When Chief Ranger Jerry
Epperson hired me to be a seasonal ranger at Arches National Park
in Utah so many years ago, I wasn’t sure what my duties were
supposed to be. So it seemed like a good idea to ask.
Epperson smiled wryly and said, “A ranger should range.”
So while all of us endured Park Service chores like collecting fees
and working the information desk and cleaning toilets and
admonishing the tourists for their often almost unbearable
ignorance, we still preferred to range. We headed for the
backcountry any time opportunity allowed.
To get to know
a piece of land — for no other reason than the intimacy
between you that it provided — was the greatest reward of
all. We didn’t range for profit; we did it for our hearts and
our souls.
Collecting fees was always the least pleasant
of my duties. Its only advantage was the opportunity it
occasionally provided for beautiful single women camping alone who
were in desperate need of a bath, and who found my invitation for a
hot shower almost irresistible. I was no chick magnet, but my hot
water was.
But fast-forward 20 years, and employees of
the various federal agencies collecting land-use fees are showing a
zealousness for their work that is almost incomprehensible to me. I
continue to read stories of park and forest rangers and BLM
staffers who spend most of their day looking for fee violators,
even to the point of searching once-empty dirt roads, watching for
visitors without the necessary proof of payment taped to their
windshields or stapled to their foreheads.
The almost
fanatical quest for fees turned to tragedy in New Mexico a few
weeks ago at Elephant Butte State Park, when a state park ranger
shot a tourist during a dispute over a camping fee. According to a
story in the Las Cruces Sun-News, the victim, a
tourist in his 50s from Montana, became belligerent and refused to
pay a $14 camping fee.
The ranger attempted to arrest the
camper for trespassing, but the tourist put his hands in his
pockets and refused to remove them. According to a spokeswoman for
the state parks division, the man was verbally abusive and “acted
in a manner that our officer is trained to respond to.” So Ranger
Woods shot him dead. The dead man had not been carrying a firearm
or a knife.
After the shooting, Parks Director Dave Simon
said, “Deadly force is always a last resort.” He added that the
“vast majority of park users comply willingly with park fees.”
I have my own deadly force story. One evening when the
Arches campground was full, a couple of young men arrived after
dark and tried to camp illegally in the picnic area. My first
encounter with them was civil enough, and I told them they needed
to leave. Twenty minutes later, I caught them again, when paid
campers complained that they’d moved into their site. This
time I was firmer, and their attitude was icier. A few minutes
later, I could see their headlights creeping down the Salt Valley
Road in search of an illegal campsite.
My self-righteous
indignation has always been a quality I needed to work on, and on
this evening it was in full bloom: How dare these jerks defy the
order of a ranger! I found their vehicle tracks; it was 11 p.m., I
was out of radio contact but determined to cite these violators. I
walked into the darkness with my maglite and service revolver
snapped firmly in its holster. A hundred yards down the dry wash,
the illegal campers were already wrapped in their sleeping bags.
When I advised them loudly that they had to leave
immediately and that I was also issuing them a federal citation,
the two men came unglued, leaping up from their bags, screaming.
They called me every unkind word imaginable and in such a
hysterical manner that I wondered if I was about to lose control of
a situation that was barely 30 seconds old. One was particularly
rabid and moved toward me in a way that felt threatening.
I was scared to death. I took a step backward and placed my thumb
on the keeper of my gun holster. The young man saw the move and
stopped. Then he screamed at me, “You take that gun out and
you’re a dead man!” We stared at each other for five long
seconds.
I reflected on his words, and I decided that, in
fact, he was absolutely right. If I took my gun from the holster I
knew I’d be the one shot dead.
“OK,” I said, taking
a deep breath. “I’m going back to my patrol cruiser. I want
both of you out of here in 30 minutes.” I backed off slowly, turned
and walked back to the road. Had they been running up behind me, I
would never have heard them; the sound of my heart pounding in my
ears was deafening.
I sat in my patrol car for 20 long
minutes, still shaken but happy to have my body intact. Finally,
incredibly, here they came, packed up and in their car. One of them
had calmed appreciably, and I handed him the citation. He even
thanked me. His friend, however, was still out of control and kept
slamming his fists into the roof of their vehicle.
Had I
been a coward or a wise man? I decided that for once, I’d
been the latter. I never again came even close to a confrontation
like that.
I don’t know all the facts in the New
Mexico shooting, but I would guess that fear and adrenaline and the
rapid way events can unfold were the causes of the shooting. But a
tragedy resulted that didn’t need to happen: A $14 fee
can’t be worth a death.
Jim Stiles is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News (hcn.org). He is the publisher of the
Canyon Country Zephyr in Moab,
Utah.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
