Noticing xlii - Rep. Jimmy Panetta

Today's excursion into the world took me, together with three other wilderness rangers, to the Salinas office of our Congress-man, Jimmy Panetta (it's in the downtown post office building). Our purpose was to describe the general neglect of our national forest, where key positions—such as law enforcement, and recreation manager—go unfilled, and trails are falling into oblivion due to lack of work crews.

Beth brought a Forest Service map of the trail network, which she had marked up to show active thoroughfares (blue) and impassible trails (red). Jimmy studied it with interest, and mentioned that his brother Chris loves to hike in the Ventana—but doesn't mind that trails are disappearing: he enjoys the adventure of finding his way, mostly without major mishap. (Apparently he and his son did get into a bit of trouble once—which the rest of the family refuses to let him forget.)

Jimmy listened to our lament with sympathy. But ultimately, he said there's not much he can do, except keep raising the issue in Congress, and keep looking for funds—of which there are so few these days, given the current administration's hatred for anything public/non-profit-oriented.

I've gone to a few town halls where Jimmy has spoken, and I always come away feeling glad to have someone who cares so deeply and broadly about all of the problems here locally. His "issues" page lists as his top priorities agriculture, immigration, environment, health, education, equality & civil rights, veterans, and national security, and good for him—all those areas of concern are so important to this community.

That said, there's only so much he can do, from Washington. Many of the boots-on-the-ground issues we need to grapple with locally—such as homelessness, cost of housing, transportation—can only be tackled locally. Federal funds may help, if such can be scraped together, but the active work of problem-solving needs to happen right here.

Which, in essence, sadly, is just what us volunteer wilderness rangers are doing: short of a miracle in Washington and copious funds raining down on us, it will continue to be us, helped by trail crews paid for with local fund-raising, who do the work of keeping whatever blue trails we can open and clear, and keeping the red trails from further extending their reach.

We didn't get any happy surprises today, but in the end, as Beth said, if nothing else, it felt really good to vent.