[R-G] WILD WEST ETHIC AND THE CRUCIBLE OF PARANOIA [IDAHO LIFE AND TIMES]

[Hunter Gray]

Brief note by Hunter Bear:

We are in the process of doing a little reorganization of our massive website, www.hunterbear.org  Nothing too ambitious at this point.  I'll have a few more words on that in due course.  In the meantime, here is an older post -- which fits my current mood. Some may have missed it initially.  H.

THE WILD WEST ETHIC AND THE CRUCIBLE OF PARANOIA  Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear]  January 2, 2003

[For a pleasant sequel to at least part of this -- the Bureau of Land Management and the  U.S. Forest Service -- see  http://hunterbear.org/LUPUS%20PREDATOR.htm ]

Sure.

I'm a radical.  Been one most of my life.  Socialist democracy is just fine
with me.  But my view of that Beulah Land is that it had better provide a
full measure of bread-and-butter -- and a full measure of liberty.  I like
the idea of a maximum number of reasonable choices -- and I don't
cotton to the idea of living in a rabbit hutch.  Or even a corral.

And also, as someone who grew up in rural Northern Arizona -- with a
full-blooded Native father and a mother from an old Western "frontier"
family -- I also hold to an Ethic coming jointly from each of those
not-always-congenially-together perspectives: don't ask personal questions
outside your circle of family and friends -- and, unless it's a distress
situation, mind your own damn business.

Here's a recent and relevant tale for you all:

Coming back about high noon from my several daily hours in the far-up rugged
and high country, early November-cool and with our Shelty named Hunter on
leash, I had just topped out on the final ridge before starting down the
very long
and steep sage-brush and juniper covered slope. As the land below me plunged
sharply down, for me at least a ten minute final junket from where I stood,
it was slowly narrowed by two boundary canyons -- right into the scattered
residential area, bordering the wild country, where our family has our
home.

At that point, there is a fence with an open gate which separates the
official 'way-up western city limits of Pocatello, Idaho from the public
land areas -- Bureau of Land Management [BLM] -- on which I was now
traveling, and also some adjoining stretches of the
Caribou National Forest.  From the gate onward for a ways into the high
country, there is a thin and rough trace of an "off-road" road -- and BLM
formally closes that to any vehicles of any kind for six months starting on
November 15.  But that date was some several days away.

As I now began to go carefully down the steep slope, I saw, far below, the
tiny figure of a man slowly come up past some houses and, going through the
gate, walk just up a bit of the rapidly steepening slope. An occasional
walker on the edges was not unusual.

But then!

Up the road toward the gate came two new pickups I'd never seen before. And
they were close-followed by the vehicle of a neighbor who lives not too far
from
the Pocatello side of the fence. He went quickly into his garage and out of
sight.

But the two pickups stopped at the gate. Two men got out of each. Going to
the fence, they then stood as a lined-up foursome -- facing up. Like they
were waiting.

Maybe waiting for me -- who was slowly and carefully and steadily walking
down toward them. The lone walker joined the group, obviously visiting.

I couldn't help but wonder at this strange sight. And it had already been --
to couch it as understatement -- a not-so-good day.  Not at all.

Much earlier in the morning, going down a very steep and narrow stretch --
partially icy-muddy -- I had suddenly flash-slipped and, half-spinning
downward, struck hard ground face-on with a super jarring and jolting blow.
The brim of my wide Australian Akubra hat - stiff - was bent sharply
up.  I lay there for a long moment hearing Hunter whining anxiously.  Then I
arose. My face was cut and scraped in a number of places. Several large dark
drops
of blood came down my cheek and onto my leather jacket from a deep cut in my
left eyebrow -- a gash  which had missed by only a hair or so the eye
itself.

But my blood always clots with extraordinary speed and, even as I took quick
stock of myself, the bleeding stopped.  My inventory indicated to me that
there were no reasons at all why Hunter and I should not continue with the
four miles or so remaining on our projected journey.

And so we did just that. Keep fighting.  Keep going.

And then, just as we were preparing to descend for our final home stretch, I
saw Them.  And now, as we moved slowly downward, they and the little
scenario -- still very far below -- came into clearer perspective.

The four men did not look like city cops or sheriff's deputies or state
police. My sharp eyes spotted no uniforms.  But they were in a kind of
deliberate line which stretched from the rim of one of the boundary canyons
along the fence and gate and then along more fence to the rim of the other
canyon. It was clear that there was absolutely no way that I -- had I wished
to do so -- could veer off into either canyon without being immediately
spotted.
The walker stood with the four.  They were all facing upward and obviously
waiting for Something -- and now it certainly appeared to be me.

And, for our part, Hunter and I were bent on getting home -- quickly,
safely.  With deliberate speed, we continued our descent.

And I watched them warily.  Trouble.

Like a great many life-long radicals indeed, I'm certainly used to all
sorts of open and covert Federal and other kinds of witch-hunting and
whatever.  The FBI began targeting me when I was still in my very early
'twenties --and I've since recovered, via Freedom of Information Act/Privacy
Act, more than 3,000 pages of my FBI file[s] which cover the time period
from 1957 to 1979 and involve my being given various "high priority"
agitator rankings:  Section A of the Reserve Index/Security Index, and
Rabble Rouser Index.  In addition, there are several hundred pages which FBI
won't release to me short of a Federal court fight.

And then there are the hundreds of pages on us from the old Mississippi
State Sovereignty Commission which we recovered a few years ago -- and which
we immediately made public.

[Not bad at all, I should say, for an outstanding member of Monsignor
Albouy's Explorer Scout Troop at Flagstaff, Arizona.]

We've always assumed -- without letting any of this inhibit us in any
fashion -- that we are being targeted by various forms of official
surveillance.  Hence, we didn't, for example, find surprising the
Federal/state/local task force situation which focused on us when, in late
July 1997, we arrived back in the Mountain West at our new, 'way up home on
the far frontier of Pocatello, Idaho.  And no sooner did we arrive than it
became clear that my reputation as a "known agitator" had preceded me.

Police commenced almost immediate surveillance and official-type people
began to circulate in our immediate area. We started having weird phone
problems -- sometimes with a crudeness reminiscent of our civil rights years
in the Deep
South.  Heavy mail delays -- including innumerable stalled and sometimes
opened Priority packages -- became commonplace.  And some mail has been
deliberately water-soaked and ruined. [Three detailed complaints on my part
to regional postal inspectors at Seattle have gone unanswered,
unacknowledged.] Our garbage has been surreptitiously searched.  Now, going
on six years
after we've arrived, the situation -- sometimes overt and often covert --
continues.

But with only a few exceptions, our immediate
neighbors -- people who've gotten to know us on a personal basis -- are
friendly and fine.

But this is Idaho -- and here, as everywhere we've gone, we are much
involved in controversial social justice issues and organizing. Thus in
addition to the enemies who awaited our coming years ago and who greeted us
with multi-faceted hostility, we've now made a whole new crop as well.

And so, as we now proceeded downward, over the sage and through the
junipers -- my eyes much on the unmoving entourage which so obviously
awaited us -- I thought of all of these things.

And I thought, too, of something else -- something very weird.

At the end of this past October, Hunter I were taking our daily trek -- five
and six miles up into the very rough and rugged turf which begins almost at
our back door.  There was some fresh snow and, as always, I saw no other
persons once I got into the basic very wild country.  Early the next day, we
retraced that trip and I suddenly saw the footprints of someone else -- from
the previous day -- faithfully following mine over some considerable and
increasingly rough distance.  Then, when I entered the really challenging
steep stuff and it was clear that I was taking an obscure and extensive
game trail almost straight up and from which I could see much indeed in all
directions -- down and around on all sides and sky-wise -- the person turned
back.

We never see other people even near there.  An experienced tracker from
childhood, I had spotted no "sign" of anyone in dust or dirt and -- until
this situation -- in the snow.

And now we were much closer to the four men -- and the walker -- who waited.