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The ranger said a short prayer of thanks and steadied his aim. The shot reverberated through the mountain pass, the hot wash from the M-16 causing snow to plop, like lumps of confectioner's sugar, from a nearby pine. The wolf 200 yards away became a momentary blur, then crumpled, the whiteness of the spring crust about the body turning red.
"Murderer!" A woman's voice. The ranger spun around, surprised to see a figure---no, two of them---emerging from a clump of trees. One of the figures disappeared momentarily. There was the roar of a skidoo and the next instant the vehicle appeared from behind the trees carrying both of them towards him. The hunter was disgusted with himself for not having sensed their presence earlier, even though they'd been downwind. As the skidoo, a white-and-red Arctic Cat, approached, its feral roar at 30 mph shattering the silence of the mountain wilderness, the hunter, dressed in arctic hunting fatigues, recognized one of the figures as an Ecotopian, one of their so-called "wardens." Armed. The other person was a woman. The hunter, a fit 40-year-old of above-average build, with intense blue eyes, turned his back on them, trudging in the deep snow past his cabin off to his left, heading towards the dead wolf. Glancing up at the cabin, he saw his wife and children peering out in alarm. He could hear the skidoo behind him.
"You bloody murderer!" the woman shouted at him, her voice quavering in her furious attempt to overcome the deafening noise of the skidoo. "What kind of animal are you?" she screamed.
"A United States Forest Service Ranger," the ranger answered, and kept walking. "And and I'm only doing my job."
"Forgive, me, Ranger Jacobson," the "warden" cut in, "but aren't these the same wolves the government you work for put on the endangered species list?"
"They are," Jacobson said defiantly. "But I just got orders yesterday from Fish & Wildlife to cull the population, folks. Sorry."
"Sorry? Sorry!" yelled the woman, so mad she was shaking. "I thought a forest ranger's job was to preserve the wildlife, not kill it!"
"Yes, that's true," said Jacobson, stopping and looking over his shoulder at her. "But these wolves are endangering the deer population that I'm responsible for, and I have to kill some of them to cull their numbers."
"Bullshit!" shouted the woman.
"I'm just following regulations designed to preserve the balance of nature out here, ma'am," Jacobsen said sullenly, forced to swallow the disappointment he was now feeling. He'd taken this forest ranger job to leave civilization, get away from the likes of this stupid woman and all their crazy claptrap. Now, it seemed, there was no escape, not from insanity.
"I believe that's how the SS officers justified their atrocities," said the "warden," turning off the motor, holding his hand up, signaling the woman to cool it. "They said, at Nuremberg, that they were 'just following orders.' I'm sorry, but I have no choice but to declare you a hostile, ranger. You've murdered an innocent wolf."
Jacobsen, his face tanned and weather beaten beneath the round brim of his "Smokey the Bear" ranger hat, smiled malevolently. "So you goin' to take me prisoner---that whatcher gonna do----'warden'?"
"Yes!" shouted the woman, out of breath from trying to keep up with him.
"Petal," said the 'warden', "let me handle it it here on in."
"Yeah," Jacobsen snorted contemptuously. "Let him handle it, Petal."
"Mrs. Bernstein to you," she snapped.
Jacobsen was still smiling.
"You're coming with me, Jacobsen," said the 'warden,' whose name was Clinton.
"You threatening me?" said Jacobsen, his left hand pulling back the rifle's bolt, the empty brass casing catching a glint of sun as it was flicked into the air, then tinkling on the icy snow. "I think it's the other way 'round, son."
"Wouldn't you rather be friends, Jacobson?" the 'warden' said. "It doesn't have to be this way."
Still smiling, Jacobson said nothing.
"You Ecotopian assholes," the ranger told him, "are gettin' way too big for your boots."
"Look who's talking!" said Clinton.
Mrs. Bernstein told the 'warden,' "Take him down!"
Jacobson's stare was fixed on the 'warden,' waiting for a move.
"You can either come with me living, Jacobson, or dead."
Jacobson remained silent, but his eyes said it all. They told the "warden" that if he went for his weapon, an illegal Tek-9 assault pistol, Jacobson would kill him where he stood. Finally, through her rage, Petal understood this, too.
"Let's go," she told Clinton. "We can come back later."
Clinton looked relieved. "I guess you're right," he said, and was about to add something else but thought better of it. Jacobson's smile widened and the 'warden's face turned beet red. Before he left he gave the ranger a cryptic yet chilling warning: "The eyes of Ecotopia are upon you, Jacobson. Watch your back!"125Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjJAutocmZC
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"What was that about, Ronny?" Jacobson's wife, Barbara, asked him.
"What it's always about any time these greenies show up!" retorted Jacobson, placing his M-16 in its rack by the stove. He didn't keep it loaded with the twins about, but if he ever had to use it quickly, the heat from the wood fire meant there'd be no cold-sticking of the bolt, that he could get off the first shot in the blink of an eye. Next to the rifle rack was a small hinged table that they pulled out for meals, and on a shelf above it was a book----Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism. Ronny understood before he'd even bought that book that there was a time----and he was old enough to remember it---when humanity looked in the mirror and saw something precious, worth protecting and fighting for—indeed, worth liberating. But America was beset on all sides by propaganda promoting a radically different viewpoint: human beings as a cancer upon the Earth, a species whose aspirations and appetites endanger the natural order. The whole premise of that eco-freak bullshit was that nature untouched by human influence has inherent moral value independently of its benefit to mankind, and therefore the influence of man, and especially that of industrial civilization, is immoral. What they opposed was not so much the threat to human life posed by environmental destruction, but man’s exploitation of nature to improve its ability to sustain human life. But Jacobson was a real man and knew how to survive by using his reasoning human mind. Instead of claws fangs, or the heightened senses of the animals he was sworn to defend, he had his mind and hands. If both ever got shackled, Jacobson knew that would lead not only to his doom, but that of his family, his friends and, probably, the whole human race.
Jacobson's father, himself a forest ranger, had met a few eco-extremists back in the '60s. He often characterized them as dangerous people who used violence to influence environmental policy. They were (are) willing to inflict emotional and physical distress on their victims if they believe it will further their environmental goals. This more radical version of environmental action is illegal, as compared to its more moderate forerunner of eco-activism which is legal and would be classified as a form of civil disobedience, using protests, sit-ins and other civil actions of effect environmental change. Not so eco-terrorism, which often included sabotage in the name of the environment, which is illegal as it includes crimes against property that often led to harm to humans.
There's only one way to deal with people like that," Jacobson had once told his son, Mark, "Just use information, the law, and force to identify, locate, and apprehend (preferably destroy) extremists or key leaders of extremist groups."
Jacobson had taken out the rifle's bolt and was now feeding the pull-through weight down the barrel.
"Was Hitler an extremist, Dad?"
"Sure was. So was Mussolini. Both had to be destroyed."
"That greenie guy an extremist, Dad?" asked his daughter, Annie.
"Yeah," said Jacobson. "He...."
"Ronny!" It was Barbara, sounding reproachful. She was ten years younger than Ronny but still a good looker at 30 despite a few wrinkles. Wasn't easy living up here. Hardest thing of all was no running water---creek down back of them through the windbreak of pine and fir froze solid early in the winter and you had to use so much of the wood piled high outside to keep warm. Kids loved it, though, and that kept Ronny going. He'd seen a kid in Seattle, seven-year-old girl, shot to death "accidentally" in a drive-by shooting, right by the day-care where he'd normally pick up Annie and Mark after school. Barbara had collected them earlier---both running a temperature in a "shared" cold---and hadn't been able to get Ronny on his cellular at the Federal Building. But the drive-by murder, that's what did it for Ronny. And so he had to plead on his knees to his supervisor to assign him to field duty in the Sawtooth Wilderness, and damn the hardships of the job.
Barbara remembered that day, too. Ronny had said he was like the guy in that movie Network---mad as hell, fearful for his kids, and he wasn't going to take it anymore. He was not going to be a pencil pusher in a plush building in the heart of the hellhole called Seattle just so he could put food on the table and keep up with the damn mortgage payments. Know, your place in the chain, just like a goddamn beehive. The queen bee (his supervisor was a woman) stands at the top, and each worker bee or drone has its own place in the hive's chain of command. Do your damn job, chase the papers, turn people away who ask for help, and just sit at your desk and take up space. Do you get the job done? Maybe, maybe not. And then there were the standard operating procedures, those clearly written instructions for each specialized job at every level of the hierarchy. Everybody had to be on the same page as their colleagues to get their jobs done.
All except Ronny Jacobson, unfortunately.
Ronny and Barbara had a garage sale, not that they had much to sell, transferred the mortgage, got all the correspondence-school stuff for kids grades 6 to 8, and moved to the ranger station in the Cascade Mountains. Ronny would man the lookout tower there, but the family would make its home in a log cabin that he would build personally. "Lookit," he told Barbara, "we don't have to live like vegetarians. We'll buy the staples we need first, and then we'll live off the land. Think of all the money we'll save! You ever eaten venison, Barbara? Fresh venison? Order that in a restaurant. If they have it you'll pay top dollar---and for something that's likely been frozen."
First breath of mountain air and they knew they'd made the right decision. They built the cabin in the Sawtooth Wilderness ten miles from the station. It made Ronny feel good, working with his hands. Made him feel like the old pioneers he so admired. And, something neither he nor Barbara had expected, other settlers from around the small towns such as Winthrop and Twisp that nestled in the Cascades came to help them get set up. They were people who were fed up with life in the city, fed up with criminals and high taxes. The criminals were what they feared more; pretty soon they'd steal the air you breathed.
Most people associated forest rangers with Smokey Bear, the lovable ursine who warned us not to start forest fires. But Ronny knew better. He knew that rangers did more than prevent and fight fires. His newfound career offered him challenges not found in other occupations. He was the wilderness’s policeman, fireman, rescuer and teacher, an unsung American hero who would work long hours in extreme conditions.
Oh sure, Mark and Annie missed playmates for a while, but before long they'd discovered they were living in one great enormous playground with snowcapped mountains and sky and forest---far as you could see---and they saw how it became a new playground every three months. They were learning all about the seasons, the natural cycle of nature, and they learned the names of the stars because through unpolluted air you could see them, as Annie said, like sparklers at night.125Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡh2zWHDI6j6
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"You shouldn't tell them that Ecotopian man is an extremist."
"I didn't," said Ronny, hauling on the pull-through in one fell swoop. "I should've, though. "I don't trust Clinton. I don't trust the Ecotopians, any of them. Clinton forgets that I'm the authority here, dammit. He made some kinda threat against my life, I'm sure of it."
"What are you going to do if he comes back?"
Ronny didn't answer.
"Ronny?"
"Don't worry."
"What if he does?"
"I told you---don't worry."
Barbara wouldn't let it rest. "Clinton might not carry out his threat alone is what I'm trying to tell you!"
"It's not him I'm worried about," said Ronnie. "It's that damn old woman that scares me. Fuckin' hippie!" He grunted good-humoredly. Ronny saw no irony in the fact that the Ecotopians were becoming as rule bound as the society they thumbed their noses at.
"You can joke all you want," said Barbara. "But one forest ranger against a bunch of armed Ecotopians is no match!"
Ronnie had the bolt out, eyes focused on the firing pin, blowing hard to make sure there were no dust particles. He had to think of getting Barbara and the kids out. "In that case," he told Barbara, "we'd have to hike out to the station, where I can radio for backup."
"Kids couldn't do that," she said. "Not in this snow."
"I know." He pulled out the table for lunch and set the places, something his fellow rangers had ribbed him about: "Where's your apron, Ronny?" He'd shucked it off.
For several minutes neither he nor Barbara spoke. Looking outside, Barbara could see Annie and Mark building a snow fort. She and Barbara had gotten used to each other's silences. They were still in love after 12 years, and their silences could be eloquent. But finally, as Barbara put in another block of wood, jabbing worriedly at it with the poker till it caught fire, she could contain herself no longer. "What will you do, Ronny?"
"My job."
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Jacobson's wolf kill was the fifth recorded that week but the first CNN reported on its "wildlife report" segment of Headline News. Within 10 minutes the station's phone lines were jammed, not only by calls from the lower 48, Alaska and Hawaii, but from around the world. There was no middle ground. People were either dead set against killing any animal or argued that because wolves were predators of other endangered species, sometimes their numbers need to be reduced. Rangers and licensed hunters said that if you saw a big gray tearing the guts out of a fawn while it was still alive you'd soon change your mind. And how about the meat you get at a supermarket? they asked indignantly. We humans, they said, don't have any compunction about killing cattle for hamburgers or bleeding baby calves to death for veal, but now "everybody's yellin' about some forest ranger killin' a few wolves in areas where there are probably more damn wolves than people."125Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYcf7utTkyS
"Well, we've got to start somewhere, haven't we?" said one caller.125Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXjhnW0CQHe
"Look," cautioned a biologist, an expert on wolves, "both sides in this debate are coming in loaded with too much emotion and too little science. If we're to preserve a species, sometimes we've got to cull the wolf stock."125Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPTVDKMOPld
"Cull?" the caller challenged. "You mean slaughter!"125Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIa5aC4oU3i
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