Ducky

Rob.... et all

How did things go? I wasn't able to find a babysitter... couldn't go... Did you get carted away? Did they have to call the National Guard? Did you kick Smokey the Bear's a$$?

Inquiring Minds want to know....

midiwall

dood... you have to check the other 2 threads that we've been posting in. ("cancelled" and "what did you do instead")


I'm working on the write-up now. In short, Rob and I made it back and forth across the pass without being tossed in jail.

btw... You don't know it yet, but you feel even worse about how your tax dollars are being spent.

Ducky

Yea I was thinking of checking there, I was just hoping to combine everything to an updated thread...

=) Ill check...

midiwall

Actually, it doesn't say a whole lot. I'm using this thread to post the big reply in and then will point to it from the others.


I'm over 100 lines now... and am still typing. I have to run out for a bit, but will be back and finish in about an hour or so.

I was too wiped out to do this last night, sorry about that.

genedefect

Can't wait to read it. If nothing else this should be the highlight of my day.

midiwall

• Dateline: August 5, 2003
• Event: Rangers hold public meeting to discuss the Naches basin
• Outcome: It's REALLY cool seeing the fog coming up the valley through Chinook pass

Details...

Rob (WATRD) and I took a ride last night to attend a meeting held at the Nache's ranger's station. The scope of the meeting was to discuss various issues that involved the campground and associated trails in the Naches area. The meeting was open to the public, and hosted by Randy Shepard, oour favorite ranger that pulled the plug on the Jam.

Rob and I talked a bit about "tactics" for the meeting, and we generally agreed that the best thing to do was to sit back, take in the lay of the land, and see what happens. If an opportunity to be heard came up, then cool. Otherwise, no one wanted to make a scene.

A 2 1/2 hour drive from Auburn put us at the Naches Ranger Station. (Nice drive btw if you haven't done it... The lightning and rain added a nice touch)


The meeting ran from 7pm to about 9:20pm. There were appx 60-70 people in attendance. An informal poll showed that appx 75% coming from the "east" side of the pass, the rest coming from the west. The same poll showed that the populous was split 50/50 between those that heard about the meeting through a direct mailing and those that heard about it from other means (newspaper posting, word-of-mouth, etc.)


It might be "fun" to share with you the "goals" that were posted on the wall at the station for the meeting last night. Please keep these in mind as we discuss the outcome.

• To help the Forest Service ("FS") reach better public decisions
• To inform the public about FS activities and decisions
• To encourage public understanding about and participation in the planning and decision process by providing information.
• To be aware of and be responsive to the values of the publics we server and to evaluate how these publics will be affected by decisions.
• To ensure that the FS understands the needs and concerns of the public.
• To broaden the information base upon which decisions are made.

Before the meeting started, Rob had a chance to glance around the room and first get a look at "Mike" (his FS contact for the past few months) and "Randy" (our man of the hour). He had previously decided to NOT tip his hand and introduce himself.


The meeting kicked off with a 30 minute intro to review the goals of the meeting. This also included a short slide-show of what one person (a concerned citizen, not a ranger) saw as examples of the problems in the area. Those being (in his statement, and I'm paraphrasing) 'Large RVs towing trailers of ATVs and motorcyles contributing to the overcrowding and mis-use of the land and facilities'. He had 10-12 pictures, and each seemed to be of the same cluster of ATVs. All were labeled as being from September 2002. More on this point later.

The intro lasted about 30 minutes. One interesting statement that rang in Rob's an my ears on the way home was:

• "The National Forest Service requires us to hold public meetings like this one."

It was VERY clear that the phrase "requires us" was used.


After the intro, people were broken up into 5 groups. Everyone was given two handouts which highlighted some of the issues that were to be addresses. The purpose of the smaller groups was to try to make folks more comfortable about voicing their opinion. Every point was to be documented, then after 45 minutes of local discussion, the groups would pick their top-ten, everyone would come back together, then the top-ten from each group would be presented to the whole audience.


I think it's worth taking a sideline here... For those that haven't met Rob, he stood out like a sore thumb in this crowd. Rob has long hair, down to just about 2-3" above the middle of his back. This crowd was VERY "farmercentric" and dare I say "red neck". 90% of the vehicles in the parking lot were American made, most being "classic" pickups, with gun racks, and yes - at least once had a rifle in the rack.

My first comment when we approached the building was "damn dude, you forgot your ball cap."

Now, we ALL make snap judgments based on appearance, and I certainly did when I first surveyed the crowd, but the feeling of the crowd when they saw Rob was VERY interesting.

That was about to change...


Once in the smaller group (there were 11 people in ours, plus two FS reps), the FS reps outlined what we were to do, and went over the "stock" bullets. The floor was then opened for general comments.

The normal silence at the start of these things ensued, and I popped off asking about the slide presentation during the intro. This wasn't earth shattering, it was basically just something to say. I voiced a concern that the pictures looked "setup" and "stock" and the ranger driving our group did indicate that "sometimes the stock footage that we can pull from is limited".

I found it to be an interesting point since the whole meeting was fronted with this being "Example A" through "Example M".


Rob then jumped in... But know that there was a bit of psych going on at this point. One of the things that he and I realized on the way home was that we both had the thoughts of trying to find a rallying entry point into the conversation before trying to be heard on specific localized points. That being the case, Rob pointed out two things that were missing from the ranger's proposed action list. Additional signage for closed trails, and a centralized location for garbage drop-off _in_ the Naches.

Again, while this wasn't specific to our Yotatech and TTORA's issue with the Jam, it was important to gain a following with common concerns, work on a trust relationship with our 50+ new friends, and use that to an advantage later.

It worked, probably better than expected.

There were a couple of head-nods, and a small positive discussion with one of the other FS reps within the group. It was VERY interesting to see the people that made the judgement on Rob's appearance kinda' take a step back and go "oh, he's not a tree-hugging long-haired hippie freak" - he can speak and is well spoken.

Conversation around various points went on in here for about 45 minutes. In the scope of our purpose here on Yotatech (and TTORA) it's not worthwhile to go through all of the points. Except for when Rob dropped a small bomb.

The discussion was friendly, and basically 5 people were doing most of the talking, Rob, myself, "slim", "western shirt" and "can't express himself" (sorry, I couldn't catch most folk's names).

Of those people, Western Shirt ("WS") was probably the most changed over the course of the evening as Rob (and I) spoke more and more. He (WS) even pointed out that there were a lot of new faces there tonight, and acknowledged Rob and I as he said it. We saw that as a positive point. We wanted to be noticed...

It was soon after this that Rob brought up "another concern" that he had. The permit system.

He pointed out that the permit system for the basin is convoluted, conflicting in it's own rules, and overly complex. he also pointed out that the permit system could be used by the rangers as a point of control, therefore they should care about it more than they seemingly do. (well done Rob!). After his initial statement, we heard from the "Bicyclist" who said "YEAH! IT TOOK ME 5 MONTHS TO GET A PERMIT!". With Rob on my right, I could feel him just itching to stand up and yell "I HAVE BEEN VINDICATED!".

A GOOD discussion came out of this. The point was written up as one to bring up to the group, and we _DID_ have the attention of our FS reps in the group. In fact, the point came up randomly as "for examples" from other folks in the group later in the discussion. This was a small win.

The other thing that got some attention was a hole that we saw to drop in a point about "You should look to the off-road user groups for volunteer help in maintaining the trails". This became another good discussion point that circled around a couple of times. As the point morphed, it was clear that there were at least 2 other people (in this small group of 12) that represented large groups of _off-road_ people. We tried a bit to weave a discussion about "groups" and "obtaining permits", but it was feeling a bit too contrived so we didn't push it.

After 45 minutes, they called a 10 minute break. For those of you working in a field where you do business with groups of folks you don't know (conventions, meetings, etc) you know that BREAKS RAWK for really getting things done. This was no different.

The people that Rob approached were "slim" and "can't express himself". "Slim" was the main target - he represented a group of 200+ off-roaders, I think Jeepers. It was gosh dern cool to watch it go down. The conversation was general about rebuilding the area, opening new trails, etc. Rob dropped a line about (I'm paraphrasing) "what we really need to do is to rally all the off-road groups together to be heard as one voice". They kinda' nodded - Rob continued and nailed them cold... "Like the NRA! The did it right, they were able to get the target shooters, the hunters, the skeet shooters, the range folks all under one umbrella and speak as one. And look at how loud they are now!".

I thought Slim was gonna jump right off of the bench he was sitting on. Rob delivered the point with gusto, inflection, hand motions, the works. You woulda' thunk that he was a minister at some point.

The point here is that with two sentences and some hand waving, Yotatechs and TTORAs voice just grew by 200 people.

Rob is on a path to follow-up with Slim - they have a mutual friend - and this should prove to be a worthwhile connection.

*** end part 1 ***

midiwall

*** part 2 ***

After the break we got back into the small groups and picked our top-ten points to present to the full audience. We had about 20 individual points, but were able to talk a few into being combined. I made sure that the "getting user groups to help" point was on the list, and Rob made sure that the "permit systems sucks" point was on the list.

15 minutes later, we're back into the full-audience mode.

We _thought_ that the presenter from each group had to be one of the FS reps. We didn't know that we could option in one-of our own (i.e., Rob), so as it was, our points were "read" (not _presented_ to the group by an FS dude. In hindsight... It would have been AWESOME to have Reverend Watrd do this. Oh well... "next time".

As it was, the reading was done, and there wasn't a lot of response. Except for one person... Randy

Up until this point, Randy had been wandering around the room, in & out, kinda' trying to look important and in charge. But as the groups were giving their top-ten, he took notes on what was being said. He happened to be sitting about 15 feet froom us, facing Rob and I.

Rob didn't see "it" happen, but I did. Randy was listening to our FS dude and taking notes, he stopped, looked up - RIGHT AT Rob - and then dropped his jaw for a full two seconds, took a breath, and "averted his gaze" back to his paper. He didn't keep writing though... I'm pretty sure that it was right then that Randy figured out who Rob was.

The icing on the cake was that 30 seconds later our point about "The permits is too complex and contradicting of itself" was read. Randy looked up again, rolled his eyes, shook his head a bit, smile a half-smile, and went back to writing. _THAT_ was when he must have been saying "Well I'll be, he actually showed up!".

Once the points were read to the group, then Randy came to the front and recapped what he had written down. He was careful to say that he was only taking notes and what he repeated wasn't meant to be all-inclusive. That was key, because he seemed to have dropped the point about the permit system - though he did get the point about user groups.


This is where Randy (finally) said something that got the attention of everyone in the room. He said that because of the extreme dry conditions, he has recommended to his superiors that the entire basin be closed to off-roaders, and that sections be closed to campers. Rob will need to elaborate more on this, and I may have it sideways. Randy was talking about locations by name and I'm not familiar with them at all.

There was about a 10 minute discussion around this, and one dude ("The Accountant") was really working hard to put Randy into an uncomfortable slot by pointing out that Randy had recommended these closures as _one_ event, not two separate events as they should be. This was key for Rob and I to witness because it became clear that we're not the only ones that have issues with Mr. Ranger Randy.


When this discussion died off, so did the meeting.

Rob and I again talked about formally introducing ourselves to Randy and Mike, but in the end felt that it just wasn't the time. There are other things at work here, and being the unknowns is a bonus right now.


So... Positive things from the meeting:

• Intel. There was plenty of info gathering. We have faces and places now.
• "Newcomers have something to say". it was apparent to many folks that we were new, had something to say, and could get it said.
• We're on the print mailing list. This will supposedly get us notice of what the rangers are doing in the Nache's area. We should also get formal announcement of meetings like this.

Negative things from the meeting: No list required, it was one big one... You really got the impression that the rangers were going through the motions. Maybe ONE of the FS reps overall seemed interested and actually showed positive enlightment in what _anyone_ was saying. Everyone else looked like (as was said at the top of the meeting) "We're required to do this".

Rob and I vowed that we will continue to show up for these (and everyone is of course invited) and we'll play by the rules _in this regard_. Now, there are other avenues that Rob has lined up to take care of the specific issue regarding the Jam, and he's working on those.

But, as a medium term plan, we think it's worthwhile to head across the pass once-in-a-while and make sure that we continue to be seen and heard. There's plenty of work that can be done by rallying people together... it just takes a spark or two to get them all going.

(whew!)

Okay... I think I'm finally done.


Oh! A couple of more "fun points" from the trip:

• XM radio is cool. The omen was that there was a new Crutchfield catalog in the mail when I got home. Guess what I ordered last night?
• Sound-deadening a truck cab leaves you with an eery ability to hear a LOT of stuff in the cab. For one, a supercharger is REALLY loud under those conditions
• We stopped about 1/2 way through the pass coming back at "Tipsoo Lake" (sp?). My GAWD that was cool. Clear sky, crisp air, and DEAD QUIET.

Okay... I'm done-done...

Thanks for driving Rob... Next time you get to ride in the Station Wagon!

Gene

FANTASTIC summary Mark! Damn! Thanks for all the effort.

I know that I for one would like to start attending these meetings, even though my dark complexion does not go too well with my redneck clothing! (I was born and raised redneck so please don't take offense at the term!) Heh-heh!

I guess if "hippie" Rob can show up and not get kicked out, then a "minority" can show up as well! j/k!

WATRD

Great summary Mark! Thanks for the company, the conversation, the participation and the write up.

One interesting note that I would add is that the Forest Circus seems to have it's priorities backwards and I intend to mention it at the next meeting. The entire evening was spent discussing the impact that citizens have on the woods and how to mitigate that impact. There was just a brief mention in passing of the "Spruce Budworm" and the "Bark Beetle" that are destroying THOUSANDS of acres of forest as I type this. These bugs kill the trees, which then remain standing and become enormous fire hazards. As you go East over Chinook pass, there is HUGE area you can see and that you then pass through where this has happened.

The Forest Circus was very casual about this and spent perhaps 30 seconds on this issue during the course of the night, despite the fact that the bugs are doing more damage in a season than ALL of the users of the drainage could do in five years. Instead, the Forest Circus seems intent on coming up with new ways to deny you access to the forest and new ways to harass you while you are there.

Mad enough to write a letter yet?

Randy Shepard, District Ranger
Naches Ranger District
10237 US Highway 12, Naches, WA 98937
509-653-2205 ext. 227, FAX 509-653-2638
rdshepard@fs.fed.us

smr4runner

Excellent writeup Mark.
Thanks for the play-by-play.
Boy it must have been hard not to just let out all of the frustration and speak your mind. Though you are going about the right way. Clever...very clever!

WATRD

Spruce Budworm:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/nr/fid/fidls/fidl53.pdf
http://ext.nrs.wsu.edu/forestryext/f...ernbudworm.htm <- Specifically the section labeled "Impact"
http://www.dnr.wa.gov/htdocs/rp/forh...2002issues.htm <- Shows what the damage by these critters looks like.

Bark Beetle:
http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_gtr62.pdf
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/tree29.shtml <- Interesting read from '99, tree huggers trying to stop FS from fighting Bark Beetles by harvesting trees.


Notice that one of those sites predicted an increase in the Spruce Budworm problem in the area in question (Rimrock, et al) during the 2003 season, a full year ago. But at last nights meeting they acted as if it were a surprise.

Mad Chemist

Thanks for representin'!

Mark- good summary!

kctopher

Is it wrong for someone who isn’t a “local” to write the folks a personal letter??? I know it’s no concern to me but but I'm very irritated that the time/effort you guys put into this has been for nothing..

The pure ignorance by the disgruntled folks in charge makes me want to dish a little "strategy" approach to outmatch and out-think these guys..

WHOS WITH ME?

Funrunner

What a write-up Mark! Great job in making us feel like we were there and a part of it. Thanks to both of you for going to the meeting and letting us know what happened.

Corey

iTrader: (1)

Yes, great write-up Mark, it was like a narration.

I have met Rob several times, and the way you were talking in the post I could see his long hair as I was reading

I hope next years Jam can go off without a hitch.
I'd still like to know the party responsible for helping this get shutdown, there's more they are not letting onto.

WATRD

There is nothing wrong about that at all. It IS a "National" forest after all... Besides, with email, there is no way for them to know where you are. Even if you are writing on paper, your voice is valid as mine. This forest is yours as much as mine and you might someday want to use it... that is if the Forest Circus has not come up with a way to keep you out before then...

midiwall

Thanks for the thanks folks - I appreciate it! I get kinda' babbly, but I write like that to try to pull you into the event.

I can't wait for the next meeting over there. If they stick to the schedule that they posted for this "project" then it should be in about 4-6 weeks.

Mark

airrikk17

i may have been late getting into this whole thing , jsut last night i read every post about the yota jam being canceled then followed the link to this conversation . you guys are awesome , most people these days talk a lot of bs and cant back it , you guys jumped right in and are fighting the beast . i actually shivered when i was reading your account of the meeting . you made me feel like i was really there .
doesnt washington need a new govener soon ?
i jsut moved to washington state a few months ago , being from oregon most of my life , and dealing with these same sort of issues a little bit , when i rode mtn bikes. trail closures , unfair rules governing certein land users . its such a crock of sheet.

im glad to see you guys getting involved . and the nnext time a yota jam is planned i wanna go , meeting you guys from the board and having a fun day or two driving some trials outght to be a blast .

im over on the sandy side of washington, in the tri cities . they recently closed off in area here that used to be used to get to the river to fish . now its gone becuase of misuse by others .

good luck guys and keep up the hard work .

airrikk17

upndair

Has anyone thought of getting the PNW4WDA involved?

WATRD

Neither of the clubs involved is a member of the PNW4WDA since they charge a fee for a club to enlist and neither club charges dues.

Individual members belong 'though...