Making a Living in the North Cascades Part III, Assessment

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. 

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. 

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 18^th 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 18^th 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 18^th 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.

 

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2007.

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2007.

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2007.