Dear HCN,
As a sometimes
cross-country ski racer and mountain biker who occasionally dons
lycra, I must say that I think T.M. Power misses the point when he
examines the “caustic humor” that traditional Westerners seem to
have for the newly arrived urban “services’ people (HCN,
5/2/94).
Ranchers, loggers and miners produce
real goods which service people consume. The anger which creates
the caustic humor is not from how we dress or act, but from the
imposition of our urban values on a primarily agricultural society.
The problem is that we urban folks are telling the locals they must
give up their occupations. Without their occupations, of course,
everything else in their life collapses.
As a
not-so-recent urban migrant (I came to the West from Boston 38
years ago), I can tell you from long observation that urban people
are really not very interested in getting to know old-time
residents. Most people in Vail and Aspen, for instance, don’t have
a clue as to how a working ranch really
operates.
When the Walmarts and the City Markets
arrive, pushing out small business owners that have dedicated their
lives to the communities they live in, the people have a right to
be upset. When people with lots of money and not much time carve up
the hay meadows, destroying their agricultural productivity and
leaving nothing but ostentatious displays of conspicuous
expenditure to mess up the landscape, local people have a right to
be upset.
Mark Rey, a forest industry spokesman,
said it very nicely. “We (the resource dependent communities) are
committed, the administration (and the new urban migrants) are
merely involved. That difference is like ham and eggs. The chicken
is involved, the pig is committed.”
When you are
out here in the rural West long enough, and you have a chance to
compare what was here with what is coming, you begin to appreciate
the “Old West.”
The local folks may joke about
our lifestyles but they do not threaten us. On the other hand we,
in our condescending and sometimes ill-informed arrogance, have
made very concerted efforts to destroy them in the name of
“reform.”
There are 280 million people out there
across America, with cars and toys and trash, looking for a place a
play. We have a broke federal government that is reducing, not
increasing, its Forest Service and BLM personnel. Who is going to
manage the situation? The fastest way we can destroy the
environment in the West is to destroy the existing rural
infrastructure, and that’s exactly what we are
doing.
Roger C.
Brown
Gypsum, Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline About lycra and denim.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
