Notes On Being Run Over By a Motorcycle

I reported below (“When Compromise Doesn’t Work“) on meetings that were going on over the rules of use for nine trails close to Bozeman. I wish I had some good news.

I’ve sat now through three of the meetings, and hikers and stockmen are losing their shirts. It’s all a well-earned defeat. Hikers, not wanting to appear confrontational or strident, have been most accommodating to the motorheads. Stockmen, who seem disingenuous, might actually be motorheads in drag. At this writing, they have given away quite a bit.

What interested me most in this process was the cool professionalism that the motorheads used in ramming their agenda through. They stated openly that they wanted five days of motorized use on every trail close to Bozeman, and that their demands were “nonnegotiable”. The proscribed counter-tactic to such an obstinate position would be to be equally obstinate. Then, if motorheads were to bend a bit, hikers could too. That would expose the intransigence of the motorized set, and clear the way for sincere haggling.

But instead we got the typical right wing circus, the orchestrated chorus of voices yelling out that hikers (hikers!) were not negotiating in good faith. Sadly, it worked. Rather than confront them head on, hikers yielded. At the end of the last meeting, they had been reduced to four or five days out of 21 on three trails. Five hiker days had been taken off the board in total. Then one guy had the balls to stand up and face the two negotiators for the hikers and say “Can’t you people BEND a little bit?”

One of the ploys used by motorheads has been to post a map of the Gallatin Forest showing how many miles of trails they “lost” in the recent travel plan. That’s why they think they have the right to take over local trails.

Here’s what happened – motorheads are small in number, but politically connected. Whenever a public process did not give them what they wanted, they ran to Conrad Burns or Denny Rehberg, and the Forest Service, under pressure from above, would yield. As a consequence, they made inroads into every area of the forest, and hundreds of miles of trails were opened up to them. But they don’t belong – the machines are obnoxious and destructive. In the most recent travel plan, the public demanded and got reductions in the number of trails they could access. The public won out – the vast, overwhelming majority of people who participated in the travel plan wanted them out.

Last I heard, local motorhead Kerry White was trying to put together a lawsuit to undo the travel plan. Absent Conrad Burns, it’s his best alternative.

In fairness, hikers went into the process in good faith. They expected horsemen to be natural allies. (They weren’t.) They expected bikers to oppose motorcycles. (They didn’t.) Landowners don’t even belong at the table, as no private land is at issue. But they too seemed to want to ally with motorheads. It was a stacked process. Dierdre, the professional moderator, wants only harmony, and at any price. Christine, the Forest Service representative, keeps telling us that all uses, including motorcycles, are considered appropriate. She seems blind to incompatibility – it’s as if she thinks that motorcycling is akin to quietly walking and enjoying nature. They are two incompatible activities.

What is at issue is exclusivity. When motorheads are on the trail, everyone else is off. Sharing is not possible – they control by default. Hikers can share a trail with anyone – we are non-intrusive and quiet. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle called us “extremists”. That’s the attitude of the hard right wing – you either give into them, or endure name-calling.

The best strategy was to circle the wagons and attack the process as being corrupt. But we were deer in the headlights. We didn’t realize the stridency of the opposition, and the lengths they would go to to get their way. We thought they were reasonable people. We erred, greviously.

As of this writing, hikers have talked among themselves, and appear to be demanding more. I expect that tonight’s meeting will be contentious, but that hikers will not be so accommodating of motorheads. I fully expect that someone will stand up and point out that demanding five days or motorized use on nine trails, to the exclusion of everyone else, is extreme in the extreme. I expect I’ll be the one to say that.