Following here is a listing of locations identified as possibilities for E.I. safe recreation or location or having research, negotiation or pilot studies in place in conjunction with the Smart Shelter E.I. Land Steward Program. Bear in mind that many statuses change daily and updates should be garnered from Smart Shelter to verify status.

An attempt is made here to roughly rate the viability, demonstrated levels of competence and cooperation of lands managers, locations and private land owners in augmenting chemically-safe environs for E.I.s and the Public. Astrics (***) appearing before a location gauge its relative known safety level in balance with the effective cooperation of the supervising entity in accordance with the following scale:

**** (a safe location designated and enforced as chemically free ...no herbicides or toxic chemical products used ...no elevated EMF sources ...usually under E.I. supervision and maintenance.

*** (a moderately safe environ with exceptions as noted ...recommended for short to medium term occupancy by E.I.s.

** (a fairly safe location with warnings regarding lower level incursions of spraying, air pollution, etc.

* ( a tolerable location, often seasonally as noted, usually a site with potential if upgraded in terms of its safety ...probably not safe for camping or longer exposures, but usable on occasion with warnings of things to avoid.

There are, of course, lands managers and owners insistently ignorant or openly hostile to accommodations of chemical disabilities as well as locations posing direct or long-term threats to the health of E.I.'s and the generally enlightened public. Those locations and entities are rated with exclamation marks (!!!) of increasing severity of warning in accordance with the following standards:

! (a location harboring a direct threat of chemically reactive exposure or EMF saturation which may be usable seasonally or periodically with awareness of spraying times, etc.

!! (a site posing a stronger and probably immediate risk of health and life to alpha two and above E.I.'s ....see the E.I. Standard published on this web site for rating explanations) This site may bear possibility of remediation and in time become safe, but is posted with a use warning at present.

!!! ( a location in which regular or high level spraying occurs regularly, pathways are particularly heavily drenched with toxic herbicides, restroom facilities have particularly heavy doses of fragrances and toxic cleaning products or where management is stubbornly indifferent or displays veiled hostility to disability considerations and accommodation.

!!!! (locations in which land managers are overtly hostile and targeted for litigation under the Smart Shelter E.I. Land Steward Program or other chemically disabled advocacy movements. It also includes location in which ambient high level Electro-Magnetic Fields or residual chemical contamination make it unsafe for any E.I. use at any time ....which we believe means makes it unsafe for the public in general and mandating legal and law enforcement or other regulatory actions, such as removal and replacement of the management.

 

Criterion for Pilot Study Sites

This program is designed to identify the most competent key players, preserve the most vibrant and attractive areas of our public lands and develop the most advanced and sophisticated technologies attainable for creation and preservation of chemical-free environments in Western Colorado....ambitious, but certainly worth doing. Sites are constantly being identified and considered for pilot study work according to the following criterion:

Visual/ Aesthetic Significance

Of primary importance to the Smart Shelter E.I. Land Steward Program is to begin with the identification and pilot study locations with the most valuable and threatened of our public lands locales ...we begin with the best, work with the most competent and develop only the most effective. In identifying the most attractive areas attainable, we increase the awareness of visitors and users simultaneous with preservation prioritized from the top on down. If key, pristine areas are successfully withdrawn and administered as chemical-free zones, over time, the rest of public domain will follow....concentrating areas of high chemical dosing consistently along diminishing corridors until that systemology itself is rendered unnecessary or inappropriate over time.

Environmental, Archaeological or Historical Significance

Attractive Characteristics for the Informed or E.I. Public

Many of our regional communities are now uninhabitable to those with advanced allergies, Alpha Two and Three MCS, severe asthma and herbicide/pesticide sensitivities (now epidemic). This is a shame, and eventually will, of necessity, be the harbinger of change through necessity as larger and larger portions of the population are diagnosed or realize the maladies they are already under treatment for are either caused or exacerbated by environmental factors such as crop burning smoke, aerial crop spraying, wood burning stove winter air pollution, fragrances in public places, etc.

The presence of these factors is already having a widespread and now measurable economic impact, especially in the tourism, restaurant and accommodations industries. Tourists, especially the higher dollar ones from areas of California and the east coast, are highly aware of environmental pollution's health cost and will systematically avoid towns like Delta (the region's worst area for crop burning pollution), Montrose (the regional capital for overuse of aerial spraying in summer) and Grand Junction midwinter with its legendary purple air pollution cloud...mostly due the archaic holdover use of wood burning heating devices despite the fact that it now appears(and is marketed as) a small, modern city...a transportation hub. Even L.A. skiers flying into the Grand Junction airport have noted the stench...not a good sign as L.A....long the national legend for pollution continues its monumental (and effective) strides toward cleaner air.

Regional effects are notable. In recent conversations with two Ouray and one Telluride resident who frequently travel the Montrose-Delta-Grand Junction shopping corridor...in an attempt to promote an excellent new family owned Delta Mexican Restaurant just off Main struggling to get its feet on the ground (which it certainly deserves)...all three commented (this was mid-March, 04) no way I'm going through the "stink corridor" till the crop burning stops. Ironically, the stench of burning fiber this spring was not all coming from the legendary pyromaniacal farmers of Delta County (seemingly still stuck in an older age) but from the Division of Wildlife burning (or better described as "smoldering") huge piles of the tamarisk they'd ripped out of the Roubidoux Wildlife Area...which sat smoking for days, smelling up laundry and escalating citizen asthma levels to all time highs.

Pollution has an impact...a definite cost...especially now that a huge section of the American public knows better, identifies the sources and is becoming insistently unwilling to pay the medical bills and suffer the debilitating asthma attacks in their children for what someone else thinks is their "right to farm"...which is obviously not "the right to harm".

The Smart Shelter E.I. Land Steward Program identifies and publishes (often in area, state, and national) newspapers and tourism industry publications the locations and status and seasonal variables and advisories for key safe or recommendable site which either are or could be (with work) safe havens for health-responsible parents, E.I.'s, or just plain smart people to recreate (or even relocate). See the itemized and updated site locator list at the bottom of this publication for details and locations as well as seasonal cautions.

Accessibility

Accessibility is necessary both for the public and visiting E.I. community and for the Land Stewards as well. Occupancy sites are a difficult balance and challenge. They need foul weather vehicle and "Micro" accessibility, but relative obscurity from impacting views. Soil conditions, existing roadways, view corridors and balancing of the "watchful eye" aspect of the Productive Occupancy presence are delicate and diligent field reconnaissance over time is the only tool we've found capable of providing viable solutions.

Levels of Destruction or Infestation rendering Non-Chemical Uses Feasible

Levels of Misuse for Which Program Occupancies May Provide Deterrent

Many criterion regarding areas selected in order to offset or curtail illegal activities or abuses are considered, including the following:

Poaching- because the abusive personality who engages in poaching is also highly likely to engage in illegal dumping, off-road vehicl use and other destructions...areas attracting or known for their poaching history are placed in high priority for the E.I. Land Steward Program...for one good reason...thanks to the Colorado DOW "Operation Game Thief" each successful video recording and submission of witnessed illegal kills netw the project around a $1000...nice method for attaining funds to continue...and also places a positive economic impact to reward the responsible (not to mention their encouragement at no longer being helpless in the grips of contempt) but also serves as a large economic deterent to the abusers...when off-road vehicle and dumping abuses begin costing abusers a bundle, they, just like poaching...will start rachetting down quickly. Poachers know poachers. ORV abusers know other motorhead criminals. Word travels fast when the wallop is hard enough.

ORV Abuses

Dumping

Drug Use

Illegal mining

Illegal firearms use

Competence, Educational Levels and Cooperation of Land Management Officials and Jurisdictions Governing the Sites

The extensive interviews with lands managers from the myriad agencies into which our public asset are divided prove quite interesting. The Federal systems of BLM, Bureau of Reclamation, National Parks System ...the State Levels of Division of Wildlife, State Parks and Recreation , school lands ...county administered parks, gravel pits, roadways ...municipal parks and easements. Myriad places, myriad personalities.

About the same is found with lands managers as we find in the public itself ...lots of everyday, reasonable, but usually not very exploratory or innovative personnel ....a few overtly hostile, closed minded, even denigrating or discounting ogres ...and a handful of thankfully open minded, highly competent, innovative and energetic souls.

It is in this last group that we concentrate our hope and efforts. As in so many undertakings ....all the technology and program competence/refinement that can be attained will go nowhere if placed in the hands of the wrong authority. Smart Shelter is spending as much time interviewing and assessing management mentalities and attitudes as it is in selecting pilot study sites and mapping invasives for remediation. We play politics, and in our experience, anyone who doesn't will soon find themselves sitting on the bench.

It is also our belief that in those innovative, willing, invested and cooperative individuals we will be identifying those who will asceed in time to higher levels of authority in the bureacracy...giving the long term viability of the pilot studies and Land Steward program itself one of the critically necessary tools to insure its longevity and success.

In publishing and reporting these findings, the Network provides its "independent reporting media" function which we take in equal balance of necessity with the innovations and proactive efforts...roles of watchdog as well as inventors. We as taxpayers fund these entities and positions. We need and have the right to have accurate assessments of their performances. There is no more realistic or accurate method of assessing public lands management competence than working side by side with the personnel. Anyone can blow smoke across a desk...a whole new view presents itself in the field with the sleeves rolled up.

Seasonally Appropriate and Viable Sites

Selections Providing a Wide Diversity/ Cross-section of Eco-Zones and Micro-Climates of the Region

Limited pilot studies are increased in their range of effective impacts by selecting sites from very low elevation, desert, winter habitats to high elevation forest and alpine sites. This sampling, though not feasibly capable of producing the detailed depth the Land Steward Program will need in time, will garner the maximum assesment of pitfalls, challenges, timing for seasonal location changes, effectiveness windows in invasive plant control (which is typically critical in terms of irradication of early sproutings). This also dovetails (or will when developed) with the timing of appropriate Short Term and Medium Term Productive Occupancies by the Land Stewards themselves.

Availability of Resources Needed to Assure Reasonable Success

Public Visibility of the Site Furthering Awareness, Participation and Educational Objectives of the Land Steward Program

Ammenability of Damaged Sites to be Turned Into Preferred or Responsible Access Free Camping/ Land Steward Locations as a Proactive force to Remediation and Maintenance

The objective of the Land Steward Program is not just to repair damages or remove infestations, but also to turn around the loss of indigenous public rights to free camping on the public domain...indeed to augment and encourage and facilitate it as an attractor mechanism to produce a responsible, productive and vigilant presence to turn the rate of destruction around and give us back the pristine legacy to enjoy and hand to future generations. Part of the selection process is to identify easily accessible, fairly private, definitely campable locales now suffering from Destructive Occupancies of ATV use, illegal dumping, etc...and (often with the simple on-site processing and reuse of the refuse itself) create attractor sites which gain awareness with the environmentally responsible and proactive public in the process of remediation and program development for their use in the future as spontaneous nite-camps or EI havens in crop burning or aerial spray conditions. There is no reason that a competent and comprehensive program for Land Stewardship cannot utilize the technologies we already have test flown and are now in daily use in private property Negative Emissions/ Native Landscape and Permaculture Design as well as Natural building technologies themselves.

Satellite free-camp sites paved with the chipped wood gravel of discarded tree trimmings illegally dumped on BLM land is not just reasonable...it's a no brainer (in fact, why isn't BLM doing this already?). Similar applications for discarded refuse of other resource origins are myriad and easily applied and continued in development and public education through creation of these satellite camp sites, which can easily also serve as educational sites for sustainable reuse and recycling...besides providing free responsible vigilance simply by attracting (rather than repelling) the right presence.

The end result of the Land Steward Program will be added (not closed) attractive and healthy free camping sites for those of us who quite frankly are a little above and beyond being herded into government constructed cattle facility campgrounds with their fragrance and cleaning solvent stenches, their smokey polluting urbanite camp fires, their screeching zombie offspring, their bloated ATV barges, their blaring satellite TV's (why the hell would you pay $14 a nite and drive that far to watch tv on a set whose quality can't match the one you have at home?). There are a bunch of us who are more sophisticated in our tastes and camping needs than that...and we are increasingly insistent on being honored and accommodated...not excluded, feed and herded with the slobbering masses....thank you...and, incidentally, we're being herded by government entities we finance and pay. Not, methinx.

 (note: this list is in development...check back later for posting)

Delta County

Escalante Canyon/ Huff Site

This site was occupied late Jan, early Feb 04 for two weeks on a BLM 2 week automatic short term occupancy. During that time, mapping was completed of the adjoining drainage basin which hooks from the Escalante Rim on the Highway side of HWY 50, down a small draw (called in Muriel Marshal's book "Red Hole in Time"...which is excellent history of the Escallante by an excellent author) Gold Dust Draw...which parallels the road (marked on the highway as "Escallante Canyon"...and eventually joins the Gunnison. The map identified several incubator infestations of russian knappweed and tamarisk, which if removed soon could prevent the infestation (and eventual herbiciding) of the draw tributary basin, which could then be declared a "chemical free zone" and an excellent starter project for the Land Steward Program. Two larger illegal dump sites and myriad smatterings of accumulated litter (including one whole roller-bed springs set which had been flung into the gorge from the road above) were mapped and proposed to the BLM regional office in Montrose for free clean up and irradication under a Medium Term Productive Occupancy pilot project...in light of the evidence that there current management was fostering Destructive Occupancies quite well. I had an old Ford truck, which I had laughingly (though they didn't get the joke) labeled "Thug"...because that's what it is...a big dump guy who'll throttle any problem at the point of a finger. They didn't like the sign on the tailgate. Freedom of speech is apparently subject to BLM approval as well. All of this happened, of course, without courtesy of contacting or questioning me...just a threatening notice of illegal use of public property... They deal with a lot of whackos, there are myriad meth labs (especially in Delta County) on public land...just like there were bootleggers during prohibition...and their single law enforcement officer drives every square inch of tractable terrane from Telluride to Dominguez County weekly...one officer. But doesn't this point out the glaring need for a piloted and approved "Productive Occupancy/ Land Steward Program" to help heal the land and turn around the goon-based abuses they are really striving valiantly to curtail? Yep.

The proposal was greeted with an eviction notice, three visits by their law enforcement officer and queries about human waste disposal, whether or not the Micro was actually a meth lab, irritated comments about the lack of value of someone "pulling weeds" and being informed that citizens who could not prove permanent residence elsewhere did not have any rights to camp on BLM land and that BLM would be the decision maker about who got camping rights and who didn't....an apparently interesting incursion of now the BLM into private lifestyle choices and personal freedoms, well beyond their assigned task of managing public lands (the destruction of which seems evidence enough that they are not) and into personal residency choices and camping equipment approval.

Never the less, any E.I. or otherwise has a two week camping entitlement and the Escalante Site is particularly healthy and recommendable, especially in high air pollution and pesticide/herbicide conditions elsewhere, ironically because of one of its most irritating drawbacks...the wind.

The ranch house on the knoll down in the river bottom is called "The Windy". Here micro climate research will elucidate. This is an excellent provisional location for tests for a wind power generation site. What's going on is that the spur of Grand Mesa produces an uplift as it reaches to the west for the Uncompahgre Plateau. You think you're going downhill leaving Delta for Grand Junction, but you're actually rising 750 feet in elevation and won't start descending until well after the Dominguez Canyon complex. This produces a "pinch" in terrain which compresses and speeds the ambient winter wind, which blows incessantly from the northwest from about September to May. It howls through the Escallante. Upwind is basically nothing. When all else fails and your sinus infections are at the point of complete agony and debilitation, a well insulated off-grid micro parked up Gold Dust Draw in whatever wind shelter you can glean will produce relief. It is a fact that the two weeks spent there in Feb04 resulted in the only period of symptom free existence this Alpha Two EI has enjoyed in 12 years...two weeks of finally finding an environment clean enough to allow an EI to live like a normal human being...greeted by an eviction notice and being informed that if the Micro was my only residence I could not use the native public lands enjoyed by five generations of my ancestors since Captain Duncan himself in 1881 escorted the Utes to the Ft. Duchesne reservation and took a can opener to the free lands of southwestern Colorado.

The wind at this site, ironically, produces some of the cleanest air in western colorado and very possibly the discovery of a viable wind generation site. It seems clear of the Grand Junction air pollution and is consistently upwind of the seasonal Delta ag burning nightmare.

One caution...beware of camping too close to rabbit brush. This stuff is everywhere...grows two to three feet tall in clumps and has a characteristically yellow fluff flower at its stem top. It blooms in late summer, fall and winter...and kills allergy sufferers who think hay fever season is done after spring. EI's are consistently allergic to its pollen and its everywhere on the bottoms of draws in desert lands. Learn to identify and avoid it...or at least be aware of its allergenic properties as a possible source if you start to react.

Hope is held out that the Huff/Gold Dust Draw/ Escallante site may prove to be a viable pilot project site once the misunderstandings and newness of the policy changes inherent in the Land Steward Program are hammered through and digested by an obviously temperamental and overloaded land management professional staffing. It would be a source of hope indeed in a couple of years to see preliminary Medium Term Occupancy permits to selected and qualifying EI's issued here to the result that the incubator invasives are gone, the area cleaned and watchful presence present from time to time to test the viability of a sane and benevolent productive presence on an abused and destructively occupied area.

Ironically (human waste in the Micro is either dealt with with a portapotty dumped at RV campgrounds or a solar composting toilet) BLM's concern about human waste...invariably their excuse for closing historic free camping locations to public camping...was greeted with a sad irony weeks later when a hiking tour of the Gunnison gorge adjacent to this site over pristine badlands witnessed an infinite sea of recent sheep shit so thick you could not walk through it covering several acres, which had been insidiously lacerated with hoof marks from overgrazing by what appeared to be hundreds of mutton with razor sharp hooves in wet mud soil conditions, sadly topped with the myriad ATV tracks of the sheep herder. When does the insanity of grazing permits on land with nothing to graze and now battling valiantly against drought to boot stop...why do we approve the destructive occupancy of now ATV mounted sheepherders producing illegal tracking of pristine desert lands and evict those who come desperately seeking a breath of fresh air that they have lost to pollution and growth and willing for the right to be there to heal and prevent those abuses, trash, destructions and invasive species scars. When will we see this kind of insanity gone from our administration of public lands.

Go utilize your two week (or even one night) use by right to camp on the Escallante/Huff site. Breathe the windy clear blue air. Pick up a little trash. Carry away a little uprooted knappweed. Whack a tamarisk or two. And call Dave Kauffman at the BLM office in Montrose and insist on a pilot project approval for the Smart Shelter EI Land Steward Program. You can do this and in the absence of anything else feasible or reasonable on the horizon, this opportunity may be one of the only cards in your deck to stem this tide of destruction and empower the awareness and rights of the E.I. community...which you should add the work "yet" to if you think you are not now one of.

Hotter than hell in summer days...but quite campable nights and a nice break from the trip to Grand Junction for your uplanders in Ouray and Telluride. Make this site famous. Meeting other E.I.s in some of these identified sites and forming regional communities of health and illness advocates could really further the already developing and effective E.I. networking Smart Shelter, Trudy Giels in Ridgway, the Grand Junction and Glenwood/Aspen crowds already have going. We can have fun in the quest for health. We can construct sanity, rights and entitlements as we do both.

(note-late March 04)-wind current shifts during peak crop/ditch burning season in the notorious North Delta Burn Corridor backed up visably (even at night) to detectable levels on the Escallante Rim...not as unusable for allergy/ EI sufferers as Delta, certainly, but indication that nowhere now is the air completley safe...we have indeed lost the pristine legacy that brought so many of us here to insanity, stupidity and greed. Apparently, because the winter winds are from the north and the summer ones from the south, sometime in spring the directions shift...making swing season air quality and pollution movements very hard to predict. I'm sitting here today as high up on the Escallante Rim as you can get with the sinularly most panoramic low altitude view in the region watching the horrid haze fueled by twenty columns of burn-farmer stench rising off the Delta/Montrose valley floor like the bomb clouds from a Vietnamese battle corridor.

Escalante Potholes Site

Riverwood RV Park-Delta

(17Mar04) A small RV park of particular appeal, despite the industrial impacts of gravel operations (within the City Limits of Delta), especially in winter. Several longer term RV hookup sites exist near the highway with office, motel and restrooms available. Further up the Gunnison River, which borders this park (complete with Canadian Geese, Sand Hill Cranes and White Mallards...also one Blue Heron) is a tent camping area without hookups, provisionally identified by Smart Shelter as an ideal and definitely worth saving area of relatively untrashed riparian terrain with wind directions and location thankfully out of the Delta wood stove pollution currents mid winter, but unfortunately right in the path of Colorado Division of Wildlife spring tamarisk burning and, of course, the legendary Delta county off-the-scale level of ag field and ditch burning...which just about every other county seems to have foregone for composting, weed-free ditch construction, permaculture and re-tilling. An off-grid Micro in this location late winter was satisfactory for level two EI habitation until mid March warming, which brought on the pyromaniacs and their wheezing children. The number of Delta County residents with oxygen bottles and clear plastic nose rigs going in and out of the local City Market seemed indication enough to leave before the PM 10 levels clogged a few hundred alveoli. Of course, right on the tail of the pyro season come the obsessive compulsive over sprays of roadside herbicides (Confluence Park in Delta is drenched with them all summer...don't even think about going there), lawn chemicals...and of course the terrorist bombings of the Yellow Crop Dusters drenching what some people would consider food products laughingly passing for ag industry in not only Delta, but also Montrose and Mesa Counties.

The Riverwood site could be hand irradicated for russian knappweed, goat heads(watch your bare feet and bike tires), tamarisk and russian olive...all of which are strongly infested, but not at levels making successive hand irradication improbable. This could be done starting at the upper end of the campground (also the most attractive and pristine) and moving back...delineating a no-spray, no-fire zone for safe camping which could be expanded year after year.

Also problematical are the huge United Sand and Gravel pit across the river and an apparent local excavator (The Dirt Merchant) who apparently has rights to rip up the campground with monster belly dump trucks (one is dozing outside as we speak) under the insane Colorado Mining laws which allow commercial mining interests to molest your lawn, home and children's playground (not to mention your business) in order to extract whatever they think is a valuable mineral without your permission and with impunity to the impacts on your land which you thought you owned until the bulldozer woke you up that morning. These acts of private property terrorism seemed to be asleep midwinter along with the polluters, and woke simultaneous with the DOW tamarisk holocaust and the rustling of readying herbicide sprayers.

Never the less...with cooperation of the owner (still to be discussed) and prudent timing...(probably October-mid March) Riverwood's stream bottom air currents and separation from the urban air qualities of Delta are a viable location for off-grid Micros (or RV's needing hookups, although other grid-tied RVers burn firewood).

(note-23 March, 04) with the increase in the North Delta Burn Corridor and DOW tamarisk burns coupled with an air current shift down canyon (from up) this site had to be abandoned because of the stench and consequent sinus infections that made it a health risk. The economic depression of Delta and Delta County in the face of its legendary levels of pollution are not hard to understand. No one but a moron would live or shop in this. I'm gone...tolerable in winter...but the minute the pyromaniacs find their matches...EI's and the health aware had best hike to higher ground.

Roubidoux-DOW sites

Site reconnaissance is continuing under the provisional interest expressed by DOW field technician Mike Zeman to consider a chemical -free zone/ hand irradication pilot project on DOW land with a written proposal, which goes over his head because of the occupancy provision, but he might be willing to fire to Denver for approval (or not...if they live in Denver, they're probably not an EI). However, the tamarisk infestations on DOW land are so overwhelming and their current programs for stump cut and aerial herbicide spraying are so life-threatening to an EI that no sites have yet been found that seem viable. The search continues. Meanwhile, despite their prolific burning of 20 or 30 stacks of dozed Tamarisk in the Roubidoux/ Gunnison River bottom, Mike has indicated willingness to open a controlled pilot tract for wood cutting of Tamarisk as a value added resource base to forestal chemical irradication and burning disposal. This one is going to be a challenge. Despite camping entitlements on other DOW sites, Zeman maintains that no camping is allowed on the Escallante/ Roubidoux. Policy needs checking and verifying here. This makes effective pilot programs very difficult to launch.

Paonia-Crawford Crosscut Sites

PCCO A &B -Two sites on the rise on either side of the highway between Paonia and Crawford have long suffered as becoming the illegal dumpsites of choice for abusive citizens in the area. Much work has been done to remarkable effect by members of the Western Colorado Environmental Resource Council (Paonia) who each spring sponsor a public lands cleanup weekend. The net result over the past 5 years has been not only a clean up of dead animal carcasses, dumped concrete slabs, horrendous household liter and dump trucks of tree trimings...but also a deterrent effect in the escalating levels of dumping. Preliminary interpretation of this effect is that a cleansed and cleaner area serves as a subjective indicator to abusers that abuse is not tolerated. They will shred any sign BLM erects with volumes of vehement ballistics (that's french for bullet holes), but they have slowed their slovenly uses because of prescident and appearances.

These sites are often used by occasional campers and seekers of sites for romantic interludes...two things our public lands policies need to emphasize more (instead of extractive gravel and timber and grazind destruction) how about more love and fresh air.

On the back burner, down the road, possible proposals for pilot projects on either or both sites, adding Medium Term Occupancy advantages to the already established and viable basis of the WSERC clean up weekends. Meantime, take your honey or your micro out for an evening or two...not that hard to find...and pack back some of the abundance of plastic, beer bottle glass and litter. You'll find beneficial uses for these products at home under our Resources File information on "Negative Emissions Site Design" or the specific problem headings such as "Glass", "Plastic", "Paper", "Metal"...you get the picture. If you go there and there's nothing, it's not because Smart Shelter doesn't have the information or tested techniques available...we certainly do. It's because: #1 we're underfunded (solution: send us a check...consider it a bribe...just send it) or #2 we haven't gotten the time to publish the information on the web site Resource Files yet (solution: return to step #1 and follow its suggestions). or #3 use your own resources and imagination...or #4 select the yard of a known motorhead or lands abuser and dump the trash back where it came from...leaving a nasty, snarly note...or not.

Perscription-This is an excellent area for a pilot study utilizing some of the strategies outlined in the Systems of Transcendant Governance...which begin with the principles fundamental to eastern cultural martial arts...do not attempt attacking or frontally moving the enemy...study their energy flows, perceptions, values and vulnerabilities and simply reapply them to the opponent,s self-destruction (or possibly change)...doesn't really matter which, since we do need population reduction here.

This site could become the demonstration pilot for junk-land art ...the solutions assembled through the magic of human imagination and expression into the educator attractors capable of mission statements signage, law enforcement and policy have failed to produce.

This is also an opportunity to apply the permaculture principle of "least effort in, maximum effect out". Instead of leaving the horrendous garbage dumped here by some truely horrific degenerate subspecies...we simply turn our perception of their problem into a resource from which we can create art in place...on the site...simply by rearranging the river cobbles, dead branches, bleached bones, drushed phone machines...into seats, sculptures, junk animals, shelter....illegal road blocks.

What would make PCCO A and B ideal pilot study locations for this concept is the level of progressive imagination and artistic values already indigenous to the Paonia area...the Visions school program, the Lamborn Community Center, the Western Slope Environmental Resource Center, who already are expending energy annually for debris removal here. Instead of relocating the garbage to the landfill, how about seeing if we can create statements in junk sculpture at these sites (like the Pype People...see "Pype Pup and the Milkjug Chihuahua text...probably somewhere in the Gonzo Literati...a humor piece dealing with the elements of Negative Emission Site Design).

It is strongly suggested that progressive, environmental and spiritual energy installed into junk art pieces left on locations of severley damaged illegal disposal sites can produce an ominous spectre of surveiling presence signage cannot compete with...and law enforcement has certainly not. If it's destroyed, it's reconstructed...until the culprits are caught and sentenced in court (after WSERC or Smart Shelter, or you pockiet the reward) to 90 days of consecutive junk art sculpture rebuilding on PCCO sites A and B....Yes.

Crawford Reservoir Site

 

Montrose County

Shavano Valley

SVK 32- This is one of the saddest losses in our public lands history/ untrammeled growth onslaught. Highway 90 begins its cliff-climbing ascent out of Shavano Valley, past "Block Rock" on the right and site SVK 32 on the left...which is deteriorating at the speed of light to teenage drug parties, obvious meth labs, rampant fire rings, 20-30 animal carcasses (cats, dogs, deer, sheep, elk), dump piles of horse shit, leavings of leach field gravel excavated from toxic failed septic systems, riddling ATV tracks lacing the junipers, several cases of spent shotgun and rifle shells as well as fragments of target clay pigeons, used automobile parts, and of course...the legacy of our industrial alcoholism corporations...coors right up there at the top.

This is one of the handiest and most recommendable camping areas around and a relatively safe haven for E.I.'s because it is located with its back to the north wind on the north western edge of the Shavano/Spring Creek Mesa ag lands...of course, terrorized by the bombing runs of the Yellow Crop Spraying Attack Craft spewing known carcinogens and chemical warfare agents you'll find invariably listed on the U.S. Department of Defense list of Chemical Warfare Agents...that's why we call them and the spraying "Chemical Warfare". These herbicides and pesticides have the miraculous capacity to kill people if sprayed by persons of foreign origin or descent, but are harmless, beneficial necessities to propping up an already failing and heavily subsidized regional agri/chemical industry producing toxic food substances no knowledgeable E.I. would touch with a ten foot pole, much less ingest.

If you stand still long enough, they will give you a taste test of these agents....and Shavano is not immune. Site SVK 32 is adjacent, but usually upwind of the crops and relatively safe. It provided a haven of safety I repaired to three years ago after the 2-4 D drenching of my living site by the neighboring rancher produced anaphylactic shock (asthmatic respiratory collapse) which prevented me from occupying my own home for three weeks...a glaring example of how critical identified chemical-free safe zones on public lands can be to the survival of an E.I.

On more than one occasion, because of the frequency of revisits, drug addled, nude, screaming teenagers with unattended roaring bonfires singing the beetle killed junipers have been encountered and occasionally, on confrontation, curtailed...the last had parked their vehicle in the middle of the access road and build a fire, whose ring remains in front of the car so inebriated they couldn't register or credence the fact that the road continued, they were blocking it and my campsite was on the other side of it. They were in such a state of the ego-inflamation that makes meth-users dillusionarily bulletproof that I detoured..leaving them to their sanity. Apparently, once the drug state subsided and the invariable paranoia of the hangover took effect, they packed paraphernalia and ran...the smoldering fire remained (unattended the next day) which was put out and the fire scar removed to the side of the road. This is evidence enough that an encouraged and responsible presence consistently occupying public lands is effective deterrent to misuse and abuse. There are myriad other examples at hand.

Of all the sites inventoried by Smart Shelter, this one is both the most feasible for Medium Term Occupancy and damage remediation and the most open and exepemlary of the destruction quickly rendering the legacy of our pristine public lands to the deterioration only paralleled by those adjoining the city of Los Angeles...and yes, the writer has extensive, graphic, personal experience with both and this is not an exaggeration...in fact it is happening, as witnessed by any of us consistently and historically present on public lands over the last 10 -20 years, at speeds unimaginable. The SVK 32 site deteriorated over the winter of 03/04 to a level unrecognizable or explainable given what would be assumed its protection by the mantle of winter...now, given our milder climate, not even a slowing deterrent to abuse of the public legacy.

SVK 32- should be targeted as the first major level public awareness and participation site for bio-remediation and preliminary application of some of the permaculture tools. Its disposal challenges are ideal demonstration opportunities for the power and effectiveness of the Negative Emissions Site Design technologies deal with. Plans are made to start using it as the eye-catcher in upcoming Smart Shelter media and service club presentations beginning with the scheduled show for the Montrose Botanical Garden Society in May, 04. This one is where the publicity emphasis is going to go.

It's great hiking and playing terrain...go there, hassle the motorheads, pick up shell casings and clay pigeons (throw them in the trucks of the shooters), stare at the meth-heads until the paranoia swells and they leave. Like Ghandi, passive resistance, nonviolent responsible presence, investing of the prescident of loving presence has amazing deterrent effect...when signage on one lonely BLM Law Enforcement Ranger cannot. This works. Just your presence there...enjoying the land, picking up the trash, talking to motorheads about how socially unacceptable and irresponsible their vehicles are will produce the image, quality and social values our public lands so desperately need. "There is no such thing as the responsible use of an irresponsible vehicle." Soon, the initiative for the Statewide Ban on personal motorized recreation vehicles we should have enacted 15 years ago, which would have saved us from the destruction already out of control and rampant on these lands and the maddening political wars ahead to get sanity to reign once more over them.

(7apr 04) The Spring Creek Mesa/ Shavano Valley Areas host a wonderful rich, soft red soil, apparently with significant expansive clay content, turning to slippery and un-traversable mud on saturation (which takes a heavy rain). Prior to that (occasional rains) it is traversable. It dries very quickly after storms. Isolation of Micro sites in ungraveled access areas is problematical for short durations, patience awaiting storm cessation and drying occurring within hours is all it takes. Extensive damaging rutting has occurred from unknowledgable and inconsiderate 4 wheelers who have attempted or deliberately sought out "the mudding experience"...another diabolical result of unethical vehicle advertisers deifying mud sloshing as a recreation form. The result is horrifying scars and eroding trenches everywhere. Care should be taken by Land Stewards not to extend this problem. Research is underway for simple restoration technologies...for instance placing animal carcasses and rocks in the rut paths and allowing the rain erosion to fill the damages back in. But the soil is the richest and most sensuous regionally...there is nothing like a barefoot walk across pinion needle beds on red soil after a rainstorm. The soil lofts with saturation expansion and remains aerated on drying producing a soft "fluff"...which also erases the tracks of bare feet in one storm...evidence indeed that this land can heal itself, given curtailment of abuse, a little help in repair and time. The adobe soil on the other side of the Uncompahgre Valley is quite another story....see other site discussions for details.

SVK-33, and SVK-34-are both sites so pristine, sensitive and valuable that their identification and discussion is withheld pending developments. Suffice it to say that they hold within their extraordinary natures and locations the first known and significant potential to apply the highest levels and most profound tested effects of permaculture and native landscaping yet developed to the most needful and potentially productive locales...our public lands. These sites also contain by nature of their boundaries a precedent potential for the working of public lands managers, environmental activists, E.I.s and private land owners together.

Government Springs Site

GVS 1118- This site, like the SVK-32 site in Shavano is located (intentionally) in close proximity to an impacted and attractive abuse locale on public lands. It, however, further serves as a resource for research into the applications of micro-climate conditions and passive solar design in the location and structure of primitive dwellings. This research, now barely a year old with Smart Shelter, has already produced key functional explanations for the structure, ventilation, heating and fresh air induction of kivas and pithouses...both from a technical physics standpoint and also from the aspects of livability and comfort.

The drainage basin wind patterns of this site are particularly challenging for comfort, campsite location and especially so in the shoulder seasons of spring and fall...when out of the wind (especially for the bald) makes the difference between a good nites' sleep under the stars or a maddening retreat with down bag in hand to the tuna-fish tin aluminum camper shell for warmth.

The application of geo-magnetics, absolute zero emf and toxin free environments for (especially) the newly diagnosed E.I. and certainly for those of us already with Alpha Two and Alpha Three diagnosis reeling in the throws of herbicide or smoke inhalation exposures...all afforded by tested open air, readily accessible and identified camping locations can mean the difference between agony or a trip to the emergency room and a return to sanity and ramp down of the allergic scenario we live with on a daily basis.

GVS 1116 is an ideal site for this kind of emergency remediation, a brief reprieve or diagnosis by sorting out exposure ingredients through "ramp down" (discussed in the EI Standard). It is in remote proximity to ag lands, relatively free of herbicide spraying and smoke pollution, not infested with rabbit brush, quickly accessible, though not readily visible.

It neighbors a targeted drug and drinking site displaying the typical plastics, aluminum and glass aftermaths of beer bottles smashed in sandstone canyons...apparenlty a teenagers angry statement toward repressive urban upbringing (as it was in mine). Again, a quiet, responsible presence can help deter this abuse.

Last visit (fall of 03) noting a prolific memorial to a teenage suicide victim replete with plastic flowers and left memorabilia, I hid behind a tree at the sound of the advancing mourners, listening to their tales of inebriation and sexual escapades. One (possibly sensing another presence) cautioned the others to talk more quietly lest they be discovered. The girl said..."ain't no Sheriffs clear out here." There you have it...explanation of the syndrome...perscription for the remedy...a visible, occasional Productive Occupancy presence automatically cleaning the site and counteracting convincingly that assumption.

I almost replied audibly from behind the tree: "don't be so sure." Your mind can follow mine in imagining the paniced aftermath. One or two instances like that can stop the deterioration on this site permanently and quickly, without law enforcement involvement or conflict...simply by a responsible presence and obvious cleaning and removal of the sacrificial debris. In the meantime, the Land Steward E.I. attains health. What more could we win here? Why aren't BLM officials already soliciting help from the E.I. Community.

Ouray County

Specific sites currently are limited to the State Parks facility at the Ridgway Reservoir, which, with a bit of luck, could interface beautifully with the CATPAW/ town of Ridgway prohibition against herbicides now in effect and working. Adding the hiking trails in Ridgway State Park, currently drenched with herbicides several times yearly, to the easily attainable regimens of hand irradication would be a no brainer. Current consensus is that the existing park manager is somewhat short of being capable of seeing that far, but we will reserve judgment until actual contact is made. Ideally, a summer residency off the main thoroughfare of the park providing hand irradication of the leafy invasives along trails could be made to work with existing facilities and staff...no brainer...done deal...it could happen this summer. The park (through oversight unaccountable in modern landscaping knowledge) has managed to plant...yes plant...over a hundred russian olive trees...many planted at adult stages and no doubt great public taxpayer cost...in an ecozone parallel to none for propagation...and indeed they are, taking over the hillsides of the park at the speed of light and visibly spreading from the landscape areas. Those need extraction early and would now provide a great demonstrator site for an area firewood supplier to extract, harvest and sell the olive as firewood along with public information sheets encouraging private property owners to follow suit with their own olive infestations. Many of the trees would be large enough to supply a couple of the smaller wood saw milling services (ie Colona) with resource stock sufficient for a couple of kitchens of finished russian olive cabinets and door panels. This could be a tiny landmark with major impact, given cooperation of the Park manager...we'll see...why don't you put a bug in their ear?

San Miguel County

The legendary incursions of underpaid construction laborers in an overpriced and undersupplied low income housing market perpetrated, ironically by the "Permanent Occupancy" on public (forest service) lands by the mega million dollar Telluride Ski Industry and to the propagation of the mega billion dollar speculative real-estate industry (none of which would exist if our public lands hadn't been given to the rich)(and for which the resulting recreation form is now unaffordable to the majority of citizens)...is a thorn in the side of forest service and BLM officials and law enforcement agencies as these "squatters" trying to make a living camp along the San Miguel, up Bear Creek Canyon, wherever they can find a free space to be long enough to make ends meet in a volatile and seasonal job market.

Had Telluride taken the responsibility for its own growth and impacts in a timely and compassionate manner, we would already see Micros (especially off grid ones) not only empowered and legitimized as affordable, healthy, portable, seasonal workforce housing in that area, but their accommodation required on developing private building sites as a portion of the building permit process...saving us the 250 car "Telluride Snake" of commuting automobiles filing through Ridgway daily delivering the unhousable workforce from Montrose (65 miles away) at maddening and unnecessary expense of canyon traffic and accidents, air pollution and dust, unnecessary consumption and cost of gasoline and escalated drunk driver law enforcement which has, at least, piloted the San Miguel River Canyon Corridor into the regions first "snitch" drunk driver cellphone based, State Patrol initiated law enforcement reporting and prosecution zone. This same technique, coupled with a reward system needs to be extended to public lands violators and abusers...ATV riders, dumpers, drug parties...etc. Making the public a reporter and rewarded extension of strapped law enforcement.

Because Telluride has cow-towed to the snobbish elite which discredits the appearance or lifestyle of Micros (unconstitutional, of course, under federal statute) they avoid viable responsibility and empowerment of solutions such and construction site provisions for on-site Micro employee housing and the result is that the impacts spill over to the use of public lands. Lands managers sympathetic to the innocence and need of these workers have to balance waste impacts and complaints from adjacent private property owners with enforcement. Now, in the canyon, free camping site historically enjoyed by us all are closing rapidly and the automatic two week camping entitlement we have elsewhere is reduced to one week due to pressure...all because the San Miguel County, Mountain Village and Town of Telluride entities will not take responsibility for the impacts and mitigation of the huge, bloated pig making them all rich...the ski and real estate industry...ironically propped up by what??? giving away of our public lands to the ski developers. Any justice in this scenario for those of us who actually built the ski area, the town, even the entertainment industry that draws the tourists and now cannot afford to live in what we created??? Not.

So....the solution....Micros on private development lands. Land Steward programs on public lands. We'll get to this porker in time, but for now, the rich and famous will have to stand in line with the rest of us. In, fact, they can go to the back of the line while the more deserving and needy get serviced.

Mesa County

Fruit State Park, Highline Reservoir, Island Acres are state parks all needing invasive species non-chemical irradication residencies and declared public chemical-free safe zones. Mesa County, because of its population base would be a great public image incubator for EI awareness and Land Steward Pilot Project.