The Sylvan Echo

By Rachel Mosier

The caller’s question is to the point. “Would someone from the park haul water for a group of Boy Scouts?” The park ranger’s answer is not so simple. He wants to know why the Scouts can’t carry their own water. The woman on the phone explains that the troop leaders would like to have water waiting for the Scouts at the backcountry camp sites, so it’s there when they all finish hiking. “We would have to hike it in just as you would,” explains the ranger.

“Can’t you use an ATV or something?” the woman asks.

“No. Your Scouts will have to carry in their own water.” The ranger places the phone down; he’s not surprised by the question, but it’s troubling none the less. Neither he nor I, also a ranger, understand why it is that humans and nature remain so far separated. Why was it reasonable to the scout leader to ask us to haul water?

It occurs to me that the Scout leader’s initial question is really about expectations. It asks who is responsible for taking care of people in the wilderness, and how do park rangers and environmental educators teach about wilderness, nature, and being prepared in the outdoors.

If the ranger hauls water to the campsite, four miles round trip, the Scouts will have no better sense of where water comes from, how little there is, and how precious the resource is than if they were sitting at home getting a glass from the tap. The Scouts’ learning experience will be quite different if they have to carry their own water. They will learn that in the high plains desert of Colorado, sources for water are few and far between and, if they are lucky to find them, may contain little more than a swallow, all of which will be non-potable without filtration. Carrying their own water, forced to conserve as they drink and cook over their camp stove, would teach them about the value and necessity of water, and that once drunk or spilled it’s gone, there is no more.

The 2400 acres the Scouts want to hike and camp in transitioned from working cattle and hay ranch to State Park in the 1960s. The house, barns, and stables were leveled by the park to make room for picnic tables and BBQ grillers. Today the only indications that there was a ranch are three full-grown cedar trees and the remnants of a stone walkway. Standing in front of the walk, looking west towards where the front porch stood, one might think the ranch family lived rather primitive. It’s a notion based on the modern idea of comfortable living, and from a culture accustomed to ease. In reality, the ranch family did quite well. They were able to extend their ranch from 160 acres to over 2600 and put all four of their children through college.

Here, where the prairie meets up with forest, the ranch family had to have a relationship with the land; their life and livelihood as ranchers depended on it. They strung pipes from a spring in a north-western gulch to their shallow well dug between their house and barn. They must have wondered how to use less water, and how to conserve what they were already using. The spring in Well Gulch depends on the winter snow pack and the late summer monsoons for regeneration; there would have been times when everything went dry, including the family’s well.

How might today’s conversation to encourage water conservation change if it were framed in terms everyone can relate to – houses, raising families, and modern conveniences? I don’t want to revert back to the time of western settlement, when people had less than an outhouse. But what I would like to see is people making an effort to work with the conditions of nature, not against.

I have a unique job as a park ranger; it gives me the gift of having to work with nature, of having to pay attention to cycles and changes. What I know is that nature is not stagnant, it does not run on a predetermined course; instead it is ever changing and re-formulating, adapting, and altering. Nature not only makes change look easy and possible, but necessary and exciting. Sadly though, our concept of nature, of environment, has moved indoors. There is a cultural acceptance that nature is a view, one that can be witnessed through a window or traveling car.

The Boy Scouts are practicing only what they’ve been taught and what they know from experience: that natural resources are readily available and plentiful. I hope these Scouts and their parents do decide to come to the park. I would like to hike with them. I’d like to show them the springs and drainages. We could talk about the plum trees which only produce decent fruit in wet years. We could cook together, making great meals which require only one cooking pot and little water. We could even roast marshmallows over our camp stoves. There would be stories and lots of time for exploration and questions.

In theory, on a wilderness backpacking trip, Boy Scouts could learn quite a bit about nature and the environment – it depends, however, on how willing the leaders are to get outside the familiar, to let go of the easy, and to put themselves in a position where they too have to recognize the importance and the inevitable shortage of water, and the natural conditions of a desert landscape.

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