ALL FOR A FEW HAMBURGERS
All For a Few Hamburgers
I walk alone, off trail, off road, away from all human activity, across Oregon’s public lands desert. Across vast flat plains dotted with sagebrush, over mountains, buttes, rims, through canyons, draws, and gullies, along rivers, ponds, streams, and springs, I have shuffled along for countless miles directly across the spaces of the vast open landscape. Looking down as I carefully navigate and plot the location of every solo footstep, I have monitored and cataloged the appearance and condition of the ground, the soil, the foot tread, and the vegetation. And after years of examination through all seasons of the year and throughout the entire public lands that I have traversed, there is one fact that jumps out like the world’s most obvious truth.
The land, the ground, and the natural vegetation across the entire region is completely decimated by cows. Everywhere there are cows. Everywhere where there should not be cows, there are cows. The 2,000 pound lawn mowers walking on concentrated sledgehammer hooves have pounded every square inch of the landscape to smithereens. Every single step anywhere in Oregon’s outback has been pummeled, trammeled, and hammered into oblivion. Where the ground gets a bit of moisture in the winter and the soil is soft, their hooves sink in deep, whole herds following each other, leaving minefields of rut holes, and when the soil later dries hard and firm as rock, any human step is as uneven as scrambling over a rock strewn landscape.
On my solo journeys through the remote, rugged landscapes, I occasionally come across a lone rancher, always out chasing and checking on his cows. His cows, which are not native to the this landscape, are forced to roam thousands of arid acres trying to find a morsel of grass left between the sage brush which hasn’t already been mowed down to within an inch of the ground by all the other cows that have been grazing there for a hundred years. The rancher usually owns a modest size piece of land somewhere nearby, but then leases grazing rights on public land at below market rates from the federal government. When I meet a rancher out on our public lands, I find myself experiencing a flood of emotions that are difficult to sort out.
As a lone explorer in the arid lands who believes strongly in self-reliance, I admire the rancher’s chosen lifestyle of living simply, far from the modern conveniences of modern urban life, completely relying on ingenuity, using and repairing their equipment, and skilled in many trades. They don’t complain about deprivations and hardships and are ready to take on challenges each and every day. Living out in these demanding landscapes, they have an intimate knowledge of the land, the plants, the animals, the seasonal changes, and every aspect of that place. An urban desert rat like me making occasional visits to the desert just can’t know the place as deeply as the rancher. An iconic piece of our country’s character is based on the cowboy hero, the freedoms of owning land in the vast open spaces of the west, and the pioneering spirit required to try to make a living off a dry, remote landscape. There has hardly been written a more romantic and inspiring tale than the multi-generation ranch family battling through hard times to keep the ranching operation afloat.
But the facts of how humans are harming the very planetary systems that support us and give us life become more clear every day. And growing cows is definitely one of those things that is threatening our livable climate and natural systems. Naturally, ranch families will resist losing their way of life, but they won’t be the first to lose a multi-generational family business. From beaver hats to buggy whips, and soon including gas engine manufacturers, many industries appeared that seemed they would last forever, before unseen events transpired that doomed their future.
Western explorer, geologist, naturalist, and Director of the USGS in the late 1800’s, John Wesley Powell knew the arid western ands better than just about anyone in Congress. In 1893, in regard to developing the western U.S. , he advised that “There is not enough water to irrigate all the lands. I tell you gentleman you are piling up a historical conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not enough water to supply the land”. If only we had listened. Instead, the U.S. government continued its boosterism of the West as an agricultural paradise. Ranchers and settlers flocked there, then tried to squeeze, bend, stretch, and twist the arid desert resources like trying to squeeze blood from a rock. Streams were straightened, siphoned, and canalled ,reservoirs were excavated across the landscape, and the ground was pummeled by livestock.. The tall, lush native grasses filling the sagebrush steppe were grazed to the nubbins and slowly replaced by invasive, problematic grasses and juniper trees. Seemingly in an instant, the eco-system of the desert was disturbed on an industrial scale.
And all this for a hamburger? With all we know now, are we really this desperate to eat a hamburger that we are willing to sacrifice the environment of our planet?
It’s so easy to stop eating hamburgers, beefsteaks, and roast beef, but the beef industry marketing has brainwashed us so successfully for so long that we think beef is some magical food. It’s not.
Public lands? Managed by the Bureau of Land Management? I am the public, but no one consulted my vote before granting a welfare lease to graze cows on my public land.
My use of my public lands is simply as a refuge. A place to search for something that has been lost by our species. A place to feel close to our first human ancestors that roamed these landscapes. A chance to glimpse their skills of living with nature, sharing some deep ancestry for a moment. A place to absorb precious remnants of our collective souls. A moment to search for the modern human’s place in nature. Here, I can fan the embers of my inner primordial man, and rekindle tiny remnants of a long buried DNA, just itching to surface again in ancient connections to the natural world. It is a place apart and different from the urban world where reflection and a reset of personal values is most easily attained. No book, picture, movie, or podcast can capture the indescribable natural beauties, vast size and scale, bio-diversity, and variety of the desert lands. One must stand in the middle of the vastness to truly appreciate the meaning of human life on this planet and be immersed in the colors, shapes, shades, textures, smells, and incomprehensible geologic timescales involved in it’s creation. Natural processes over millions of years of an unfathomable sequence of events created these one-of-a kind beautiful features, none of which can ever be wrought by the hand of man. Respect and reverence, these are my uses of our public lands.
My simple use of our public land is impeded by the devastation to the land, degradation to the natural systems, and cow pie landmines that jeopardize every step and assault my senses., My desired use of our public lands does not involve resource extraction or economic benefit and therefore does not seem to register with The Bureau of Land Management, the agency governing uses of our public lands.
In my imaginary world where societal decisions are not all made by those with corporate financial interests, logic would prevail and decisions would be made with the greatest overall benefit for humans and our natural environment that gave us our very existence. An excellent place to start with decisions for the greatest benefit would be to eliminate cows from our western public lands, where they never should have been introduced in the first place. Eliminating the sod tromping beasts just from grazing our public lands would only cut the American beef supply by three percent, an easily achievable and worthy goal.
In my dreams I am walking solo across the vast desert landscape, hiking off trail to cross a rare desert river on my journey to a climb a distant lava rim. All the plants look magnificently healthy, the soil is soft and untracked. I still carefully place each step, dodging sagebrush, but I am no longer dodging cow pies.too. After scrambling up to the top of the flat lava rim, I survey the silent, sunny vista, dotted with moving shadows from puffy clouds sailing across the impossibly deep blue sky. I setup my camera and tripod to record a magnificent desert landscape in the setting sun without having to shoo cows out of the picture. When I awaken from my utopian dream, I fire up the grill and throw on a couple of Impossible Burgers.