Enjoy our state parks now before proposed budget cuts from Wyoming Legislature take effect

Glendo State Park

The following is a great program offered by my state government colleagues over at Wyoming State Parks.

The Wyoming Division of State Parks, Historic Sites and Trials will sponsor free, guided hikes in four state parks and historic sites on New Year’s Day as part of America's State Parks First Day Hikes initiative in all 50 states. 

America’s State Parks First Day Hikes offer individuals and families an opportunity to begin the New Year rejuvenating and connecting with the outdoors by taking a healthy hike on January 1, at a state park close to home. First Day Hikes offer a great way to get outside, exercise, enjoy nature and welcome the New Year with friends and family. 

“We are excited to host First Day Hikes as part of this national effort to get people outdoors and into our parks. First Day Hikes are a great way to cure cabin fever and burn off those extra holiday calories by starting off the New Year with an invigorating walk or hike in one of our beautiful state parks,” said State Parks Administrator Domenic Bravo. 

America’s State Parks boast a variety of beautiful settings for year-round outdoor recreation, and each First Day Hike will offer an opportunity to explore the unique natural and cultural treasures close to home. From California to Maine, hikers can climb hills and mountain tops, walk along ponds and beaches, and traverse trails through forests, fields and prairies. Visitors can listen to birds, breathe in the fresh air, discover wildlife tracks, feel the wind and the warmth of the sun or the coldness of the snow. 

Visitors can expect to be surrounded by the quiet beauty of nature in winter, experience spectacular views and vistas and benefit from the company of a knowledgeable state park guide. “Studies have proven that getting outdoors is one good way to relax and recharge the body, mind and spirit.” stated Phil McNelly, NASPD’s Executive Director. “We hope that hiking along a trail in a state park will become part of an individual’s or family’s regular exercise routine.” 

First Day Hikes originated over 20 years ago at the Blue Hills Reservation, a state park in Milton, Massachusetts. The program was launched to promote both healthy lifestyles throughout the year and year round recreation at state parks. Many other states have offered outdoor recreation programs on New Year’s Day, however, this is the first time all 50 state park systems have joined together to sponsor First Day Hikes. 

Park staff and volunteers will lead the hikes, which average one to two miles or longer depending on the state park. Details about hike locations, difficulty and length, terrain and tips regarding proper clothing are listed on the America’s State Parks website. Visit www.americasstateparks.org to find a First Day Hike nearest you. 

In Wyoming, hikes will be offered at the following locations and times: 

Fort Bridger State Historic Site – one mile hike/walk around the historic site. Meet at entrance booth at 1 p.m. 

Curt Gowdy State Park – Up to four mile hike on a trail to be determined. Meet at Aspen Grove Trail head at 1 p.m. 

Guernsey State Park – Up to 2.5 mile hike on a trail to be determined. Meet at headquarters at 1 p.m. 

Glendo State Park – Up to a four mile hike along a newly constructed Narrows Bluff Trail. Meet at the Dam overlook at 10 a.m. 

Participants are urged to wear adequate clothing, coffee and hot chocolate will be provided, Bonfires at most locations. This is a kid and family friendly event, entry fee to participating parks will be waived. 

RSVPs are requested but not required. Please RSVP by emailing Paul.Gritten@wyo.gov. 

This event kicks off Wyoming State Parks and Historic Sites 2012 75th Anniversary celebration. The organization America's State Parks is committed to promoting outdoor recreation in state parks as a way to address obesity, especially among children. Getting kids outside and unplugged from video games and other electronic media creates a unique connection with nature that promotes physical and mental well-being and encourages creativity and stewardship of our shared resources.

The ironic part of all this? Republicans in the Wyoming Legislature want budget cuts of up to 8 percent. Those budget cuts may force state agencies to eliminate staff and cut back on programs. So, while Wyoming celebrates the 75th anniversary of its fantastic system of state parks and historic sites, many of them will be cutting back hours, services and possibly even closing due to budget cuts.

All this will be happening in a Wyoming that has a budget surplus of somewhere around $500 million. The only explanation can be found in the fact that 24 Republican candidates with a Tea Party philosophy (if you can call it a "philosophy") were elected to the Legislature during the 2010 elections. They are true believers in small government at the expense of service to their constituents.

If you show up at a state park this summer and find it closed, call your Republican state legislator and ask him/her why. You can find contact info on the Legisweb site at http://legisweb.state.wy.us/lsoweb/default.aspx

Winners announced for the Wyoming Outdoor Council calendar photo contest

This photo of a Golden Eagle in Sinks Canyon, by Scott Copeland, is among the winners of the Wyoming Outdoor Council photo contest and will appear in the 2012 calendar. Buy a calendar. Support Wyoming's outdoor legacy. Join here.

Head to Estes Park for Jan. 17 Earth Fest

Janice Mason in the Estes Park Trail Gazette on Jan. 9 writes about the second annual Estes Earth Fest taking place on Saturday, Jan. 17, at the YMCA of the Rockies' Willome Center.

For those of you unfamiliar with the area, Estes Park is known as the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. When you drop into town on a summer Saturday, Estes Park may be the last place you think of as "green." Traffic is backed up for blocks, with cars and SUVs and RVs spewing clouds of exhaust into the mountain air. While downtown features creekside paths with a walkway and park, the town's shops are eerily similar to the those in Myrtle Beach and Branson, Mo. T-shirts, ice cream, burger joints, etc. It's not bad, but not exactly picturesque. But you have to go through Estes to get to RMNP, at least from the Front Range side of the Rocky Mountains. RMNP is one of our family's favorite camping and hiking spots. It's only a couple hours away from Cheyenne, the closest national park. It's worth a half-hour traffic jam in Estes to reach our destination.

But some changes are afoot, green-wise. Estes Park Light and Power is now accepting reservation requests for rebates on the installation of small wind turbines and photovoltaic generators. They'll be promoting the program at the Earth Fest.

Eagle Rock School staff and students have been working for months to recreate the success of last year’s Earth Fest held at the Estes Park High School. John Guffey, service-learning instructional specialist at Eagle Rock, leads the coordination of the festival.

“My sense of Estes Park is that we have a responsibility,” said Guffey. “I believe that it’s a beautiful one that we haven’t acknowledged. It’s been here for a long time, but we just think that we can milk the cow until we dry it out. In fact, we need to change how we relate with tourists and how we relate with the Park, to be a real connecting point. So we don’t just bring people in but that we give out the message.”

General admission tickets for the Earth Fest are $5 for adults 18 and over, $2.50 for students, and children under 8 enter free. The dinner will be by separate ticket: $10 for adults 18 and over, and $5 for youth ages 6 to 17. Advance dinner tickets are $8 for adults and $4 for youth ages 6 to 17.

YMCA of the Rockies Estes Park Center is located at 2515 Tunnel Road 2515, off of Highway CO-66.

FMI: John Guffey at 586-7115, jguffey@eaglerockschool.org, or visit www.eaglerockschool.org.

Two of the more interesting Earth Fest speakers are:

David Wann is an author, filmmaker and speaker about sustainable design and sustainable lifestyles. His most recent book, “Simple Prosperity: Finding Real Wealth in a Sustainable Lifestyle,” is a sequel to the best-selling book he coauthored, “Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic,” which has been translated in nine languages, including Chinese.

Jim Merkel is the author of “Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth” and directs the Global Living Project that consults with campuses and municipalities and offers workshops and lectures. Originally a military engineer, Merkel’s projects included energy demand management, design of military systems and foreign military sales. The Exxon Valdez disaster and the invasion of Iraq prompted him to devote his life to sustainability and world peace. He founded the Global Living Project (GLP) and initiated the GLP Summer Institute where teams of researchers attempted to live on an equitable portion of the biosphere.

Pointy-headed artists meet the hardhats

Creativity is embedded in everyday objects. Our clothes, cars, cellphones and homes all have some sense of design (although you wouldn't know that by my wardrobe). We like our stuff functional and we want it to look good.

What if we brought that same sense of creativity to Wyoming's energy industry? Let's take those wind turbines sprouting up all over the state. They're always white. There may be a great functional reason for that. White is cheaper. White scares away birds. White structures absorb less heat.

What if artists were brought into the process at the beginning? Artists, especially those who make public outdoor art, could offer advice on color, design and materials. They could work with engineers on the shape and size of the blades. Artists, in turn, could learn about metallurgy and BTUs and construction techniques.

I know, I know. We don't want any of those pointy-headed artists messing around in our factory. Next thing you know, they'd be painting all of our machinery a nice cornfield yellow or Wyoming sky blue.

But we're all trying to make a living here. And we're in a new era, where creativity could hold the key to the U.S. making it to its 300th birthday later this century.

An e-mail from Laramie artist Julianne Couch prompted this post. She's looking for visual artists in Wyoming who might be working with wind farms or other forms of energy production in their art. She writes that those "other forms" could mean anything from coal mines to nuke plants. She wants to talk to those people for her new book project, "Earth, Wind & Sky: A Power Trip." Contact Julianne at jcouch@uwyo.edu.

I've seen the work of artists who've documented the depredations of energy exploration in their photos and paintings. I'm all for that. We all know that each picture tells a story. But I'm also concerned that artists can sometimes paint themselves out of the larger picture. The quest for non-renewable energy sources is ruining our state and killing our planet. That's true. But what if the pointy-headed artists and the energy workers in hardhats were thrown together and told to come up with a solution to, say, the air pollution problem in the Pinedale Anticline? The template of roads criss-crossing Wyoming's fragile ecosystem? The clouds of CO2 that escape our many power plants and add to global warming? We might come up with some solutions. We all might learn something about each other. There's also the possibility of fisticuffs (the artists would lose).

But it does come down to this: we need solutions or we're goners. The Obama Transition Team has put out a call to all states asking for ideas on getting the citizenry back to work. The OTT also asked this question: "How would you put your artists to work?"

I've offered one answer. There must be other good ideas out there....

Reagan on Rushmore could mean a boost to Wyoming tourism

Jim Hightower, "America's No. 1 Populist," revisited the Ronald Reagan presidency in his year-end column:

"I must admit that the seven-year reign of Bush & Company makes me yearn for the years of Ronald Reagan, when the term “conservative” merely meant right wing, rather than full-tilt, bull-goose loopy."

He's a bit shocked that there's a movement afoot to add Reagan's image to that of Jefferson, Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, and Lincoln on Mount Rushmore. Hate to tell you this, Jim, but certain Reagan idol-worshippers have been at this since 1988, when The Gipper left D.C. for his California ranch. But now there's a web site devoted to the cause: “Put Reagan On Rushmore in your home or office." Go to http://www.reaganrushmore.com/. I was going to copy and paste the image but I didn't want to be responsible for spreading it around.

But hey, if you look at it from a Wyoming tourism P.O.V., it's not such a bad idea. Reagan fans from all over would be drawn to the Black Hills during the construction phase, which could take up to five years. Once the giant head is completed, it will receive a constant stream of traffic until the end of time. The most direct auto routes to Mount Rushmore from Orange County, California, take you through Wyoming. Even those voyagers taking the southern route through Colorado would have to transverse the southeastern corner of WYO, where I live. Gas prices will be, like, $10 a gallon by then, so we can siphon off some of that dough from Hummer 5's and the giant SUVs of the future.

Makes you wonder what other GOP hero could be added to Mount Rushmore. Perhaps the beady-eyed visage of Karl Rove? He wasn't technically a president, but he was George W. Bush's "Brain." Maybe we could just stick the brain up there. The actual brain.

When the big cats own all the hilltops

Writer Barbara Ehrenreich grew up in Montana and now lives in Florida. In her books such as Nickled and Dimed, she tracks the inequities in an economy where the rich get richer and then filthy rich and then obscenely rich, etc. And most of the rest of us don’t exactly get poor, we just lose our dignity, our houses, and – gradually – our views.

"You can’t eat the scenery" is a phrase heard often in Wyoming, more often in bust times than in booms. Scenery is nice, but it’s tough to admire the view when you’re unemployed and the kids are hungry. You may like the idea of living in Jackson or Santa Fe or Red Lodge, but you and your spouse can’t work enough jobs to afford it. So you find jobs in a less scenic place and, at night, dream about the Tetons.

Turns out, you can eat the scenery if you’re rich. Ehrenreich discussed this strange fact in a June 30 column for Alternet, "The Rich Have Priced the Outdoors out of Everyone Else’s Hands."

Here’s the opening paragraphs:

I took a micro-vacation last week -- nine hours in Sun Valley before an evening speaking engagement. The sky was deep blue, the air crystalline, the hills green and not yet on fire. Strolling out of the Sun Valley Lodge, I found a tiny tourist village, complete with Swiss-style bakery, multi-star restaurant, and "opera house." What luck -- the boutiques were displaying outdoor racks of summer clothing on sale!

But things started to get a little sinister -- maybe I had wandered into a movie set or Paris Hilton's closet? -- because even at a 60 percent discount, I couldn't find a sleeveless cotton shirt for less than $100. These items shouldn't have been outdoors; they should have been in locked glass cases.

Then I remembered the general rule, which has been in place since sometime in the '90s: If a place is truly beautiful, you can't afford to be there. All right, I'm sure there are still exceptions -- a few scenic spots not yet eaten up by mansions. But they're going fast.

Ehrenreich relates how she and a friend rented an inexpensive house in Driggs, Idaho, ten years ago. Located just over Teton Pass from Jackson, Driggs was an affordable alternative for those who worked The Hole’s restaurants and hotels. But now, gazillionaires such as Microsoft’s Paul Allen brewing magnate Augustus Busch III, have discovered Driggs, forcing up land values and prices and taxes. Where will the Driggsians go now? The rich buy up great gobs of land, forcing the have-nots away from the scenery they love so much they keep plugging away so they can stay.

I know people who moved to Jackson and Aspen in the sixties and seventies. Not all were hippies or back-to-the-land folks. Some were ski bums and entrepreneurial drug dealers. But it didn’t seem to matter. Some stayed in Jackson to make a home, finding a way to survive. A writer I know worked a series of service jobs for two decades before he could (kind of) support himself in Jackson. A woman friend founded a little bistro that thrived with the influx of trust-fund babies and telecommuters. Others just gave up and moved on, back to their hometowns in Maryland or Texas. They found jobs and spouses and, eventually, discovered ways to get back to the mountains, if only for one week each summer.

When I was hitchhiking around the West in 1972, I was tempted by Jackson and Driggs. My girlfriend Sharon from the Boston burbs was skeptical. She knew that two college drop-outs couldn’t make a living in tiny Driggs. Jackson would be better. Missoula even more so. But still we moved on, wending our way through Seattle, Portland, and Berkeley and through the deserts and mountains back to Denver. I had relatives and friends in Denver. We could have landed jobs the first day, work our way through the service industry and college to an affordable fixer-upper on Capitol Hill or Washington Park and then have a few kids and then visit Driggs and Yellowstone on summer vacation. That was the only way we could get a piece of the scenery. Some people back in Boston might say we had a nice view right there in Denver.

That’s not the way it worked out. We left Denver and moved to Boston. After six months in that dreary city, I quit it and the relationship and returned to Daytona Beach, Florida, where Sharon and I first met. Beach town, you say, the big blue Atlantic right at your doorstep, surf and sand and wahines. But by then I had mountains on my mind and didn’t care about the view from the beach. So a couple years later, after graduating from college on the seven-year plan, I met a beautiful woman and we moved to Denver. I’ve been Out West ever since, always within sight of the Rocky Mountains. Not bad, really, when you consider the alternatives.

It addresses a key facet of life – the need to be attached in some way to the landscape. Here’s how Ehrenreich describes it:

I take this personally. I need to see vast expanses of water, 360 degree horizons, and mountains piercing the sky -- at least for a week or two of the year. According to evolutionary psychologist Nancy Etcoff, we all do, and the need is hard-wired into us. "People like to be on a hill, where they can see a landscape. And they like somewhere to go where they can not be seen themselves," told Harvard Magazine earlier this year. "That's a place desirable to a predator who wants to avoid becoming prey." We also like to be able to see water (for drinking), low-canopy trees (for shade), and animals (whose presence signals that the place is habitable.)

Something basic about our need to be part of the outdoors. You don’t have to be a mountain climber or a long-distance sailor to be part of it. Sometimes you just have to be able to see it. As we keep getting moved back from the scenic places, maybe that will incite a fear in us that we are more prey than predator. The big cats now control the high places. They can look out from their perches in the Rockies and see the prey spread out below. That's the way they like it.