Dear fellow OBOL members,
Dave has eloquently expressed the soulful and factual experience of
Harney/Malheur that has been equally available to all until now. Thank you,
Dave.
Dottie Belknap
SW Portland
From: obol-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:obol-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of David Irons
Sent: Saturday, January 23, 2016 8:14 PM
To: OBOL Oregon Birders Online
Subject: [obol] TOO POLITICAL?
Greetings All,
Shortly after the 2 January 2016 armed takeover of Malheur NWR headquarters,
the moderators made it clear that this forum was not to be used for any
discussion of this occupation as such discussion might become contentious
and too political. Malheur NWR is not merely a square in someone else's real
life Monopoly gameboard and I'm not about to reduce it to that level. There
are positive things that we can do and I recommend doing them in an effort
to bring this occupation to a hasty end. Let your voice be heard.
My ex-wife first took my kids to Malheur when they were barely school-aged.
After that we continued making somewhat regular trips there throughout their
childhood. This is where my kids learned about the high desert and all the
wildlife that the average person thinks isn't there. They also learned how
the entire Malheur NWR wetland system is fed by snowmelt from the Steens and
Strawberry Mountains and that once the water drains into the closed
Harney/Malheur basin, it evaporates throughout the dry months, then it's
gone until the next round of snow melt. They even learned a bit about
cattle-ranching, the history of cattle barons in the region, Pete French,
and his murder. They learned about and continue to make annual visits to the
crazy round barn out in the middle of nowhere that French designed so that
horses could be exercised when it was too cold for man or beast to venture
outside. Most importantly, they learned that Malheur isn't immune to human
problems or conflicts about how the land is best used. They learned about
the various interests whose needs must be factored into refuge management
policies.
Malheur is where they saw their first American White Pelicans, Burrowing
Owls and Yellow-headed Blackbirds. As a teenager my oldest daughter Lucy
invited her best friend to join us for a long Memorial Day Weekend. Meli had
no notion of what she was getting herself into. For Lucy it was a bit of
litmus test, which Meli passed with flying colors. From then on, my kids and
Meli and other friends they drug along began to forge their own brand of
love affair with Malheur. Once they gained access to their own wheels, they
were no longer stuck birding with dad anymore, although they never miss the
chance to 'let' me to buy them milkshakes in Fields. Otherwise, they
organize their own trips now. Malheur has become a place where they go
geocaching. It's where they still watch with child-like joy as the Belding's
Ground-Squirrels pop in and out of holes in the lawn at headquarters. They
go camping and sit by a fire and cook their own meals at Page Springs. They
poke around Diamond Craters and then make the pilgrimage to Fields for
burgers and shakes. While there, they still go into the woodlot each
Memorial Day Weekend to see the fuzzy juvenile Great Horned Owls. Then they
drive north to go walking out onto the dry alkali-white Alvord Lake bed and
take pictures so beautiful that they bring tears to this dad's eyes.
Malheur is where the two surviving "desert sisters" (Lucy and Meli) had
their last great outing with the third desert sister in May 2014. Three
months later my younger daughter Lilly would be gone. Over Memorial Day
Weekend 2015 we gathered with family and long-time friends to scatter some
of Lilly's ashes atop South Coyote Butte on the south side of the Malheur
Field Station, just a few miles west of the currently-occupied headquarters.
Four months after that we placed a memorial bench honoring Lilly on those
same occupied headquarters grounds. This evening, Lilly's bench is one of
the few tangible connections to anyone associated with this forum that is
currently able to be on those grounds. No friendly faces to come by, take a
seat, and warm it up. No one I know is there to stop by and make sure
Lilly's bench is still intact and in the spot where we placed it last
September.
Perhaps this summary is TOO POLITICAL for some of you, or crosses the
arbitrary boundary of "too political" in the eyes of the moderators. All I
can say is, you need to spend a little more time at Malheur and then maybe
you'll get it. The alternate forum for discussion of this occupation
(Birders of Oregon) is perhaps appropriately represented as "boo" in the
posting URL. BOO! Perhaps we are afraid of what might happen if someone's
emotions come across a little too raw in this forum, or a poster gets a bit
too strident in their call for action. Can we really be too strident in this
case?
As for me, this isn't about politics, who you vote for in the next
election, whether cattle should or shouldn't be grazing on the refuge, the
harshness of the Hammonds' sentences, or what you think should happen to the
Bundys when this all comes to an end. I'm not using this space to opine
about any of that. What this is about is Malheur and Harney County, which
has been, is, and always will be a part of our birding lives and part of the
fabric that binds this community. For my family and certainly many others,
the bond with this place and this landscape goes far beyond the birds that
we might see there. Being able to spawn in my children a love for Malheur
and the Oregon high desert that rivals my own may be the single most
important gift that I've given them as a parent. If that's too political for
this forum, perhaps I need to find a forum that welcomes this sort of
connection to nature and the land. If you love Malheur, The Grand Canyon,
Yosemite, Big Bend, Denali, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Crater Lake
or some other spectacular public place in America, please let your elected
officials hear your voice. It's long past time that we all start drowning
out the noise coming from the decided minority who think they know better
than us how these lands ought to be used. They are just about perfect
exactly as they are thank you.
Until the current occupation of Malheur headquarters ends, I will be absent
from this forum. I've got important work to do trying to protect access for
my family and your family to a place that we hold dear. I hope to be back
very soon.
Dave Irons
Portland, Oregon
