Chapter 7 ~ Page 88
These Indians also had a custom of individuals adopting a spirit animal, supposedly that contained the soul of his forefathers. That day, a three legged cougar became mine. After all, both of us had been warned, "You do not belong here. Go somewhere else!"
Doing just that, we rode cross-country to reach our first U.S. Forest Service Wilderness Area. The mission of the USFS is to manage our timberlands for use by conflicting interests as: logging, mining, grazing, watershed, wildlife, and recreation. For years, through the pressures of timber and cattle interests demanding more and more, the needs of wildlife and recreation traditionally came last. Fortunately, in the late 1960's Congress decided it might be a good idea to set aside l/50th of our forest lands to be protected in a natural state. In these wildernesses—picked for their scenic beauty—man is only allowed as a visitor. No roads, or motorized equipment are allowed.
It really hurt to arrive at a beautiful meadow in the Domeland Wilderness to find it full of corporate cattle grazing on land that belongs to you, me, and the cougar. As it stands now, for all the public lands in America—the majority, desert that no one really wanted, and Wilderness, a minute portion of our holdings—there is less than two acres per person. Is it unreasonable to want a contented cougar living on mine?
I have heard that since we crossed over the Kern Plateau that the exploiters turned a handsome profit on their investment by logging off the magnificent stands of Ponderosa Pine. All that remains is a wasteland. I am sure my cougar is gone, either a victim of a trap, a gun, or progress. I hope though he escaped, as we did by climbing higher, and higher, into the mountains.
The Sierra Nevada was formed from five different violent upheavals dating from 200 million years ago, to a mere yesterday of eight million. The mountains were born from the sea. Paleontologists have found the remains of fish skeletons in rocks that pierce the blue sky. Boiling lava and molten granite added crests and craters. Pressure caused faulting and gave the range it's charismatic westward tilt. Then came ice, glaciers, and rivers that carved cliffs, canyons, and basins.
There was no prehistoric animal this large, but I like to think of The Sierra as the remains of a dinosaur's skeleton, laying on it's side, with head to the north, and tail wagging south and west towards the sea. I can visualize the bones of the vertebrae and the rib cage being climbed by a smaller than ant-like man.
Too difficult to comprehend? Then how about a man, as myself, measuring his lifetime on earth against a cliff face in the Sierra. His existence could be said to be equal in size to a particle of a pebble in thousands of feet of geological strata. That small pebble on our graph would only represent time from the beginning of recorded history.
Doing just that, we rode cross-country to reach our first U.S. Forest Service Wilderness Area. The mission of the USFS is to manage our timberlands for use by conflicting interests as: logging, mining, grazing, watershed, wildlife, and recreation. For years, through the pressures of timber and cattle interests demanding more and more, the needs of wildlife and recreation traditionally came last. Fortunately, in the late 1960's Congress decided it might be a good idea to set aside l/50th of our forest lands to be protected in a natural state. In these wildernesses—picked for their scenic beauty—man is only allowed as a visitor. No roads, or motorized equipment are allowed.
It really hurt to arrive at a beautiful meadow in the Domeland Wilderness to find it full of corporate cattle grazing on land that belongs to you, me, and the cougar. As it stands now, for all the public lands in America—the majority, desert that no one really wanted, and Wilderness, a minute portion of our holdings—there is less than two acres per person. Is it unreasonable to want a contented cougar living on mine?
I have heard that since we crossed over the Kern Plateau that the exploiters turned a handsome profit on their investment by logging off the magnificent stands of Ponderosa Pine. All that remains is a wasteland. I am sure my cougar is gone, either a victim of a trap, a gun, or progress. I hope though he escaped, as we did by climbing higher, and higher, into the mountains.
The Sierra Nevada was formed from five different violent upheavals dating from 200 million years ago, to a mere yesterday of eight million. The mountains were born from the sea. Paleontologists have found the remains of fish skeletons in rocks that pierce the blue sky. Boiling lava and molten granite added crests and craters. Pressure caused faulting and gave the range it's charismatic westward tilt. Then came ice, glaciers, and rivers that carved cliffs, canyons, and basins.
There was no prehistoric animal this large, but I like to think of The Sierra as the remains of a dinosaur's skeleton, laying on it's side, with head to the north, and tail wagging south and west towards the sea. I can visualize the bones of the vertebrae and the rib cage being climbed by a smaller than ant-like man.
Too difficult to comprehend? Then how about a man, as myself, measuring his lifetime on earth against a cliff face in the Sierra. His existence could be said to be equal in size to a particle of a pebble in thousands of feet of geological strata. That small pebble on our graph would only represent time from the beginning of recorded history.
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Text and Photographs © Barry Murray 1971-2007 Mac&Murray Multimedia