A walk in a Markleeville meadow revisited

It has been over two years since last I spoke of the meadow that my golden Retriever Buddy and have loved for the past 10 years. The years have been kind to this old man and his dog, although Buddy has grown gray around his nose and eyes he still finds wonder in the sights and smells of the environment around the museum. But there has been a change in the meadow, one that I never thought I would see, the backhoe and skip loader have invaded the fragile home of the meadow creatures and the plants that set the area apart from all the other tracks of vacant land.

This change came quickly in the fall of 2006 with workers arriving here at the end of Schoolhouse Road and within a few hours they had dismantled the museum's rail fence and began to drive onto the meadow. As director of the museum I called those within county government responsible for issuing permits to tear down the museum's fence, drive upon the fragile meadow, drive giant drilling rigs across the meadow grass and Great Basin sages, rabbit brush and the lowly blue dicks lily. I was told that permits had been issued and what was happening was all legal and proper and part of the development group known as "Markleeville USA's" quest for adequate water for their project. After all, the meadow and pine covered hills beyond are private land and no business of the museum's or the members of the community.

Over the next weeks, Buddy and I watched the meadow scarred beyond repair. Holes were dug to receive run off from the well digging, the meadow grass and the limited topsoil removed to make a level base for the drilling rig. Truckloads of machinery arrived unloading the equipment needed to drill for the water needed to feed and fill the proposed condos, hotel, spa and the hotel's swimming pool. Soon the drilling rig was set up and Markleeville's peace and quiet was shattered, as the drill beat it way through the clay and basalt that forms the understructure of the area. Drilling hundreds feet into heart of Markleeville is a 24 hour job and with generators and light towers providing workers an environment they needed, at the expense of the community member unlucky enough to live and work in the area, especially the Alpine County Museum.

But then, where dollar signs mean more than meadow grass and field mice, the sacrificing of a meadow is a cheap price to pay for development. Oh, the developers have vowed to reseed the area with wild flowers and grasses. Of course they have no realization of what makes a meadow tick. They think that come spring the area they scarred will be covered with new grass and blooms, what they don't understand, is that the worst thing that can happen to a meadow environment is to introduce foreign grasses and flowers. But then I don't think that they really care beyond what will buy them a pass with County.

This fall is but a precursor of what is to come as the chain saw and bulldozer eat away at the meadow and hills beyond. Of course this is private land and no one in the community really has a say in what will transpire. I know that future members of the community will look upon the development and probably say "How grand." They will carry no memory of how Markleeville used to be, no memory of a meadow that once nestled next to their Museum, of the coyote, cottontail, quail and meadow mice and all creatures big and small that called the meadow home.

Nature is a gentle soul, confining change to a long and thought full process that passes un-noticed in the life of we inhabitants of this thing we call Earth. Oh yes, nature does have a thing called catastrophe that causes rapid change, but that is nature's way and should not be the provenance of mere mortals.

Buddy and I no longer set foot in the meadow area, it can never be the same for either of us. I realize that I have spent a lifetime as a fisheries biologist, park ranger and finally museum director, and have no vision of the world of development and finance. My vision comes from a little book called "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold, first introduced to me as an undergraduate in the early 1950s by my mentor Dr. Harold Lint. Aldo Leopold was not a wild-eyed zealot, but someone who had spent a life in the conservation of the environment, from his humble beginnings as a U.S. Forest Ranger to professor and department head at the University of Wisconsin. I would like to end with a short passage from "A Sand County Almanac."

"There are some who can live without wild things, and some who can not. Like wind and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. We in the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress; our opponents do not."

n Dick Edwards is director of the Alpine County Museum and a Markleeville resident.