LIVING IN THE BED OF A PICKUP : Camping etiquette, the BLM, snow, and a cattle drive

We hiked three days through the hills and canyons where our “top 10 hike” was, and had planned two other hikes in that area

Until……..

Two other campers moved in and set up camp in our site for the weekend. Complete with three motorcycles.

Oh, great.

We realized from talking about this experience that most of the time people give us “space.” There is so much empty space in the BLM and National Forest Lands that this comes naturally I think. It is like those old psychology studies that show that men don’t stand next to each other in a row of urinals if they can create space between them. So it was a bit odd that when there were other sites along our road that were large and easily accessible, and empty, that they set up shop 50 feet from us. Our guess was that they had agreed to meet here, knowing the area, hadn’t expected anyone to be there, and didn’t know how to adjust to that fact.

So we just packed up and left. Too much beauty and too much fun to let it bother us.

One of the pleasures of the way we travel and camp is that we avoid many of the hassles of modern life and many of the tragedies and problems that create anxiety. We often don’t have a cell signal so don’t know about what’s happening in the world.

I wonder if there is something good about that. For example, we didn’t find out about those horrible bombings in Paris until a few days after they happened. We still found out, of course, but for a while had a respite from this ugliness in the world.

I wish there was a way we could only be in contact with our families and just let the rest of the world go by completely for about five months. We’d catch up when we returned home, and be able to make our choices for President, etc., with the same information. but we wouldn’t be so upset along the way knowing about things that we can’t do anything about anyway.

I don’t know what’s right, but both of us had jobs where the sadness, violence, and tragedy of peoples’ lives were always in our faces. In some ways we are still recovering from that, I think, as we both often talk about our work and the sad experiences we saw first-hand. When you work with a child who was sold by her mother at a garage sale at age 6 for $5 and lived with the man who bought her for about 5 years until the authorities caught up with the situation, you are never the same person again. Then multiply that by the combined 50 years we both worked with people and it adds up.

So, we try to limit being upset about things to what is right in front of us when we camp—and almost all of that has to do with how well our public lands are being cared for or not cared for. We have more to say about that issue already, for a later time.

We were really glad that we could be so Zen about having our tranquil and beautiful camping spot taken. We drove down the road for a while, saw a road off to our left, and took it. This road rose steeply to one of the most beautiful mesas we have ever seen.

That is what is called making lemonade out of lemons.

We were hoping to stay at this place for about a week, but a change in the weather forecast cut that short.

The place was beautiful, the hiking was limitless, and in a couple of days we were going to be able to witness a cattle drive.

We had a very interesting conversation with a man on an ATV who stopped by to tell us about the change in the forecast. His family had been bringing cattle onto this land since 1870.

Can you believe that? For about 150 years!

They were going to bring them up the steep road in a herd using horses, so he was up there checking out their leased land. He, like some other ranchers we have talked with, is upset about getting more problems from the BLM about raising cattle. He was a strong Cliven Bundy supporter, for example, and thought what he did was wonderful.

When we have these conversations with ranchers we know to keep quiet, smile, and nod. Since they all have guns strapped to their belts, that’s easy to do.

But actually it’s not like that. And they are not at all dangerous. The opposite, in fact. The BLM has to make changes in the way ranching is conducted on public lands. The amount of cattle produced on them is miniscule—about 2% of all beef produced. And the fees don’t even cover the costs.

Plus, and most important, the cattle are very destructive to the land.

It was a way of life that made sense 100-150 years ago, but nothing else has stayed the same in that time, and raising cattle has to be one of those things that changes.

Having said that, however, the ranchers we have met have been really nice people. Last week two of them offered to give us a ride when they saw us walking along the road back to our camper after a hike. We talked with them for a long time. Others stop and ask if we need anything. And this guy really helped us. We would have been stuck up there on that mesa if we hadn’t returned to lower ground before the storm. The road to the mesa was very steep and would have been slick as ice.

Is there a way of being kind and fair and still protect our public lands from the destructive effects of cattle? I hope greater minds than ours can come up with a solution because the ranchers are not like Wall Street carnivores living off of the fat of other peoples’ work.

But the inescapable fact remains that cattle are highly destructive to public lands, and provide very little in the way of public good.

So we got up the next morning and drove to lower ground before the storm was predicted to hit. Found another beautiful campsite where we stayed for one night. Liked it so much that we decided we would come back to it after going into town the next day for supplies, since that day was supposed to be very cold anyway. That night it rained hard and often. Can you spot our camper in the next photo?

Driving into town on the roads the next morning proved to be a surprise. I had assumed they were gravel and that we would have little difficulty. But they were actually more like hard-packed dirt. And slick as driving on snow, which I found out right away when the entire camper started sliding sideways.

LUCKILY (and I finally get to say something nice about this), I had lived in Illinois for 30 years and knew how to drive on snow and ice, so easily maneuvered the pickup back straight on the road. And slowed down to 5 mph the rest of the way.

The camper was filthy. Worse than any other time, and we have had some dirty roads.

After restocking, we decided we would wait a couple of days to return to our previous spot so the roads could dry and go, instead, to a new area at a lower altitude. The temperatures were going to climb in a couple of days, and we know our spot will be there.

So, here we are, along the Mojave/Joshua Tree Road. You can see the snow in the hills behind us. But it is sunny and warming, and we will stay in the St. George area for at least another week.