Skiing through the government shutdown

      Last week I went skiing in the Cascades east of the Rogue Valley, where there are many good trails for cross-country skiing. You just park in the sno-park and take off on your skis.

      I went with the Grants Pass Nordic Club, a group I ski with every weekend we have good snow, which hasn't been often enough these last few years. But the snow on the Big Mac Trail to Summit Shelter was deep enough, with a good layer of new snow, and the weather was cold enough without being biting cold, and there was no wind. The road at the beginning had at last been closed to vehicles (it had been open in December for Christmas tree cutting), and what had been an icy, hard-packed hill a few weeks earlier was now a smooth skiers' route. At the top of the road we turned onto a trail through the forest, where the snow lay heavy on fir branches. We skied in silence past big trunks, dark in the white snow. There were icy spots under the trees, where the snow was thinner, but on the way back down the hill to the sno-park after lunch at the shelter, the warmer temperatures had softened the ice without making the snow too heavy. All in all, it was a terrific day's ski.

      There was only one downer, and that was the United States government, or, let me be specific, the United States president, who has proudly taken responsibility for shutting down the government. All the bathrooms on National Forest Service sno-parks, for instance, were closed. The bathrooms at Fish Lake, where we stopped on the way up the mountain, were closed, and the bathrooms at the sno-park to Summit Shelter were closed. To take care of the situation, we bought some food at the store/restaurant at Fish Lake and asked for the key to their bathroom. So we were all right. But at the end of the day, when we skied back to the sno-park, the parking lot was full of cars, mostly families taking their children sledding. Great fun. But what did they do when those kids asked to go to the bathroom?

      National Forest Service bathrooms are closed, and Crater Lake National Park is closed. Restoration work and fuels reduction on public lands are suspended, but BLM and Forest Service timber sales continue without a backward glance at all the public services no longer available. What kind of prioritizing is that?

      I don't want a wall on the Mexican border. I think it's an inappropriate and unnecessary expenditure and would be a symbol of much that I don't want this country to represent. I don't want a president who disdains the American public so much he is "proud" to shut down the government and make us pay the consequences. May the trash and the feces that built up in the national parks that weren't yet closed come showering down on his head.