< PREVIOUS ] [ 1989 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
In the summer of 1977, Martha and I published the Middle Park Times, the weekly newspaper in Kremmling. We'd just hired a new editor, Allen Best (who has gone on to greater things -- he's now the editor of the Vail Trail). During his first week on the job, he and I were discussing the usual Western Slope woes.
Six Front Range cities were building a new reservoir and diversion at Windy Gap by Granby. They had indulged in all manner of deception during their presentations in Grand County. They said they needed municipal water, so that they wouldn't have to keep buying agricultural water rights along the Front Range. But the water wasn't going for lawns and toilets -- it was going to cool the Rawhide Power Plant near Fort Collins, which to this day has not produced one kilowatt for the cities that acquired its water through various ruses.
The Denver Water Board was promoting yet another scheme to dewater our part of the Western Slope, a collector canal along the east flank of the Gore Range wilderness. Besides, Denver hadn't been releasing water from Dillon Reservoir down the Blue River to Green Mountain Reservoir for Western Slope users, even though it was legally obligated to do so.
Then there was Colorado-Ute, building more big
coal-fired power plants near Craig, and an official of that
company had just said that You people on the Western
Slope better quit thinking that you can have clean air and
creeks with water and fish.
Tri-State, another major
electric wholesaler, had just ignored the county's
specified route for a transmission line, and built its line
where it pleased, threatening a moratorium on new power
connections in Grand County if it didn't get its way.
Every valley seemed to be filling up with jerry-built condos that used electric heat in places with severe winters so that more strip-mine-fueled power plants would be needed. More dams and diversions were planned everywhere you looked. There wouldn't be such a thing as cheap, non-directed recreation -- industrial tourism was on its way, with rules and outrageous fees for what we had been doing for free. Every virtue that had drawn us to the mountains was threatened.
As our despairing conversation came to an end, Allen
looked thoughtful for a moment. Gee, Ed, I thought you
were just an employer, not another subversive.
He went
out to his car, and returned with a paperback novel.
Here. I think you'll like this.
I did. The book he gave me was The Monkey Wrench Gang, and I stayed up all night reading it. On my next trip to civilization, I bought every book I could find by Edward Abbey.
They were a shock and a revelation. All those years, I thought that it was only I and a few friends who'd ever held such dark thoughts about how we might preserve and protect what we held dear against the diverters and despoilers.
Reason never worked, and nothing I published in the Kremmling newspaper ever made any difference. The laws on the books never seemed to be enforced against developers, metropolitan water boards or power companies.
And here was somebody who came out and boldly said saying what we'd merely been thinking and were afraid to say. Fight the bastards. Rip out their survey stakes. Disable their earth-raping equipment. Burn the billboards that promote their subdivisions. It isn't legal, of course, but considerations are different in wartime, and this is a war against you and your way of life.
What a tremendous, wonderful liberating experience it was to read Edward Abbey for the first time. Forget the xenophobia, the misogyny, his frequent plagiarizing from his own work. With eloquence and good humor, he said things that had to be said. His death last week was a loss to the West, but we can feel comforted by the certainty that his subversive influence will linger for many, many years.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1989 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >