Cabins in the Woods

I love this country, always have. I come from a long line of America-lovers. I have toured—and I mean more than flown over or driven through—every state. Camped in all but one (RI), canoed the rivers of almost all, explored the capitol buildings of most (yes, including RI). It is exciting to investigate Chicago, Seattle, Anchorage and many others on foot. Public transportation in Boston, NYC, and Chicago is a trip.

But far and away my favorite parts of America are her open spaces. I especially enjoy the National Parks, the state parks, the National Forests, even BLM lands where I can paddle, hike and camp. Naturally I have been a contributor to the parks and conservancies every year, and get the junk mail to prove it.

There is a short hike in Zion National Park along Taylor Creek to the Double Arch Alcove. It takes you past two abandoned cabins, the Larson and the Fife cabins, built in the 1930s before this area was absorbed by Zion National Park. That’s about all you’ll know.

Paddling down our nation’s first National River, the Buffalo in Arkansas, you pass several abandoned homesites. Information about their former owners is sparse. You assume the residents went broke and moved.

In Montana there is a 150 mile section of the Missouri River, left intact since Lewis and Clark’s Discovery Corps came through here over two hundred years ago. You can get out and inspect several abandoned homesteads. Again, very little information is given in the guide as to why these ranches and farms lie untenanted and collapsing.

As you drive through Smoky Mountains National Park, the guide brochure points out former schoolhouses, homes, and stores. Where did those people go?

Throughout the country there are hundreds of abandoned homes on now-public land, and you can find them in parks, on preserves, and written about in books. Until now, I had assumed that these unfortunate people, who had to abandon their dreams, had simply chosen an inhospitable location, or had been bought out.

Now we have to wonder. The relocation of the American Indian, an injustice that they found fatal to resist, is a horror in American history eclipsed only by the enslavement of human beings. Stop and think that the same has been done to Japanese Americans less than 80 years ago, and you begin to wonder how many families were uprooted and tricked out of homes that lay in the path of a railroad or highway or shopping mall. And what about those cabins in the wilderness that were devoured by the machinations of an ambitious park administrator?

When I moved onto my little patch of land north of the San Gabriel Mountains I was in awe of my surroundings. I still am, by the way. I wondered, “How can I possibly own this? I do not own this; I can only cherish it and steward it for the animals and people (me) that live here.” I was proud to take over a small old stone house, rather than to carve up the land and build yet another structure. Over the years I watched Acton get chopped into smaller and smaller parcels, as city people bought, built, split and split. I was proud that our neighborhood was not turning into a suburb.

Not everyone in the community felt that way; some did build, some did split. For the most part, though, the area has maintained its outback character—partly because of the terrain, but mostly because that is how enough of us wanted it.

Yes, some did build, some did split. Was it necessary, then, for the State of California to come in here and engineer a way to trick the residents out of their property values? Aren’t there plenty of ways a heavy-handed government can prevent, or at least slow, the ticky-tackinization of a rural area, without resorting to strategies that would be illegal for a private speculator?

Besides, our area is one of the better preserved, by our own efforts, unlike many others in the County.

But this is not really about conservation, is it? This is about a handful of people making millions from a sneaky land deal, and scooping up a dozen homes for good measure—and why not? They are the government; they can do what they want.

Don’t be a dope. They are not the government; they are acquisitive people who are misusing the powers of their position to make a personal gain. And if you now think, as I once did, that people just walked away from those cabins, and that you are secure from the scheming of people who look at you and see dollar signs, you are as dumb as I was.

Are you going to wait until the gravel trucks are running down your street and you can’t stand to live there anymore and so you sell at a terrific loss, maybe to a developer in cahoots with a County or State official who happens to have directed those trucks your way? You think that can’t happen? You think they are not that creative?

Don’t be a fool. Write a letter. They’ll only scatter when the lights are on.