THE RETIREMENT YEARS
THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED:
I’ve had a recurring dream most of my adult life; the details vary, but the general idea persists. In my dream, DH and I are living in some remote place hidden from the world. I suddenly hear a loud noise and look out the window to see a huge semi-truck* driving right through our front yard. I’m infuriated, violated, completely freaked. I run around screaming at them to get out. Sometimes it gets violent. Eventually I become so agitated that I wake up.
(*or a logging truck, bulldozer, convoy of pickups…it varies.)
Let’s just say that DH and I are a little territorial. Given that fact, why did we buy retirement property way out on a forested mountainside with a PUBLIC ROAD running through it? This parcel was the only place of its kind available, and the price was right. As it turned out, the road became a significant part of our story.
Our 40 acres was an approximate square, ¼ mile on each side. A dirt and gravel road bisected the north third, running east to west. The road was on an easement owned by the state Department of Natural Resources; they administered the state forest south and west of our parcel. To the east was 40 acres owned by a local ranch who eventually sold it to the state, and the north side bordered another parcel that we eventually acquired.
When we bought the original 40 acres in 1991, access was via a bulldozed dirt track running from the DNR road at an angle through the ranch parcel before it connected to ours. The following spring, we were laying out our fenceline borders when a DNR forester drove by. He stopped to introduce himself and let us know that our access road wasn’t a legal easement through the ranch land, but using it was probably no problem…as long as we didn’t make any trouble for the ranch. “You’ll find that one hand washes the other around here,” he assured us. Red flag: meet bull. We immediately arranged to have a new driveway bulldozed in directly from the public DNR road onto our property, then ran our new fence straight across the old track running from ranch land. We weren’t sure what trouble we could make for the ranch, but we didn’t want to owe anyone anything.
We learned soon enough what trouble we could make for the ranch…or they could make for us. Forests of the American west, much to my surprise as a Pennsylvania transplant, are leased to ranchers and have cattle freely roaming them from early spring to late fall. Many surrounding areas are designated open range, which means that the burden is on the private landowners to fence their land if they don’t want someone else’s cattle grazing it. We wanted our property to be habitat for wildlife, so fencing was one of our first priorities.
Of course it’s more complicated than that. If a road runs through your property, you need a way to allow road access while keeping livestock out (or in, depending on the situation). When only a few people use the road, you can just put in a gate and count on the users to keep it closed. If the road is public, however, your chance of getting people to get out of their trucks and close gates on either end is pretty low. Hence the cattle guard.
The cattle guard is a simple, low-tech structure. Cattle don’t like to cross it because their hooves can fall through, though we’ve never witnessed such a thing. They just seem to know better than to try, and there’s been some success on paved roads with merely painting a cattle guard design on the surface. On the other hand: we’ve seen seasoned cows pick their way delicately across the bars, leaving their fearful calves bellowing behind them in confusion.
On one side of the cattle guard is a swing gate. This allows heavy equipment like snowplows to bypass the cattle guard surface and ranch hands to herd cattle through via the road. When we bought our parcel, the ranch owners had been long accustomed to leaving the gate open and letting the cattle graze through the private property on their way to and from DNR land. Various people assured us that this was to our advantage because cattle grazing can reduce wildfire fuels. We’d seen the damage to natural habitat, streams and wetlands from cattle overgrazing. This was especially true in recently logged areas, where we would see cattle standing a foot deep in dry, bare dirt. We had zero interest in allowing cattle on our land…and thus began the Range Wars.
The tiny town nearest us was known for its ranching roots. Every spring and fall, cattle were driven through the town street by real-life cowboys herding them from the ranch to summer pasture. We found this very romantic until we realized that the cattle were dropped off at the base of the mountain where we lived. From there, they wandered on their own through unfenced state wildlife land and private property on their way to the actual grazing leases on higher ground. Some of them felt no compulsion to travel further than fragile wetlands and riparian areas, congregating to consume and trample the vegetation. They also spread noxious weeds and provided a breeding environment for flies.
Since we were always drawn to live in remote places, we tried to mitigate our own impact by enhancing – or at least not degrading -- habitat. We wanted our land to be an oasis of sorts for deer and other wildlife (eventually moose, which made us very happy). Allowing cattle to eat all the grass/shrubs and spread invasive weeds was clearly incompatible with that goal. We weren’t trying to eradicate the long tradition of grazing leases; we just wanted the cattle to be managed in accordance with the law. One of the lease requirements was moving animals from fully grazed areas into new grass and actively herding them through fenced private land on access roads. And so back to the cattle guard and gates.
Remember that nice cattle guard image above? Here are photos of the ones on either end of our property:
Again: the concept was that ranch hands would open the gates and actively drive cattle through to higher ground. That didn’t happen. We spent a couple of years chasing cows out of our property, re-closing gates, writing letters to the ranch owner and the DNR, posting signs requesting that the gates be kept closed…it was hopeless.
Though it ran counter to our code of self-reliance and ingrained thrift, we finally consulted a local attorney with ties to the whole good-old-boy network. While were still sitting in his office, he called a statewide DNR manager and explained the situation. The DNR official immediately wrote a letter (copied to us) telling the ranch owner that he would lose his grazing lease if he didn’t shape up. Grazing leases are a deal for the lessee and critical to the viability of cattle ranching, often passed down through families. Without further ado, the problem was solved. The gate was not left open again, and we had a remarkably cordial relationship with the ranch owner from that point forward.