Forest Rangers

Forest Rangers seem all to be very nice people. At least the ones I have met are. They love nature. Years ago, my girl friend and I hiked in about 30 miles or so to photograph a valley on the North of Yosemite National Park, that the Sierra Club was trying to get declared a National Wilderness Area. (The photos were put into a book and hand delivered to every member of Congress and the Senate, so they could see what it looked like, and it is now a genuine Wilderness Area. I have ever since thought of it as my own personal Wilderness Area.)

Anyway, on the trail, we met a Forest Ranger and stopped awhile to chat.

He told us that a few weeks before, he had found a fellow riding a big motorcycle up the same mountain trail. This was very illegal. Such vehicles often do a lot of damage in high altitude wilderness. For example you can run over a plant up there and it might take it twenty years to recover, if you didn't kill it. He could have just given the fellow a "ticket" to pay a fine, but instead, he removed the distributor rotor, let the air out of the tires, and left him there with the inoperable bike. It must have taken him days to push the thing all the miles back to the highway.

There was obviously a certain amount of malice in the way he handled the situation, but I still get a chuckle out of thinking about it.

... Doug