Arnold G. York
The Big Bear in the Woods: A fable
There is a big bear that lives in the woods and his name is Joe Edmiston, although we all call him Joe. Joe prowls around in the brush, stopping where he pleases, taking what he wants, pushing aside all the smaller animals of the forest and generally letting everyone know he is lord of the forest and brooks no challenges to his authority. The forest that Joe crashes around in is called the Santa Monica Mountains. But Joe is not alone in that forest. There are other big animals and some not-so-big animals roaming the forest. There is the California Coastal Commission, that not only claims the forest but also the sky above and the waters below, and all the little creatures running around in the forest, which the Coastal Commission dearly loves, just so long as they’re not people, particularly people who live next to the forest. Then there is the National Park Service, which also lives in the forest and is very careful to protect it, and doesn’t want the people living next to the forest to do anything the National Park Service does, like putting its outhouses next to the forest streams and putting the parking lots into habitat areas. But that’s another story.
Anyway, one day Joe decided he wanted more campsites in the forest so that the people who live outside of the forest-way out of the forest-could come and enjoy it. In all candor, I must admit that many of the people who live next to the forest are a bit proprietary about it and tend to think about it as their forest. So when Joe says the forest should be open to everyone, he’s not all wrong, but for one little thing. Joe absolutely insists that all the people who come to the forest should be able to have campfires, and on that point he’s absolutely insistent. Needless to say, that scares the hell out of everyone who lives even remotely close to the forest and is a great cause of alarm.
Now, I must confess, I am puzzled over this. I never could understand why it is that sitting in the forest and eating a Big Mac with fries and a 24-ounce Diet Coke is somehow less of a forest experience than sitting around an open fire toasting marshmallows and stamping out embers coming from the campfire. But Joe had an answer to this. Instead of sitting around an open, burning campfire, we would all be safer if everyone were sitting around a cold fire (which is technical word for a butane stove). Joe’s solution was for all the campers to sit huddled over their butane stoves to preserve that old, out-in-nature feeling. Needless to say, the people who lived near the forest were not overjoyed with the cold camping idea either. And I’m still just as puzzled.
Now a year or two ago when Joe first proposed the camping in the forest, there was much shouting and screaming, and hand-wringing. But ultimately, Joe toned down his demands somewhat and the city of Malibu reluctantly made a tentative deal. Sadly, the city, which likes to think of itself as another big bear in the forest, came to the realization that it was really only a little municipal bear and not a great big state bear, and that the game was rigged a bit for the state bears to win. Things probably would have settled down and the tentative deal would have been finalized, but something happened-the fires came. In October, the Canyon Fire burned down the Presbyterian Church and several houses. And then in November the Corral Fire went up, and more than 50 homes were burned out. And this year, the entire state of California was ablaze with more than 1,500 fires burning and the governor, and later the president, was running around trying to look like he was in control, which we all knew he wasn’t.
Well, perhaps a more prudent bear than Joe would have said to himself that maybe this wasn’t the time to push for open campfires in canyons that are tinderboxes, and that people who lived there weren’t just obstructionists, but were truly and justifiably scared.
Perhaps a more prudent bear wouldn’t have put the Malibu City Council into a corner where they had to propose banning camping altogether after spending several hours listening to their citizens talk about their homes burning down.
A prudent bear might have acted differently, but then no one ever said Joe was a prudent bear. So it’s all going to the Coastal Commission and thereafter to trial court, and then appellate court and probably even to the Supreme Court. And the only ones who are going to be happy are the lawyers.