Column by Hal Walter
Recreation – August 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
I’VE RECENTLY FACED UP to the fact that I am a “green extremist.” I knew this even before reading the ad placed in a local paper by a motorized recreation coalition urging people to “act now” to stop the “land grab” by people just like me.
The ad encourages attendance of a meeting by forest users, ranging from piñon nut pickers to mushroom hunters, to oppose President Clinton’s roadless initiative for National Forests. Of course the motorhead coalition couldn’t resist headlining the ad with the bad-association poster child of all time: President Clinton. It’s a no-brainer, really, a tactic learned from Rush Limbaugh, who has made a career out of getting up in the morning, checking the news to see what Clinton’s done, and then getting on the radio to oppose it for an audience just waiting for their beliefs to be reinforced.
I wish my job could be that easy, but I actually have to put some thought into my work. And people sometimes question what I do. But that’s neither here nor there, so let’s get back to the subject at hand.
The reason I’m a green extremist is because I believe motorized vehicles shouldn’t be allowed on forest trails. I also believe that we need more trails and fewer roads, and that motor vehicles allowed on forest roads should be made to follow strict rules concerning noise and speed. I have a litany of reasons for my beliefs.
Motorcycles and ATVs are noisy, and detract from the experience of others who want to enjoy the solitude of the out-of-doors.
Motorcycles and ATVs are dangerous, not only to their users, but also to people who use trails for hiking or horseback riding.
Motorcycles and ATVs disturb wildlife.
Motorcycles and ATVs pollute the clean mountain air.
These are not delusional ideas I have conjured up just because I’m a green extremist, and they are brought into striking focus on trails where motorized travel is allowed.
Take the Rainbow Trail for instance. This trail runs nearly 100 miles along the Sangre de Cristo mountain range from south of Westcliffe to just southwest of Salida, and serves roughly as a boundary to a wilderness area. Motor vehicles are allowed on this trail, along with hikers, horseback riders and mountain bikers. I don’t know how many times I have been disturbed on this trail by people riding trail bikes, and to a lesser degree ATVs.
Once I rounded a corner and saw what I believed to be the corpse of a dirt biker lying in the trail. When I got up to him I realized he was still breathing, and he sat up. His motorcycle was several feet off the downhill side of the trail. I ended up helping him push the bike out of the brush and onto the trail. Then he thanked me and screamed off on the bike.
THAT WAS UNUSUAL. The more usual scenario is that you hear the dirt bikers coming from miles away. On city streets and state highways, vehicles are required to adhere to regulations requiring mufflers; that’s apparently not the case for motorcycles in the National Forest, though you can be ticketed there for cursing.
So you are not at all surprised when a motorhead rounds the corner or tops a hill in a cloud of dust and flying gravel at full-tilt speed.
There’s usually several of them strung out over a half-mile or so. With their noses glued to the rocky trail, the first rider is almost always surprised when he glances up and sees you.
If you’re on foot and possess any brains at all, you’ve already moved off to the side of the trail before they appear. They usually see you, squeeze the brakes and slow down as they pass. The more polite motorheads will yell out how many more are following. I always enjoy someone shouting at me when I’m out on the trail. Sooner or later they all pass. Then you get to listen to them fade away into the background.
Welcome to the wilderness.
If you’re riding a horse or leading packstock it’s a different drill. You’ve already found a safe place to move your animals off the trail. When the first motorhead sees you, he locks up the brakes, skids to a stop, moves to the side of the trail and cuts the motor. The rest of the group follows suit. Then they sit there very politely astride their stunning orange dirt bikes in fluorescent lime-green Darth Vader suits, expecting you to lead your terror-stricken animals past their ridiculous visages astride their fuming machines.
Yeah, right.
I KNOW MANY RANCHERS who use four-wheeled ATVs to tend their irrigation ditches and fields, transport tools and fencing materials, and to check up on their animals. This is a reasonable use for these machines.
ATVs don’t eat hay and don’t need to be caught and saddled before use. They sometimes need repairs but never veterinary care. They don’t buck in absence of reason. When driven slowly, ATVs cause minimal damage to pastures. In many operations, four-wheelers have supplanted horses altogether. But I don’t know one of these ranchers who, when it comes time for a day off, says, “gee I think I’ll hop on my four-wheeler and go ride some trail.”
These machines are strictly for work. Of course it was once that way with horses, and they are mostly used for pleasure now. Things change.
Sure, the motorheads have the right to pursue their hobby, however moronic it seems to green extremists like me. But hikers and horseback riders, and dirt bikes and ATVs do not mix on the same trails. One solution is to designate specific small areas of public lands as motorized sports parks. Then the motorheads can go there and tear up the trail as much as they want without disturbing or endangering other public lands users or wildlife. However, mufflers should be required; there’s absolutely no reason these machines should not be subject to the same rules as road vehicles. I think they should be even more strict.
When I was a youngster I was taught that a person’s individual freedom to swing his arm extends only so far as the next person’s nose.
Swing so far that you hit someone in the nose, and you’ve overstepped your freedom.
The motorhead coalition wants the world to believe that green extremists want to take away their freedom. The truth is that this small and noisy group of forest users has already taken away the freedom of the larger majority to enjoy the outdoors.
When he’s not composing a monthly column for Colorado Central, or writing for publications that pay better, Hal Walter practices green extremism from his burro ranch in the Wet Mountains.
