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| Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2006. It took me three attempts, each over multiple days, over three years to get to this spot. |
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| Same spot as previous photo, about half an hour later. I made sure to get up early to get the sunrise, which I hoped would be dramatic and produce some good photos because I didn't think I would ever get back to this place. |
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| Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2006. |
During two recent posts I have detailed how I have made a
living in the North Cascades to this point in my life. This post is my assessment of the experience, what
I think about it and how I feel about it.
During my work history I have experienced a number of setbacks.
I know that many people everywhere have experienced setbacks throughout history
so this is hardly unique to my experience. Many people have experienced
setbacks that make mine pale in comparison.
Undoubtedly the reader will find some whining and self-pity
among the words that follow. Along with the self-pity, I would hope that the
reader will also find well founded observations and grievances. I would also
hope the reader will forgive me if a little sarcasm or accusatory language
bleeds through in these writings. Some of this may not be warranted but I feel
like I have had my back to the wall for years and it is hard to maintain a
balanced perspective in this type of situation.
I have watched the place where I grew up and still live,
languish in an economic backwater during the last few economic booms this
country has experienced. During the Great Recession things certainly didn’t get
better. When I was young, even though it was hard, there was work here for
those willing to work. It is
depressing to see the place where you grew up, where most people could
once make a decent living, get hollowed out.
Readers of my previous blog posts will note that I don’t
know everything, I am wrong about some things and I have, and continue to,
sometimes make bad decisions. Like everyone else in the world, I am far from
perfect and, though I haven’t included every screw up and faux pas of this
period in my life, I have tried to make it apparent that I am not perfect in
the stories contained in this blog.
This writing also suffers from a lack of editing. For this I
apologize. I realize that I repeat myself several times in places throughout
the text but, as I write this, it is past my bedtime and I can’t think of a
better, more coherent, way to say some of the things that I am trying to say.
With the previous statements in mind, these are some
thoughts about the past and current situation here in eastern Skagit County.
The economic backwater that now exists in eastern Skagit
County is the result of many forces but much of it has been artificially created
by denying the local population use of local natural resources, mainly federal timber.
This was done, in large part, by people who didn’t live here and it was done through
policies, lawsuits and government actions that prevent almost all federal timber
harvest and create set asides.
These practices continue to this day. Set asides are usually
created in the name of saving the environment. The set asides, along with most of
the lawsuits and policies pursued in the name of saving the environment focus on
simplistic preservationist measures like denying use of the resources rather
than harder, messier solutions like trying to help the people and communities
who, for a viable economy, depend upon natural resources such as timber, find
better, practical ways to use these resources so as to cause less environmental
damage. Many preservationists like to behind the term conservationist but there
is a significant difference between preservation and conservation. Where
conservation focuses on using
resources, and yes, this would include harvesting timber, in a practical,
responsible manner, preservation prohibits all but the most superficial use, in
other words, you can look at it but that is all you can do and you had better
be careful where you step when you do go to look at it.
During the course of my working life I was first told that access
to federal timber for harvest was going away because of the Northwest Forest
Plan. I had a good job that went away with it. This was because certain threatened
and endangered species needed to be protected. With the two years of college I
got for the retraining of displaced timber workers, I decided to get on the non-production
side of the resource use equation while trying to earn extra income as an
artist. I actually hoped that the art, using the beautiful scenery of the North
Cascades as photographic subjects, would eventually become the majority of my
income and be enough to support me.
Then I realized that my art was probably never going to make
any money. In hindsight this shouldn’t have been surprising at all. The
“starving artist” is a well known and well warranted cliché. I believe there
was a lot of denial and wishful thinking on my part that involved fantasies of
making a living as an artist. To top it off, my photography mostly featured
wilderness areas. Most people can’t access many of the areas my photos feature so
most people aren’t familiar with them and don’t relate to them.
Finally it became clear to me that, even though there was
plenty of work to be done for the federal government in maintaining and
protecting public lands and facilities, via North Cascades National Park and
the U.S. Forest Service, there wasn’t much of a budget to pay for it. So I was
regularly laid off, making my employment situation and annual income highly
unpredictable. Time and time again during my working career, I turned to timber
to make ends meet until I was finally lucky enough to get a stable job. I find
it quite ironic that logging helped finance my National Park Service career.
I never had any big ambitions for my life. All have ever really
wanted to do was make a living and contribute to society. I never wanted a
handout. Yet other people, who lived far away and didn’t share my economic
fate, decided to abruptly cease sales of the federal timber that my community
depended on in so many ways. This was done in the name of protecting threatened
and endangered species and it was done at our expense. Who was looking out for
us?
Then, even though it was deemed necessary to cease federal
timber sales because of the Northwest Forest Plan and a flock of lawsuits, it
wasn’t deemed necessary for the federal government or any other institutions,
governmental or otherwise, to reliably fund conservation or restoration work at
a scale to employ people like me, locally, in any reliable, predictable manner.
This cost me, and a lot of people around me, jobs. Again, who was looking out
for us?
North Cascades National Park is now one of the few employers
locally where I live, though the majority of the permanent, stable jobs are at
headquarters, almost 50 miles away. I know some people who seem to do okay or
at least get by on seasonal Park Service work. More power to them. It didn’t
work for me or, I should say, it wasn’t stable and predictable enough to work
well for me. I also know people who grew up here who have been able to thread a
needle and be in the right place at the right time with the right type of
degree or training to get a permanent job with the Park. My hat is off to them.
I believe that these are exceptional people. But I believe their experience is
usually more the exception than the rule (hence they are exceptional). Due to a
lack of foresight and some bad decisions and bad luck, this was not my
experience and it hasn’t been the experience of many people I know.
When rural people and communities are denied access to local
resources, an artificial downward pressure is exerted on the local economy which
depends heavily on those resources. This is not the result of jobs going away due
to globalization or mechanization. It is an artificial economic situation
because the resources still exist and are in demand by our own society as well
as global markets. So they haven’t been exhausted or outsourced. They have simply
been put off limits, literally by someone’s say-so. The Northwest Forest Plan
was just one of a long string of ongoing attempts over decades to put all but a
few minor uses of resources off limits on public lands. These attempts continue
today.
It is true that I have had a number of good jobs over my
working history and I have had some good opportunities, Timber Retraining
Benefits was one of these. And I have a good job today. But it is not enough
that I have a good job. I need the people around me to have good stable jobs as
well. It makes a big difference on everyone’s quality of life to have money in
a community. Resources in the form of revenue help create a stable part of the
fabric of any community and make it a more pleasant place to live. When you
lose people with stable lives, it creates a downward spiral that feeds on
itself.
While it is also true that there is still work around here,
even in the timber industry, the situation could be much better. Today it is
largely an all-or-nothing economy in the North Cascades. Either you have one of
the scarce family wage jobs with a government agency or you own one of the few
viable businesses or you have nothing and commute many hours a day. There is
much less opportunity for many of the people who want to live here. And the
options are very limited when the job you are working dries up for the season
or goes away. I would suggest to
those who say “money isn’t everything”, that they go try to live without money
in a community that doesn’t have a lot of it either.
For many people, like myself, to be able to make it, we need
to be able to use our natural resources. This is the reality. In many ways, it
has always been hard to make a living here. I believe it always will be hard.
When we are not allowed to use our natural resources, the jobs and tax dollars
that help people and communities survive evaporate and it becomes even more
difficult to make it unless you are lucky enough to get a stable job. Even at
that, if there are fewer stable jobs there is less money and fewer resources
within the community, making it overall, a poorer and less pleasant place to
live.
Time and time again during my working career I turned to
timber as my main job or to make ends meet until I could get into something
else. Producing and selling logs gave me access to markets that I had no hope
of reaching with my photography. Producing and selling logs also generated
earnings for other people around me as well as tax revenues that benefited
society in general. And, as I stated earlier, having the skills to work in the
timber industry actually financed my Park Service career early on and supported
me throughout.
Over the years while I struggled to remain employed year
round, I lived within sight of millions and millions of board feet of timber
worth I don’t know how many hundreds of millions of dollars that could have been
harvested to provide not only jobs but tax revenues that would benefit not only
the local population but the entire state. This timber could be harvested in a
manner more sustainable than organic farming but this has been prevented by
federal red tape and numerous lawsuits filed by people and organizations who
don’t live here.
I think it is an issue of social justice when access to existing
resources that have been used historically are denied to any group of people if
there are no provisions taken to find a means to maintain these people and
communities at some level of economy equitable to pre-set aside conditions. There
never are. And when you remove a major pillar of an economy where people are
already having a hard time of it, the impacts are often devastating.
The populations of areas where resource set-asides usually
occur are quite often rural, small and easily disregarded, and therefore, vulnerable.
They seem to be the last to be considered when our society and the government
institutions that are the organs of our society’s will consider land use
policy. If we want to live in a just society, the needs of the people in an
area that will be impacted by some set-aside should be considered first, before
anything else.
Of course the impacts of land use actions by the federal
government on local communities has to be addressed. But the studies done to fulfill
the requirements to address these impacts are typically and purposely contracted
out to some group or entity far removed from the communities in question. I suppose
this is in order to maintain “objectivity”. In this type of situation however,
it is very easy for anyone not having to live with the results of the land use
actions to see the people who are impacted simply as statistics, dry numbers
with no real human context. And, quite often, since the groups or entities
conducting the studies are not from the areas in question, they are less
familiar with them and make many flawed assumptions in study design.
The loss of jobs to an area has a lot more impact on you
when the people who had those jobs and have to leave for work elsewhere are the
same ones you depend upon to staff your local volunteer fire department and
other community organizations or send their kids to the local school, which
because many funds are tied to enrollment, means there are more resources for
that school. Job loss also means that there are fewer people around to help
create a critical mass of people with money in their pockets to spend at local
business, creating a larger customer base and allowing these businesses to stock
a larger variety of items, giving everyone more choices.
I think studies on the impacts of job losses to communities
created by land management actions would be much more accurate if there was
significant input to them from people who actually have to live under the
conditions created by the land management actions. This input should be given
weight proportionate to where a person lives, their years of experience living
there and how they make their living. More importantly, these studies should
also be revisited at regular intervals to determine if the assumptions made in
them are correct or not. It would be really nice if study authors had to live
in the communities impacted by the decisions made that are based on, or
justified by, their studies for at least five years. They would no doubt gain
some valuable insights.
The setting may be beautiful but eastern Skagit County in
the North Cascades isn’t always the nicest place to live. It is one of the most
economically depressed areas in the state and it shares many of the problems
faced with poorer areas anywhere in the world. Supporters of simplistic
preservation policies that put public lands and resources off limits to uses
that would significantly benefit rural economies, not just here, but
everywhere, need to own this.
I am really tired of hearing “but it’s so pretty here” and
how lucky I am every time I talk to someone who doesn’t live here about the
trials of people who do, as if living in a pretty place makes up for everything
else. Because the place where a person lives is beautiful is not a good reason
to deny them economic opportunity in order to satisfy the sensibilities of people
who don’t live there.
I was born and raised here. I didn’t choose it as a pretty
backdrop to my life or for something as superficial as a recreational
experience. When I was younger, as far as I knew, the whole world looked like
this place. How can a fish describe what it is like to be wet when they have
nothing to compare the experience to? I had no concept that others from outside
might think my home was beautiful and even less that people like me might be
oppressed because of this beauty. If the beauty of the place can’t be converted
into a significant source of revenue for my community, I don’t know how much of
a benefit all the beauty is or really how lucky I am.
The fact that the North Cascades are beautiful, I think, is actually
a big part of the problem. It encourages some pretty vocal people who haven’t
invested their lives and resources here and don’t really have a stake in living
here to pursue strict preservationist actions and policies that harm the local
economy without any thought to compensating people for lost opportunities or
resources.
The idea put forth by preservationists who push ultra
restrictive land use policies when confronted with the impacts of those
policies is that the people affected by their measures can turn to tourism for
a living. Recreational tourism is typically held up as the savior for rural
areas like this, the answer to job creation and revenue generation without
having to actively use natural resources. I don’t think this has been well
thought out by its advocates which is hardly a surprise when you consider that
most of them won’t have to try to make a living in a local economy based almost
solely on tourism. It is hardly a secret that most tourism jobs have poor wages
and stability. So much so that the U.S. Secretary of Labor, as recently as a
year ago, characterized tourism jobs as “low quality jobs”.
From my observations, it seems that, typically, if you own a tourism business and you work very
hard, you have a chance of making a decent living in tourism. Obviously I have
failed in this. But, assuming that you are successful, depending on the
business, quite often, through no fault of your own, you can’t afford to pay
the people who work for you a whole lot of money, not to mention providing them
any type of benefits.
So, assuming everyone has the savvy to run a business in the
first place, which not everyone does, and given the limitations placed on
tourism opportunities for the general public, not everyone who lives in the
North Cascades and needs a job is going to get to be the owner of a tourism
business here.
I think tourism is very important for a certain segment of
our population, and I don’t begrudge these folks a living at all, I consider
most of them important members of my community but this type of industry isn’t
going to support a robust economy in the area. In Hawaii, while I was there,
the tourism industry didn’t provide many high quality jobs, I doubt that it
does today. If it didn’t provide very well for people in a place like Hawaii,
it certainly won’t here.
One of the main attractions for tourism here is supposed to
be outdoor recreation but outdoor recreation here isn’t like it is in other
places. Much of the public land in the North Cascades is designated wilderness.
Wilderness designation of lands is specifically designed to limit access to
people. Wilderness rules restrict access to much of the general public by,
among other things, forbidding mechanized travel. This means only those with
the proper gear, skills, physical fitness level and free time to spend on
ventures many days in length can really make use of most of the wilderness
areas here.
Something like 98 percent of North Cascades National Park,
one of the things that should be a major draw to the area, is designated
wilderness. There are also a lot of U.S. Forest Service lands that are
designated wilderness. This, coupled with decreasing access to public lands not
currently in wilderness status as well as decreased access on private lands, I
think, decreases the appeal of this area to the majority of people. Decreased
appeal means fewer visitors and thus fewer tourist dollars. What kind of
tourism industry, or business of any sort for that matter, is based on a main
attraction that is designed to discourage most people from using it?
So, ironically, many of the strict preservationist measures
to taken to “protect” this place also end up limiting access to the majority of
the public to all of this beautiful public land. This limits tourism opportunities and disenfranchises both
society in general as well as local people. It also limits jobs and economic
opportunity where they are sorely needed and erodes the tax base that benefits
everyone, locals and society at large alike.
I am sure that there are many parallels to this situation
throughout history but, to my mind, this is not unlike old feudal systems where
peasants were punished for taking game on lands belonging to kings and lords.
This wasn’t because the kings and lords were hungry and needed to hunt to feed
their families like the peasants. It was because, when the king or lord went
out to hunt for sport, he wanted to make sure he had plenty of game to shoot so
he could have a good time. People here aren’t starving for the sake of
recreational opportunities for a small sub set of our population but they are
suffering for it.
Because the majority of the public can’t access and use most
our main natural attractions, I think the number of viable tourism businesses a
place like the North Cascades can support is very limited. Another thing that
doesn’t help and another prime example of how “protecting” something can have
marked, negative impacts on local businesses by limiting opportunity is the designation
of The North Cascades Highway, State Route 20, as a Scenic Highway.
I agree with this in principle. I don’t want to see a bunch
of tacky advertising signs along the highway. However, at the same time, the
Scenic Highway designation prevents people from advertising their business in a
market where chances to get business are already very slim. In a tourism
economy how are you supposed to attract people if you are severely limited in
advertising your business? This hurts the local economy. The impact and burden
on individuals who are affected by it isn’t recognized and their losses aren’t
compensated
If the reader still harbors any doubts about what I have
said, maybe they read recently that North Cascades National Park generated an
estimated 30 million dollars plus per year in local communities, I ask them to
go to the communities in eastern Skagit County and look around. Does it look
like any part of 30 million dollars was generated here in the last year? Where
are the businesses that are based on all this tourism? There are people out
here looking for work that would like to know where they can go to get a job.
The truth be known, I think that often there is a lot of snobbery
behind preservation measures that so adversely impact small, resource dependant
communities. From conversations I have heard over the years, it seems that many
in the preservationist camp are more worried about having to put up with the
“wrong type” of people who “don’t really care about the environment” while they
are out trying to have their recreational “experience”. And I think that many
are afraid that the scenery will get messed up and their recreational
“experience” will be ruined.
I think a lot of the people who support such strict
preservation measures may occasionally come here to recreate but they don’t
actually live here. Others may live here but don’t have to make a living here
or they are lucky enough hold one of a handful of available, specialized jobs
and, therefore, don’t share the economic fate of most of the rest of the people
around them though they do have to live in a more impoverished community.
Over the years I have heard a lot of talk about rural communities
and natural resources that seems to be based on prejudice, dogma and slogans
and quite often, it seems that precious little effort is given to critical
thinking. There also often seems to be a very poor grasp of ecology, the
environment or even how the world works. Local people seem to be seen as some
vague other, either endowed with true insight and deep knowledge if they
support some cause to “protect” or preserve something or morally deficient,
ignorant and backwards, if not stupid outright for even considering something
as sacrilegious cutting down a tree. And there is plenty of cognitive
dissonance. I recall two people I knew when I was going to college who
protested timber sales to the point of physically going to logging sites to try
to stop them. On many occasions I heard these same people swap notes about
their log cabin dream homes.
In my estimation, many of the folks trying to save the world
by preserving small corners of it that they happen to be infatuated with aren’t
any better informed or more intelligent than people like myself who actually live
here and are just trying to make a living and contribute to society.
You would think the people of a region like ours that, for
all appearances, prides itself on being an innovative technology hub that
specializes in thinking outside the box would have come up with some kind of a
solution for the plight of its rural areas by now, one that addresses not only
the environmental side of the equation but also the social justice issue of
disenfranchisement of rural populations. Yet we seem to cling to 18th
Century management models that try to preserve certain areas, often at the
expense of the populations who live in the vicinity, while continuing to
exploit everything else on the planet for the benefit of the larger population.
I think this is at the root of many of our environmental problems.
Under the 18th Century model of preservation as mitigation for
environmental damage, you don’t really solve any problems related to the need
for humans to use natural resources. You just shift the problem somewhere else.
Set-asides increase pressure on the lands where resources are still being
extracted because the overall availability of resources is decreased. Whatever
resources you decide to set aside are gotten somewhere else, often using
unsustainable practices, either in this country or places in the world that are
quite often more ecologically sensitive and prone to political corruption. That
might have worked when this system was created. There were still vast amounts
of resources available for exploitation and lots of places for displaced people
to go then. We have a lot fewer of both nowadays.
I am definitely not against parks and wilderness areas and I
am not advocating resource extraction in such areas that are already
established. But we have wilderness designated lands running the length of the
North Cascades from British Columbia to Stevens Pass where any sort of
development or resource extraction is prohibited. The remainder of the public
lands in these areas not in wilderness status should be made available for use
in a sustainable, responsible manner to help nearby communities. I have some
ideas about how this might be done that I will write about later.
Most of the environmental groups that I see filing lawsuits
that, among other things, tie up federal lands are based in the urban areas
around Puget Sound, one of the most polluted areas in the state. I think these
groups reside in urban areas because that is where most of the money is. The
pollution that occurs in these urban areas is the natural result of all of the
economic activity that is generating the money that supports, among other
things, the environmental groups.
None of these environmental groups have ever, to my
knowledge, contributed in any significant way to the rural communities that
their lawsuits harm, whether this be through scholarships or sponsoring school
projects or local organizations. Yet I have seen many “bad” organizations like
timber companies and mills making many contributions to their communities along
with providing living wage jobs, or at least they did when they were in
business. My beef here is not with people who live in the urban areas around
Puget Sound. Everyone should be able to make an honest living if they want to,
including the people who live in and around Puget Sound. My beef is with
hypocrites.
Citizens of a just society are obligated to look out for the
well being of their fellow citizens. This doesn’t mean giving handouts and
freebies. This should mean sharing fairly the resources held in common by
everyone to allow those members of society who need them to be able use them in
a responsible manner in order to make a contribution to society and have a
chance at a decent life. It could be argued that timber resources weren’t
always used responsibly or sustainably in the past. I don’t disagree with that.
The trouble is, rather than taking steps to ensure that these resources were
being used responsibly and to help resource dependant people find workable
solutions, the resources were simply, and abruptly, put off limits.
Continuing to cling to 18th Century land
management models that preserve certain areas at the expense of the people who
live there while continuing to rampantly exploit other areas is not the mark of
an innovative, forward thinking, or just society. I think we, in the Puget
Sound area and the Pacific Northwest in general, can do much better. I hope so.
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| Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2007. |
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| Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2007. |
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| Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2007. |
