Nixon Rock
Red River, Idaho
In the summer of 1980 I was working on a trail crew for the Elk City Ranger District in Central Idaho. After four days out on a hitch we would often travel up the Red River to the hot springs resort for a soak and a beer (or two). The road ran right next to Red River and so, along the way, we would always see Nixon, immortalized by geological forces several million years previous.
The summer of 1980 was the height of the presidential election season between Carter and Reagan, and "Social Media" had not been invented yet. In fact, televised debates between presidential candidates were still something relatively-new, and so we were still blessed with the innocence of judging politicians on their actual behavior combined with facts...and geology.
Nixon was the worst thing I'd ever seen up to that time. He was a crook. Simple. He was ousted from office because of that. Also simple. And this rock was funny because it reminded us that, although progress was geologically-slow, it was fact-based and...simple. President is caught being a crook. President is ousted. Simple. And solid. Like rocks. Ha ha.
Around August we came in from a hitch in the rolling mountain country behind Elk City that should have been designated wilderness but was left out (and still is), and we sat down in the bunkhouse in the back of the ranger station for a beer and a televised presidential debate. Anyone who has come in from a few days out in the woods, away from cars and other worries, knows that when you "hit the asphalt", your senses are sharpened in proportion to how many days you've spent "out", and you're a bit less prone to the bullshit thrown at you by such things that our hyped-up society loves to throw, like the ubiquitous visual imagery we seem to have grown more and more addicted to over time. It was mere TV in those good old days, the flickering blue light, and I honestly don't remember the substance of the debate, and furthermore refuse to "wikipedia" it up for a synopsis. Let's just agree that it was bad enough.
What always did stand out in my memory, though, was how bad Reagan's "performance" was. He was a joke, especially compared to Jimmie Carter's even, relatively-honest cadence. Reagan appeared--at least to my wilderness-altered state--to be disjointed and dishonest, and on full display for a nation full of TV heads to see! He was obviously pandering to peoples' base instincts for the sake of power. He was a demagogue, a bigot, and not a very good one at that. He was, unlike most rocks I've come to know, transparent, and I remember thinking distinctly, that there was no problem here. People don't want a crook for a president again. Geology will prevail. People will see right through this guy for what he was, and we will go out for another hitch into the mountains that will someday be declared the wilderness that it deserves to be, with all due protections as per the laws of the the Land, the same laws that we use to oust crooks from office (at least when they've been caught) and at least allow us to get a good night's sleep sometimes.
After resting up for the weekend, we went out for another four-day hitch, and I didn't think anymore about the news. Why should I? The world I had landed in was beautiful, I was healthy and we slept out on the ground with cares washing off our skin with every breath of breeze that also swayed the tops of lodgepole stands. I was duly appreciative.
Then we came back, hit the blacktop, and what I viscerally remember about our re-entry was the news awaiting us, that Reagan had "won" the debate, had in fact, cleaned Carter's clock and was on a roll. This, of course, came from an already-corrupt mass media that would benefit greatly from a divisive president who would simultaneously "sell product" as a direct result of his divisiveness while giving them giant tax cuts, which I kind of knew already, but this was not what I remember thinking when I learned, in my wilderness-altered state, what had occurred in crazy TV world during my brief sojourn into the sane one.
My distinct memory of what I thought is only two words long, and for all you visual-imagery-crazed fellow travelers of mine who are equally wondering WTF is going on, I will write them down for you here:
"Uh-oh."
And I was right.
I took the picture that opens this post with my cell phone when I was passing through the Clearwater country last weekend on a foray to collect some additional insights into my book-in-progress, "What's Bigger than the Land? The Life and Times of Stewart M. Brandborg". To say that Nixon and Reagan had a huge, negative effect on Brandy and his life's passion of "making democracy work" is a gross understatement. Nixon and Agnew sicced the IRS on Brandy's Wilderness Society (TWS) during their running battle with Brandy over the Alaska Pipeline, and this was ultimately what scared TWS into firing him as executive director in 1976. Brandy saw--and contributed to--the Nixonites getting kicked out of the halls of power--for a bit at least--but he had no such luck with Reagan. After he and his wife, AnnaVee, returned to the Bitterroot Valley in 1986, they fought Reaganism hard and well, mostly in the realm of forest-use and planning issues, but they and their allies were constantly being vilified by the local wing nuts-du-jour, who seemed, like Reagan, less and less attached to facts and more and more attached to hate-enhanced talk-show radio and the ever-more virulent social media pseudo-reality. The Brandborgs never gave up. In fact, they never let it bother them overmuch. It was just part of what you put up with when you stood up and did and said what's right. People have always been...well...people, they believed, and you had to deal with them on that level. Simple.
This week we had a criminal in the Bitterroot (Ammon Bundy this time)whipping up more crazy hate for--what?---a book selling tour? Who knows. But the word is a couple busloads if hate-charged people were seen just below Lost Horse Hill on Highway 93 yesterday, taking a 'stand' against...evil environmentalists?!? Bundy's own public statements are so confused as to be unintelligible, but it seems the gist of his 'stand' is that a property owner is being forced to take down an illegal gate blocking public access to a road behind it.
Yes, this is the same crazed crowd that in a blink would take the same frenzied 'stand' against evil enviros colluding with an overreaching government to close a road leading to public land (think Jarbridge, Nevada, circa late '90s).
Irrational behavior doesn't even begin to describe the bigotry and nativism that ReaganCo. unleashed in 1980 and that our poor ol' Bitterroot has received (and is still receiving) the full measure of. Trump? He's just a symptom of the disease our society no longer seems able or willing to cure. The kind of crazed support on display that a criminal like Bundy can gin up for such a joke of an "issue" as a locked gate is rooted in the kind of mentality that leads to bloodshed and, in the big picture, war. This, I believe and have believed most of my adult life, is the worst aspect of human behavior, on full display in the Bitterroot this week, and I'm glad to say that, finally, due to the unflinching efforts of our old time conservationists and other progressives like the Brandborgs, the tide is finally turning against them. On this very day there are millions of people protesting against insanities such as a Bundy would peddle, in the name of Climate Action, and I only wish Brandy and AnnaVee were around to see it finally come to fruition.
Yeah, we were all young once, and Nixon was bad enough, but he's just a rock in a river now and so will all of them be someday. Yes, Reagan was worse and had a little more staying power. Four decades is long enough to have been stumbling around in the Dark Ages waiting for things to get bad enough for enough people to rise up. In a sane world, the likes of Ammon Bundy would be in prison, and so, by definition, it's not a sane world yet. But Nixon Rock is still funny, just on the face of what's been possible in the past and will be possible again soon. Brandy and AnnaVee would be tickled to see all the kids who have had the truth thrust upon them and, far from shrinking from it, are willing to act.
That truth? Without democracy, and all its associated righteous corollaries, we will perish from the Earth.
Simple enough, right?
