A Lone Ranger : U.S. FOREST SERVICE RANGER GUY PENCE IS A PERSISTENT AND PASSIONATE DEFENDER OF PUBLIC LANDS. IS THAT WHY SOMEONE BOMBED HIS OFFICE AND HIS HOME?
Bouncing along a twisting, potholed dirt road, Guy Pence appears oblivious to the mountain trailâs crumbling edges and hairpin turns. The tires of his government-issue Jeep are inches from a sheer drop, but Pence is busy scanning the forest around him.
The fire came over the hill right there, he explains. Burned 18,000 acres in August, 1994. Before it hit, his people had a timber sale to reduce overgrowth. Residents complained about noise and logging trucks, though, so they couldnât cut how theyâd wanted. Wouldâve been a smaller fire if theyâd cut their way. Even so, they managed to reduce the impact. Look over there. Now thatâs nice. Real nice.
As he talks, Pence sweeps his left hand out the driverâs window. Heâs hailing what is, on this early fall afternoon, still his domain. He does not yet know that his eight years as U.S. Forest Service Ranger for the Carson District of the Toiyabe National Forest will abruptly end in one month--on Oct. 30, to be precise. During this survey of his districtâs northernmost tip--a rugged reach of the Sierra Nevadas some 20 miles northwest of Reno--he is thinking about the Toiyabeâs future, not his own.
To an untrained eye, the land looks devastated. Burnt, toppled trees lay everywhere. To Pence, though, the blackened columns of white fir and Ponderosa pine only mean that the salvage harvester hasnât yet arrived. Heâs looking instead at the burgeoning willows and the forestâs rebuilt watershed structure.
They seeded to stabilize the soil, Pence explains. They replaced culverts and set stones to buffer runoff areas. Over there, see the bales of straw, the boulders, the check dams, the armored stream banks. Over there, the willows are in full swing. Which means the wildlife that feed on them are too. Deer, for example, and chipmunks. So who cares about chipmunks? Well, hell, who knows? Maybe the cure for cancer is locked in the gene pool out here. Who knows?
Finally, Pence falls silent for a moment, lost in thought. At 45, his thinning, close-cropped hair is tinged with gray; fine wrinkles form webs at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Squinting into the sun, he turns his Jeep toward Verdi Peak Lookout. As he drives, he studies a dying stand of beetle-infested fir and waves appreciatively at the abundant mountain mahogany, which will provide oil and protein to deer in the coming winter. When he next speaks, Pence has shed his customary certainty. âI think most people,â he suggests slowly, âyou say, âForest Service ranger,â they would have a good thought.â The words are offered as a statement, but sound more like a question.
Pence has good reason to wonder. Itâs not just the 34 incidents of harassment and violence that Forest Service employees in the West have weathered so far this year. Nor is it the vitriolic national debate over land management that pits the Forest Service against ranchers, miners and a Republican-dominated Congress. The roots of his concern are more personal, more particular. Twice this year, Pence has been the target of bombings.
The first, on March 30, exploded just outside his office window at the U.S. Forest Rangerâs station in Carson City, Nev. The second, on Aug. 4, exploded under his van, parked beside his home. Both showered debris and shattered glass, one upending Penceâs desk and computer, the other burying his living room couch. Timing alone explains why no one was hurt. Pence wasnât at his desk; his wife and three daughters werenât on the couch.
It could have been anyone, Pence believes, for no one has claimed responsibility. Maybe itâs a disgruntled former employee. Maybe itâs a camper who got ticketed.
Perhaps, but itâs hard not to link the bombings to Penceâs passionate defense of public lands. During the past four years in the Carson District, heâs canceled three grazing permits and suspended several others. Before that, he helped draft tougher standards in the Toiyabeâs Tonopah District, which sits smack within the borders of Nye County, heartland of the county supremacy movement.
His colleagues insist that Pence isnât doing anything differently from other rangers. Itâs true, theyâve all been saying no more often--to ranchers who want to graze, miners who want to cut roads, loggers who want to harvest. Pence, though, has been doing it with his chin out.
He doesnât just talk about conserving the forests and protecting the rangelands; he declares, he demonstrates, he insists. He underlines phrases, makes them all uppercase. He acts out remembered exchanges with adversaries, he rehearses past conflicts. Simply denying a permit or blocking a road will not suffice. Pence wishes to educate. Pence wishes to convince.
âThe United States forests belong to the public, to all of us, to future generations,â he informs anyone who will listen. âThese are our lands. Someone treats them poorly, theyâre stealing from you and me. Itâs a goddamn crime, it shouldnât happen. These lands are an inheritance we can pass along. Most citizens donât have a lot. One thing we can pass on is 200 million acres of national forest. What a tremendous gift . . .â
Whether Pence should continue talking like this, at least so vociferously, has been the subject of much comment recently. He has been inundated with letters, cards and computer messages since the August bombing. Some simply pray and commiserate. Others advise. There are those who urge him to dig in and those whoâd rather he retreat. Then there are those in the Forest Service who wish heâd at least quiet down.
The last he hasnât done, not by any stretch. When I call in mid-September to propose shadowing him for a few days, he agrees, on two conditions. The first is the profile canât put his family in danger. The second is he gets to talk and be heard about the national forest system. Some in his agency get nervous about any conversation with the news media, he explains. But how can he not comment? How can he not?
âI view it as part of my job. Not commenting makes it sound like weâre not here, like weâre not responsible. I feel strongly about the story of public lands. People donât understand. These are their lands. These lands are yours and mine. . .â
For most of the time we spend together, Pence delivers variations on this theme, mixed regularly with equally intense concern over how his words might affect his unknown assailant. âHell, no, I canât do that,â he instantly barks when I ask if the bombings have influenced how he does his job. Then, in the next moment, he shakes his head. âSee now, will that exacerbate things? Me saying, âHell, no?â Will someone read that and think âWell, better go bomb him again then?â â
In the end, Penceâs concerns are misplaced. It is not the anonymous bomber who will usher him from the Toiyabe. It is the U.S. Forest Service.
*
Just before 10 p.m. on Aug. 4, Penceâs middle daughter, Morgan, 13, heard someone walking on their gravel driveway. She and her mother, Linda, were in the family room, getting ready to watch the movie theyâd rented, âLittle Women.â In a back bedroom, the Penceâs eldest daughter, Colter, 15, was talking on the phone. In the kitchen, the cucumbersthey planned to pickle were boiling in a pot.
âMom,â Morgan said. âSomeoneâs outside.â
Linda, a fifth-grade public-school teacher, opened the front door and started out. Then she stopped. It was dark, for the outside light hadnât been turned on. Their red Dodge van, parked adjacent to the family room window, blocked her view. Guy wasnât home; Guy was 300 miles away, on a horseback journey in the Tonopah wilderness, introducing a new ranger to his territory. Their youngest daughter, Sitka, 11, was with him.
Linda decided not to go out. She closed and bolted the door. Then she and Morgan walked into the kitchen. It was time to lift one rack of cucumbers from the pot and put in another. Linda reached for more cucumbers. Morgan turned to the stove.
When the bomb went off, Linda wheeled in alarm toward Morgan, thinking the cucumber pot had exploded. Then she understood. It had been only five months, after all, since the first bomb. Sheetrock and glass covered the family room sofa where theyâd been sitting minutes before.
Colter came running down the hallway. âStay in the kitchen,â Linda told her daughters. âStay down on the floor.â
The Forest Service helicopter found Guy and his party where they were camped on Table Mountain, their radios turned off for the night. Guy and Sitka had trailered their own horses down from Carson City; Sitka had her appaloosa, which she rides in competition. Guy never felt he spent enough time with his daughters. This had looked to be a good chance.
âThereâs an emergency message,â the helicopter pilot said. âBetter call in.â
Not until Guy climbed out of the helicopter in Carson City and saw his family did he believe they were OK. He hugged them and kissed them. Two days later, he held a press conference. He looked shaken but he didnât mute his words. âI am very angry and sad,â he said. âI am angry that someone would apparently go after my family to try to get to me. I am sad that someone would express hostility against the work I do in such a personal, cowardly way. My family and I are going to go on with our lives. I am back at work.â
*
To this day, Forest Service and FBI investigators have no firm notion of who set the bombs, but theyâve never been at a loss for possible suspects. All theyâve had to do is thumb through the files in Guy Penceâs office. Nearly anyone heâs run up against could be a candidate. The Toiyabeâs 400,000-acre Carson District sprawls along the eastern front of the Sierra Nevadas, straddling the Nevada-California border in a strip about 15 miles wide and 96 miles long. Running from northwest of Reno south to Topaz Lake, passing between Lake Tahoe and Carson City, it spans urban and wilderness territory, eight counties, two states. To the investigators, it soon became clear that everyone wants something from Pence. Special-use permits to install telephone lines, gas lines, power lines, microwave dishes. Grazing permits to run cattle on federal lands. Mining permits to cut roads. Recreational permits, timber contracts, fire suppression.
Other times, itâs what people donât want. Homeowner groups and environmentalists on occasion object to timber sales arranged to reduce fire danger in overgrown or bug-infested forests. Some donât like the logging trucks, some argue over details, some just donât see the point. Whatâs the matter with dead trees anyway?
In response, Pence negotiates, cajoles, explains. âSpitting and whittlinâ time,â he calls it. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.
When not, Pence doesnât hesitate to act anyway. âGuy Pence can be diplomatic when he wants to, but heâs willing to speak the truth and shame the devil,â says Glenn C. Miller, a professor in the Department of Environmental and Resource Sciences at the University of Nevada in Reno. âHeâs willing to take a stronger leadership role than others, heâs willing to make decisions. The elk herds in the Monitor Range and the meadows in the Carson Iceberg area are all healthy in large part due to his leadership.â
For that, Pence makes enemies. Many of them call him âarrogant,â more than a few say heâs âin bed with the environmentalists.â A logger who was cited for improperly hauling timber says, âI donât care for the man, I donât agree with the man.â
Even weekend campers have been known to take exception to Pence. âA guy doesnât pay his camp fee,â Pence explains. âYou go to him, point that out. âWELL, I WAS GOING TO,â he tells you. You say, âWell, youâve been here two days; WHEN were you going to?â He says, âWell, Iâm on my way RIGHT NOW.â Or he points to his wife, says, âI thought SHE did it.â â
Everyone in Penceâs stories bark and shout and bellow. Not by any means, though, does his job involve only confrontation. In the summer, Pence leads all sorts--politicians, ranchers, environmentalists, business leaders--on pack trips high into the Sierras. In the spring, he takes them on rafting trips down the east fork of the Carson River. Twice each year, he participates in High Sierra Resource Camps for high school students.
With both the adults and teen-agers, he teaches about the national forests, talks about what rangers do. He shows his students how to recognize trees. If youâre on a playground, he asks them, how do you recognize friends? You have ways. If you know people, the playground is a friendly place. Same thing in the forest. If you can recognize trees, itâs a friendly place. Hereâs how you do it. . . .
So Pence earns admirers, too, who are as ardent about him as those he enrages. Some he doesnât even know. Of the hundreds of cards, letters and computer messages he received after the second bombing, many came from strangers.
Lawyers offered pro bono legal help; families offered their homes for a temporary retreat. Most expressed sorrow, outrage, shock, support, good wishes. Some sent personal prayers. A Nevada state judge who once joined Pence on a wilderness horseback trip wrote: âI would ride with you, dine with you, work alongside you, do anything else to help. . . . You are the finest example of a public servant. . . . I will be at your side at a momentâs notice.â A woman from Sacramento wrote: âYou are a legitimate hero, and you have a brave family. Weâre proud you work for us.â
Pence answered everyone, mostly with simple thanks, sometimes with homilies like ânear as I can figure, there is no way except straight ahead.â Only to a fellow ranger who offered to trade positions did he show any brio. âI believe for now I will stay put,â Pence advised. âBesides, it a ll might just be starting to get interesting and I wouldnât want you to have all the fun!â
On the first day of my visit with him, Pence shares these comments--the critical and the favorable--as he sits in his office amid piles of sagging cardboard boxes. The blown-out window has been replaced and two alarm systems installed, but many of his files and books, stored during the repairs, have yet to be unpacked. âI suspect some regard me as relentless,â he allows. âHell, some people just donât like you.â
He reaches for a piece of paper, draws a long line. At one end, he writes âdisgruntled employee.â A little further down the line, he writes âsomeone who got a ticket.â Further still, he writes âcounty supremacists.â At the opposite end, he writes âpolitical uprising.â
âWho knows?â he says. âIt could be anyone.â
He glances at his watch, then jumps up, grabs his keys. âWe better get going,â he says.
His daughter Morgan plays guard for her eighth-grade girlsâ basketball team. Their game starts in 10 minutes.
*
What Pence has avoided talking about is the possibility of a link between the bombings and the particular county supremacy movement brewing in Nye County, 250 miles south of his Carson City office. Others, though, have. In the hours after the second bombing, local newspapers, Nevadaâs Sen. Harry Reid and Humboldt-Toiyabe Forest Supervisor Jim Nelson all argued that Nye Countyâs militant rhetoric, at the least, has forged a climate that encourages violence. Others also noted that Pence served in Nye County as ranger for the Toiyabeâs million-acre Tonopah District from 1984 to 1986.
Nye is where county commissioners in December, 1993, passed resolutions declaring all federal lands under local control, and all roads on federal land the countyâs. Nye is where County Commissioner Dick Carver, on July 4, 1994, bulldozed past two rangers to open a washed-out road within the Toiyabe National Forest. Nye is where civic leaders a month later threatened to charge federal agents who acted âoutside of their authorityâ within county borders.
The federal governmentâs decision last March to file a lawsuit against Nye over these events has raised the stakes. Since then, Carver has been touring the country, offering cheering crowds lines such as âAll it would have taken was for [the federal officer] to draw a weapon and 50 people with side arms would have drilled him.â
Pence was long gone from the Tonopah District by the time Nye County erupted, but the seeds of the present conflict were planted during his tenure. Pence helped create the districtâs 1986 Forest Plan, the basis for many of the recent decisions to reduce grazing. Also while in Tonopah, Pence had occasion to deny a grazing permit to Carver and to prevent Carverâs good friend Bob Wilson from rebuilding a washed-out mining road.
âHeâs just got an attitude problem about himself, he just didnât get along,â Carver has been quoted as saying about Penceâs time in Nye County. When reporters found him in Seattle the evening after the bombing, Carver expressed shock and hinted that a Forest Service employee might have engineered the event to win sympathy. Then, with a laugh, he added: âYou know, I was up here last night.â
Asked about all this in his office, Pence shrugs it off. It is not his nature, however, to keep biting his tongue. Asked about it again as he drives south on Highway 395 toward his daughterâs basketball game, Pence responds. At first his tone is tactful.
âI donât look at my years down there as being any different from other times. I really donât. Folks living down there have hopes, expectations, realities, just like everyone. That period doesnât stand out in my mind as involving unusual controversy or conflict.â
Yes, he allows, he was involved in drafting a tougher plan for the region. Following mandates of Congress, that planâs new standards had to be incorporated into all existing contracts and permits. Most of the implementation happened after he left, though. The controversial stuff came later.
Dick Carverâs grazing permit?
âNot much to remember, really. He came in with a proposal, not even written. Asked if he could graze. Itâs not an outstanding event in my mind. We said no because the land wasnât capable of sustaining that use. Itâs discretionary. No big deal. That happens all the time. Some just shrug, go on. Some donât, I guess.â
Dick Carverâs miner friend, Bob Wilson?
âHis mining road crossed a creek a number of times. It washed out, did real damage to the creek. Only way to put the road back was to throw soil into the creek. We said no, canceled his special-use permit. He wasnât working the mine anyway. The next ranger got more into it, really. When Wilson built a road illegally, Dave Grider went out and cited him.â
Carver has likened that event, which occurred about five years after Pence left, to âa minor Ruby Ridge or Waco.â Pence rolls his eyes at the comparison. By now his tone has started heating up. âItâs what I DO for a living,â he barks. âApprove âem, deny âem. I view permits as a contract with the public. I just administer them.â
Thatâs right, he agrees, thatâs right, the standards for those permits HAVE grown more rigorous. âWe learned more is what happened. Used to allow them to graze 95% of the vegetation. Then we learned if you graze 95%, you lose stream banks, willows, birds, watersheds. We saw really it should be 45 to 50%. So we tell âem at that 45% level, you gotta move cows. Some say sure; others refuse, or say theyâre going to move and donât. Then I come and suspend or cancel a permit. Some people tell me, âWe donât like it, no one said no to us before.â Well, times change. Times change.â
He pounds his steering wheel. âChange is HARD. Damn it, change is HARD. We just passed two lights here on 395. They didnât used to be there. I donât like stopping at these lights, especially when Iâm pulling a horse trailer. Itâs hard as hell to get going again. I HATE those lights. If they hadnât built that subdivision over there, we wouldnât NEED those lights. But they DID build it. So we DO need lights.â
Itâs not, Pence wishes to make clear, that he doesnât understand heâs threatening an entrenched way of life. Yes, families pass permits on for years. Yes, itâs always been the custom to renew them. Yes, itâs very disturbing. He understands, he understands. They donât think so, but he does. Hell, he grew up in rural Idaho. In his high school days, he worked for ranchers. Mowed hay with an old single-lung John Deere tractor. Branded calves. Learned how to hold their tails down so they donât crap on you. He hears all that talk about Eastern bureaucrats telling ranchers what to do, he thinks, âWait a minute. Wait a minute.â
Pence doesnât slow down until he reaches the junior high where Morgan is playing.
âFact is,â he says as he pulls into the parking lot, âI donât really know that I have any bone with Nye County. I truly donât know of any.â He thinks on that, then offers a sidelong glance. âOther than the fact that the rhetoric there maybe stirred someone up.â
*
In the first hours after the Pencesâ home was bombed, Dick Carver told reporters he would urge his fellow Nye County commissioners to offer a $100,000 reward for finding the assailant. He would âhold bake sales on the streetâ if necessary to raise that money. âLet me assure you that nobody within our circle would have done anything that stupid,â he declared. âI just hope the sheriffâs office nabs someone real quick and hangs them from the nearest tree.â
The next day, the Nye County Commission did indeed offer a $100,000 reward. âIâm just tired of the news media portraying Nye County as being connected with individuals in their half-brained violent acts,â explained the commissionâs chairman, Cameron McRae. As it emerged, however, the money for the reward would come not from bake sales but from a federal grant Nye County receives each year for having the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump within its borders.
That piece of news was just too much for Guy Pence. He found Nye Countyâs reward âironic,â he told reporters six days after the bombing. âThey are proclaiming there are no federal lands in the county, yet the reward is coming from federal dollars. They say, âWe want to offer the $100,000 to clean up our reputation.â I mean, you either have a good reputation or you donât. If you have to spend $100,000 to clean it up, maybe somethingâs wrong with it.â
Less than a week later, the commission withdrew its reward. Pence was very âarrogant,â explained Commissioner Bill Copeland. âAll he did was knock us. We canât take all that mouth from him all the time.â
Pence canât help grinning a little as he sits in his office recounting this sequence of events. He leafs through newspaper clips, recites quotes. Dick Carverâs idea for how to address lawlessness particularly amuses him. âCarver hopes the sheriff ânabs someone real quick and hangs them from the nearest tree,â â Pence reads. âHe abhors violence, but he wants to hang them from a tree. The nearest tree!â
Although Penceâs most observable concern is over his familyâs safety, Iâve started to wonder whom Pence is more likely to aggravate--the anonymous bomber or his supervisors and political overseers in Washington? It is, after all, a treacherous time for the Forest Service or anyone inclined to take a strong stand for land management.
In recent months, Congress, led by strong-minded lawmakers from the West, have introduced several sweeping measures aimed at turning back the past decadeâs environmental laws. One bill would cut deeply into federal conservation programs and expand opportunities for logging, mining and grazing on public lands. Another would strip control of the Forest Service from Agriculture Department Undersecretary Jim Lyons, who has incensed western lawmakers by resisting efforts to cut more trees in national forests.
The politicians promoting such measures--supported by lobbying groups representing timber, mining, energy and ranching interests--have been playing rough. During a private meeting with Jack Ward Thomas, head of the U.S. Forest Service, Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska reportedly threatened to eliminate Thomasâ salary if he didnât go along with a plan to increase by one-third the allowable timber harvest on Alaskaâs Tongass National Forest. Asked after the bombing of Guy Penceâs home to investigate growing violence aimed at government land managers, House Resources Committee chairman Don Young (R-Alaska) declined. This was the third such request rejected by Young, a former trapper known for, on various occasions, brandishing a knife, a steel-jaw trap and an oosik (the penis bone of a walrus) before those seeking to fortify environmental laws. Given this climate, top Forest Service managers in Washington at times must blanch at the latest public utterance from Carson City.
Before I can raise this matter with Pence, he more or less does so himself. âIâm sure my supervisors think, âCanât he shut up and be a ranger?â â Pence declares. âWell, I think I am being a ranger.â
*
The story of how Guy Penceâs appendix burst has by now assumed legendary proportions among his colleagues. It happened in 1986, while Pence was on his way to an elk hunt high in the Tonopah wilderness. What with back pain and nausea, Pence thought he had the flu, which didnât stop him from traveling another day, then rising at 2 a.m. to go hunting. The pain brought him back to camp an hour later. After resting, he saddled up and rode out nine miles. By the time he got to the hospital, he was so sick, it wasnât clear heâd survive. Better talk to each other, the doctor advised Guy and Linda before emergency surgery. Which they did. âBeen fun?â Guy asked.
His colleagues tell this story to illustrate what a tough SOB Pence is. Pressed for his version, Pence willingly buffs the image--"My only regret is, I didnât get any elk"--but then ends with something more revealing: âFor a while after that, I followed Linda from room to room. I didnât want to be alone.â
As he recalls those long weeks of recuperation, Pence is sitting in the stands at Morganâs basketball game. Heâs hunched over, his elbows on his knees, his eyes on Morgan. âShe doesnât always start but she usually plays a couple quarters,â he says.
Pence is no casual observer. He coaches girlsâ basketball and soccer teams in Carson-area recreational leagues. His fervor is such that a Forest Service spokesman, after the second bombing, jokingly wondered whether a defeated team or rival coach might be behind the attacks.
âWrong side! Wrong side!â
Pence is shouting advice not just to Morgan but to all her teammates, most of whom heâs coached.
âMisty, get it.â
âNo, Jena, put it back up.â
âUse the backboard, itâs not there just for hanging banners.â
Pence used to do a lot of hunting and fishing in his off-time. Now, except for breaking Nevada mustangs, he mainly devotes his evenings and weekends to youth activities. He sees kids with no direction or purpose, it kills him. Kids will do something, he believes, even if itâs just wandering down a road. They need purpose, they need direction. You make time for them, even if you donât have it.
âOh, traveling, that was traveling.â
âOK, Misty, all right now.â
âNo, no, you got your back turned.â
To himself, Pence mutters: âThe whole gameâs going on and theyâre missing it.â
Morganâs team nonetheless wins. Thereâs no time to savor the victory, though. Penceâs eldest daughter, Colter, plays on her high school girlsâ JV soccer team. Their game starts in 15 minutes, across town.
Morgan comes with her dad, not bothering to change out of her uniform. She looks glum; the coach didnât play her enough minutes. Pence understands. Even though theyâre running late, Pence stops at a Dairy Queen when Morgan asks.
âYou got $4?â he deadpans to Morgan at the drive-thru window.
She shakes her head, knowing his game.
âShoot, guess I gotta pay,â he says. He looks in his wallet, groans. âColter stole $20 from me this morning. I got to figure out a way to get that back.â
Pence licks his cone as he drives. Again, the question returns: How to gauge his wordsâ impact on an invisible assailant whose motives remain unknown? Penceâs eyes fill with tears. âIf something happened to her,â he says softly, nodding at Morgan, âIâd never forgive myself.â
Given that prospect, isnât it reckless not to pull in his horns?
âThereâs principles involved. Thereâs a message the children will learn if you do that. Thereâs bullies on the playground. Thereâs always bullies on the playground.â
At a stop sign, Pence turns to me. âBiggest thing I hear people say is: âDonât talk with you.â â
So why is he? I ask. Itâs a question Iâve increasingly pondered as it becomes clear all that Pence is negotiating. Is Pence being naive? Self-indulgent? He appears far too aware and disciplined. Itâs more likely that Penceâs stance is his way of countering those in the West who increasingly have been getting attention by yowling, posturing and bulldozing.
âTo be heard, to be listened to,â he says. âI want people to understand the public lands story. Iâm tired of it being misrepresented. When Iâm asked a question, I answer the goddamn question, and honestly. When people tell me that causes a problem, I say, âYouâve got your job to do, Iâve got my job.â â
Pence glares at his watch. The soccer game has already started. He canât find the parking lot, heâs not sure which field Colter is playing on.
âI wonât tell you Iâm not afraid. I would be a liar. I am afraid. Canât let fear run your life, though. We have internal cautions at the Forest Service. Iâm cautious. But I have a job to do. Iâm going to do it.â
Is this what he expected when he joined the Forest Service?
âNo,â Pence says. âNo, itâs not what I expected.â
*
There never was much question that Pence would become a forest ranger. For that matter, there never was much question about any of the five Pence boys. Growing up in Mackay, Ida., next to the Challis National Forest, four of them ended up as forest rangers, the fifth with the Soil Conservation Service.
âOur father,â Pence explains, âalways had us in the woods.â
Every Saturday, the five brothers would gather the camping gear. Remember this, remember that, their father would urge, calling from the grocery store he and his wife ran for 50 years, six days a week. Soon as he closed up, they were gone, the boys all piled in the back of their dadâs 1949 Ford pickup, slingshots aimed at roadside tin cans. All Sunday, they hiked, caught grasshoppers for bait, fished for brook trout, sometimes hunted deer. The Pence boys learned how to survive in the woods, how to appreciate where they were.
Guy, the youngest by a good six years, also learned how to keep up with much older brothers. At the age of 9, he rode, hunted and played barn-ball with 16- and 18-year-olds. Then their father had a stroke, and within two years, all his brothers had left for college, leaving Guy at 12 largely on his own, helping his mom with the store. This they now regret. âGuy had sort of hard knocks growing up,â recalls his brother Lew, who works for the Soil Conservation Service (now called National Resource Conservation Service) in Idaho. âHe perhaps didnât have a childhood like the rest of us,â âGuy grew up being an individualist. He had to cope with a lot of things, and that made him pretty strong. He just stood alone.â
Penceâs dad had no higher education--he was born in 1899 in the station where they changed horses for the stagecoach his father drove between Challis and Mackay--so there was no question his boys were going to college. The only question was how. They found the answer in a neighbor. The Forest Service district ranger in Mackay happened to live just up the street. John Wick always wore a uniform, always helped with forestry 4-H projects, always provided a sense of order.
What to do seemed plain. Like his brothers before him, Pence got a summer job with the Forest Service after graduating from high school, earning money for the University of Idaho. Four years later, filled with botany, biology, geology and forest management, newly married to his classmate Linda, Pence landed a job on the Boise National Forest. After Boise came a tour of duty on the Challis, then, in 1981, Alaskaâs Tongass National Forest, the nationâs largest temperate rain forest.
Alaskaâs abundance was a revelation to Pence: You could walk across rivers on the backs of steelheads; you could camp near brown bears grown huge on the plentiful fish supply. This vision of how things used to be in the Lower 48 set Pence thinking.
It was, generally, a time for thinking in the Forest Service. Where once rangers considered only local, short-term issues, some now were starting to talk about the âextended ecosystem.â Where once vegetation-rich lands adjacent to streams were treated as âsacrifice areasâ for cattle, some were focusing on the âvalue and vulnerabilityâ of western riparian rangeland.
By the time Pence transferred to the Toiyabeâs Tonopah District in 1984, he was one of those talking like that. His education had come not just from reading scientific literature, but from what heâd seen: eroded stream banks, ruined wildlife habitats, trampled meadows, barren range land. Heâd come to understand how what you did on one part of the land reverberated in distant regions.
âItâs just like how the old family doctor fixed broken arms without fancy CAT scans or MRIs,â Pence says. âHe just yanked. Now weâre more sophisticated. Not only do we see encroachment and damage, we also realize that weâve been part of the cause. We didnât know. Now it hurts me to know what weâve been doing.â
After drafting the 1986 Toiyabe forest plan, Pence and other rangers moved slowly. There were existing permits to modify, regulations to craft, pamphlets to produce. Then came a trial period, for everyone to get accustomed to the new standards. Workshops, education, spitting and whittlinâ. Not until 1991 did the Forest Service really start to enforce the plan. By then, Pence had moved on from Nye, by then heâd been ranger in the Carson District four years. Not everyone there thought Pence meant it when he started to pull permits. Now they do.
In one case at the north end of the district, a fence needed to be built to constrain livestock. The permit holder refused. A couple of years passed, the rancher still saying no, not going to do it. âWell,â Pence finally told him, âsince we canât get proper use of this land, weâre going to cancel.â
In another case down south, Penceâs office suspected a permit holder of subleasing his grazing rights for profit, which the Forest Service doesnât allow. They told him as much, three times--in writing, in a personal visit, in a phone conversation. Each time, he denied it. Then the service found proof. âOK, Iâm doing it,â the fellow said. âBut I didnât think you meant it.â Pence stuck out his chin. âWell, we did mean it. So youâre canceled.â
Third case, a permit holder kept letting his cows graze way over the 45% limit. First Pence just temporarily reduced a percentage of the cows he could graze, but next year, the rancher still didnât comply. âYou know,â Pence told him, âI have a feeling you donât take us seriously.â Not so, said the rancher, âI just didnât think youâd go this far.â Penceâs chin shot out again. âWell, I would.â Another permit canceled.
âIâm not being arbitrary or capricious,â Pence says. âItâs not Guy Pence alone causing change. Itâs the science. Time just goes on, you canât stop it. If I could, Iâd still be 16, fly-fishing every night in Mackay. I canât though, I canât.â
With that, he is out of his car, jogging across an open field. Heâs found Colterâs soccer game.
*
Pence still regularly rides into the wilderness, but heâs just as likely to be found staring at his computer monitor or thumbing through his thick, dogeared copy of âPrinciple Laws Relating to Forest Service Activities.â One morning he brings me with him as he protects his budget before a visiting fire-management review team at the Toiyabeâs Reno headquarters. âJust like me, this reporter is trying to figure out what a district ranger does,â he informs a row of grim, stolid faces. That meeting consumes half a day and includes many entreaties: âI donât want to lose lives. I . . . DONâT . . . WANT . . . TO . . . DO . . THAT.â
Later in the afternoon, laying off four seasonal workers requires filling out all manner of forms. Recovering a $250 overpayment from a recalcitrant salvage logger compels writing yet another futile letter. âYou can say itâs just $250, but itâs not MY $250. Itâs the PUBLICâS. . .â
When his workdays end, Pence doesnât so much relax as shift attention. Sitting now with his wife at Colterâs soccer game, Pence looks no less driven than when facing ranchers or bureaucrats. He shades his eyes against a sun low on the horizon. On the field, Colter is streaking toward a goal, the ball before her.
âNow, now,â Guy bellows.
âShoot, shoot,â Linda hollers.
Both parents clutch cellular phones. Guy turns, asks about Sitka, who trained with her cross-country track team today. Sitka got dropped off at home, Linda explains, so she could do her homework.
âCome on, Colter, run it in,â Guy shouts. âPush it, push it.â He grins as his daughter lofts the ball far down the field. âAh, Colter. Sheâs got a good foot on her, she does. . .â
Eyes still on the game, Guy and Linda talk about home insurance claims related to the bombing. New carpets to replace those full of embedded glass shards. Fresh paint, an antique clock, a concrete pad where the van was parked.
The signals between them are nonverbal, but both are worrying about Sitka being home alone. Before, this would not have been a concern in a town such as Carson City. Now it is. Linda picks up her phone, punches numbers. There is no answer. Both parents squint into the sun, study the game. Linda punches the numbers again. This time Sitka answers.
âNow a little footrace,â Guy shouts to Colterâs teammates. âOh, cross it, now cross it. Oh, oh, close, half a foot, so close. . .â
It is well past 7 p.m. before the entire family manages to gather back at the Pence home. Itâs a wood-frame ranch house, set on an acre at the foot of the Sierra foothills. Pence stops out back to pet two of his Nevada mustangs prancing in the corral. His third mustang and Sitkaâs appaloosa are out to pasture.
Dinner appears imponderable. The three girls have scattered. Colter is debating whether to go to her dance class, Sitka has homework questions, Morgan wonders about tomorrowâs car-pool. This is no simple matter, what with dance, cross country, basketball, swimming lessons, three different soccer teams.
âThis is actually early for our family to be all together,â Linda laughs. âNever have a family where the kids outnumber the parents.â
Guy produces a pile of photos from one of the High Sierra Camps, which Linda helps run. Then he displays Lindaâs award plaque for being Nevada Wildlife Federation Conservation Educator of the Year, 1995. The two of them are standing inches from where the bomb exploded, but appear oblivious. So do their daughters as they bound in and out of the living room.
âWhat we didnât do,â Linda says of the first hours after the bombing, âis wring our hands in front of the children and shake and go, âOh my, oh no, what are we going to do?â What we did do is have a slumber party. Three days later, eight little girls. Life goes on.â
Guy nods in agreement even as his eyes once again tear up. His voice is shaky. âI donât know what Iâd do if I lost one of the kids. . . And yet, people do things like that.â
âYes, they meant it,â Linda says. âIt was a warm night, the windows were open. They could hear our TV, they could hear us talking. They knew we were on the other side of the window.â
âTen seconds later,â Guy says. âIf they hadnât gotten up. . . .â
âThe first week was chaos,â Linda says. âThen Colter had to be somewhere at 6 a.m. We had to get going.â
âI canât imagine my parents falling into a swoon over this,â Guy says. âMaybe thatâs what Iâm falling back on.â
Are they sure of their course?
Guy and Linda look at each other, shrug.
âNew turf,â Linda says.
âNever been here before,â Guy says.
*
Exactly one month to the day after my visit to the Pence home, the Forest Service made its announcement. Guy Pence would be transferring out of Nevada, out of the Toiyabe. He was being reassigned to the Boise National Forest in Idaho, effective the next Monday, Oct. 30. There, according to the formal notice, heâd be the aviation, fire and lands staff officer in the supervisorâs office. That involved introducing prescribed and natural fires into Boise ecosystems; it didnât involve directly governing ranchers, miners and loggers.
The transfer was âsafety-related,â said Penceâs immediate boss, Jim Nelson, supervisor of the Toiyabe-Humboldt National Forests. Yet it was also a good âcareer moveâ after 12 years on the Toiyabe, a chance for Pence to âwiden his experiencesâ and move on from a situation that had âconsumed him.â Pence--"one of the finest district rangers Iâve ever known"--was âon a trackâ toward becoming a national forest supervisor.
On the phone to me that day, Pence labored to speak carefully. The transfer offer had come two weeks before from Dale Bosworth, the regional director in Ogden, Utah, who had expressed passionate concern about his safety. Pence accepted the reassignment out of love for the Forest Service and respect for Bosworth. But he did not ask for it, did not want it. He was having a tough time with it. He understood there are some folks in higher management who are concerned about his safety and his familyâs. But âtheyâre looking at this through the lenses that have been ground for their eyes. Their lenses donât fit me. My lenses are ground from my experience, my situation.â
It was left to others to suggest that the Forest Service had folded under political pressure, or at the least had let an anonymous bomber drive an outspoken ranger from his home. Despite earnest denials by both Nelson and Bosworth--"Iâm outspoken, tooâ Nelson quite rightly pointed out--it isnât hard to see how Pence might be regarded by some as a loose cannon, as an unacceptably dangerous flash point in an already incendiary situation. That others see him as a hero of sorts would carry little weight, would perhaps even make matters worse. Strutting and glowering may work for those bent on grazing cows and cutting roads in national forests, but not, in the current climate, for those fixed on conservation.
A wave of angry, dismayed messages filled Penceâs desk in the hours after the announcement. What can we do? they inquired. How can we change this? Pence for once didnât fan the flames. âIâve already cried all I can,â he explained. âLetâs focus on the real issues. God gave us only so much air, water and land.â
His own focus now was on Boise. He would not be reporting there until the end of the school year, because he refused to leave his family. Heâd work on assignments out of Carson City until next spring. Boise will be a new experience, he told his distraught daughters, a chance to see new things. âIâm going to my new job with enthusiasm,â he said. âI would be irresponsible if I didnât have a positive outlook.â
Lest anyone assume such equanimity signaled his taming, though, Pence took one parting shot before stepping aside. When a television station called from San Francisco during that last week, requesting an interview, he first checked with Forest Service managers. Absolutely not, they told him. Pence gave the interview anyway.
âGoddamn right,â he told me on his final day as Carsonâs district ranger. âShow me where thereâs a law or policy that says Iâm not to speak out. Show me where itâs written.â
*
Next week: Dick Carver and the county supremacy movement in Nye County.