The old guy with his head stuck under the hood of an early 80s pickup waved or flagged me down, I'm not sure which. I wanted to know about the road conditions ahead anyway so I stopped. As soon as I pulled off he came right over to my truck asking me to give him a hand. Kids didn't know what to think of it. Old fella looked crusty.
According to him he had 20/20 vision but just didn't know where to put the quart of oil. He'd found the dipstick alright but the oil cap was way down into the engine compartment on top of one of the valve cover gaskets of a V8 and had one of those suction hoses coming out the top headed for the air filter. It was an old 4WD 150 with dual tanks. Back window busted out. Somebody had just given it to him. His drive around truck was 30 years younger.
I didn't feel like yacking, it was obviously going to rain, I had a big tent to put up in a place I'd never been, wife kids, all that. Memorial Day. He did manage to tell me the place I was headed was hard to miss, gate unlocked and what not. Invited him for coffee whenever he felt like it.
Tent went up quick, it started to rain steady, and the old fellow (Tom) got there just as the stove started to go. The kids didn't even look up from their ipods, wife made a fuss over Tom and started water for chicken/tamarind soup and coffee.
Tom is 68, and has a kid going to the University at Laramie. The place we were camped was actually the site of his grandfather's homestead. Nothing to be seen any more except some old logs gone back to dirt and the steel horse corral. A careful look showed how the hills either side protected it from the wind and a seep at the foot of the hill provided year round water for the house and the barn that used to be there.
Kids playing on old corrals at homestead of Tom's folks
I asked Tom if they'd gotten the typical 160 acres, said his dad got a whole bunch more due to the Taylor Grazing Act. My ears perked up at that as it's been all in the news of late. Clive Bundy and all. The way Tom spoke one would assume his dad had been given a whole bunch of land via Taylor, but we know that's not true right? I mean it's BLM land.
Later googling around I found this Early history of the Taylor Grazing Act in Western Colorado which was written back in the days when people wrote to be read and it makes for easy and interesting reading.
Most already know the outlines of the story. Tragedy of the commons, open range over grazed, dustbowl, establishment of what was later the BLM. The implementation was interesting. Miles from anywhere, they all got together, sheep men, cattlemen, lawyers, and the people appointed from Washington to implement the act. They hammered out agreements acceptable to all and changed them as new directives came out of DC, and as they gained experience.
What they did is establish where each rancher normally grazed his cattle, established how many head he had, and determined if the range was being grazed without damage. The lines on the map establishing where each rancher grazed cattle became more defined and the lines became the grazing allotment that went with that ranch. With approval they were free to put up fences, dams for irrigation, barns, etc. The allotments went with the ranch, no wonder people looked upon the land as being theirs.
Chicken tamarind soup and hot black coffee with a steady rain on the outside.
The western US went from having open range with anyone driving cows and sheep wherever and whenever they wanted, to small pieces of private land down in the valleys surrounded by large tracts of land used exclusively by the small private landowners by agreement with the government who encouraged via the assistance of experts, careful range management and use of water.
Looking at the maps some of the sections of private land are five to twenty square miles big. Maybe people had kids who claimed quarter sections and stuff. Maybe there was some sort of corruption, who knows.
So for fifty years people used the land. Many went out of business, those that remained buying out portions of the old ranches. Lots of people divert moisture from creeks and rivers with ditches or pipes to either water hay fields for a second crop or to water meadows for a place grow much more grass. Lots of small irrigation ponds too. In the arid west it doesn't matter as much how many acres you have, as it does how many of those acres have a source of water. Cattle will only walk so far to drink, so a rancher is restricted to only those places they can give a cow water.
Across the road and across the river a hill in another state. Thirty two hundred feet above us.
The grazing fees are to pay for the advice of the experts, not as a source of revenue or taxes to the US Govt. The idea was for what was later to become the BLM to be self sustaining. The range expert would ride the range with the landowner and give an evaluation of whether the range was being used correctly and also give advice on improvements.
Tom like many people wasn't typical. He had no horses or cows and leased out the hay fields which isn't really that uncommon. He also ate almost no meat and ran every day. Built like one of those Ethiopian marathon runners he was short, skinny as a rail and what there was of him was all legs. Belonged to some kind of local cattlemen's association just to use the indoor riding ring to run laps on in the winter. Used to teach cross country skiing god knows where. Probably at the ski resort an hour and a half away.
I didn't mention it but this place was on a dead end dirt road, the closest store was twenty five miles away at a town of 325 people. There was a good sized river full of fish but a long drive to anywhere anyone would want to stay. No campgrounds, no hotels, nothing.
I went back to Tom's truck with him to lift up the gas cans to fill it with. He'd taken a fall off the burrow and hadn't healed right. Couldn't lift them. Guy probably weighed 120 wet. Neither of us wore coats. Rain felt good.
One thing the area does have is a resort. It's out on the main road but down it another ten miles away from town. It's roughly a thousand a night and another three thousand for four days of fishing. Similar for hunting, ten thousand for the hunt, with guide and room etc you're probably looking at $15,000 maybe more. The help is hired elsewhere, many from overseas, and provided with board and room too. Kind of a self contained unit. Resort has snow cat skiing, fishing, restaurant, bar, hunting of duck, elk, and deer, even chauffeured shopping trips to the ski resort if you don't mind a three hour round trip just to indulge your consumptive habits.
The place I was camped was part of a fifteen mile parcel that while not public was open to the public with restrictions similar to Wilderness Areas with a couple differences. The area between the road and the river wasn't to be walked on, it was for hay. The rest of the easement was open only to foot and horse travel, no bikes, no motors. Camping only in the place I was. No shooting except for hunting (similar to most Wilderness here). The biggest difference, and I really like this, is no commercial outfitters or guiding.
Some wilderness areas seem overrun with outfitters providing deluxe tent accommodations with cooks and servants etc. for fishing or photography or hunting or whatever. Eliminating the commercial part doesn't keep out horses, it just means you have to care for them and set up your own camp.
When they first began making Wilderness areas they carved out an exception for commercial outfitting in a nod to the hunting business. Now some outfitters carry tens of thousands of people a year into the wilderness for prices only affordable for the five percent.
The easement had none of that, and it looked good to me. Seven miles to the top, it takes a practiced eye to even see that there are real mountains hidden as they are behind the low sagebrush covered hills. No continental divide or high peaks to attract the backpackers, just remote, unvisited, high BLM land that holds the snow till at least late May.
The inobvious mountain in the easement.
River was in flood stage from the snowmelt, muddy and fast, girls got a fish a piece, one of them pretty big, us guys got nada. My wife cut through the bones on one side of the backbone and flattened them to dry on top of the truck.