GUEST COLUMN: Management project could hurt Fallen Leaf
Fallen Leaf Lake and its surrounding area have a rich and enduring history and beauty. This project cites the need: A) “to reduce erosion and improve water quality in the area,” B) “to improve and expand public parking and access,” and C) “to improve recreational opportunity, improve trail and destination connectivity, and address potential use conflict,” all the while “minimizing the removal of large trees to maintain the natural character of the site.” The recommendations put forth by the USFS are dubious at best, raising more questions than they answer. I believe that they will be more of a detriment to the natural, aesthetic and historical value of the area than a success in achieving the proposal's “desired conditions.” Why are more parking lots needed when we have existing parking lots at Pope, Baldwin and Kiva Beaches, as well as the Tallac Estates, which could be opened during the winter and set up as additional snow park areas? Why aren't the Cathedral Snow Park area and the empty Mikasa parking lot at the “Y” utilized more fully during the summer as viable parking? Perhaps we should think twice before A) Paving over the historical Pope Estate polo grounds. B) Closing off the available parking at Valhalla. C) Issuing special use permits for large events such as the Renaissance Faire, Oktoberfest, or SDA camp-outs, without ensuring adequate parking solutions for the public who will attend these events? Why create an emergency access road at the northeast corner of Fallen Leaf Lake Campground when we can do a better job improving the existing Fallen Leaf Road, especially between Highway 89 and the campground so that emergency vehicles as well as recreational vehicles and trailers can more smoothly access the campground without conflict? How can closing 14-plus miles of some of the most popular trails lead to fewer user conflicts between hikers, bikers and horses?Words, Words.... Words: 2011 in Retrospect.
I'm sitting at the dining room table, a place where I have done a vast amount of the writing on my last two books. The cats are racing all over the place, chasing each other in and out and over and under boxes left over from the holiday making a racket, as they are wont to do when I'm writing. I'm drinking coffee out of my Boba Fett coffee mug that I just received as a belated gift, and I'm thinking that 2011 has been a rough, weird, surreal ride. A few weeks ago, I saw the movie Hugo . It is an inspiring fill about a boy who fixes things and, even though he doesn't know it, people. The underlying premise of the movie is that everything has a function, even people. People are meant to do things, the trouble is, we usually don't know what we're meant to do, and even if we do figure it out, the world often conspires against us. I was meant to tell stories. It doesn't matter if it's on a stage, or in a role-playing game, or typing them into a computer, or just teasing my son about why we don't use Scottsman's heads when playing golf any more. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, stop by one of my shows and ask me to tell you "The True Life Story of How I Invented Golf") I am, in everything I do, a storyteller. I'm one of the lucky ones that has figured out what I'm supposed to do, found myself blessed enough to have opportunities to do it, and fortunate enough to have people willing to see my shows and read my stories to make me successful. In the last week of 2011, I sat down to lunch in my favorite pub with Damon Stone, one of the creative geniuses behind several of the trading card games produced be Fantasy Flight Games Inc. We spoke for several hours about bringing me in to write fiction for the Call of Cthulhu card game. In the middle January, I had my first contract as a professional fiction writer. We're off and running. Flash forward pretty much twelve months later: I have four ebooks in the top 100 fantasy books on Amazon.