Friday, September 3, 2010

The Rural Edge in Northern Arizona

Once a book finds its way into the open, you never know who might stumble upon it, process what they read, then, based on their own life experience and worldview, construct something the author never dreamed of. Such happened a few weeks ago when an email showed up from Dr. Kathy Hemenway from Snowflake, Arizona, 120 miles southeast of Flagstaff. Having read about the Malpai Borderlands Group and their efforts to stave off fragmentation of their rangelands, she writes:

While I understand the negatives in fragmenting large landscapes, and I certainly understand that subdivision of large ranches is not the right thing to do in many contexts, I believe there is a place for it and that is not reflected in your book. I think a distinction needs to be made between subdivisions that are at the edge of towns, like mine, and subdivisions…carved out of large ranches…in the middle of nowhere.

To be honest, Dr. Hemenway's distinction never crossed my mind. Her neighborhood, Cedar Hills, comprises more than 1500 parcels sandwiched between Snowflake and several huge ranches. Like many of her neighbors, she settled there because of health problems that make living in urban and suburban environments impossible. For people like her who are made ill by air pollution, pesticides, building and furnishing materials, and noise, "there is no solution but to get some land around you and get away from development," she says. Her non-toxic home was featured in a recent article in the Los Angeles Times. She realizes ranchers detest subdivisions of her type, which she calls the "rural edge," despite the fact they were sold to developers by the self-same ranching community.

A new kind of conflict presents itself. Ranchers at the edge of her subdivision seek permits for large wind and solar generating facilities immediately adjacent to and, in some cases, surrounding occupied subdivision parcels. Such would, in her opinion, make such places unlivable and worthless. "Try to imagine fighting for your property rights when you own 40 or 80 acres and your interests conflict with a landowner who owns hundreds of thousands of acres."

She feels compelled to defend her piece of the world which, because of her health and her intention to live simply and well on her property, is not only worthy of protection but is also critical to her ability to be a productive human being. Across the fence are ranchers, with much bigger tracts for sure, who presumably also are trying to do better than live at the margins in iffy health. Ranching, risky as it is, often must supplement the cattle business. The new energy economy may be the modern equivalent of dude ranching.

Thinking about this takes my mind into new space. Here, in the least likely of places---the sparsely settled rangelands of northern Arizona---clearly different perceptions of the environment and of the values people want from it, as well as an imbalanced power equation (literally and figuratively), is leading to a showdown. Is it possible to find common ground between urban refugees seeking solace, solitude, serenity, and salubrious lives (who, by the way, have no zoning protection) and ranchers trying to preserve open space by helping the region produce energy from wind and sun? Without more information, I struggle to visualize how this conflict might be resolved. Yet I feel certain it could happen. If the ranchers and residents of Cedar Hills (and other stakeholders) could meet face-to-face, perhaps with a third-party facilitator, keeping in mind the place they share and love as their starting point, miracles might ensue. If such a gathering could be arranged, are there ways for people who attend to simply name and define the focus and scope of further discussions (not unlike the Israeli-Palestinian talks just underway)? If so, another meeting and another can happen. While working on ways to escape apparent impasses, people gathering in good faith might then build trust in one another. Once that happens, anything is possible.

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