“People seeking food will see an opportunity to hunt, gather, or cultivate. People who are well fed, but seek spiritual sustenance in nature, will see a refuge. Wildlife biologists will see a laboratory, archeologists a dig, real estate developers a suburb, park managers a place of employment.” Mark Dowie of Inverness.

(From The Fiction of Wilderness published in the West Marin Review. The essay was adapted from an upcoming book Vital Diversities: Balancing Protection of Nature and Culture. Dowie teaches science and environmental reporting at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.)

A small group of Point Reyes National Seashore visitors buying oysters from Drakes Bay Oyster Company and quietly picnicking beside the water a couple of weeks ago.

The tranquility at the oyster company contrasted with the folks screaming in excitement at another national park 200 miles away. In Yosemite, two rock climbers set a speed record for going up the face of El Capitan.

The climbers, one from Lafayette and one from Japan, shaved 2 minutes and 12 seconds off the 2 hour, 45 minute, and 35 second record held by two German brothers.

Back at Drakes Bay, oyster-company owner Kevin Lunny is fighting an attempt by National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher to close the oyster farm when its lease runs out in 2012.

Supt. Neubacher’s administration says the 125-year-old oyster farm is incompatible with a wilderness area. Of course, the oyster farm isn’t actually in a wilderness area. So far, the government has labeled Drakes Estero, the inlet where Lunny’s oyster company is located, merely “potential wilderness.”

Drake’s Bay Oyster Company’s parking lot in the foreground and the Coast Guard’s white buildings in the background.

But it’s a stretch to call Drakes Estero even “potential wilderness.” By act of Congress, the land around it is reserved for agricultural. From the oyster farm, visitors can view not only this “pastoral zone” and traffic on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard but also a US Coast Guard Communications Station.

One chunk of parkland that is in a designated wilderness area is El Capitan.

The 3,000-foot-high granite monolith is part of what the Park Service boasts is “one of the world’s greatest climbing areas.” Not surprisingly, members of the press and public were on hand for a week to hoot and holler as climbers Hans Florine and Yuri Hirayama repeatedly scrambled up El Capitan. Hirayama has said that if he climbs the rock again, he’ll bring a movie crew from Japan.

Encouraging an international hullabaloo in the Yosemite wilderness area is apparently appropriate when the national park is looking for good publicity. In their own way, national parks do a fair amount of huckstering. The National Seashore, for example, holds sandcastle contests at Drakes Beach every Labor Day to lure crowds to Point Reyes.

All this commotion suggests that seeking solitude in nature to restore your soul can sometimes be more romantic than realistic — whether you’re wandering on Point Reyes or in Yosemite (right). Even without climbers and their fans, Yosemite’s wilderness is crawling with an estimated 500 black bears. If you don’t want your meditations disturbed, it’s better to follow the Savior’s advice (Matthew 6:6), and “when thou prayest, enter into thy closet.”

So what activities are appropriate in a “wilderness” area? That apparently depends on the park superintendent of the moment and whom he likes or doesn’t. Ever since Lunny helped organize the Point Reyes Seashore Ranchers Association so that ranchers could put up a united front in negotiations with the park, Supt. Neubacher’s Administration has made it clear they don’t like the oyster grower/beef rancher.

From a strictly environmental standpoint, Neubacher’s justification for trying to close Lunny’s oyster farm reveals the irrational way the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service is being administered these days. If this region of the Park Service is so fastidious it wants to close down a 125-year-old oyster farm to protect “potential wilderness” at Point Reyes, what the heck is the region doing promoting environmentally damaging rock-climbing competition in Yosemite’s “wilderness area?”

“As the number of climbers visiting the park has increased through the years, the impacts of climbing have become much more obvious,” the National Park Service acknowledges. “Some of those impacts include: soil compaction, erosion, and vegetation loss in parking areas, at the base of climbs, and on approach and descent trails, destruction of cliffside vegetation and lichen, disturbance of cliff-dwelling animals, litter, water pollution from improper human waste disposal, and the visual blight of chalk marks, pin scars, bolts, rappel slings, and fixed ropes.”

And what about the 2 million visitors a year the National Seashore attracts to Point Reyes. By any chance do they affect the wilderness around here more than a low-key, family-owned oyster company? Or the National Seashore’s filling in a wetland at Drakes Beach to provide parking for for this multitude… how did that preserve nature?

Given all this, just what does the Park Service mean when it talks about protecting the “wilderness?”

“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'” — Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Homage to Rembrandt. Former Inverness resident John Robbins, who built the Horizon Cable system in West Marin, at my dining-room table Wednesday just before sunset.

Not much news here from this past week, just a few stories and mostly unrelated photos. The first story occurred, appropriately enough, after dark on Friday the 13th.

Kathy Runnion, who heads the cat-rescue group Planned Feralhood, was riding with me to the No Name Bar to in Sausalito for an evening of jazz when I drove past the Ross Police Station along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard about 9:15 p.m. The traffic light at Lagunitas Road up ahead was green, but as we approached the intersection, Kathy suddenly exclaimed, “Do you see that? Look out!” There was a thump, and Kathy cried out, “Oh, my God! That car hit her!”

I glanced over at the far curb just in time to see a pre-teen girl collapsing on the pavement. I immediately stopped, as did the oncoming driver that hit her. The girl was apparently leaving an event at the Marin Art and Garden Center, and parents who had been at the center, along with a policeman, immediately converged on the scene.

The girl was obviously in shock and may have been briefly knocked out, for she kept screaming, “What happened?”

“You were hit by a car,” the officer repeatedly explained. Within minutes, paramedics and an ambulance arrived. I later called the Ross Police Department to relate what Kathy and I had witnessed. Kathy had seen two girls in the road, jaywalking in the dark. One retreated to the curb when she saw the oncoming car. The other girl, however, tried to run across the street. If she’d been a second or two faster, the oncoming driver probably wouldn’t have struck her, but I probably would have. Our cars were virtually side by side when the accident occurred.

The policeman I talked with said the girls’ view of oncoming traffic had been momentarily obscured by a third car, which was turning left. Fortunately, he noted, the oncoming driver was able to swerve just enough to avoid hitting the girl head-on, so her injuries were not too severe. Nonetheless, the incident left me shaken. I pass all this along for the obvious moral: don’t jaywalk on a busy boulevard after dark, and if you’re a driver, keep your eyes peeled for those that do.

The blacktail doe and two fawns that live on this hill spend part of every day in my pasture. The fawns are now about 10 weeks old. I shot this family photo Thursday.

My next story isn’t grim despite its violent conclusion. As it happens, when I sold The Point Reyes Light 32 months ago, I had been storing two of the newspaper’s old computers in my basement. They were obsolete and ready for recycling, but I didn’t want to throw them out until the hard drives were erased. In these days of identity theft and cyber-crime, leaving personal and business records on the hard drives would seem to be asking for trouble.

On Monday, using the computers’ erase function, I tried to write over the hard drives with zeroes, the usual way to clear a hard drive. But the old software soon froze. What to do? I called Sheila and Michael Castelli, who a few years ago moved from Point Reyes Station to Taos. She builds websites, and he’s a computer techie.

Mike gave me advice for resuming the erasing, but Sheila soon emailed me that Mike had come up with a simpler, low-tech solution: take out the hard drives and smash ’em. The only problem with that was I’d never tried to disassemble a computer and wouldn’t know a hard drive if I saw one. So I wrote back for more advice.

On Tuesday, however, it occurred to me to call Marin Mac Shop in San Rafael, where a techie told me he’d remove both hard drives for a total of $49.50. I crammed the two computers, two monitors (one of them huge), a plate burner, and other gear into my Acura and, with its rear end sagging, drove over the hill.

Marin Mac Shop needed less than five minutes to remove both hard drives, and I was back out the door and on my way to ReNew Computers. The electronics-recycling center is hard to find. It’s located at 1241 Andersen Drive, Suite J, a small space in one of the non-descript industrial buildings south of downtown; however, the staff was friendly, and the dropoff was free.

Back at home, I followed Mike’s suggestion and destroyed the hard drives with an ax. I pass all this along as one solution to the vexing problem of what to do with old computers.

This last story is a pretty good indication of how I live these days. My long-term houseguest Linda Petersen has a 15-year-old dog, a Havanese named Sebastian. As I’ve noted before, he’s virtually deaf and legally blind, but he’s very sweet.

In recent months, unfortunately, Sebastian has taken to begging at the table, and given his advanced age, neither of us has had the heart to turn him down.

My dining-room table sits next to a window, and just outside the window is a woodbox. Linda and I were eating dinner Thursday night when her little dog as usual came over and stood with his front paws on my leg, wanting to be fed. At that moment, Mrs. Raccoon climbed onto the woodbox and began vulching over my shoulder, hoping I’d throw her some pieces of bread.

“Only in this cabin,” I said to Linda, would we have a pet dog and a wild raccoon begging at the dinner table simultaneously.” Linda then took over feeding table scraps to Sebastian while I got up and threw some bread out the kitchen door to Mrs. Raccoon. I pass all this along as a warning as to what can happen once you start feeding dogs and raccoons from the dinner table. They give you no peace.

An enthusiastic crowd showed up at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art Saturday afternoon for the opening of an exhibit by Bruce Lauritzen of Point Reyes Station.

Lauritzen’s idiosyncratic exhibition of paintings, which is titled the Vessel Series, consists of abstracted representations of boat hulls.

The artist discusses his painting Still Waters III with two guests at his opening.

The painting in the foreground is titled Boathouse. The three smaller paintings to its left are titled Towards Dark Water, RowBoat, and RowBoat II.

Lauritzen graduated from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and earned a master-of-fine-arts degree at the San Francisco Art Institute. He later taught at the College of Marin and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He was also a member of the Marin Arts Council’s founding board of directors. Lauritzen’s work is in more than 100 private, institutional, and museum collections.

Lauritizen (left) with fellow Point Reyes Station artist Chuck Eckart during Saturday’s opening at the Marin Contemporary Art Museum on the old Hamilton Air Base.

The show can be seen from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays through July 13 at 500 Palm Drive.

Some history regarding the museum’s impressive home: It typifies the air base’s Spanish-Revival-style buildings, which were mostly constructed in 1934. Originally called Hamilton Airfield, the base is named for a World War I hero, 1st Lt. Lloyd Andrew Hamilton. In August 1918, Hamilton received the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism after leading a low-level bombing attack on a German airdrome 30 miles behind enemy lines in Belgium. He died in action only 13 days later in France. The air base was decommissioned in 1974.

Turnout was light today, Tuesday, for California’s state primary elections, mainly because the state had already held its presidential primary on Feb. 5. Waiting for voters at the Point Reyes Station polling place in the firehouse are election workers (from front): Doug Long, Cathleen Austin, and Cindy Knabe.

US Senator Barack Obama today clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, as numerous news organizations early this afternoon began projecting he would.

Acknowledging her opponent’s commanding lead in delegates to the nominating convention, Senator Hillary Clinton told Democratic politicos in New York that she is willing to be Obama’s running mate.

Senator Obama, 46, is the first black presidential nominee of a major US political party.

Obama was born in Honolulu to a Kenyan father and a white American mother, who met at the University of Hawaii. His parents soon separated, however, and eventually divorced. His mother’s second husband was Indonesian, and when he was six, Obama moved to Indonesia for four years. He then returned to Hawaii where he lived with his maternal grandparents while attending 5th through 12th grades.

Obama graduated from Columbia University where he majored in Political Science, specializing in International Relations. In 1991, he received a law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.

From 1993 to 2004, Senator Obama taught Constitutional Law parttime at the University of Chicago Law School while also working as an attorney. He was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996 and the US Senate in 2004.

Meanwhile, this news blog at 10 a.m. today (which is when I got up) projected Supervisor Steve Kinsey and Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey would easily win their races.

Incumbent Kinsey (left) ran unopposed in the nonpartisan Marin County race for the Fourth District.

He will now serve his fourth term on the Board of Supervisors, representing all of West Marin, along with pieces of Larkspur, Corte Madera, and San Rafael.

Incumbent Woolsey (right), who represents Marin and Sonoma counties in the US House of Representatives, likewise ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.

In November, Woolsey will face Michael Halliwell, who was unopposed in today’s Sixth District Republican primary. Woolsey has already served eight terms in the House, where she has one of the most liberal voting records of any member.

Update on the State Senate Democratic Primary: With 43 percent of the vote, Assemblyman Mark Leno handily outdistanced Assemblyman Joe Nation (29.3 percent) and incumbent Carole Migden (27.7 percent) in the Third State Senate District.

The district includes Marin County and parts of San Francisco and Sonoma counties.

Leno (left) will face Republican Sashi McEntee in November’s general election. McEntee ran unopposed in today’s Republican primary.

The Third State Senate District, like Woolsey’s Sixth Congressional District, is overwhelmingly Democratic, and a victory in either Democratic primary is often tantamount to election.

Fifty years ago this month, the late columnist Herb Caen of The San Francisco Chronicle coined the word “beatnik.”

As it happened, a recognized Beat Generation, epitomized in literature by poet Allen Ginsberg and novelist Jack Kerouac, had made its presence known over the previous decade, and six months earlier, the Soviet Union had begun the “space race” by launching Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the globe. With his typical whimsy, Caen in April 1958 blended the two names into beatnik.

This much of what I remember I can confirm. What I can’t confirm is my vague recollection of why Caen did it. I welcome any correction, but if my memory is accurate, it was in reference to an otherwise-not-bad Beat who one day lost it and ended up destroying property in North Beach.*

On this mostly unnoticed but nonetheless historic anniversary, it would seem appropriate to comment on Sausalito’s No Name bar. It too began five decades ago, but its connection to the Beat Era runs deeper.

“When the bar first opened, it was a beatnik bar,” Michael Aragon, drummer and bandleader, told me last week. (Seen here performing with Aragon are Rob Roth on sax and Pierre Archain on bass.)

“Lots of folks like Jack Kerouac, [actor] Sterling Hayden, Allen Ginsberg, and the like hung out there and played chess, read poetry, wore lots of berets and horned-rimmed glasses, and played bongo drums,” said Aragon, who schedules the music at the No Name. “And how can we forget the cigarettes?”

In the No Name’s protected garden where smoking is still permitted, Michael Hall plays chess four times a week, as he has for 20 years. Hall, an electrical contractor who lives on a houseboat, is but one of the bar’s regular chess players.

Along with chess and smoking, cool jazz and bebop from the Beat Era are alive and well and living in Sausalito. “I have been blessed with the opportunity to keep jazz music alive at the No Name for the past 25 years,” Aragon said. “This is the longest-running, continuous jazz gig in Marin County.

“This in itself is a miracle, considering that most people believe that the only way to survive in the club world is to constantly inundate the mind with tremendous amounts of decibels.”

Trombonist Mal Sharpe, who heads the Big Money in Jazz Band, has played Dixieland jazz Sunday afternoons at the the No Name for roughly 15 years, he told me this week. Thanks to YouTube, Sharpe and his band can be seen and heard playing at the bar by clicking on The Sunny Side of the Street or St. Louis Blues.

“The bar is a unique place,” Aragon remarked, “because on one side of you there could be sitting a homeless person and on the other side, someone that owns a $50 million yacht. What I have tried to do over the years is make sure that no matter what, everyone is treated the same.”

There is music at the bar seven nights a week. On Friday and Saturday, jazz groups play from 9 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., and on Sundays, there is Dixieland from 3 to 7 p.m.

On Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the No Name features blues and folk music from 8:30 p.m. to midnight. On Tuesdays, an open microphone is held from 8:30 p.m. to midnight.

The bar is now under its fifth ownership, Aragon told me, and as the sign out front reveals, No Name is not really the bar’s name. It literally is a bar with no name. Check the phone book; you’ll find it listed as “no name 757 Bridgeway Sau.”

There’s also no cover charge, and the audience is always a mix of oldtimers who were around for the Beat Era, tourists, and fans of live-music, especially jazz.

* Over time, the term “beatnik” came to refer anyone with the supposed trappings of Beat writers and artists: berets, dark glasses, dark clothing, and a propensity to use hipster slang. For Ginsberg and Kerouac, “Beats” were down-and-out wanderers who also were visionaries. Both writers resented their quixotic outcasts’ being confused with “beatniks.”

Chileno Valley ranchers Mike and Sally Gale several weeks ago returned home after spending a fortnight in the Middle East visiting their son Ivan, a newspaperman in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Sally, Mike, and Ivan Gale at their Chileno Valley ranch last Christmas.

In 2003 and 2004, Ivan was an excellent reporter for The Point Reyes Light, winning three national and three statewide journalism awards during those two years. Ivan left The Light to attend Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and earned two master’s degrees in Communications, one with a specialty in Science Reporting.

From there, he managed to land a job in the UAE, where for two years he was a business reporter for The Gulf News in Dubai. The transportation industry was his main beat. Ivan, now 33, this month will begin a new job with a startup daily in Abu Dhabi.

Maps from the World Fact Book, which is posted by the CIA.

The UAE is a federation of seven states on the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula: Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain. The federation’s neighbors are Saudi Arabia and Oman while across the narrow Strait of Hormuz lies Iran.

The emirates are shown to the upper left of Oman on the right side of Saudi Arabia.

A federal constitutional monarchy, the UAE’s presidency is always held by a member of the Al Nahyan clan of Abu Dhabi and its premiership by the Al Maktoum clan of Dubai. The Supreme Council, which consists of the rulers of the seven emirates, elects a Council of Ministers.

Thanks to oil and natural-gas revenues, which in turn have fueled other industrial development, the UAE has the fifth highest Gross Domestic Product per capita in the world.

A whopping 85 percent of the UAE’s population of 4.5 million are non-citizens. Along with residents from other Arab countries, there are 2.15 million South Asians (mostly Indians, Filipinos, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis plus several thousand Sri Lankans).

In its report on Human Rights, the US State Department annually complains about abuse of South Asian workers in the UAE. And while acknowledging improvements in recent years, the State Department also reports the UAE’s Islamic fundamentalism can be harsh.

These criticisms notwithstanding, Islam in the emirates is far less fundamentalist than in such neighbors as Saudi Arabia and Iran. And the UAE is definitely friendly to the West. From 1892 until 1971, its states were by treaty under British military protection. In 1990-91, the emirates joined the fight against Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War, which followed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

During his parents’ visit, Ivan (at left) accompanied them on a trip to Jordan, which is across the Arabian Peninsula from the UAE. Included here are two photos from that trip. While Sally like other women was expected to wear a headscarf, Ivan and Mike are wearing them to ward off a cold wind.

Because the emirates are Arab states ruled by sheiks, with each state having both secular and Islamic law, I found myself wondering what is it like for Ivan to live and work in this world, especially when he doesn’t speak Arabic. And for that matter, why are there several English-language newspapers in the UAE?

On the occasion of Ivan’s moving from Dubai to Abu Dhabi and going to work for a new newspaper, I questioned him by email about his life there. Here are his answers:

DVM: What can you tell me about the newspaper where you’ll be working?

Ivan: The National is set to launch on April 17 and will be a nationwide, general-interest, English-language newspaper.

We will be the only English daily based in Abu Dhabi [above], the UAE capital, but there are a handful of other English dailies based in Dubai and Sharjah.

A lot of newspapers have done well here because the real estate market (and the economy as a whole) is so hot it is keeping the advertising market extremely buoyant.

Our newspaper is funded by the Abu Dhabi government which is reshaping its media subsidiary (and our parent company), Emirates Media Inc., into Abu Dhabi Media Company. ADMC’s CEO is Ed Borgerding (formerly executive vice president of Walt Disney International in Hong Kong and senior vice president of Walt Disney International Television in Hong Kong and London).

Our newspaper is the first and most significant new initiative from the Abu Dhabi government’s media arm, which has some pretty ambitious plans for the future.

DVM: Why is it possible for an English-language paper to survive in the Arab world?

Ivan: Some UAE-based English dailies have not only survived, they have flourished. This is in large part due to the high expat and South Asian population fluent in English. There could be as many or more English speakers than Arabic speakers in this country because of the
high numbers of foreign workers living here.

There are some other [English-language newspapers in the Arab world]: The Daily Star in Lebanon and some newspapers and business magazines in Cairo, where English-language publications have established themselves. But outside the UAE, I don’t think you will find the same conditions of a booming economy and a critical mass of English readers that have spelled success for the local dailies here.

Outside of the commercial aspects, I think local publications provide an important service for English readers living outside the region. There is a growing hunger among readers in the East and West [for news] about what is happening in the Middle East, and this will mean online readers will increasingly consult the websites of UAE newspapers for news and analysis.

DVM How many English-language newspapers are there in the UAE?

IVAN: 7 Days (daily freesheet), Gulf News (daily broadsheet), Khaleej Times (daily broadsheet), Emiates 24-7 (daily tabloid business newspaper), Xpress (free weekly newspaper), Gulf Today (daily broadsheet), and soon The National (daily broadsheet).

I should also note that The Times of London began printing an edition in the UAE last year, and The Financial Times does as well, I believe.

DVM: How much of the English-language press’ readership in the UAE is from India?

Ivan: It has been said that some newspapers cater almost exclusively to the South Asian segment of the population. As a block they could very well constitute the single largest group in this country. It’s probably true that some of the English newspapers rely on this group for at least half or more of their readership. But there are also large numbers of expats living here from the UK, Europe, and North America. A lot of Arab businessmen also consult the English press for news and analysis too. So it’s definitely a mix.

DVM: What fuels the UAE economy?

Ivan: A brief answer would be high oil prices which spill over into a booming real estate market, high consumer spending, and the relentless pace of infrastructure mega-projects [built with] private and government investment. Travel and tourism are also very important.

DVM: I gather you’ll be covering transportation. Why is that a major beat in the UAE?

IVAN: The thing is, there are many major beats here because the UAE government, and Dubai [above] in particular over the past five years, have undertaken an ambitious and wide-ranging diversification campaign. So there are exciting developments going on in real estate, finance, telecoms and technology, travel and tourism, media and marketing, and of course oil and gas.

But it is important to note that transport was the first major industry that put this country on the map after its pearling industry collapsed. Dubai borrowed heavily to dredge its creek and then build a deepwater port around the 1950s, before the country’s oil and gas reserves were discovered.

They’ve gone from strength to strength, and Jebel Ali Port in Dubai is now the largest between Rotterdam and Singapore. Emirates Airline is now on track to become the largest international airline in the next four to seven years. The airline has roughly 250 aircraft on order right now, worth $60 billion, while Dubai and Abu Dhabi together are spending close to $50 billion on new airport infrastructure. The name of Dubai’s new airport hub is telling: “Dubai World Central.”

DVM: Under Islamic law, Muslims are not allowed to drink alcohol. What are the UAE’s laws on drinking as they apply to you?

Ivan: It is legal to buy from a licensed liquor shop if you have an alcohol license. You can also buy from the duty free shops at the airport when you arrive. In some emirates, there are hole-in-the-wall shops where you don’t have to have a license.

DVM: How much Arabic do you speak? How do you get along, both at work and around town, without being fluent?

Ivan: I’ve picked up greetings and how to exchange pleasantries but never studied the language. And I’ve never felt that I was any worse for it. The Emiratis and the Arabs from other countries who live here all speak English with varying levels of fluency. People in the service industry are invariably from the Philippines or South Asia. Frankly, this would be a tough place to study Arabic because there is no immersion experience. English is read and spoken all around you.

Gathered on both sides of Papermill Creek Sunday morning, 125 West Marin residents demonstrated their support for a pedestrian bridge at the site of the onetime irrigation dam for the Giacomini Ranch.

Demonstrators including surfboarders, kayakers, several dogs, and people on opposite shores assemble for an Art Rogers photograph Sunday morning. A line over Papermill/Lagunitas Creek marks where the demonstrators want the Park Service to build a pedestrian bridge.

Originally a saltwater marsh, the ranchland was bought by the Giacomini family in 1944. Encouraged by the federal government (which wanted to increase wartime milk production) and subsidized under the Land Reclamation Act, the Giacominis built dikes surrounding the ranch to keep water from inundating their pastures at high tide. For half a century, the ranch prospered, but in 1998, the State Water Resources Control Board, stopped issuing permits for its seasonal irrigation dam.

In 2000, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area bought 550 acres of the ranch for $5.75 million. This Recreation Area land is being administered by the Point Reyes National Seashore, which last year began excavating it for a new marsh.

Even before the 550-acre sale eight years ago, the Giacomini family had sold more than 400 acres to public agencies, with Marin County Open Space District acquiring a slice of acreage just downstream from the Green Bridge. The acreage is bordered by the creek on the south and Point Reyes Station’s C Street on the north.

A footpath along the western edge of the county land from C Street to the dam site became popular for short walks.

Meanwhile, the County Open Space District — with assistance from the state — developed White House Pool park on the opposite bank. The park includes a scenic path along Papermill Creek from Inverness Park to the old dam site.

Demonstrators on the south shore of Papermill Creek last Sunday said they want a bridge so that pedestrians and bicyclists, especially children, are not forced to travel along the shoulder of the 45 mph levee road when going between Inverness Park and Point Reyes Station.

Not surprisingly, many of those at Sunday’s pro-bridge demonstration were residents of Inverness Park.

As administers of the Recreation Area land, the Point Reyes National Seashore has said it will soon hold a public meeting to discuss the proposed bridge. At this point, loudest opponents to the proposal are ideologues who insist that once a new marsh is created, humans should not sully nature with a path and bridge.

The new wetland will be located between downtown Point Reyes Station and downtown Inverness Park. The pathway above runs between the proposed bridge site and C Street in Point Reyes Station (seen in the background).

Folks, the land is not virgin terrain on either side of Papermill Creek below the Green Bridge. Not only has much of it been grazed for more than 50 years, humans have been reshaping it since at least 1855 when Samuel P. Taylor “built a warehouse at creekside for the paper he manufactured eight miles upstream,” to quote the late historian Jack Mason’s Earthquake Bay.

“It was here the steamer Monterey deposited passengers Olema-bound.

“A ferry crossed the creek here, Charlie Hall charging 25 cents one way per passenger. His bar, the Ferry House, was nearby to the south…. The county bridged the creek in 1875, the year the train came and the steamer pulled out.”

When the Park Service bought the Giacomini Ranch eight years ago, it’s stated goal was to create wetlands and thereby slow sedimentation of Tomales Bay and improve its overall environment. There was no mention of creating a wilderness area between the county firehouse and the Inverness Park Store. Remember, the former ranch is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and the purpose of recreation areas is not to exclude humans.

Demonstrators on Sunday morning walk along the scenic path from White House Pool to the site of the proposed bridge. The Point Reyes National Seashore a while back argued for the elimination of this route near the creek, I have been told by county staff. In the background is Inverness Park.

The National Seashore, which would have to pay for much of the bridge, is also opposing it. For a public park, it is amazing how misanthropic its policies are. A while back, the park tried to convince Marin County Open Space District to reroute the scenic White House Pool path so that it ran along the edge of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard (the levee road) instead of along the creek. That way, nature would not be disturbed by humans walking through it. Fortunately, the county did not go along with the idea.

Now the National Seashore administration has raised a new objection. Even though the bridge would connect two rutted dirt paths, the park says it would have to be wheelchair accessible, and the requisite ramps for the eight-foot-wide bridge would double its length, making it 450 to 600 feet long. That’s more than twice the length of the Green Bridge and more than three times the length of Platform Bridge.

This Brooklyn Bridge over Papermill Creek — up to twice the length of a football field — would cost millions of dollars, the park says, and it is therefore unaffordable. I’m not buying any of it.

Here Joyce Goldfield of Inverness Park, who uses a motorized scooter to get around, takes part in the pro-bridge demonstration along with Duane Irving.

Government officials’ wanting to sound “green,” rather than science and common sense, seems to be behind the growing number of restrictions on West Marin’s woodstoves. (In fact, a number of environmentalists have complained that the new restrictions on woodstoves are actually un-environmental, for they encourage the use of fossil fuels for heating while restricting the use of a renewable resource.) Two months ago I wrote Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey about my concerns, and this week he “belatedly” responded to my comments and answered questions for this blog.

On Jan. 20, I had written: As a constituent, I’m asking that you and the Board of Supervisors speak out against the broad-bush limits on woodstoves proposed by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. [The county has a seat on the district’s governing board.] As I’m sure you recall, in 2003 you shepherded an ordinance through the board that required us to replace our woodstoves with EPA-approved versions by 2008. At that time, I objected in The Point Reyes Light that what might be needed in the San Geronimo Valley was clearly not needed in windy areas.

As was reported here last May, a recognizable apparition of Jesus (or is it Moammar Khadafy?) appears from time to time on the glass door of my woodstove after there’s been a fire. Whoever he is, he’s clearly saddened by what the world of his woodstove is coming to.

There just isn’t a smoke problem in the windy areas or open countryside of West Marin. The San Geronimo Valley’s problem, which is what prompted the ordinance, is that the Valley acts as a bowl for smoke. As the Air Quality Management District noted at the time, “When there is no wind to dissipate pollutants, they become trapped under this inversion layer, building up to unhealthy levels.” The operative phrase is “when there is no wind to dissipate pollutants.”

Despite published objections from environmentalists such as Mark Dowie and Michael Stocker, from The Light, and from others, the ordinance passed without making allowances for parts of the county where it isn’t needed, such as in Point Reyes Station. So as a good citizen of Marin County, I spent more than $4,000 last year to replace my Franklin stove with an EPA-approved model.

Now along comes the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and proposes banning the use of woodstoves on the West Marin coast if there is air pollution in, for example, Oakland. Why should smoke building up somewhere that’s a mountain range and a large bay away keep people from using EPA-approved woodstoves in rural areas along the coast from Sonoma to San Mateo counties? Doesn’t the County of Marin, which has already made rural residents spend thousands of dollars on EPA-rated stoves, now have an obligation to defend the use of those stoves?

From a strictly financial standpoint, heating with propane or electricity is enormously more expensive than with wood. I fear the Air Management District board has the provincialism of those hooked up to natural gas. Because of storms each winter, there is always plenty of firewood for sale here, making fallen trees a resource rather than a disposal problem. On the other hand, there are heavy environmental costs from the refining and transporting of propane, the damming rivers and using fossil-fueled plants to create electricity.

So as a constituent, I am asking that the County of Marin, after forcing us to install expensive, EPA-approved woodstoves, will now secure an exemption from the Air Management District’s proposed ban on heating with wood on bad-air days.

It would not be difficult, to determine which parts of the Bay Area have inversion-layer problems and which don’t. If everyone wanted to, the problem areas could be overlaid on zoning maps the way the Coastal Zone is. The district previously said it had the equipment to monitor air anywhere it was requested to do so, so this is not an extravagant suggestion. Forcing hundreds of thousands of people to unnecessarily stop heating with wood in cold weather is extravagant.

To me, it seems only fair that county government take a stand after already making us spend more money than most of us can easily afford. Nor would it be healthy to force families who can’t afford expensive heating to shiver through cold days because 75 miles away some town has an inversion layer.

Supervisor Kinsey (left) responded: The issue of windy areas is one I researched we researched when we were considering the County ordinance five years ago. The BAAQMD and others provided us with clear information that pollution created in Marin ends up impacting the East Bay and the Central Valley. I believe that if all counties and cities act together we can substantially reduce air pollution in the region, as well as addressing the immediate concern of areas which have inversion layers.

DVM: Under a four-year-old county ordinance, which you sponsored, homeowners in West Marin and other unincorporated parts of the county, by July 1 of this year have to replace their old woodstoves and fireplaces with EPA-approved units. Do you feel that should be sufficient to meet the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s goals?

Supervisor Kinsey: I believe that our ordinance has taken appropriate steps to meet the BAAQMD’s goals related to air quality impacts related to wood smoke. The county ordinance provided a five-year voluntary program, and the board provided a rebate program to financially help people who need to upgrade their wood stoves. Given that those who have only a wood-burning source for their heat are exempt from the BAAQMD ban during “Spare-the-Air” events, as long as they are using dry material for their fuel, I believe that our ordinance is consistent and adequate to meet BAAQMD goals.

DVM: The main alternative to wood for heating in West Marin is propane, and it is derived from other petroleum products during oil or natural-gas processing. With the cost of natural gas expected to rise by 20 percent this year and the cost of oil already high and rising, wouldn’t this seem to be a bad time to be forcing people to burn more propane?

Supervisor Kinsey: The proposed regulations do not force West Marin residents to switch to propane. Wood burning remains a viable option, although some homeowners will have to pay the price of converting to an EPA-certified stove. I agree that petroleum-based fuels will continue to become more expensive and have their own environmental consequences, even if their impacts occur remotely. Our board is strongly advocating the development of additional renewable energy capacity in our county, and I am very pleased with the operation and cost savings that I am realizing from my own photo-voltaic installation.

DVM: Do you think the Air Quality Management District recognizes differences in rural, suburban, and urban wood heating? Should it?

Supervisor Kinsey: The BAAQMD considers air quality to be a regional responsibility, and I doubt that they differentiate between remote, low-density communities and larger, more urban ones, because they recognize the interconnectedness of the atmosphere. Having said that, I also doubt that their enforcement activities will focus on the lower-density areas where problems and complaints will be fewer. I also think that by exempting wood-burning smoke when it is the sole source of heating for a residence is an acknowledgement that there are differences in the character of communities.

I believe that we all live in the same fragile bubble, and that we are equally responsible for the quality of our air, whether we live in West Marin or an urban area. At the time that the Marin County ordinance was enacted, many local residents agreed with me, and some cited their own health problems related to smoke. That said, I also believe that when regulations are implemented the cost must be taken into account, and I applaud the Air District for proposing a rebate program, similar to Marin County’s rebate program, which will help people make the transition.

DVM: Should the county ask the Air Management District to make exceptions for EPA-approved woodstoves? For homes in sparsely populated areas? For woodstoves not in the vicinity of bad-air-day problems?

Supervisor Kinsey: For the reason mentioned above, I do not think that the Air Management District needs to make additional exceptions for low-density communities.

DVM: In general, what should the County of Marin’s role be in all this? What position is the board taking?

Supervisor Kinsey: Marin County seeks to be a leader in reducing health risks and climate change consequences related to pollution of our air. We were in the lead on requiring improvements to wood-burning appliances, without taking an arbitrary position of banning all woodstoves. We also have tried to ease the financial impact of change for individuals. I expect that our board will endorse the proposed regulations, but we will not take an active role in enforcing those regulations.

Our objective has been, and will remain in a supportive role, to help homeowners convert their stoves and to meet the county code. In the upcoming county budget process, I will be requesting that my fellow supervisors support renewed funding for the county rebate program to help homeowners with the costs associated with conversion.

A couple of Supervisor Kinsey’s answers make me suspicious. He talks about “pollution from Marin” having an impact in the East Bay and Central Valley. That’s “Marin,” not “West Marin,” the territory that makes up most of his district and which is on the other side of the coast range from the East Bay. In fact, he acknowledges, “I doubt that the [Air Management District officials] differentiate between remote, low-density communities and larger, more-urban ones.”

I’m also suspicious when a politician says, “Don’t worry about this law I’m backing. In your case, it’ll never be enforced.” Either you have a bad law or a prediction you can’t count on. Supposedly, as long as you don’t have other ways to heat your house, you’ll be able to fire up EPA-approved woodstoves on “Spare the Air Days.” Of course, you won’t be able to do so if you have propane available, even if you can’t afford to use it.

I like Supervisor Kinsey, but his citing the “interconnectedness of the atmosphere” and our all living “in the same fragile bubble” as arguments for restricting this coast’s woodstoves strikes me as a wondrous rhetorical leap, not empirical science.

Although the official comment period on the Air District’s proposed woodstove restrictions expired back on Dec. 10 (well before most of the public was aware of them), readers can still email suggestions to district staff or directors at sparetheair@baaqmd.gov.

The Park Service’s hired hunters are assaulting not only wildlife but the value systems of West Marin residents as disparate as ranchers, deer hunters, animal-rights advocates, and merchants.

Until now, the administration of Point Reyes National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher has managed to avoid most of the criticism it deserves by repeatedly giving out misleading information regarding the need for the slaughter, how quickly it would proceed, and what would become of the venison.

Until the press found out, for example, many fallow deer were left where they dropped, slowly dying of gut wounds. Axis-deer carcasses were carted off in Waste Management dumpsters, one garbageman has reported.

Fallow-buck photo by Janine Warner, founder of DigitalFamily.com

Wildcare has organized an email petition drive to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Senator Barbara Boxer, calling for a moratorium. I urge readers of this blog to please take a few seconds to sign the petition by clicking here.

Among those offended by the park’s latest round of deer killing is Kathy Runnion of Nicasio (seen below). Many of us know Kathy from her job at the Point Reyes Station Post Office and as the head of Planned Feralhood. This weekend she wrote this message to the press:

I am devastated by the slaughter of the fallow and axis deer, and I’ve wanted to organize some kind of event that will allow the community a way to express our grief and horror.

I spoke with Ella Walker this week and was moved by her story. She lives in the heart of Olema and has spent time in the National Seashore confronting the White Buffalo hunters. Other Olema residents have seen helicopters terrorizing deer out of gulches into the open where they could be shot.

I sure would like to see the press embrace this story and stay on it until we can figure out how the Point Reyes National Seashore was allowed to eradicate axis and fallow deer when so many citizens are against it, including leading politicians. Park Superintendent Don Neubacher’s response to any query is that we all had our opportunity to comment.

Did anybody really listen to our input or respect it? I don’t think the Point Reyes National Seashore was ever very concerned about the community’s feelings.

The axis and fallow deer are a part of our community, whom we have loved seeing as we go about our daily business. I don’t see them anymore and I miss them.

Had the National Seashore not given the public so much misinformation, the public opposition up to now would have been far louder. We were told that the deer were not scheduled to be totally eliminated until 2020 and that there would be time for changing this approach to managing them during the intervening years. But already, the axis are virtually gone, as are a large percentage of the fallow deer.

Trinka Marris, Richard Kirshman, and many other Marin County people have worked hard to stop the killing, and I, like Susan Sasso said in her letter a few weeks ago, thought this group would be able to carry the fight for us. However, the slaughter has been so fast and furious, and there has been so much deception that more of us need to be heard.

Now that we are hearing the horrible truth about White Buffalo’s barbaric practices, it seems their contraception program is, in fact, merely one way they track herds to kill them.

A fallow doe, her head jangling with a tracking collar and tags that pierce both her ears. While all this is supposedly to keep track of which does have received contraception, the tracking collars are being used by hunters to find and kill the does’ herds. Photo by Ella Walker.

Many people in our community complain in private about the abuses they have witnessed but have remained silent out of fear of the park’s ability to retaliate against their business or the home and ranch they lease within the park.

People who know the reality of the culling and contraception program need to speak out and tell the public and our political leaders what has happened to the fallow and axis deer. Silence is complicity when a holocaust surrounds us.

Ella Walker has witnessed White Buffalo boss Anthony DeNicola, his clothes covered in blood, driving across the Vedanta Retreat, where there was not going to be any deer killing, the park had said. At the very least, White Buffalo appeared to be using the retreat as a staging area for killing deer nearby.

A lot of information is coming out now about White Buffalo’s disturbing tactics in communities all across the country. I wish we could have had an opportunity to learn something more about them, to be a part of the process that determines life and death in our homeland. I thought West Marin’s concerns were supposed to be significant.

Not only are we in West Marin part of the public that owns the park, we are a key part. The National Seashore is part of our community, and more than most Americans, we are aware of what is occurring within it. We in West Marin are its caretakers as much as the Park Service employees who get assigned here. And we demand a stop to the killing.

I’ve lived here 35 years. This land and this community have been the love of my life, my healing place, my home. Now I wake every day with a pit in my stomach, knowing my animal friends have been terrorized and murdered. I feel sick.

The Point Reyes National Seashore needs to know a very heavy toll has been taken on this community. We wish the park would have shown us some respect and considered our feelings about these innocent, majestic animals.

Why the blitzkrieg after the park said it would proceed gradually? Like the deer, we as a community never had a chance. To the Point Reyes National Seashore I say, “Shame on you!

Kathy Runnion
Nicasio & Point Reyes Station, 662-2535

Photo of fallow does by Janine Warner, founder of DigitalFamily.com

North Marin Water District manager Chris DeGabriele this afternoon announced, “Cleanup of the sewer spill which occurred Monday, Feb. 18, in the Oceana Marin subdivision [of Dillon Beach] has been completed.

“Sewage debris deposited on the steep hillside where the sewer spill occurred has been removed. Staw wattles, jute netting, and native grass seeding have been applied to the affected area to help prevent erosion and limit sediment from entering the drainage swale and storm drain that flows to the ocean.” The swale is downhill from where the sewer pipe broke, apparently because tree roots damaged a joint.

The spill was relatively small; initial estimates were that it totaled something over 250 gallons, some of which reached the ocean and some of which ended up in the swale and on the hillside.

A Dillon Beach resident discovered the spill Monday afternoon and notified North Marin, which in turn notified county, regional, and state regulatory agencies. NMWD repairmen, along with a truck from Roto Rooter, were dispatched to Dillon Beach, which took them through the town of Tomales. As it happened, the Tour of California bicycle race stopped traffic in and out of Tomales for more than an hour that afternoon, but DeGabriele assured me that the bicyclists were long gone before his crew needed to get through town.

“Results of tests completed by the County of Marin from the ocean-water samples taken on Tuesday, Feb. 19, show bacteria levels are much lower than the acceptable [maximum] standard, indicating the ocean water is safe for body-contact recreation,” DeGabriele reported. As a result, “warning signs and precautionary tape keeping people away from the area have been removed.

“Today the inside of the affected pipeline is being remotely inspected with a television camera to determine if areas other than that which failed on Monday afternoon may need repair. NMWD’s contractor will begin repair of the pipeline early next week.

“NMWD provides sewer service to 222 homes in the Oceana Marin area,” the North Marin manager noted, and “17 of these homes are connected to the sewer-collection pipeline which failed.

“The six-inch-diameter, ductile-iron pipeline was installed in the mid-1970s in open terrain down a steep hillside, extending from Kona Lane to Kailua Way.”