contrary, with an inherited inbred paranoia for big government and bureaucrats. On the other hand, come Fourth of July, Memorial Day or Presidents’ Day, they were almost universally very vocal flag-waving patriots. Unarguably, it was a schizophrenic position. They loved their country, but hated their government. However, one thing was for certain, westerners did consider President Clinton’s creation of the monument a blatant federal government land grab. Of course, this was all nonsense. This was totally inconsistent with historical fact. Long before there was a monument, Mormons in Utah or even before there was a state of Utah, this land had been the possession of the federal government.
Specifically, she was getting plain damn tired of the sniveling argument that the western states had not been treated fairly, or at least consistently with the eastern states. Of course, they had not. No body said they had. The reason there was very little federal land in the eastern states is because they never had been federal territories. They were sovereign states first, then they banded together to become the United States. In the Midwest, territories on the road to statehood purchased or homesteaded their land, thereby acquiring it from the federal government. The same principal was applicable to the West but here, there was so much land nobody wanted, nobody claimed. The only land considered of any value was that associated with or adjacent to water, but a lot of lands were inaccessible and arid. Shamefully, even the federal government had tried to push some of this wasteland off on the American Indian, often creating reservations out the most barren sections of this land. But regardless of that, somebody had to be a caretaker of those lands and it fell by default to the federal government. And that scenario was also true of the one million seven hundred thousand acres now called the Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument. The only federal land grab in the west was in their collective, overactive and paranoid imaginations.
Even after all arable land had been claimed, the federal government had magnanimously set aside large tracts of land adjacent to those sections claimed by early pioneers as state school trust lands. This was to make doubly sure in the future that western states would remain on equal footing with the other states.
This continuing undercurrent of animosity thoroughly astounded Judith. During the early years of her career, having spent some time at Big Bend National Park, she was used to disgruntled Texans idly talking sedition, mainly due to government regulations controlling the market price of domestic oil, but of course they never really meant it. Here in the West, she was not so sure.
Rolling over again, Judith pounded and repositioned her pillow, then wormed slowly across the bed, searching for that elusive comfortable spot. Why had she not asked for another pillow? Loudly she sighed in frustration. Until her furniture arrived, she was stuck in this over-priced, over-rated, but very uncomfortable motel. At least the lodging fare was not coming out of her pocket. The taxpayers were picking up the tab but in her estimation, they were getting more than a little ripped off.
She rolled again and stared at the white ceiling tiles. If she were honest, this bed was no worse than some of the places she’d slept in as a kid. Groaning, she closed here eyes. They, Judith and her Mother, had lived in some real dives back then. She remembered the time they were residing in the Washington DC area, just about the time her mother and father divorced. Before the divorce, they’d had a nice home. Her father, a career Marine officer, had been stationed at the Pentagon. Though she was only nine at the time, she still remembered how handsome he was in his royal blue and white dress uniform. Then came the big break up.
One night her mother and father had a particularly loud fight. Then he moved out. Sometime later she learned he had moved in with another woman. At first he came to see her frequently, then occasionally and finally not at all. For a while they continued to live in the Bethesda, Maryland house, but as finances became tighter, her mother sold the house and for the next few years they lived in various apartments in the DC area including some in very suspect neighborhoods and some with very uncomfortable beds.
During those early years, they would have perished had it not been for the assorted government relief programs for the poor and single parent families. Her father was supposed to pay child support and alimony, but the checks never came. Eventually, her mother obtained employment as a clerical at the Department of Interior. It was during the Kennedy administration and rightly or wrongly, her mother had always credited JFK as their savior.
It had just been the two of them, her and her mother. With almost no money, they never went to the movies or restaurants and her mother despised television. They spent the long empty days and evenings playing chess. Her mother was more than a fair player and it had been years before Judith could come even close to beating her.
Needless to say, Judith grew up appreciating government assistance programs, JFK and the entire Democratic Party. She never cared much for the wealthy, stingy, uncompassionate republicans. More, not less, government had been their savior. Judith, to no one’s surprise, had become and remained a loyal democrat. In Utah, she thought ruefully, that was somewhat akin to being an African-American at a Klan rally.
As her mother struggled ever upward, tirelessly climbing the bureaucratic ladder, she taught Judith the pearls she had gleaned on the way. These are tough lessons, she had counseled young Judith, and if you want to survive, you best learn them. Point one, this is a man’s world. Two, men view indecision in women as an overt sign of weakness. Three, men consider women’s primary station in life in the bedroom, not in the work force. Four, you can never trust men. There’s always a hidden agenda or an ulterior motive.
After graduating college, Georgetown University, with a degree in management, she followed her mother into Civil Service. Initially, she secured a job with the National Park service at Gettysburg. From there she moved a lot, but eventually worked her way out west, first at Mount Rushmore, then Big Bend, finally the crown jewel, Yellowstone. Slowly she learned agency politics and worked her way up the precarious, often treacherous, management ladder until she was named assistant superintendent at Crater Lake National Park.
Fortunately, the National Park Service was only marginally subject to the capricious winds of political rotation and even through republican administrations she continued to advance. However when Bill Clinton became president, he inexplicably began placing national monuments under the stewardship of the Bureau of Land Management. At first, being loyal to the Park Service, she considered this an egregious affront, but this attitude would soon change.
Then came the day, her moment in the sun, when President Clinton created the BLM Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument and plucked her with all her park management skills from the National Park Service and put her in charge! She still glowed with pride at the memory. So far, that had been the crowning achievement of her life. In celebration, she and her mother had a quiet restaurant dinner highlighted with a bottle of champagne.
That had been over year ago and she’d spent the entire past year organizing. There had been hundreds of meetings and countless airplane flights from Washington DC to Utah trying to put together a team, come up with a preliminary management plan, devise a budget, and create an initial outline of how she envisioned the monument would grow in the future. Needless to say, it had been a stimulating and exciting experience.
Then harsh reality set in. She actually had to physically move to the monument, to Utah. After a month, in frustration she had written to her mother her general impressions of the West, small dusty towns, devoid of culture and manners, with no amenities and a hard to define feeling of hostility to authority. Add to all this, the unique oddity of Utah society, basically a one religion state with all social and cultural life centered around the Mormon Church, and sometimes she felt a foreigner in her own land. Sometimes, it was almost more than she could bear.
Then to heap dismay onto disappointment, she did not particularly find her new monument fascinating, breathtaking or even enchanting, at least not in the same way as Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, or the majestic Yosemite. It was mainly just a remote tumbled landscape of black brush, sagebrush,
