Sometimes Better to Walk than Fly

This is an extract of my book

Emily


SOMETIMES BETTER TO WALK THAN FLY


Selections from my weekly column
by


Emily Ungerecht Horswill








©2007 Emily Ungerecht Horswill
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any means without the author’s permission.
Book Design: Thomas Smith
Cover photo: Hikers Trek through the Greenway. (Credit Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust)
Other books by Emily Ungerecht Horswill

FOLLOW THE HAWK : the first of historical sequels
In the Spring of 1884, due to an influenza epidemic, Jim buries his family and neighbors, the community who had tithed future funds to support his dream to attend Concordia Seminary to complete the education begun in his Uncle’s rectory. He the choir soloist, plays organ, fills-in for choir master, manages pretty well with Latin, outlines Uncle Dodd’s sermons, even parses a bit of Virgil. Now he goes West. On The Swing B Ranch, he is ”That kid who can’t do nothin’ but read.”
MONTANA WINDS:Sequel to Follow the Hawk
An adventure story in which Jim leads his community to financial success rooted in sustainability.








TO



ZOLA ROSS WHO TAUGHT ME HOW TO WRITE A BOOK



AND FOR
Annette, my wonderful, precious daughter who, in spite of her handicap and her life of pain, has, for 60 years, been my guiding spirit and my inspiration


TO HER READERS:
I wrote my first story with charcoal on the sides of a wagon. I was 5 years old. I saw the first one in print 73 years ago.

In 1972 I was one of many who joined Congressman Mike Lowry in an effort to save some of the Nation’s still unspoiled natural areas, In the effort, Mike, Congressman from Washington State, read a letter I wrote to members of Congress. As a result, he led a group of U. S Congressmen to the top of Bear Top Mountain in Mount Rainier National Park and the entire Cedar River Watershed, in which Bear Top is merely a grain of sand, was designated as wilderness.

During this activity, I meet Stewart Udall, then Secretary of the Interior, one of the few of leaders who, had his boots pointed firmly on the only path from which we could hope to leave a livable planet in our wake. Next, to the amusement of other literary folk involved, a team of judges for The Rocky Mountain Outdoor Writers Conference Contest gave my submission first place and his second.

We didn’t expect Stewart at the awards banquet. it being a long jump from The Oval Office to Park City, Utah. But, with the smell of steak, the door banged against the wall, and Stewart, strode in followed by three photographers. “Where is this woman who writes so much better than I do?” he demanded. Looking down at me from his 6 foot plus viewpoint in a voice that matched, he announced “Peanut size, too. Human man can’t stand it: but she’s sitting at the wrong table.” Cameras clicking, he plucked me from my chair; and, loudly lamenting his frustration with the situation, he studied and rejected table after table as we toured the room. At the last table, he rubbed his hands and smiled. Ignoring the “Reserved for” sign, he gestured for those diners to move over, which they did among waves of laughter. As the maitre de brought chairs, he introduced me to the editors and publishers at his chosen table. Minutes later, as he pushed his chair back, he whispered in my ear, “Due back in DC in the morning. Hope this does it for you, kid.” He crossed a continent twice to do that charade for me!!

The result was a weekly column published as TREAD LIGHTLY which in turn begat this book. It happened thus:


Three years ago, I heard the thud of footsteps. A voice called, “Wait. I know who you are!” Panting, she caught up and explained, “When I was 6 years old and my brother was 12, we spent Sunday morning sprawled on his bed reading your column. Pulling one from her pocket, she said, “Now when I can’t stand the world as it is, I read them again.” Hugging me, she whispered, “Thank you.”

In my apartment I booted my computer and wrote the prologue for SOMETIMES BETTER TO WALK THAN FLY, the collection of the
of the columns a six-year-old kept.

With all my love,

emilyhorswill.blogspot.com

PAGE #
CONTENTS

PART 1: SETTING THE PACE

Prologue 9
My Patato Patch 14

PART II: EARTH ETHICS RISES FROM THE DUST

A Homesteader Returns 18
Back to the Dustbowl
The Last Great Op
Ever See Sheep that Couldn’t Go Out In The Rain 26
The Traveling Fields
Grass is the Forgiveness of Nature 28

A Homesteader Returns shared second place for a Western
Writers’ of America Spur Award. It was first published in The
New Land which is produced by The American Land Resource Assoc.

PART III: WEST BY EAST: THEN ONWARD AND UPWARD BY BOOT

A Message For Mosquitoes 34

IV: TREAD LIGHTLY

Sometimes Better to Walk than Fly 38
Don't Be Yellow in the Garden 41
If Only a Child Could Save It 42
All WashedUp 44
Thereau Had Answers to the Energy Problem 46
Garbage Man Hitches Up Real Horse Power 47


PART V: INTO THE WOODS

Maybe It's Time to Return to the Sod House 51
Alder is NOT a Junk Tree 54
Forests in Perpetuity? 56
The Woodcutter. 58
Wilderness Home for the Woodcutter’s Indian Boy 60
Chester, the Woodcutter’ Dog 62
Sharing the Wilderness with the Kennedy’s 64

PART VI: AND WALKING WITH FEATHERED & FOUR-LEGGED FRIENDS

Soft shoe with a Flutter 69 A New Resident on Jay Deck 72 A Chipmunk Sermon 74
"Male & Female, Pair by Pair” 75
Zoos, The Good News 77

PART VII: POLITICAL PUNDITS

The New Drug War—Let’s Take the Natural Cure 80 A Retrospective Look at the Presidency before “Read My Lips” 83
Uneasy Rider 84
The Forest Service on "Wilderness" Before" Wilderness" Became
"Old Growth” 86
U. S. Cures Unemployment Problem—For Japan 89
Educate the People & Inform Them “Thomas Jefferson 91
Immoral Minority 94
Chicken? Veggies? 96
PART VIII: MORE RAMBLING--SOMETIMES SIDEWAYS,
SOMETIMES IN SOMERSAULTS
A Winter Wonderland 99
Light at the End of the Tunnel 101
Out of the Frying Pan 103

PART 1X: AND SOMETIMES RAMBLING BACKWARD

Levi's Date Back To Chris Columbus 105
Secret Ingredient was Indigo 107
Clean Living Indian Style 111
First Colonists Were B.C's Haidas 113

PART X: EARTH'S ETHICS AGAIN
The Miracle Paper Plant 120
The Ditch 122
The Good News is the Crusade 126
Lucky Break for Sunnybank 129
Oregon’s First Farm 134
Dayville Cares 138
Dayville Keeps Trying 142

PART XI: THE CONTEMPLATIONS Of A HIKER WHO SITS
A LOT--AND SOMETIMES SNOOZES.

Child Birth, Nature's Way, From Experience 142
Granny and the Skeptical Salesman 145
Wilderness Remembered 148

PART XII: FROM AN OUTDOOR WRITER'S JOURNAL
Maybe a Trip into the "Outback" Would Finish
Chapter 150
This Friend Takes a Beating and Keeps Right on Chugging151



PART I: Setting the Pace

Prologue

My Potato Patch






PROLOGUE

Seventy-two years ago, I saw the first article published under my byline. I was 13. Subsequently, 2,500 words a week, including a column called TREAD LIGHTLY, appeared in print. Twenty-five earned awards. Two hundred became this little book.
Readers have asked, “How did you come to write with such passion about conservation years before the existence of the term” Global Warming?”
My answer is that that’s the wrong question. The right one is, “Why didn’t you”? My people’s propensity for greed and destruction of our natural areas was obvious long before I arrived. But perhaps a reminder is in order.

For eons, the World rested under a melting blanket of ice. As the blanket melted, the First People shared the land. Honoring their role as caretakers of this gift from their Maker, they left little trace of their footsteps. Then my forefathers, and likely yours, came from the sea and with shame I admit that mine had no thought of either caring or sharing. They wanted ownership any way they could get it.
They survived their first winter on the Native’s largess. So did their friends, who followed them by millions. With guns against bows and arrows, they murdered the residents: the remnants they drove onto The Great Plains, better known then as The Great American Desert, a vast grassland, of scorching sun, whipping winds and frozen winters —and little rain. The Newcomers came in such numbers that within hundred years they, again, ran out of land.
In the 1870s the new leaders, beseeched by masses of landless immigrants, sent J. Wesley Powell, scientist, botanist, and geologist into the Great American Desert to determine if it was worth taking from The Natives. Shortly, Powell verified that great herds of buffalo fattened on the grass seed, that rivers teemed with fish and waterfowl and that great migrations of birds hid the sun for weeks on end. But his report warned, “Plow this land and in 60 years it will be a wasteland, a desert of blowing dust.
However, under pressure from railroads and land agents who planned to benefit, the government hid the Powell Report. In 1889, the Homestead Act offered ownership to anyone who plowed ALL of it in 5 years!
Fifty-eight years later, on a fall day in 1934, we filled up on the last of the oatmeal and joined the barefoot, ragged hordes leaving the Dustbowl. With our few possessions tied to the running board or fastened on top of the battered Ford, we left with the first hint of sun seeping through the sky thick with floating dirt.
With a few drops of rain the air we breathed would be mud. At the wheel, my Father peered into the murk guided by fence posts all but the tops buried under the blowing drifts of sand. My two little brothers, too young to understand, too young to connect this with the grocery store carrot their eyes longed for, bounced with anticipation as the car lurched into motion. I, having dealt with the carrot scene and the little hands reaching, listened to them, dry-eyed, my supply of tears exhausted.
Bodies of animals spattered across the prairie testified that this land could no longer support life. Occasional stands of thistles grew from cracked land. The cracks resembled a giant copy of the tic, tac toes game children play with. I could remember when wild flowers had stretched from horizon to horizon perfuming the air. Now four-year- old Earl and seven-year-old, Cal used thumb and finger to their noses to close out the stench of rotting flesh.
As the sun hung overhead, mom divided the last can of beans among the 3 of us. It took the edge off our hunger, but Mom reminded us that tonight we would fill up on venison stew with friends who had preceded us to the Northern Minnesota swamps. There, on land largely devoid of the once great forests, lakes and bogs still teemed with fish and strawberries and deer for those tough enough to brave the droves of mosquitoes and the long 50 below winters and the short steaming hot summers.
My father’s foot on the brake signaled a stop. I put the rag in his hand and watched him scrape the dust and bugs from the windshield and reactivate the quivering wipers. I put the rag under the rug where Dad could reach it and dozed.
My mother’s voice woke me. “If you are going to open the door, shut it behind you fast, unless you want carry several pounds North Dakota dust in your quilt as a memento,” she said. I opened both eyes. We were parked beside a statue. Full-sized and very much alone, he stood dressed, traditionally, in fringed buckskin, one long finger pointing down at the plowed ground. The caption beneath stated, “Wrong side up” —which it certainly was.
The statue was new to the little kids, but I had seen it before. As it had then, it left me in what Dad called my deep funk mode, which, he said, was bound to lead to my “doing something about it mode,” at which point, to keep me out of trouble, I must be locked in the barn until I recovered. That usually got a laugh, but this time I just sat back on all our quilts deep in dreaming up something to do about it. But what? I sat trying to dredge a miracle out of nothing. I must have sat and dreamed for hours.
When I returned, mother was saying, “Wouldn’t you know? That’s the only gas pump in Jamestown and it’s on top of a hill. We sat at the bottom of it, in the ancient overloaded car incapable of reaching the gas. The obvious answer was to lighten the load. The cook stove would probably do it, but we didn’t have the muscle. Then my miracle, roared up in a truck. (Never discount a miracle, even if it is one you didn’t ask for). The truck’s door opened and a man’s bass boomed. “Need a push, folks. Come on Jack, let’s do our Boy Scout.” Two husky young men leaped to the ground. The car rolled up the hill as if it were a toy. Pointing at a pump halfway up, my mother said, “Wouldn’t you know? It’s 11 cents a gallon where we can’t stop and they want 12 at the top. “
“Never mind Min.” I got enough to get to the Demises. Pulling out a wallet, Dad counted pennies then turned his pockets inside out.
As we drove on signs directed us to the North Dakota—Minnesota border and the Red River and the bridge spanning it. We came to it from a curve, suddenly. Far out at the half-way point, a car looked toy-size. We inched onto it. Looking down at water below made me dizzy. My father’s hand helped me out. Clinging to the rail, I looked down and down. Then I saw that it flowed thick like chocolate pudding. My father’s voice explained, “That’s Canada’s wheat fields heading for the ocean to be salted down for ever.” No plant I knew grew in salt, certainly not wheat. To overcome the nausea, I picked my brain for the image of a forest.
I could barely remember the pre-Dustbowl’s cottonwoods that had once lined the prairie creeks. I had seen only pictures of a perpetually green tree with needles. I tucked the image into my mind, tasting it.
But when happened I was unprepared. When the branches formed a canopy overhead I stared, bewitched. My father opened the door and invited a walk. I moved into the trees as if sleep-walking. Tottering on spindly legs, a spotted fawn sniffed my hand. Head back I looked up and up and up into the tree’s crowns. I threw my arms around a regal patriarch and fell on my knees. As we tunneled through the canopy tears rolled down my cheeks, but The International Paper Company had preceded us and shortly we exited into a fresh clear-cut and the stench, this time, of oil and gas dumped and the devastation hit me in the face. With clenched teeth I promised payback.
My opportunity came too soon. We settled in village of 300 logging families called Northome. That winter, taking advantage of the local poverty, International Paper Company paid the County pennies for the remainder of the forests, using the argument that we have all heard a thousand times: trees for jobs.
The Company argued that the biter cold winter made delivering a payroll impossible. Then during one fine spring night, owing local logging families three months salary, The “Company” sneaked south where they would destroy the hardwoods.
That winter I saw children running barefoot leaving blood in the snow with every step. I wrote it on a scrap of brown paper sack and the local gab sheet published it. The lumberjacks muttered that due to my acidic prose, they would have no jobs next winter. I pointed out that when they helped destroy the forests they destroyed their jobs. I was on my way and I never turned back.



On the whole Sometimes Better to Walk Than Fly is the story of the development of an environmentalist and one person’s effort
to elicit tender loving care for the lovely places that we were given.
It starts in a potato patch 83 years ago.










Part I: MY POTATO PATCH


When I was a child on Cherry Creek, I had a shelf in my closet that was my very own. For a year or two an assortment of toads, frogs, grasshoppers and battered birds lived there, and for a while a seven-foot bull snake. But he came after my potato patch.
He was destined to be my guest the day Mother insisted on rechanneling my interests. Mother announced her intent at breakfast. "I declare," she said to my Father. "It's time our daughter got rid of those hopping, crawling creatures in her room. I've about had it. Those things belong outside."
"Maybe she would like to have her own garden," Dad answered, smiling at me. "There are a lot of bugs and birds in a garden patch."
When Dad finished his coffee, he found a seed catalog to illustrate the little piles of seeds Mother bought. Father seemed fascinated. Dutifully, I looked as he turned the pages and I listened with one ear. Then a picture of a yellowish-brown bug captured my attention. Its beetle-shaped shell had black stripes running from top to bottom. Under the picture were the words, "Potato Bug," and a paragraph that read, "Before the white settlers plowed all the ground, this bug was a 'good citizen.' He fed on sand burrs, a wild cousin to the potato."
I looked back at the picture. The stripes were thin, shiny threads, like spider webbing except they were black. I counted them. There were l0. He was beautiful. I had never had any potato bugs, probably because there weren't many sand burrs left that weren't plowed under.
"Daddy, can I have a potato patch?" I asked.
The planting was disappointing. Much of the preparation was geared to methods of discouraging potato bugs. It appeared unlikely that anything of interest would come of this garden, so I turned my back on potatoes and potato bugs and started kicking a rock. It rolled around the corner of the milk shed, and there I saw this big bull snake moving slowly toward me. The way he propelled himself enchanted me. Things were looking up. The snake seemed to waggle, but I decided he moved in a straight line. We stopped to examine each other. Our interest was mutual. His tongue came out and darted to and fro, then he waggled left in a friendly gesture to give me the right-of-way. He was traveling toward the chicken coop, and I followed.
We both lived outside most of that summer, but I fed him. He liked eggs best. I swiped big ones from the geese. Watching him prepare a goose egg for his stomach was a treat. He would slither right up to my hand and swallow my offering whole with a swoosh: it made a bump a few inches back of his head.
Next, he wiggled to the nearest tree and wrapped all seven feet around the trunk, pulling his coils tighter and tighter until the egg squashed. I could almost see it splash. It made a noise like a burp. My snake liked mice, too, so I called him Tabby.
When the first snow fell, we moved inside. I cut one end out of a cardboard box to give my guest privacy, and he was little trouble. In cold weather he didn't move much. When he did, he used the leg that held up one end of the shelf, which was only couple of feet from the floor, for a staircase to his bedroom.
Tabby didn't make any noise, and I was so good about cleaning my room that year that Mother didn't notice my roommate for some time. When she did she marched, straight-backed, out to the barn to find Dad. I explained to Dad that Tabby didn't hop and he wasn't crawling much. Then, too, he ate mice and bugs, and I was saving him for the garden in the spring. For a minute, I thought Dad was mad. He got all red and choked, but they let me keep Tabby.
I can't remember how my potato patch did.







PART IV: Sometimes Better to Walk Than Fly



The crumbling logging roads scarring the steep sides of the mountain wilderness were abandoned. Today so was the trail. Farther up, it disappeared into dense, second growth fir forest. Ahead, it twisted through tall bunch grass and flaming fireweed.
I glanced at the new emblem on the jacket I carried and read, "OUTDOOR WRITERS' OF AMERICA" with satisfaction. I picked up my daypack and turned my back on the disappearing auto, gloating at the success of my conspiracy to be alone with the mountain.
Shortly, I stopped to watch a humming bird dive-bombing a bee's bottom up-ended in a flower.
Then, I saw the six black ants, marching in solid no-nonsense formation under their heavy load of twig.
In the midst of all this activity, I began to feel sleepy.
For me, a meadow had always acted as an opiate. It had been a mistake to stop, but I'd stretch out for just a moment.




The bee buzzed--louder and louder--became a roar. My eyes popped open to look up into the underside of a mammoth helicopter. It was settling down right on top of me. I jumped up shouting, but the roar obliterated all else. The air pressure from the props threatened to push me back into the ground. My hat took to the air, circling upward. A notebook followed, its pages riffling like a deck of cards in the hands of a gambler.
I waved my arms. The machine hovered, then continued its descent. Leaves, dirt, pebbles, dried grass followed the hat as if sucked by a vacuum cleaner. Now, with my face level with the tips of the revolving propeller, I struggled to keep my feet against the blast. The machine touched earth, and I dived toward the cab for protection.
A door opened and a man in a khaki flight suit jumped out and ran toward a clump of bush. Then I saw the refueling tank. As he hooked up a hose, I was reminded of Farmer Brown's cornfield friend, the scarecrow.
Clothing billowed and flapped around his spare frame. In a moment, he bent all seven, reedy feet to put a mouth near my ear. One corner of the mouth twisted upward in a wry grin, as he shouted, "Name's Pat O'Reilly." His gaze slid to the patch on my jacket. "A writer? Walking around looking for a story?" I nodded. "Why walk when you can ride?" he offered. "I'll drop you in to interview my logging partner."
His eyes laughed, daring me, as he jerked a thumb at the wilderness of trees and opened the cab door. The roar deafened. The forest bent under the onslaught as we hung above it. O'Reilly shouted. "Nice boy, Jim, but he's lower than a snake's under drawers today. Needs company."
He leaned over a radio. I heard, "...bringing you...remember, I promised. Boss? Hell, he's out on the Peninsula." The radio crackled back, but I missed the return message. The lanky pilot's shoulders shook with mirth. "Sure, blonde. YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT!"
I glanced at my reflection in the panel—at auburn braids with threads of grey. What fun! Then, I looked down at twenty square miles of trees and panicked. Was I going down into that on that logging hook? How would I find anyone in that jungle if I did? But the machine was slipping through an opening. Too late to change my mind.
We slipped closer and closer to a steep shelf of rock— hovered at three feet. O'Reilly pointed over the edge. "Watch where I pick up the logs." He opened the door. I jumped. With a roar and a shower of debris, he was gone.
As he disappeared, the marrow in my leg bones melted. Still, my new patch suggested I was a journalist stalking a story. I wavered between pride and weak knees, then sat down to reconnoiter. A ride in a helicopter was one thing, but to be picked off this precarious ledge...
Then I saw the grasshopper the Sioux Indians had called "friend." An Indian scout consulted with this little, green, wingless one, and the grasshopper pointed to buffalo. I consulted. The grasshopper zipped from the top of his grass tree to the ground.
But I had just come down!
On the other hand, perhaps I was still too high. I glanced again at the patch and made my decision. A short distance down the mountainside the helicopter was lifting a log, and there a young logger had a walkie-talkie.
As I slid off the ledge and scrambled through the brush, I composed my message.
"Thanks for the lift, O'Reilly. However, you won't get into trouble if I walk back, and I'll enjoy the ramble."
I would.