(I’ve had some recent encounters with coyotes that reminded me of an experience I had with one over a decade ago that was truly out of this world. This essay appeared in Super Sunday in Newport.)
October 9, 2008
Do you know what it is to have your heart broken? What
it means to get your ass kicked in a battle to preserve something in
nature you love? Well, I do.
The headline read: “Nestucca Bay Refuge Opens with
Art, Audubon, and More.” The article, in part, read:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service…will host a
Celebration of Wildlife…on Saturday, Oct. 11. The free
community-wide event is in honor of the grand opening of the Nestucca
Bay National Wildlife Refuge near Cloverdale.
The refuge will open at 9 a.m., with a ribbon cutting
at 10:45 a.m. and free guided walks from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Visitors are also welcome to explore the new Pacific View Trail.
In 2004 the Oregon Department of Transportation
awarded (a) grant to the USFWS, to design and construct visitor
facilities on the refuge. The project includes two parking lots; a
paved, wheelchair-accessible trail that leads to an elevated viewing
deck; road improvements; interpretive panels; and a restroom. The
paved Pacific View Trail and Deck perched atop Cannery Hill, afford
visitors a sweeping view of the ocean…
I lived on site and served as caretaker of the 600-acre
Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge on the Oregon Coast for ten
years, from 1998-2008, and ascended Cannery Hill over 8,000 times
during my tenure. I went up there with my dogs in every kind of
weather imaginable and at every time of day and night and might have
been the luckiest American alive to enjoy this privilege.
What was once a bankrupt dairy farm, an abused and
forlorn piece of land, I helped restore to fuller ecology. Indeed, I
led the restoration and cleared acres of blackberries, planted 2,000
trees, and organized over a hundred volunteer groups to plant an
additional 20,000 trees. I ripped out miles of barb wire and hauled
away tons of garbage. I made friends with geese and swallows. I gave
the land everything I had, and in turn the land gave me everything of
things I didn’t even know existed. This exchange—an exchange
older than words—saved my life, transformed me, and made me become
a writer. I love the refuge so much that I tattooed its greatest
symbol—the Aleutian Canada geese it helped save from extinction—on
my body.
Tell me an employee of the refuge would do that. Many
jobs undermine our best principles. A while later, they usually
disintegrate them.
And now the humans invade with their pavement and their
cars and their plastic and their restrooms and their expensive
optics. USFWS estimates that in the peak season, 250 vehicles a day
will park on the refuge. At the point, visitors won’t see any
wildlife. But they will have a sweeping view of the ocean from the
Pacific Wildlife Dispersal Viewing Deck.
I happily labored on the damaged land, but never for the
benefit of other humans. I was called “selfish” at an April 2007
public meeting after I read a statement in opposition to a public
presence on the refuge. “You want it all for yourself,” a woman
said angrily.
Here
is part of that statement:
Dear
USFWS:
At
least two, frequently three times a day, I take the same half-mile
walk. In nine years that adds up to 6750 trips. That’s how many times
I conservatively estimate I’ve walked from the house on the grounds
of the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge to Cannery Hill since
becoming caretaker in October of 1998. Through these walks and my
other caretaker experiences I’ve established a special seasonal and
daily relationship with Cannery Hill that I believe qualifies me as
holding a unique and unprecedented personal perspective to comment on
the proposed public access plan.
The
draft plan states that when USFWS established the Nestucca Bay
National Wildlife Refuge: “The Service would seek to manage Refuge
lands for maximum benefit to wildlife, and provide for public use
which is compatible with the purposes for which the refuge was
established.” According to USFWS’ own definition, a compatible
public use is defined as a use that does not “materially interfere
with or detract from” the purposes the refuge was established.
Undoubtedly,
year-around, sunrise to sunset public use of the Cannery Hill
Overlook would “materially interfere with or detract from” the
purposes the refuge was established. How could it not when the public
use plan calls for a hiking trail and viewing deck on the hill that
invites hundreds of people a day to traverse the site? To assert
otherwise is to lack a basic ecological understanding of what happens
on Cannery Hill with respect to wildlife.
On
page eight of the plan, a sentence reads: “Since Cannery Hill is
primarily vegetated with introduced grasses including invasive reed
canary grass and is mowed regularly, wildlife use of the hill itself
is relatively low.” I can say from experience of the sort that
comes from 6750 trips up the hill that the second half of this
statement is totally and empirically false.
The
plan anticipates “disturbances” to wildlife if the overlook is
established, including impacts on forage for deer and elk and the
availability of prey for raptors. Disturbance is not the proper noun
to employ here. Displacement is. A year around human presence on
Cannery Hill would unquestionably displace coyotes, bobcats, foxes,
deer, elk and bears, all mammals I have observed or seen evidence of
on the headland multiple times. As for birds, on my walks up the hill
over the years, I’ve observed merlins, kestrels, kites, peregrine
falcons, bald eagles, red-tailed hawks and a few other raptors I
couldn’t identify. They typically leave when they sense my presence.
Now imagine 250 vehicles a day parked near there and hundreds of
people walking the trail to the viewing deck. You couldn’t devise a
more efficient plan to displace this raptor population if you brought
in a team of consultants working for a month.
Establishing
and maintaining a wildlife refuge on the primary basis of affording
scenic views of the Pacific Ocean to humans stands as wholly
incompatible with what I understand the purpose of establishing and
managing the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge, or any refuge for
that matter. Refuges should be first and foremost a sanctuary from
sustained human presence, especially here at the Oregon Coast where
there are so few undeveloped places left to protect wildlife habitat.
It
might seem as if possess a conflict of interest regarding the public
access plan since I served as caretaker and led the ecological
restoration effort of the refuge. I do possess a conflict of interest
but not because I want to remain living here undisturbed.
No,
my conflict of interest flows from my overwhelming love for this
place and joy at seeing it slowly healed and evolving before my very
eyes into a special place where in the near future, full ecology is
possible. I’m not objective about this place. How could I be after
nearly a decade in residence here, seeing all sorts of wonders of
nature, planting upwards to 2,000 trees, cutting acres of
blackberries by hand, and leading about a hundred student tours of
the grounds?
It’s
my belief that the Cannery Hill Overlook would undermine, if not undo
the healing that has commenced here, particularly the upland areas
where leaving the place alone has proved the best strategy for
attracting wildlife. That’s right, doing nothing. How often does an
opportunity to do the right thing for nature entail us doing nothing?
This is one of those rare opportunities. It is so obvious.
It was not obvious to USFWS and less than a year later I
was gone from the refuge. During the last month of my service I was
walking the dogs to the top of Cannery Hill four, occasionally five
times a day. At that point I had pretty much stopped going to work
and wanted to spend as much time as I possible on the grounds. On one
of my last days I saw a cougar and laughed aloud when I did because I
knew I would be the last person in history to see a cougar on Cannery
Hill.
The woman at the meeting called me selfish. Was I? I
only wanted humans to leave a place alone. To do nothing. To let it
heal and become wild. They could not. They almost never can. Both the
Right and Left are guilty of this. Rednecks don’t run marathons on
Antarctica and hippies don’t fly to Africa to shoot big game.
To think that my service on behalf of the refuge enabled
humans to visit the refuge is one of the most unbearable thoughts
I’ve ever had. But it’s probably true. No, it is true. In 2002
USFWS brought the Under Secretary of the Interior to the refuge to
inspect my work and in 2003 I won a national volunteer award and from
USFWS and $1000 for my service as caretaker. In 2004 USFWS applied
for and received the grant. I literally paved the way for this
invasion!
Not too long ago, as I drove by the refuge for the first
time since I moved away seven months ago, and saw the pavement and
the Pacific Wildlife Dispersal Viewing Deck from Highway 101, I
nearly vomited out the window. Then the nausea ebbed and the sound of
a breaking heart commenced. It sounded worse than anything I’d ever
heard inside of me.
What is a wildlife refuge? I know what it is not: a
place where humans intrude on wildlife for human satisfaction. If a
person defines the phrase any other way, he is unconscious. He is
someone who stands in a smoking clearcut and claims clearcutting
benefits forest health. Or believes a smolt reared in a concrete pond
is a part of a rational strategy to save wild salmon. As the writer
Derrick Jensen clinically described this kind of human, many of whom
earn their living as biologists, “You are insane.”
If I was half the man I wanted to be, I’d take a
flamethrower to the deck or chainsaw it to the ground the night
before the ribbon cutting ceremony and film it for all the YouTube
world to see. I would free Cannery Hill and make Edward Abbey proud.
Unfortunately, I am a coward and don’t possess the courage of the
tree sitters or the whaler rammers.
I was going to boycott the “Celebration of
Wildlife”—if the celebration is the word. I prefer the more
accurate noun ‘desecration.’ Defilement is a good one too. But
what good does it do a writer to sit out his story if that story is
in play? It does no good. So I’m going up there, on my own, on a
mission.
October
10
On
a 38-degree morning, I walked Ray to the beach to plot my mission. In
18 hours, in the dead of night, I would drive alone, sneak onto the
refuge, and execute the mission—my last noble service as caretaker.
I had ruled out any vandalism—I think—but really couldn’t
predict what would happen when I saw the viewing deck on Cannery
Hill. Losing my cool was a distinct possibility. I store an ax in the
truck and as Edward Abbey once wrote, “One brave deed is worth a
hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words.”
My
idea of a brave deed was to make a 20-foot poster of yellow butcher
paper that read “Welcome to the Desecration” and staple it to the
viewing stand. Naturally, USFWS officials would tear it down before
the ribbon cutting ceremony, but they would read it, know who wrote
it, and that’s all that mattered to me. I would have the last word
and they would have their wooden trophy.
After
a half mile walk from the house, I approached the beach from a
winding and descending path that cut through salmonberry and willow.
Soon the path leveled, led into an opening, and I looked west, across
a creek, out to a Pacific of perfect surfing waves and perfect blue
sky.
Suddenly,
a large brown, orange and white-colored coyote entered the
foreground. He was running north down the sand not more than 50 yards
away from me. At almost the exact moment I noticed him, he stopped
and turned to me. I’m certainly no animist but I instantly
identified the coyote’s presence as some kind of urgent personal
message, although I was at a loss to fathom its meaning. In my decade
on the refuge of seeing coyotes at least a couple hundred times,
sometimes a few feet away, I’d never received a message like this,
much less from a coyote so fit and with such distinct and handsome
coloring. He seemed groomed, like a prince.
A
few seconds later, the coyote resumed his northward course,
disappeared from my sight, and I felt compelled to follow. I
unleashed Ray, crossed a bridge, and jogged down the path to the
beach. Ray lagged behind to sniff around and mark his territory.
A
high tide had swept the beach clean of all markings except the
coyote’s footprints. I followed them for a few seconds and then
looked up and saw 75 yards down the beach the coyote sprinting
closely parallel to the rock and sandy cliffs that rose 60 feet high
in some places.
Then
the coyote abruptly halted and turned around. He looked right at me
and I was transfixed until Ray zoomed by me in pursuit, if a 14-year
old partially epileptic dog with two bad hips can be said to zoom. I
marveled at my old dog’s burst of energy and watched the spectacle
for a couple of minutes until I realized the coyote hadn’t moved
and seemed to be waiting for Ray.
I
took off running and when Ray closed within ten yards of the coyote,
I saw the coyote scamper up a nearly vertical 20-foot rock wall, and
then, surprisingly, sit up instead of disappearing into a thicket of
Scotch broom and shore pine. Ray went to the base of the wall and
started barking and making short aborted attempts to scale the wall.
By
now I had closed within 30 yards and was calling to Ray. He turned
his head and then I saw the coyote slide down the wall to within
several feet of Ray. Ray made no move toward him, nor did the coyote
advance on Ray.
As
I came within 15 yards, the coyote scampered back up the wall and sat
up. I went to the base and looked directly up at him, into his white
and orange face. We stared at each other for ten seconds and then I
disengaged, leashed up Ray, and headed home. A few seconds later I
turned around and the coyote had slid down the wall again and
appeared to be following us. I stopped, he stopped, and I began to
listen.
Here’s
what the coyote told me: I must let the refuge go, let go of my
bitter shame of losing the battle to save it, let go of my anger at
the lunatics who perpetrated the desecration, let go of the
attachment of being the caretaker, the greatest role in my life. The
coyote told me that my one brave deed should be to have the courage
to not do something out of anger or disgust or vainglory. You let it
bleed, he said, now let it be.
October
11
And
that’s exactly what I did with Ray by my side, this morning, on the
beach, at dawn.
October
14
After
I moved off the refuge, I used to tell my friends and family, “I
haven’t even dreamed about it.” It was a boast but it was also
true.
Now
I understand why I never once dreamt about the refuge. In my mind,
I’d never left it. I was still the caretaker.
Last
night I had my first dream about the refuge since I’d moved away.
All I remember seeing was large green trees. Ray was there too.
