coming change

Bills from Empire Electric Association will have a whole new look starting in Sep­tember, as it is upgrading its rate structure and customer billing system. The new Time-of-Use Demand (TOUD) rate structure will change how EEA charges its customers for electricity.

The Four Corners Free Press interviewed Andy Carter, Empire’s member engagement manager, by telephone and email and at­tended the member forum on April 12 to learn more about these changes that will take effect Sept. 1.

Four Corners Free Press: Why is EEA creating a new rate structure?

Carter: First thing, it is important to re­member that EEA is a member-owned co­operative and decisions about rates are made by the elected board of directors for the good of the cooperative. In other words, we aren’t out to make money for third-party in­vestors. EEA’s board of directors and staff have been looking at a change to the rate structure for years as a way to increase fairness, give mem­bers more control over their bill, and improve the finan­cial stability of the co-op. The TOUD rate structure is the culmination of this deliberation.

This new rate structure also will al­low EEA to take ad­vantage of changes to the electric market and give customers more control over their monthly bill. Tri-State Genera­tion and Transmission Association, EEA’s primary power provider, is allowing distri­bution companies like EEA more flexibil­ity in electric purchase and self-generation. This new rate structure will help us respond to these changes. In addition, EEA’s mem­ber/customers have changed the way they use electricity. Remember a time before cell phones and remote control of your light­ing and appliances? This new rate structure also allows EEA to more fairly allocate in­frastructure requirements to meet new cus­tomer demands such as electric-vehicle (EV) charging. For example, La Plata Electric Association has a program where they own the EV charging station at their customers’ homes, and they control when the EV can be charged. We know that EEA customers would prefer to own and control their EV charging stations. So, we needed to create a rate structure that would encourage custom­ers to charge their cars off-peak, minimizing the need to upgrade our distribution system to handle this new load.

FCFP: How did EEA design the new rate structure?

Carter: The main goal in designing rates is to balance fairness with practicality. EEA has always used the “cost causation princi­ple,” which means that rates are based on al­locating costs incurred by the cooperative to the ratepayer responsible for the cost. There­fore, to be totally fair there would be a dif­ferent rate for each of the 17,000 services. Obviously, this is im­practical. The way that we compromise is to group custom­ers using similar ser­vices into a manage­able number of rate classes. For example, a homeowner who uses residential-scale appliances is grouped in the “residential rate class” separate from, say, a restaurant or big-box store with commercial-scale ap­pliances like large re­frigerators and thou­sands of square feet of buildings to light and heat.

The art to rate design, what I call “buck­et-ology,” is how to allocate the costs of purchase power from Tri-State, the cost of distribution equipment investment and maintenance, and the administrative costs of running the co-op and billing our customer/members across these rate classes. The easy way would be to take total costs each month and divide them by to­tal number of custom­ers. But that wouldn’t be fair. We would be over-charg­ing custom­ers who use less power to cover the costs and main­tenance of larger equipment needed to meet cus­tomers with high de­mand.

FCFP: What is a TOU rate?

Carter: A time-of-use rate is based on en­ergy use over time as measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh). EEA’s current rate structure is often referred to as an “all-energy rate,” meaning that we allocate all costs to our rate classes based on energy use. It requires that we allocate energy and demand costs across the amount of kWh a customer buys each month. This can lead to payment shortfalls when customers don’t buy “enough” energy during a month. This happened a few years ago during a particularly warm October when customers did not buy much energy until the last few days of the month, when a cold snap hit. When everybody turned on their lights and heaters at the same time, EEA’s demand charge from Tri-State was large because we have a contract with them that says they will meet “all of our require­ments” for power no matter how big that spike in demand may be. Yet, because cus­tomers hadn’t used much energy during the rest of the month, we weren’t able to recover this demand cost in that monthly bill. This risk of potential shortfall is not good for the financial position of the cooperative.

The TOU rate better matches how Tri-State charges EEA for energy. The rate charged per kWh will change depending on the time that it is purchased, on-peak or off-peak. Energy purchased between noon and 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday will be billed at the on-peak rate of $0.15114 per kWh for residential consumers. Energy pur­chased all other times will be charged at the off-peak rate of $0.04428 per kWh (about half the current all-energy rate). The on-peak and off-peak times mirror EEA’s con­tract with Tri-State.

The TOU rates offer customers a new way to reduce their monthly bill without using less energy. For example, the average EEA residential customer purchases about 40 percent of their energy during on-peak hours. Just by shifting the time of day that they, for instance, run their electric dryer, the average customer could save money.

This side-by-side comparison of the old “all energy” rate structure and new TOUD rates was included in the April 2021 issue of Colorado County Life.

What is the new demand charge that will be on EEA’s residential customer bills?

Carter: The demand charge is based on a customer’s energy use without the time com­ponent and is measured in kilowatts (kW). It reflects how much power a customer re­quires all at once. Just as Tri-State has a duty to meet all our power requirements, we have the duty to meet our customers’ power re­quirements, no matter how many appliances, lights, heaters, or chargers they turn on at the same time. Just like when you blow a fuse in your house because you turned on the elec­tric oven, electric broiler, and microwave at the same time, we need large-enough equip­ment available to allow you and your neigh­bors to turn on your appliances, lights, and chargers at the same time. EEA owns, oper­ates, and maintains the wires and equipment that bring power to your home. Currently, we charge all residential customers the same rate for this equipment in the energy charge whether we must upgrade that equipment to meet a large demand at their house or not. The new demand charge will allow us to more fairly allocate these equipment and maintenance costs.

The new demand charge is based on the maximum number of kW used by a cus­tomer each month. Each meter’s total kWh is measured every 15-minutes. The demand charge for a residential customer will be $2.74/kW for the maximum kW level on their meter during that month. Currently, the average EEA residential customer has a maximum demand reading of 5 kW. That would result in a demand charge of $13.70 per month. You can find the maximum de­mand for your household on your monthly bill under “Peak Demand: X kW.”

FCFP: Wait a minute, I am confused by on-peak hours and peak demand.

Carter: Yes, I know that is confusing and we apologize for that. We are also upgrading our customer database and billing system. Your September bill will look completely different and better explain this TOUD rate structure. In the meantime, we are working within the constraints of our existing sys­tem.

To clarify: there are on-peak and off-peak times of day that will determine the rate used to charge your energy or kWh purchased. Your maximum demand in kW (currently listed as peak demand on your bill) will de­termine your monthly demand charge.

FCFP: So, what’s my monthly bill go­ing to be under this new TOUD rate structure?

Carter: In addition to making the coop­erative more financially stable and distrib­uting costs more fairly, one of the goals of the new rate structure was to be revenue-neutral. This means that EEA is not plan­ning to collect more money from the entire membership with the rate structure change. Individual member bills will go up or down based on usage habits but the average cus­tomer will see less than a $10 change, up or down, of their current monthly bill even if they don’t make any changes to the way they use electricity.

For the average residential customer, their monthly bill would be about $3 lower each month under the new rate structure. But like every other user cost promise out there, “your mileage may vary.” It will depend, in part, if you are higher or lower than the hypotheti­cal average EEA customer. If your monthly energy use is higher than 600 kWh per month your bill could be higher or lower depend­ing on when you purchase electricity. If you switch to running your electric dryer to the morning instead of the evening, you could see a lower monthly bill. If your maximum demand during the month is higher than 5 kW, you would see a higher monthly bill.

FCFP: What about the special case of residential net-metering customers?

Carter: Just like all other residential cus­tomers, net-metering customers will auto­matically go to TOUD rate structure in Sep­tember unless they opt to stay at all-energy rate. The difference will be that they will bank and be charged for energy at the on-peak and off-peak rates. It is a like-for-like system. They will essentially have two banks to draw from. Those kilowatt hours gener­ated and banked during on-peak hours can be used to meet demand during on-peak hours. They will be charged according to the on-peak and off-peak rates if there is no bank available. For folks with solar panels, they have a good opportunity to bank a lot of on-peak energy during the noon to sunset period. And just like regular residential cus­tomers, they can save money by purchasing energy during off-peak hours if their bank is depleted.

FCFP: When do I have to decide?

Carter: Starting in September, the default residential cus­tomers will be billed with the TOUD rate structure. Cus­tomers/mem­bers will have the opportunity to “opt-out” of the change starting in July or August. If it takes a few monthly bills to figure out which rate structure is better, you will have a second chance after September to make the change.

FCFP: What can I do now to prepare for the change?

Carter: My recommendation is to con­sider “Cuando y Cuantos,” which translates to when (cuando) you use appliances and how many (cuantos) at the same time. (See article in February 2021 Colorado County Life.). Think about when you use power and if you can change your tasks to more off-peak use. There are a few ways to do this. Try setting an alarm for noon each day and inventorying the number of electric appliances that are currently turned on. Are you running your electric dryer? The dishwasher? Do the same thing at 6 p.m. Could you run the dishwasher and dryer during off-peak hours?

Be careful, because it won’t do you any good to turn everything on at 10 p.m., when the off-peak period starts, because you could rack up a high demand charge. Consider staggering the starts. Run the dishwasher and when it is finished, then turn on the dryer.

Look at your past monthly bills to see how yours compare to average. Consider re­placing some appliances with more efficient ones. EEA offers rebates on EnergyStar ap­pliance purchases. It might be time to retire that extra refrigerator in the garage. You can get credit for recycling that fridge at local ap­pliance dealers. See the EEA website, www.eea.coop, for details.

Published in May 2021

Cortez voters to decide broadband’s future

May 10, 2021
Gail Binkly

Believe it or not, it’s election time again, at least in the city of Cortez. On Tuesday, June 8, residents will be voting on a measure that would allow the city to enter into broadband partnerships or business.

Cortez is seeking to join a host of oth­er governmental entities that have already taken control of their broadband futures by opting out of a measure passed by the state legislature in 2005, SB 152.

Montezuma and La Plata counties as well as the municipalities of Mancos, Dolores, Durango, Ignacio, Bayfield, Telluride, Grand Junction, Montrose, and Delta are among the local governments on the West Slope whose voters have opted out of SB 152. So far, at least 40 counties and 105 municipali­ties statewide have opted out, according to numerous sources.

The Cortez ballot question will ask voters whether the authority of the city to provide high-speed internet, telecommunication, and/or cable television services should be “affirmed and reestablished.”

“If the measure passes, service can be provided either directly or indirectly through public or private partnerships,” explained Rick Smith, general-services director for Cortez, in a phone interview. “It would give the city the ability to explore options on how to move forward.”

The legislature passed SB 152 at the urg­ing of large, corporate service providers that did not want competition. The measure gen­erally prohibits local governments from pro­viding broadband and certain other services without a vote of their residents.

Cortez was originally thought to be unaf­fected by the measure because it already had a small broadband network in place at the time that the bill was passed. However, city officials have decided that voters do need to pass the opt-out if they want more broad­band options.

“The legal opinion we originally had was over 10 years ago,” Smith said. “Voters do need to do the opt-out if we are to provide options to move forward. If we don’t, we are very limited in what avenues and options the city can take.” The Cortez Community Network cur­rently allows for service to government, and private service providers are allowed to use the network.

“The City does not provide any services – it just provides the digital road for others to use,” the city’s website states. “The network currently has over 120,000 linear feet of fiber throughout Cortez. The current system serves City facilities, County facilities, Hospital, Fire District, and School District, and parts of the downtown core business district.” If voters pass the exemption, “the com­munity would be permitted to establish busi­ness partnerships with private companies to increase access to high-speed broad­band internet, opt to provide this service itself, or develop a combined strategy to benefit residents and businesses alike,” according to a flyer about the election. The measure would not prevent any pri­vate provider from starting new services or continuing to pro­vide existing services.

“The City of Cortez does not have plans to create a public broadband utility, nor do any communities within the county,” the flyer states.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the need for widely accessible, high-speed, and affordable broadband, many locals be­lieve.

“The city has always been interested in getting for the citizens affordable and abundant broadband so they can meet their needs,” Smith said.

Ballots will be mailed to voters by Mon­day, May 17. Ballots can be dropped off at: • City Hall dropbox in the rear parking lot of City Hall, 123 Roger Smith Ave. • Inside City Hall, 123 Roger Smith Ave.

They can also be mailed back to City Hall at the same address.

Ballots must be received by 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 8.

Published in May 2021

What is a healthy forest?: The Forest Service is trying to re-establish one through the proposed Salter Y project

April 20, 2021
Janneli Miller

The San Juan National Forest’s proposed Salter Y Vegetation Management Project is intended to help both the forest and the timber industry, but it has drawn concern from recreationists. The question of forest health is key. Photo by Gail Binkly.

“People love big trees. Whether they are hiking, biking, riding – people notice them.People just love the fact that there are big trees and ecologically we need to keep the big trees.”

— Jimbo Buickerood, San Juan Citizens

Alliance

Part I of a two-part series

Read part II

Out-of-town visitors as well as residents of the Four Corners region in search of big trees often frequent local areas in the San Juan National Forest (SJNF), in the north­east section of Montezuma County.

This area to the east side of McPhee Reservoir is accessed by travelling north of Dolores on County Road 31, known as the Dolores-Norwood road, as well as FS Road 527, the Boggy Draw Road and FS Rd 528, the House Creek Road which leads to a boat ramp and campground on the edges of McPhee reservoir.

Locals often refer to these areas as Boggy Draw, the Glade, or “our backyard.”

SALTER Y PROPOSED TREATMENT AREA

The area within the black boundaries is proposed for treatments in the Salter Y project, which would include commercial logging and prescribed burning. Graphic by Janneli Miller.

But is that backyard healthy? What makes for a healthy forest, and what should be done to maintain or create one?

Those are questions the Dolores Ranger District of the SJNF is considering as it weighs public reaction to the proposed Salt­er Y Vegetation Management Project, which would treat 22,346 acres of pub­lic land in this region north of Dolores.

A paradise

Visitors to this region of the national forest can engage in year-round recreational activi­ties, which the SJNF website says include bicycling, camping and cabins, climbing, fishing, hiking, horse riding and camp­ing, hunting, OHV riding and camping, outdoor learning, pic­nicking, scenic driving, water ac­tivities and winter sports.

Indeed, this area is promoted on the Town of Dolores website as being “an outdoor enthusiast’s paradise.” The Dolores Cham­ber of Commerce lists the Boggy Draw Trail system, the McPhee overlook trail, the San Juan National Forest and McPhee Lake in its promotional materials, mentioning swim­ming, kayaking, rafting, hiking, biking, cross-country skiing and fat-bike snow riding as recreational activities.

The proposed treatment area has few older ponderosa pines with broad-diameter trunks. Photo by Janneli Miller

In the fall, the area is utilized by hunters, with eight permitted outfitters providing guide services then, eight offering winter use, and six offering guided fishing services. Other permitted out­fitters provide Jeep, OHV and dirt bike tours, mountain bike tours, and llama pack tours, and 13 outfitters provide summer educa­tional and family trips.

Included in this area are 11 active individual livestock grazing allot­ments. According to the Draft Environmen­tal Assessment for the Salter Y project, “pon­derosa pine forests in the analysis area are considered suitable for livestock grazing and do provide understory vegetation for livestock forage to varying levels.”

Any visitor will notice that there are a fair amount of cattle in the area, especially in spring and fall. The local national forest truly is a multiuse area, enjoyed by many.

Indeed, due to the pandemic limiting in­ternational travel and out-of-state vacation options for many, this area of Southwest Colorado has seen escalated activity. (See the July 2020 Free Press). Increased visita­tion, including dispersed camping and both motorized and non-motorized trail use, has been noted by local residents and forest us­ers.

More people using the area means more impacts to wildlife, vegetation, limited water sources, and roads and trails.

In addition, the forest is currently suffer­ing from the combined impacts of extended periods of drought and bark beetle infesta­tions.

In response, the Dolores District pro­posed the Salter Y Vegetation Manage­ment project to increase forest diversity and health.

“The San Juan National Forest is critical infrastructure for our community, providing natural resources, recreational opportunities, and capturing and filtering the water that we all depend on,” Rebecca Samulski, speaking as concerned citizen and a volunteer with the Dolores Watershed Resilient Forest Col­laborative, told the Four Corners Free Press.

“Keeping these nearby forests healthy is important to all residents of the Four Cor­ners, as we become more aware of the role healthy landscapes contribute to human health.”

First cattle, then logging

In the past, places with natural resources were seen as places that existed primarily for extraction, and a reciprocal relationship in which humans contributed to restoring the places they exploited was not so much a part of the thinking. The result of the early resource extraction and fire suppression is apparent in today’s forest, which consists mainly of dense, even-aged stands of pon­derosa pine.

The first white settlers in the area came in the late 1870s, usually with cattle. In 1879 Charles Johnson brought in 2,000 head of cattle, Henry Goodman brought in another herd of 5,000, and the Quicks and King brothers brought more in 1880.

Ira Freeman, writing in A History of Mont­ezuma County, mentions that “cattle were ev­erywhere.”

It was open range and soon the region had a reputation as good cattle country, which lasted through the first wave of settlement. By 1882 the entire Dolores River Valley was settled.

The rich grazing range ran out around 1910, and interest shifted to logging. The first sawmill established in the region was in the town of McPhee in 1874, and in 1897 a lumberyard was established.

The New Mexico Lumber Company re­ceived access to logging rights in the Mon­tezuma National Forest near Dolores, which had been established in 1905. McPhee, a lumber company town (the site is now under McPhee Reservoir) grew quickly.

In 1924 New Mexico Lumber purchased 400 million board-feet of yellow pine, logged within a 55-square-miles area seven miles north of Dolores. In 1927, McPhee was the most productive mill town in Colo­rado, producing more than half the state’s lumber – 30 million board-feet cut annually, according to Lisa Mausolf in the NPS publi­cation The River of Sorrows.

These early loggers cut the biggest pon­derosa pines, and the impact is still apparent today in that the area is largely devoid of big old trees and snags.

The area was harvested again in the 1940s. In the 1980s an effort to regenerate and reforest was car­ried out. Overgrown brushy areas, consist­ing mainly of Gambel oak, were mowed, and restocking of seedling trees was performed via an interplanting method.

The resulting for­est – which users see today – is a mix of dense same-age mature ponderosas, open areas with no tree regeneration, and brushy oak thickets. The entire area has been har­vested, and regeneration efforts have been spotty, leading forest planners to begin their current efforts to restore vegetation to more diverse growth. “What we have seen in stands lacking an uneven aged structure is scenarios where the stand converts to almost brush with only hope of persisting is reforestation,” Derek Padilla, Dolores District ranger, explained in an email to the Free Press. “Essentially los­ing the quality habitat associated with a Pon­derosa Pine overstory unless intervention.”

LITTLE BEAN TRAIL

The Little Bean Trail is one of many sites in the area proposed for treatments, including logging, in the Salter Y Vegetation Management Project, which is being considered by officials with the Dolores Ranger District of the San Juan National Forest. Photo by Janneli Miller

The increased drought conditions preva­lent locally can stress trees and make them susceptible to bark-beetle infestations. Plac­es with infestations have been noted in the area.

“Currently, there are isolated occurrences of insect activity throughout the Salter analysis area,” Padilla said. “Fortunately, they are not large in size at this time. Projections are difficult. We have seen in an area northwest of the Salter analysis area, areas that started out as isolated insect activity areas that re­sulted in significant mortality and then we had other areas with similar insect activity that did not result in significant mortality.” The Salter Y Vegetation Management Project is expected to begin in 2023. By “treating” the forest, managers hope to in­crease forest diversity, thus mitigating poten­tial damaging impacts to the trees from fire and beetle infestation.

Samulski said the current large-scale veg­etation management projects “have the abil­ity to really start rehabilitating our forest.”

“We do not have several-hundred-year-old ponderosa pine trees out there to keep,” she said. “In order to get a diverse forest, that has to be grown over time, with some of the surplus of medium-sized trees out there now perhaps becoming those big yellow-barked pine trees in another century.” Needing restoration Jimbo Buickerood, lands and forest pro­tection program manager for the nonprofit San Juan Citizens Alliance, told the Free Press, “The basic situation is that the ponderosa forest in general, after years of fire suppres­sion and the way timber harvesting was man­aged, or not, and grazing, but mostly logging – is in need of restoration.

“Restoration means that what we’re trying to do is that we want the forest to be more diverse. Diversity is strength and resilience. SJCA would like to see the forest with a more diverse age class and size class.” Padilla said forest health is definitely relat­ed to forest diversity. He believes the Salter Y Vegetation Management Project is neces­sary for the “development of resilience to disturbance, main­ly insect and fire.” “This EA focuses on beetle resiliency but has desired con­ditions that lend to fire resilien­cy,” Padilla said. “Beetle resil­iency focuses on uneven-aged management with basal area spreads from 50 to 70. Most of our stands are deficient in 27-inch or greater diameter trees but also seedling and healthy pole-sized trees.

“Bark beetles have a tenden­cy to focus on large-diameter trees first and taper off at a lower diameter to almost no hits in trees 5 inches in diam­eter and below.

PROPOSED SALTER Y TREATMENT AREA

Trees in the proposed Salter Y treatment area tend to be dense and uniformly aged, thanks to clearcut logging in the past. Conditions make the forest vulnerable to bark-beetle outbreaks and catastrophic wildfires. Photo by Janneli Miller

“As bark beetles attack a stand with only large trees and succeed in killing off most of the overstory without seedling and pole cohorts, the stand has the potential to lack the stock­ing to promote regeneration and succeed in resiliency.” The Salter Y Environmen­tal Assessment, which was re­leased in February, explains the need for the project as three-pronged.

Proposed treatments are intended to:

  •  improve resilience and resistance to epi­demic insect and disease outbreaks,
  • increase the structural diversity of the ponderosa pine forest represented across the landscape, and
  • provide economic support to local com­munities by providing timber products to lo­cal industries in a sustainable manner.

The proposed project will include four kinds of treatments, depending upon the specific area, type and quality of trees.

BOGGY DRAW AREA

The Boggy Draw area has become popular for recreation year-round. Cross-country skiers here did their best to ski even when the snow was melting in March. Photo by Gail Binkly

Impacts to recreational areas, including roads and trails, and dates when logging will take place, were incorporated into the treat­ment plan. For instance, the Environmental Assessment states that no logging will take place during Escalante Days in Dolores when the Rotary Club holds a mountain bike race on trails in the proposed project area.

During logging the EA states that there could be as many as 24,000 loads of forest products hauled on the Dolores Norwood Road, with maybe as many as nine loads a day coming through the town of Dolores for nine months of the year. The treatments include single tree selec­tion, commercial and pre-commercial thin­ning, post fledgling area treatment (PFAT), and brush thinning. (See below)

The maximum diameter to harvest would be 26.9 inches in single tree cutting, and up to 22-inch-diameter trees in the PFAT treat­ment areas.

The proposal includes three options:

  • Alternative 1: No action
  • Alternative 2: Modified pro­posed action • Alternative 3: Large tree re­tention.

No tree larger than 26.9 inches in diameter at breast height would be cut in alternatives 2 and 3. For the average stand in the project area, the residual bas­al area would be 60-to-68 square feet/acre de­pending upon the silviculture treatment. Interestingly, on the SJNF website project information, the project purpose is listed as “for­est products.” Buickerood is concerned that the Environmental Assessment did not in­clude any common stand exam information.

“What they’ve identified is that there’s a lack of seedlings and a lack of older larger trees,” Buickerood said. “Their actions will help with the seedlings, but unless you are specifically retaining some older larger trees you’re doing nothing to help at the other end of the diminished number of older larger trees.

“All that adds up to a timber project more than a restoration project.I’m afraid that the economic piece is too tilted towards forest industry. Frankly it seems to be giving indus­try some contracts.”

Padilla disagreed, telling the Free Press “To be clear, forest-product removal is a tool to achieve desired conditions, which is the number one priority. While providing forest products provides an economic driver to the community, economics is secondary to de­veloping healthy forest conditions in a sus­tainable and ecologically sensitive way.” The Salter Y EA was open to public com­ments through March 10. At press time, the district was reviewing the 123 comments it received. The next step is a 45-day “objec­tion period,” estimated to begin on April 1.

“When working on improvements, there are always short-term impacts,” Samulski told the Free Press, “but we must invest in these kinds of projects and sacrifice for a short time in order to move our forest to one that can better grow grass and forbs in the understory and that can absorb the im­pacts of disturbances including wildfires and insect and disease outbreaks.”

The second part of the series in the May issue of the Four Corners Free Press will elaborate on the project’s process, with information on potential envi­ronmental impacts as well as scenery, transportation and recreational use. Public comments addressing the project will be covered as well.

Proposed vegetation treatments

The following information on four different types of treatments in the proposed Salter Y Vegetation Management Project was provided by the Forest Service.

Single Tree Selection: An uneven-aged regeneration method where individual trees of all size classes up to 26 inches diameter at breast height are evaluated and removed more or less uniformly throughout the stand creating or maintaining a multiage structure of groups, clumps and individuals to promote growth of remaining trees and to provide space for regeneration.

Commercial Thinning: Silviculture “Free Thinning” with enhancement objectives in mixed stocking ponderosa pine with a variable residual square feet of tree stem basal area of 50-70 basal area per acre depending upon stand condition. Individual trees of all size classes up to 26 inches diameter at breast height are evaluated and removed throughout the stand creating or maintaining a multiage structure of groups, clumps and individuals.

Post Fledgling Area Treatment (PFAT): PFAT prescription is a free thinning in which trees of all size classes up 22 inches are evaluated for harvest while retaining a 100-to-120 residual basal area target. A focus on large groups of 20-30 trees or more is desired with internal clumps made up of 3-to-5 large and mature trees with interlocking crowns.

Pre-commercial Thinning: Thinning of ponderosa pine (Less than 5 inches diameter) to variable spacing specifications. Would be implemented in any treatment unit.

Brush Thinning: Thinning of understory brush species (generally target brush less than 6 inches diameter at root collar), mainly Gambel oak; to create openings for seedling recruitment and reduce ladder fuel effects on residual trees. Would be implemented in any treatment unit. This prescription is limited to treating no more than 5,000 acres.

Published in April 2021 Tagged

Zed’s Hamper (April 2021)

April 10, 2021
Duane Abel

Published in April 2021

Tales of a ‘naughty’ woman

April 10, 2021
Midge Kirk

(Terri Helm is writing in place of Midge this month.)

BESSICA MEDLAR RAICHE

Bessica Medlar Raiche

Bessica Medlar Raiche would have been considered a bit of a “naughty” woman during her lifetime. Born in April 1875 in Wisconsin, Raiche once said of herself, “I got more attention because of my life­style. I drove an au­tomobile, was active in sports like shoot­ing and swimming, and I even wore rid­ing pants and knick­ers. People who did not know me or un­derstand me looked down on this behav­ior. I was an accom­plished musician, painter, and linguist. I enjoyed life and just wanted to be myself.”

Just being herself would result in Raiche becoming the first woman in the United States to fly solo. On Sept. 16, 1910, with no previous experience or flight instruction, Raiche hopped into an airplane she and her husband, Francois, had de­signed and built together at their home in Mineola, N.Y. During that day, Raiche made five flights. The last one cov­ered approximately one mile.

Raiche became fascinated with flying while she was studying painting in France. While there, she saw Or­ville Wright demonstrate his Wright Flyer. Upon her return home, she and Francois built their first airplane in their living room. They used lighter-weight materials such as bamboo, silk, and piano wire. Because Bessica was lighter, it was decided that she would attempt the first flights.

Two weeks earlier, on Sept. 2, 1910, Blanche Stuart Scott had also made a solo flight in Hammondsport, N.Y. Scott’s flight, however, was deemed to be accidental by the Aeronautical Society of America. Scott was practicing taxiing in an airplane that had been mechanically rigged to prevent takeoff. A gust of wind, however, allowed Scott to be airborne for a few seconds.

The Aeronautical Society of America credits Raiche with the first intentional solo flight by a woman. On Oct. 13, 1910, the society held a dinner in her honor and awarded Raiche with a diamond-studded gold medal inscribed “First Woman Avia­tor in America.”

Raiche went on to make as many as 25 flights in a week, and with her husband, formed the French-American Aeroplane Company. They would build two more air­planes and would become innovators in the use of lighter-weight materials in aircraft construction.

A woman of many talents, Raiche re­ceived a Doctor of Medicine Degree (MD) from Tufts University in 1903. She prac­ticed dentistry for awhile, but would later become one of the nation’s first woman specialists with a practice in obstetrics and gynecology.

When Raiche’s health forced her to retire from fly­ing, she and Francois moved to California, where Bessica focused on her medical prac­tice. On April 11, 1932, Ra­iche died in her sleep from a heart attack. She was only 57 years old. At the time of her death, women comprised just 3 percent of the world’s li­censed pilots.

Guest columnist Terri Helm lives in Mont­ezuma County, Colo. She and regular columnist Midge Kirk have been artistic partners for about 10 years, bringing little-known women from the dusty archives, where they have been relegated, back to life to share with you.

Published in Midge Kirk