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Along The San Miguel: looking out from the cone

By Art Goodtimes

" Telluride Coyote Just loping along. Nonchalant. As if traffic & trouble didn't matter one whit. Broad daylight. By the Illium turnoff. Just as soon eat a housepet as any wildass rabbit. Fancy fur coat. Sharp teeth. My kind of dog."

- Art Goodtimes

WESTERN SLOPE NO-FEE COALITION ... This regional public lands group is challenging the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act that Rep. Regula of Ohio rammed through Congress recently as a rider on an omnibus funding bill - the same devious tactic this administration is using to open up the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to oil development and thus avoid congressional hearings, or any national public debate ... In fact, the No-Fee folks prefer to call the new authority given over to our land management agencies as a Recreational Access Tax, or RAT for short. Lone Cone area landowner Robert Funkhouser is president of this group ... They are asking supporters to evaluate current fee sites on federal lands in our region, using a survey checklist they've developed - the idea being to measure compliance with the law, which the group maintains are contradictory and overbroad. Funkhouser explained his group is looking for those "sorts of abuses that we need to bring to the attention of Congress in order to achieve repeal of the RAT." ... For more info, contact Kitty Benzar of Durango at wsnfc@hotmail.com or (970) 259-4616.

ASPARAGUS ... Spring in the San Juans always feels kind of reassuring. Especially this year in the San Juan/Dolores/San Miguel River Basins. To have rain and snow and sun and clouds all mixed up with wind and blue skies and sufficient moisture to fill the ponds in the region. And even mud enough for a season ... Why is mud good? Because, as we all know, it's out of the mud grows the asparagus. That wild lotus "weed" our pioneer ancestors first brought to the Lone Cone country, and all around this part of the state, and which, like us, has taken root and multiplied ... Just goes to show, not all "weeds" are bad.

GOVERNMENT WASTE ... It's so ironic that our state leaders keep harping on the dire financial straits the state budget is in, blaming it on everything but their own mismanagement. But get this ... Thanks to the state-mandated imposition of a new Social Services computer system, that none of the counties wanted or liked, it appears that the state has spent $18 million on overpayments to welfare recipients ... That's right. The same politicos who make a field day of blaming welfare moms for cheating the system appear to be responsible, through their ramrodding of a flawed tech system on county and town governments, for millions of dollars of government waste ... Make your blood boil? It should. Because it's not the only instance of unfunded mandates from the offices of our current Governor who hands out millions in rebates for the TV cameras, while throwing away millions behind administrative doors on bad ideas.

HIGHWAY 141/145 ... I've been traveling back and forth along the Unaweep-Tabeguache Scenic Byway a lot these last couple weeks. I still believe that's one of the prettiest blue highways in the nation - an off-beat circumnavigation of the spectacular slickrock rims of the Dolores River canyon country ... And, after years of serving as a little-known tourist backwater (although the Ray Motel in Naturita rightly boasts, "The Middle of Everywhere"), it's about to be discovered! By the producer of the Discovery Channel, whose Gateway Canyons Outpost Resort and Car Museum is already listed on the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association website (although the adjacent river in the listing is noted as "the Delores") and whose U.S. Highway 50 billboard at Whitewater says it opens this spring. But it isn't. At least not yet. But when it does, it's going to become a significant Four Corners destination resort ... Better check it out for yourself - to catch some of the area's rustic flavor before it goes big-time.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS ... My six-year-old, Gregorio Rainbow Osh� (we call him "Gorio"), was in a talkative mood the other day, riding over to Paonia ... We got to playing a game. He'd ask me a question, and then would immediately provide me the appropriate answer, when my answers were rejected out of hand (daddy isn't always right, you know!) ... Here's a few I wrote down ... Why are trees green? ... Because everything else is green, so they're green (this boy is definitely going to be a political chip off the old block) ... Why is the snow always white? ... Because the clouds are white & it snowballs from the clouds & so the snow turns white ... Why is the sky blue? ... Because outer space is blue & the sky is in outer space ... Why do trees have leaves that fall off in the fall? ... Because they get so loose from all those wind storms of winter & they just fall off.

Poet, journalist and organic potato farmer, Art Goodtimes is serving his third term as San Miguel County Commissioner. Founder of the local San Miguel Green Party and co-founder of the Sheep Mountain Alliance, he makes his home on Wright's Mesa at the western edge of the San Juans.