THE SAFETY MESSAGE
Normally, the Safety Message is located somewhere in the bowels of each issue of THUNDERBEAR. This gives the NPS reader a Safety margin should the reader's supervisor claim that the reader was using a government computer to access "inappropriate or unauthorized sites" such as, well, THUNDERBEAR.
The reader can thus claim that they were innocently scrolling through the pages of THUNDERBEAR searching for the invaluable and informative Safety Message that can be found in each and every issue of THUNDERBEAR.
Indeed, it is not the fault of the reader that the unscrupulous editor is too lazy to put in a table of contents that would allow the reader to go directly to the Safety Message rather be forced to wade through a mass of scurrilous diatribes against Our Dear Leader "Dubya" and his many helpers.
As "Safety" is a reliable garlic & crucifix defense against administrative vampires, the reader need only politely inquire if the supervisor is "against the Holy Grail of Safety?" to send said supervisor scurrying back to his/her coffin, denying any such intention to impugn Safety. That would be in normal times.
However, "Normal" is not now, neighbors. These are trying times and require that for the first time in THUNDERBEAR history we put THE SAFETY MESSAGE first and get straight to the point.
To wit: It may be unsafe for you to vote Republican in the 2008 election.
"Now just a darn minute!" You protest "I've always voted Republican, just like every other patriotic permanent NPS employee! Why should we change now?"
That is the point. Now is now and now is not normal.
Normally, it does not matter if the 9,208. NPS permanent employees and their spouses vote Republican as their votes are cancelled out by the Navajo and Lakota vote.
However, these are not normal times.
The 2008 election will be very, very close, maybe a few thousand votes one way or the other in a number of swing states such as New Mexico. It is thus very important for Traditional NPS Republican voters to cross over and vote Democrat (Just this once!)
Now wait a minute!" Says Liberal Reader (Their turn!) "The Environment is a liberal concern, these NPS permanents must already be liberal Democrats! You're preaching to the choir; wasting valuable time and effort."
"Not at all! What you have touched upon is The Park Service Paradox.
Park Service Paradox?
Well, yes. The Park Service Paradox is that America's only socialistic experiment, the National Parks, is staffed by very conservative men and women, that is to say, Republicans.
"The National Parks are NOT a Socialistic Experiment," Our Conservative Reader fairly shouts.
ÔFraid so, neighbors. NPS forests are not "working" forests; nobody is cutting them down. NPS grass is not "working" grass; nobody's cows are grazing it NPS rivers are not "working" rivers (God Almighty was one lazy S. O. B until we humans showed Him what could be done with a planet!)
About the only thing you can legally do with a national park is experience it. That is, look at it, while walking, riding, climbing, or floating.
To paraphrase Jesus Christ: "Consider the National Parks, how they grow: They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these!" (Matt 6:28-29 as modified by TB.)
Thus, like the lilies of the field, the National Parks are of value in and for themselves rather than any money that can be grubbed out of them.
"SCREW THE LILIES OF THE FIELD!" snorts one Conservative reader "If we could charge what the market will bear, say, $50 a park visit, the parks would be self supporting! AND we would have a better class of visitor! Now we have that damn radical, Bill Wade, going around saying parks should be free!
Now I had to admit that I had not considered the possibility of a "working" park that would also keep out the riff-raff, but obviously Grover Norquist and my Conservative reader and other Republicans had.
Still, Bill Wade has a point. There should be some things in life that do not have an entrance fee: Libraries, museums, and parks come to mind. As one of my acquaintances observed "When you are unemployed (an increasing occupation for more and more Americans) what else can you do but take in a museum, pick up a book at the library and read it in the park?
But is it really true that Republicans are the dominant force in the National Park Service?
"NOT SO!" says Lily Langtry, ace environmental reporter for the NEW YORK TIMES: "I have interviewed scores of uniformed park rangers and have found almost all of them to be more liberal than Edward Abbey AND every superintendent I talked to identified himself as a political independent." So there!
Now neighbors, Ms Langtry is a New York Liberal, which does not necessarily mean she is dumb as a fire hydrant, but it does mean that she is easily gulled into Liberal Wishful Thinking.
The reason she found her rangers to be more liberal than Edward Abbey, is that like Edward Abbey, they were all seasonal employees, who tend to be liberal. Nothing wrong with that, but seasonals do not make park policy.
That most superintendents identify themselves as "Independents" does not mean that they plan to vote for Ralph Nader or carefully weigh the environmental merits of the Republican or Democratic arguments.
The superintendents are Republicans, not fools.
By identifying themselves as "Independents" to pushy New York reporters, our superintendent can claim to be floating above grubby partisan politics, deftly selecting the most virtuous environmental response.
Naturally, when the superintendent is at ease with his fellow Conservative Rotarians and out of range of New York harpies, he/she can express what they REALLY think.
So how come there got to be so many Republicans in the National Park Service?
Well now neighbors; it's a matter of history and sociology.
For one thing, if you haven't noticed, America is a pretty conservative country. Democrats rarely get elected.
From 1860 to 1912, only one Democrat got elected President. The situation after 1912 wasn't much better. The "minority party," The Republicans, usually preval.
Even the environmental noisemakers of the time, John Muir, Gifford Pinchot and Steven Mather were reasonably devout Republicans.
Indeed, when the impossible happened, and a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson was elected President, he appointed a Republican mining executive, Steve Mather, as the first Director of the new National Park Service. Understandably, Mather did not name the Socialist Eugene Debs, as his deputy, but rather choose another Republican Western mining executive, The Potash King, Horace Albright for the job; and so on and so forth.
The new agency, the NPS would "preserve and protect" To do this, the employees of this agency would need to be able to tell people what to do; that is, they would need to have police powers.
Now, neighbors, police stations are not known as bastions of Liberal Thought. All police, even Communist police (particularly Communist police) are Conservative defenders of the status quo.
To be identified as a "preserver and protector", the NPS employee needed to wear a uniform. This served as identification, but it also served to reinforce "team spirit" or groupthink. (The population of Red China was a lot easier to control when everyone wore those blue Mao suits with the cloth cap) People who habitually wear uniforms that include a pistol tend to be Conservative. Rangers therefore tend toward the Republican persuasion (However, as rangers can be quirky mavericks, there are exceptions.)
Not least in the facilitation and reinforcement of Republican values is the setting of most National Parks. Most natural park units are located in remote rural areas, often in economically depressed regions, the "pockets of poverty" of Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty. The land is mountainous, desert, or both. Jobs are scarce and usually seasonal, with unemployment insurance barely bridging the gap between low pay jobs. Health Services consist of visits to the Emergency Room, with sincere promise to pay "when times get better" which they never do.
Religions of National Park Country tend toward the starkly fundamental, with a God that doesn't like labor unions or pushy women. Judgment Day is coming -- and soon. The use of stimulants, particularly alcohol is frowned upon by the Elders. (However, the Juniors have been known to raise marijuana on Public Land and Meth labs are not unknown.)
Now sociologists and psychologists tell us that we feel a bit better about society and ourselves in general if we make a bit more than the average run of people in the community. This happens when you pull down a dependable federal paycheck with attendant health benefits in a depressed seasonal economy. This can lead to the belief that you are one of Nature's Grandees, chosen by Darwinian selection if not God Almighty to rule over the lesser brutes. Such thoughts can lead to membership in the Republican Party.
Now as many of the inhabitants of the country around national parks do not have the proverbial pot or window to throw it out of, one might think the region would be seething with left wing resentment.
You would be right about the seething resentment, but the resentment is directed against "Them"; the thundering Four Horsemen of the Rural Republican Apocalypse: Liberals, Big Government, Mexicans, and "Elitists". If we could just make these four plagues go away, thing would be ever so much happier on Mockingbird Hill. (The first three phobias are sort of self explanatory, "Elitism" is screwy enough to require an explanation; "Elitism" in Rural Republican usage does not refer to Secretary of the Interior Henry Paulson, his 600 million dollar fortune or his heartfelt plea to Congress not to dock the obscene salaries of Wall Street, Rather, "Elitist" refers to a person who transports himself into the backcountry with boots rather than four wheel drive, camps in a tent rather than a motor home, and paddles a kayak rather than squatting on a Personal Water Craft. That's an "Elitist". Simple, No?
All of this right wing group think places our permanent NPS employee under considerable pressure to conform.
Unlike say, Berkeley, California, where it takes real moxie to put a MC CAIN/PALIN sign in your front yard or on your car, our NPS permanent has noticed that the gateway town to his park is festooned with MC CAIN/PALIN signs; the customers at The Cattleman's Caf good naturedly kid him about being a government parasite, but feel he will defy the "elitists" and vote for McCain. The town's weekly newspapers editorializes darkly what will happen to the American Way of Life if John McCain is not elected.
Truth to tell, our NPS permanent is conflicted. He holds a law enforcement commission, cops are by nature and experience Conservative (ÔReality reinforces stereotypes"), his parents and relatives are conservatives. One of the reasons he joined the NPS was to enjoy the Peace and Harmony of America's Wide Open Spaces and avoid "Big City Problems" for his family.
But here is the Safety Officer of THUNDERBEAR telling him that voting Republican in 2008 is an unsafe practice! Why would this be the case?
Well now, neighbors, the buzzword for this campaign is "CHANGE"; endorsed by BOTH political parties.
From the standpoint of the Democrats, this sort of makes sense, as they have been out of the Presidency for 8 years and out of control of Congress for 5 years.
The idea of CHANGE coming from Republicans is a bit surreal as the disasters occurred on their watch; a damaged constitution, a crushed and gutted federal bureaucracy, two endless, money sucking wars, an all time low in the international reputation of the U. S. No coherent plan to make US energy independent (Other than a Tooth Fairy promise to drill and a "Hail Mary" for each dry hole) and, of course, that 1,000 pound gorilla in the voting booth, an economic meltdown that may rival the Great Depression.
The Republicans have had 8 glorious years to effect "CHANGE" and they have succeeded beyond anyone's wildest nightmares.
According to McCain/Palin, they are now going to "shake up" Washington. (That would be, um, you, the Federal Bureaucrat.) You may have thought yourself properly "shook up" during the past few years, but it seems that there are still a few bureaucrats standing in the way of dumping toxic wastes, mountain top removal for coal, one sided "partnerships" in the National Parks, prevention of Wilderness designation and unrestricted mountain biking in said parks and so on.
It may take four more years of Republican rule to ferret you out of the bureaucratic woodwork before we can achieve reactionary Nirvana.
Ah, but you are retired, you say, and have blissfully risen above all this storm and strife.
Not necessarily. Just because you are tired of right wing conservatives like Karl Rove does not mean that Right Wing Conservatives are tired of you. In the event of a McCain Palin victory, Mr. Rove can be relied upon to say that it is only "fair" and "commonsense" that Federal retirement annuities and Social Security payments be "adjusted." (No prize for guessing which direction.)
Now McCain/Palin are not evil people. McCain has conducted a plucky campaign and has shown nobility of spirit. When asked by one of his more extreme supporters if his opponent was some sort of Moslem terrorist, McCain emphatically replied "No he is not! He is a good American and a decent family man!"
Palin is a gifted natural politician with a talent for the Populist message. (The idea that "She is just like us!" is a bit scary; I am looking for someone smarter and wiser than myself for the job.) Palin's offer of $150 bounty for wolf paws in defiance of the findings of most modern Wildlife Management professionals will appeal to "down to earth" anti-intellectuals who object to the intrusion of science in daily affairs. It should not appeal to a professional like you.
So yes! We would say that voting Republican in 2008 would be an unsafe practice!
ROUND RIVER
Most NPS types and most DC metropolitan area dwellers are familiar with the C & O Canal National Historical Park.
From rather modest beginnings and modest intentions, it has grown into into one of America's most popular and most visited national parks, attracting more visitors per year than Yellowstone National Park.
The Canal's attraction lies in its almost equal measure of History, Nature, and Recreation in the heart of a major Metropolitan area.
There is engineering history and Civil War History. There is a haunted abandoned gold mine and mysteries ancient and modern.
President John F. Kennedy's mysterious mistress, Mary Pinchot Meyers was murdered on the tow path of the C & O Canal on October 12, 1964. No one was ever convicted for the crime. (NPS Park police have a pretty good idea who did it.)
The C & O Canal is one of the places you take Uncle Fred and Aunt Edna when they visit Washington, DC. Where you take them and what you do with them depends on their level of interest and fitness.
Most relatives will be satisfied with the mile round trip walk to the overlook of the Great Falls and an ice cream bar afterwards.
More persistent relatives can be treated to hikes on Billy Goat "A" or "B" to introduce them to some of the biological "hot spots" in the rock gardens of the Potomac Gorge.
Relatives that are real adrenaline pests can be taken on a rappel into Mather Gorge. (Yup! Named after that Mather.)
Mather Gorge is part of the much larger 13-mile long section of verdant islands and white water rapids known as the Potomac Gorge.
Of course the gentle rapids of the Potomac Gorge are not to be compared with the truly awesome class IV and V of the Colorado River.
On the other hand, more people die each year in the rapids of the 13 mile Potomac Gorge than in the much longer Grand Canyon for exactly the same reason more people are killed each year by Holstein cows than by Grizzly bears; people just don't expect homicide by Holstein any more than they can visualize drowning in the metropolitan area of the Capitol of The Free World.
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River is grimly beautiful but forbidding and you really cannot access it unless you have convinced a suspicious National Park Service of your competence and preparedness or (more usually) have placed yourself in the care and protection of a professional river running service, who will do everything possible to avoid the paper work and down time that your untimely death would cause.
The Potomac Gorge is; on the other hand, cheerfully open to any of the 13 million people in the DC area who might like to try their luck.
As noted, most of the rapids in the Potomac Gorge are pretty, but of no consequence, with one exception; that would be the Great Falls rapid, which is comparable to Lava Falls, the largest (highest) rapid on the Colorado River. The Lava Falls Rapid has a fall of 37 feet; the Great Falls rapid has a fall of 76 feet in a comparable distance. This means that the possession of considerable skill and experience are suggested before running the Great Falls of the Potomac. The Great Falls were first run in 1976 by Wick Walker and Tom McEwen and again in 1978 by NPS park rangers Bill Kirby and Steve McConaughy.
Contrary to popular opinion, the NPS does not forbid running the Great Falls; it does advise strongly against it. (The idea that Great Falls running attempts are allowed only before 9 AM to preserve park visitors from the horror of seeing someone drowned in the falls is an urban legend) While it is true that the NPS owns the land on both sides of the river, the river itself is owned by Maryland, a liberal state that shows no interest in stopping someone seeking the Darwin Award. Although (or because ) there is some risk, the Great Falls Rapids are run by kayakers on a weekly basis during the summer.
Now the NPS and the kayaking community DO suggest that experienced kayakers run the Great Falls only on weekdays and before 9 AM. This is because skilled athletes make any task, no matter how difficult or dangerous, look easy. The NPS and kayakers do not want visitors on the observation deck to assume they can go to Wal-Mart, buy a rubber ducky inflatable and go over the Falls as "It looks easy and fun!"
Unlike the 1,450 mile Colorado, which has been run by a number of people, to the best of my knowledge, the short (384 mile) Potomac has never been run from its source at Fairfax Stone in West Virginia to its entry into Chesapeake Bay at Point Lookout. (Let's do it!)
However, before running the entire Potomac, I had something more modest in mind. The Violette Loop.
Now neighbors, white water rafting companies often offer a day trip on white water rivers to give curious tourists a taste of the adventure. Their rafts put in a point A on the river and the company bus picks up the clients at Point B, 10-12 miles downstream.
Inevitably, before the trip starts, a tourist will innocently inquire if they will exit the river the very same place they entered.
Rather than dwell on the stupidity of the question, the unflappable boatman will say:
"Yes sir/Ma'am! This is the world's only round river! We will make a complete circle and bring you safely to where we started!"
Now every kayaker, rafter or canoeists would prefer a round river. They all hate the inconvenience of a car shuttle.
Violette's Loop, through the courtesy of the C & O Canal and the Potomac River, allows for a rare round river experience on a white water river.
You park your car in the Violette Lock parking lot, unload your kayak or canoe, paddle across the Potomac to the Virginia side, enter George Washington's Potowmack Canal, proceed down the old canal and then reenter the Potomac below the Violette Rapids, paddling briskly across the Potomac back to the Maryland side. You portage your boat about 50 feet to the C & O Canal and paddle back to where your car is parked.
Now the fun of the Violette Loop is the old Potowmack Canal. It is an industrial canal that 200 years of floods and regrowth of timber have recycled into a quasi-wilderness experience, complete with class I and II white water. It is one of the hidden little gems of wildness in the Washington DC area. It is also history.
The Potowmack Canal was the brainchild of none other than George Washington. The Father of our Country could also be called the Father of Real Estate Development. After the success of the American Revolution, there was no plan for What Was Going to Happen Next. Would the 13 states remain in a loose confederation or would each go its own way? What would happen to the vast Ohio River Valley? Would it become a separate country or a colony of one of the European powers, or a huge reservation for Native Americans?
Washington thought the answer might be trade rather than force of arms.
According to the site bulletin issued by the Park Service's Great Falls Park: "Few ventures were dearer to George Washington than his plan to make the Potomac River navigable as far as the Ohio River...Washington believed that better transportation and trade would draw lands west of the Allegheny Mountains into the United States, and "bind those people to us by a chain that can't be broken"
Washington reasoned: "The way is easy and is dictated by our clearest interests. It is to open a wide door and make a smooth way for the produce of that country to pass to our markets".
The way was not easy, as we shall see.
Today, The Potowmack Canal or Violette Loop is usually navigated by single person fiberglass white water kayaks. I was curious to see if a 16-foot touring kayak could get through America's most historic canal. I therefore called up Carl Lohmann, the local kayaking/canoeing coordinator for the Appalachian Mountain Club.
Carl had just returned from a victorious summer out West. Carl is a "High pointer". That is, someone who has the interesting hobby of climbing to the highest point in each state. Now one has to use the term "climbing" advisedly when visiting the high point of states like Florida (345 feet, or Louisiana (545 feet) but out West, things can be a bit more challenging, and Carl had spent the summer bagging the last of the peaks in the lower 48 (plus Hawaii) This left only Denali in Alaska, and he was considering."You try that and I'll divorce you!" said his normally patient wife, Judy. (Carl had passed his 70th birthday on one of the Western high points.)
I asked him which high points were the most difficult.
"Most of the western high points are simply high, but not technically difficult. You just have to be there and keep walking; Gannett Peak (13,084) highest point in Wyoming, is the most difficult to access. It requires a two-day wilderness horseback expedition to reach the base camp. The most technically difficult high point is Montana's Granite Peak (12,799). There is some exposure.
Mount Rainier (14,410) can be difficult, even fatal, due to the weather, but we had fine days and no problems. The highest of the Lower 48, California's Mount Whitney (14,494) was a walk up, the only problem being a line to sign the register at the summit.
I asked Carl if he thought it possible to get a 16-foot tandem-touring kayak through the Violette's Loop during autumn low water.
Carl thought it would be interesting to try.
Joan and I arranged to meet Carl at Violette Lock parking lot in the C & O Canal Historical Park just off River Road.
Carl is one of those compact, wiry types you often find in the ranks of veteran canoeists. He has a weathered Walter Mathieu resemblance that had looked out on many a snowfield, glacier and white water river.
"The river is as low as I've ever seen it, but we should be able to make it through. If I can get a canoe through, then you can get a kayak through!"
I liked that power of positive thinking.
We entered the River just above the Seneca Breaks Rapids; the beginning of the Potomac Gorge and one of the many reasons George Washington built the Potowmack Canal. The rocks of the rapid stood out of the water like dragon's teeth. Many kayakers used them as rather unforgiving slalom posts to improve their boat handling skills, but we were interested in the Potowmack Canal. We used the current to ferry us across the mile wide river to the Virginia side. We were now in another Jurisdiction of the National Park Service, Great Falls Park.
The entrance to the Potowmack Canal is not obvious from the Maryland side. One of the delightful aspects of the Potomac Gorge is the illusion of Wilderness that is preserved by the National Park Service. There was a forest wall; it could be 300 years ago.
"You'll see the entrance when you get there." Shouted Carl over the sound of the rapid.
Carl was right. There was a cave in the tree line and then a little cove appeared. The remnants of a masonry wall appeared, evidence to an industrial archeologist that here was the entrance to George Washington's canal.
Is the Potowmack Canal historically important? Yes it is, neighbors!
If George Washington is the Father of our country, then his canal is the Mother of our Country.
Say what?
Yup! America got its initial push to becoming The First Nation of the Planet from the Potowmack Canal. You see, everything might have been different had the Potomac River been located entirely in Virginia. There would have been no need to compromise or negotiate and the US might have remained a collection of squabbling states, manipulated if not controlled by foreign powers.
Luckily for us, the Potomac is the border between Maryland and Virginia. This meant if Mr. Washington was to get his canal, there would have to be interstate cooperation; something not too plentiful in the new America.
Washington turned on his formidable personality and invited reps from Maryland and Virginia down to Mount Vernon for wine, dinner and conversation in 1784. The result was the Mount Vernon Compact, a document that pronounced the Potowmack Canal was one hell of a good idea, along with navigational aids, suppression of piracy in Chesapeake Bay and the strong suggestion that, hey! That was worthwhile! Let's get together again for some more problem solving!
Things rolled right along. In 1786, folks who believed in canals, roads and interstate commerce and the resulting money, met at Annapolis, Maryland to discuss further cooperation. This was getting to be a habit. Maybe it might be more efficient to have just one more conference in Philadelphia in 1787 and get all of this stuff settled once and for all and write it all out in a list of rules to run this country; we could call it...whatever! A Constitution maybe?
And that's pretty much what we did. All because a distinguished war hero wanted to build a canal.
In 1785, George Washington became President. Not President of the United States (that would come later) but rather President of the Potowmack Canal Company with the somewhat token salary of 30 shillings a year.
The entrance to the canal was a sun-dappled pool with yellow sycamore leaves dancing on the water. Carl put his canoe into an eddy and explained the route.
"There are three rapids, the first coming up right shortly, I'll give you directions on what chutes to use. It's usually a piece of cake, the only dangerous thing is there may be some strainers."
Strainers are trees that have fallen into the stream. The term is very descriptive. If you get into a strainer, and there is a fast current, you and your boat will be pinned in the branches by the hydraulic force and you can't paddle out even if you are Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime; your boat will inevitably roll and you will be pulled under the water to drown miserably, clutched in the deadly wooden fingers of the submerged branches. Strainers are to be avoided.
The antidote, according to Carl, is to resist the temptation to try to extricate your craft. "Start climbing the branches! Get your body and legs out of the current as quickly as possible. Work your way to the main trunk. You and your friends can worry about getting the boat later!"
The rapids went as Carl's expert direction suggested and we bounded (and occasionally banged) through. At a hydraulic named "Surfers Hole", water rolled over the bow and into Joan's lap causing her to whoop with glee. We found no strainers nor did we seek them.
The white water portion of the Potowmack Canal is only about a mile and a half and is too soon run. The beauty of the recycled wilderness remained, however as we paddled and floated through the flat water section of the Canal with the autumn sun filtering down through the second growth sycamore and white oak. The neat thing about the humid Eastern United States is that Nature quickly reasserts itself given half a chance.
The Potowmack Canal remained an obsession with Washington the rest of his life.
Men that are movers and shakers seem naturally attracted to the idea of canals as their way of putting their mark on geography and history whether they are Chinese emperors, Russian dictators, or larger than life American presidents such as George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt.
The oldest (and longest) canal in the world is China's 1, 114 mile Grand Canal that connects the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, built by the emperor Wen in the 6th century AD. It occupied the time of some 5 million workers, not all of whom were enthusiastic about the project. Indeed, the stress of building the canal is said to have brought down the emperor's dynasty.
George Washington's canal had to go only around 13 miles, but it was a long 13 miles. You didn't go much more than a shovel blade length before hitting solid, very solid rock.
There was also the problem of labor, both top and bottom.
While canals were wildly popular in England and Europe, the folks who knew how to build them mainly lived in England and Europe. We had to sort of figure it out abetted by some enterprising industrial espionage on our part. Canal building would eventually be the open-air Civil engineering university of America, but that would be after Washington's time.
There was also a labor shortage on the bottom end. (The Irish and Italians had not yet been invited.) Nobody with any sort of freedom of choice wanted to chop their way through 13 miles of glassy hard metamorphic rock. It would be necessary to use at lest some slave labor.
The Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, could sympathize with Washington's problem. Good help is hard to find. In the 1930's Marshall Stalin decided he needed a 141-mile canal to connect the Baltic Sea with the White Sea up around the Arctic Circle. People were not enthusiastic about the "up around the Arctic Circle" part, so it was necessary to use at least some slave labor. Stalin assembled some 100,000 convicts of whom around 11,000 died on the project before it was completed.
It is not known how many slaves perished building the Potowmack Canal. Probably very few, as the rented slaves had to be returned to their anxious owners in one piece as they were extremely valuable capital assets. This was particularly true as the Potowmack Canal.
became one of the first American engineering projects to employ extensive use of explosives. As the blasting technology of the time was essentially "earn while you learn", black powder is notoriously unstable, and the Bickford fuse had not yet been invented, it was thought economically best to use valueless poor Whites for the blasting part.
As you can imagine, the canal progressed slowly, but it did progress. There were cost overruns. When $40,000 was needed for the all-important locks at the base of the present Mather Gorge, Washington put up $4,000 of his own money and cajoled others to pony up the rest.
Finally, in 1802, two years after Washington's death, the Potowmack Canal finally opened for business. (Washington had grumbled that if being the President of the United States hadn't distracted him, he could have got the canal done.)
The canal proved popular, moving flour, whiskey, and iron downstream, with clothing, hardware, and firearms and other manufactured goods. Popular as the canal was, it was too seasonal. The Potomac River was either a raging flood or too shallow for most boats except for about two months of the year. (Poor Marshall Stalin's canal also proved too shallow for modern shipping.)
So the Potowmack Canal went bankrupt in 1828.
Ah, but hope springs eternal! In 1828, President John Quincy Adams turned the first spade full of dirt for the new, ultra modern, state of the art Chesapeake and Ohio Canal that would (surely) connect Pittsburg on the Ohio with Georgetown on the Chesapeake!
We paddled slowly down George Washington's magnificent obsession, until the trees on our left thinned a bit and the bank became islands and it was time and place to rejoin the Potomac, just below the Seneca Breaks Rapids. We paddled through the bonsai appearing rock gardens over to the Maryland side and saw a yellow clay gash on the green bank. That would be the Maryland take out for the Violette Loop. We pulled our boats up the bank and then portaged the 50 feet to the C & O Canal.
The C & O Canal is the final leg of the Round River or Violette's Loop experience. In the autumn of the year, it is like paddling into a French Impressionist painting; yellow leaves and silver grey trunks against a blue sky. Even the poison ivy redeems itself; growing into the branches of certain of the oak, sycamore, and tulip trees, it has turned half dozen shades of red against the host trees yellow.
The Seneca Breaks to Violette's Lock section of the C & O is one of the prettiest on the entire 184-mile canal. It was necessary to blast through the rock outcroppings and one can still see the 170-year-old grooves in the metamorphic rocks where Irish "John Henrys" drove steel drills to make the holes for the blasting charges. Were we paddling past the work of my ancestors? Interesting thought.
The C & O Canal was supposed to be everything that the Potowmack Canal was not; Independent of the River, uniform depth of 6 feet, no matter if there was a drought, open most of the year, no worries about rocks or rapids. The advantages over land transport were obvious; no hub deep mud or axle breaking rocks, just a smooth, liquid highway.
Best of all was the efficiency, 4 horses could pull a Conestoga wagon with two tons of freight, but two mules could pull a canal boat with 120 tons of cargo.
The equation sounded irresistible. Sort of like the mortgage boom of our own time. How could you possibly lose?
In the case of the C & O Canal, there were a number of ways.
First, the Potomac Valley was a pretty rugged place to build a canal. It was not like the easy going Erie Canal; here you had to tunnel more than half a mile through a mountain and you had to build aqueducts to take your canal across numerous fairly large tributaries of the Potomac.
Then there were the floods. There is a reason it is called a flood plain. Even today, with modern equipment, the National Park Service is hard pressed to keep up with flood damage and keep water in 20 miles of canal, let alone 184 miles.
Last and deadliest was the competition. The same date, 1828, when President Adams turned the first shovel full of the C & O, somebody else over in Baltimore turned the first shovel on a new technology that was not stopped by frozen canals -- the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
The C & O abandoned its dream of reaching Pittsburg and called it close enough at Cumberland Maryland in 1850, a target long before reached by the B & O railroad. The Canal ran from 1850 to 1924, just barely hanging on, transporting coal from western Maryland until the floods of 1924 finally did it in as a transportation method.
The canal and its crumbling infrastructure of locks, towpath, and lock houses were taken over by the railroad, which ironically went broke and turned its assets including the defunct canal over to the Federal Government (sounds a bit like the mortgage crisis).
The Federal government told the National Park Service to do something with it. The NPS, fresh from a series of successful "Par way" ventures, wanted to fill it in for an automobile parkway.
Associate Justice William O. Douglas famously intervened, gently forcing the NPS to create one of America's great park experiences; one blessedly removed from automobiles, and last but not least saving the Round River Adventure for the American People.
We arrived back at Violette's Lock about 3 hours after we put in. Not record time, but who keeps track paddling through beauty?
LIVING AND WORKING IN MEXICO
Now friends in these stressful economic times, the question arises "How much does it cost a retiree to live in Mexico?"or more hopefully, "Will my pension and/or social security go three times farther in Mexico, than it would in say, Tucson, Arizona , or Hope, Arkansas?"
The short answer is No.
Contrary to the pitches of various scam artists, you will not be living in beach front property and golfing with the richest man in world, Carlos Slim. (Unless of course your pension is from the Mafia.)
When Joan and I started going to Mexico to live and work about ten years ago, a middle class lifestyle could be obtained for roughly half what it cost to maintain such a lifestyle in the US. Today, with the crumbling US dollar, the same lifestyle can be maintained for about 2/3rd what it would cost in the US. That is still not bad.
What do I mean by "Middle Class"? Well, I don't know about you, but over the years, I've grown attached to electricity, running water and indoor plumbing.
If these things are not big ticket items in your life, then, neighbor, you can REALLY save money living in rural Mexico! Now this is self evident to a retired biologist who has long dreamed of wandering the Sierra De Tenango in the state of Guerrero to write the definitive flora. The slow passage of Mexican time in a mountain village marked by the hiss of a pressure lantern will be a delight to the contemplative naturalist (if not to his/her spouse).
But most gringos will opt for some version of the bright lights. Not Mexico City or even Guadalajara, but one of the smaller Spanish Colonial towns: These are the little stone cities that have a town square (Zocalo) right out of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. They are small enough to be picturesque and large enough to have some cultural amenities. They will usually have a sizable American expatriate colony. (A sure fire test is to check the local list of clubs. If there is a chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, you have hit on a town that has an American population: I realize you don't plan to spend your Golden Years hanging out with reformed drunks and dope fiends, but it is just an indication: there ARE other clubs.)
So how much does it cost to rent a middle class apartment in a pleasant neighborhood in a colonial town like Oaxaca in the very Indian state of the same name?
Well, we rented a nice furnished apartment with kitchen, bath, two bedrooms and a living room for around $500 US a month in 2007, plus phone and utilities. Can you find something cheaper? I expect so. Were we satisfied? Yes. Did we have a cook, maid, and gardener? No. (Did you have them back in the states? If not, why do you need them now?) What most people, even those of modest means have is "help"; that is a part time cleaning lady that comes in once or twice a week. This we did.
What about food?
First of all, do you like Mexican food? You do? Fine, because that is all you are going to get. Unlike the United States, Mexico is not a multi-cultural society. It is profoundly Mexican Indian in cooking and culture. If you didn't like Pancho's Rio Grande Caf back in the States and plan to eat out a lot down in Mexico, you are in for severe disappointment.
Unless you live in Mexico City, you are not going to be able to mosey down to your favorite Thai, Chinese, Italian, Indian (The Hindu variety) Middle Eastern or even an All American steak house.
Mexicans do not yet seek diversity in their food. In some respects thay are very much like the New Zealanders of 30 years ago. The Kiwis were eating the same tasteless slop that they had inherited from their British ancestors. Then cheap airfares came along and young Kiwis and Aussies started to roam the world, eating their way through exotic countries and returning to find Mum's cooking inedible. This sparked a food revolution in New Zealand and it is now one of the tastiest countries in the world.
While most young Mexicans do go abroad, it is usually to the United States and not to experience exotic foreign culture, but to make money. They usually cook in their rooms and when they do go to a restaurant, it is to--- Yup! Pancho's Rio Grande Caf.
So change in Mexican cuisine is going to be slower than the Second Coming of Christ.
That said, the raw ingredients are excellent; with Mexican markets and stores well stocked with familiar produce and lots of exotic stuff you don't normally find in the US.
How much does food cost? Well now, I was in the Colonial town of Puebla in July of this year (2008) and here are a few prices from the local WAL-MEX.
(WAL-MEX! Yep! Them sneaky migrants with the Arkansas accents have slipped across the border!)
Remember, Mexico is on the metric system, a manner of measurement designed by French atheists to irritate Anglo Saxons; to arrive at the Christian "pound", simply divide the Kilo by 2 (Actually, a kilo is 2. 20 pounds, but by skipping the decimal, you give yourself a little lagniappe!
The prices are in US dollars per Kilo:
- Beef $6. 60
- Apples (Gala) $3. 78
- Oranges $1. 55
- Bananas $0. 82
- Chicken breast $5. 04
- Whole chicken $2. 50
- Pork chops $5. 43
- Tomatoes $1. 55
- Potatoes (white) $0. 96
- Romaine lettuce $ 0. 48 a bunch
- Rib eye steak (imported from US) $18. 00
- Sirloin $7. 46
- Salmon $9. 89
- Red Snapper $11. 63
- Ground beef $3. 78
- Carrots $0. 63
- Papaya $0. 96
- Butter (400 grams) $2. 33
- Eggs (per dozen) $1. 64
- Beer (Corona 6 pack) $4. 65
- Wine (Mexican) $4. 46
So you can see, you can do rather well at the supermarket. Can you do even better bargaining with the nice Indian lady at the open-air markets so beloved by guidebooks?
Possibly.
Do you really want to haggle over the price of a papaya? Does the nice Indian lady enjoy playing mental chess with rich gringos?
Possibly not.
Now neighbors, one of the most persistent questions asked about living in Mexico is:
"Can you drink the water?"
Well now friend, if you don't drink the water, you are either a vacationing camel or you have a soda straw that reaches all the way to Texas.
The problem with Mexican drinking water is not lack of chlorination, it is low water pressure.
Low water pressure?
Yes! In July 2008, the citizens of Montgomery County, Maryland, one of the five richest counties in the United States were turned into honorary Mexicans. You see one of the major water mains burst in a remote forested part of the county and the break was not discovered for three days, long enough to lower the water pressure in the rest of Montgomery County's plumbing.
Now what keeps dirt and other contaminants out of the pipes is not chlorine, but water pressure. All but the newest pipes leak. With leaks as a given, you want the leak to flow outside the pipe, you do not want the pressure to be so low that the leak is INTO the pipe from possibly contaminated ground water.
This is what happened in Montgomery County.
Now the County Water Authority is quite responsible and was in touch with its customers through radio, television, and to a surprising degree, direct e-mail. The county water authority told the Montgomeryans that, for the immediate future everyone in the county was to boil their drinking water, thus transporting affluent Montgomery County into the Third World.
All went well, until the county began receiving e-mails stating that drinking boiled water was very painful. The county fathers thought a moment and then acted Step 2 to their instructions."ALLOW WATER TO COOL BEFORE DRINKING."
Mexicans are not that dumb, but Mexico suffers from endemic low water pressure. (Toilets famously include the instruction not to put toilet paper in them.) They know that their pipes have low pressure and are subject to leaks and thus contamination. So Mexico has developed an excellent bottled water infrastructure ranging from bottles of water that you can buy in the most remote town to multi-liter "garifunda" plastic jugs delivered to your home by the water man that will last a week.
There have been remarkably few scandals about the purity of Mexican bottled water, as it seems to be one enterprise where the public will not tolerate graft or corruption. So yeah, you can drink the water as long as it comes out of a bottle.
"But is Mexico safe?" You ask.
A wise and prudent question, neighbors! After all, you don't want to spend your retirement prematurely dead.
Mexico can be violent, no question about that. However, a few simple precautions can reduce your chances of being present during the violence.
- At the risk of sounding like Sister Mary Agnes, your favorite parochial school teacher, Avoid Occasions of Sin. Do not have any involvement in the drug trade in any manner, shape or form, not even buying a little weed for your own consumption. These are truly bad people. They may not kill you right away, but you will wish they did. If you can obey this one easy rule, your chances of a long and happy retirement in Mexico have improved 100%.
- Avoid targets. When Joan and I were in Oaxaca, a couple of health minded tourists decided to go jogging in the city park with the Oaxaca Chief of Police and his bodyguard because, well, what could be safer? Bad health move. A drug lord's assassins killed all four of them. If someone has a bodyguard, there is a reason.
- Avoid political demonstrations and processions. This is unfortunate because they are often a great deal of fun with larger than life paper Mache puppets of local politicians, and occasionally, George Bush and Uncle Sam doing incredible things. However, Mexicans take their politics seriously and so do the police. Your First Amendment Rights don't apply here and things can get out of hand rather quickly. The American Photo-journalist Brad Dill was shot dead in Oaxaca filming a street demonstration in 2006.
- If in doubt, ask a local. This can save you a world of trouble. Here is an example: Joan and I had some free time, so we decided to rent a car (an adventure unto itself) and explore the cloud forest region of what is known as the "High Mazateca" of the state of Oaxaca. The High Mazateca is extravagantly rich in deep, deep strata of limestone, which in turn produces deep and spectacular caverns.
As my first assignment with the National Park Service had been as a ranger at Jewel Cave National Monument, where I had the pleasure and honor of caving with Jan and Herb Conn, I have always had a soft spot for caves.
The High Mazateca has Nindo-Da-Ge. (Broad Spring Mountain Cave), which is said to rival Carlsbad Caverns in grandeur. This we had to see.
To do the cave, you have to get to the remote mountain town of San Antonio Eloxochitlan. When you get there you go to the mayor of the town and he will arrange for a guide to take you into the cave. The tour will take about half a day.
Now there is probably a sealed, all weather road into San Antonio, but we didn't find it.
After taking the car on roads not authorized by our rental agreement, we finally arrived on a summit overlooking San Antonio.
The town was drop dead picturesque so we stopped on the summit to take a picture.
"We're in luck!" I said, "It must be the feast of San Antonio! I can hear fireworks!" Fiestas in Mexican villages are always a great deal of fun for both the participants and the viewers. Often migrants to the United States time their return to coincide with the village festival; a happy reunion for everyone.
Joan was strangely hesitant. An anthropologist, she is normally enthusiastic about seeing folk life in action.
"There is something strange about this". She said (Now anthropologists are not familiar with the police term "Hinkey", but she was definitely feeling it.)
"Look at the Zocalo (village square)."Notice anything?"
Like Dr. Watson, I had not.
"The Zocalo is empty. Isn't that unusual for a fiesta in a Mexican town?" She asked, Holmesianly.
I had to admit that it was.
"Then we'd better find somebody to ask before we go into town." said Joan sensibly.
We didn't have to look. The local schoolteacher had seen us parked and came over to offer an explanation in excited Spanish.
Joan grinned broadly as she translated.
"It seems that there has been a close election in San Antonio. What we are watching is a gun battle, not a fiesta! The PRI are shooting it out with the PRD! He is very sorry and very embarrassed that this is happening, but even if we got through to the mayor's office without being killed or wounded, it would be unlikely that we would be able to find a guide to see the cave. It would be best if we were to come back another day" (Mexicans hate to say no!) I had to agree with the schoolteacher.
Judging from the volume of small arms fire it seemed that PRI (Party of Revolutionary Institutions) and the PRD (Party of Revolutionary Democracy) were about equally matched. It was indeed a close election.
Now it might sound a bit anarchic, but the scene was actually a sign of nascent Good Government. The 70 year iron grip of PRI on Mexican small towns not to mention the nation was only recently broken.
We turned around just in time to be nearly run off the road by truckloads of black clad Police sent in by PAN, the ruling party, to sort out Democracy in San Antonio.
We would be back another time. The moral of the story is being aware, ask questions and you'll do OK.