Ammon Bundy, "man about town," talking water and housing in Oregon and Idaho

This piece out of Klamath Falls, Oregon about the West's water crisis caught my attention last month.  Emmas Marris reports in The Atlantic, under the headline, "The West Can End the Water Wars Now."  Here's the lede for the story, which doesn't focus on Bundy, but does provide important context:

[I]n the West, people are, by and large, aggrieved. This is not entirely their fault. Federal and state governments have made lots of promises to people in the West, or to their parents or grandparents. Some people were promised that their land would not be taken, while other people were promised free land. Some were told that they could withdraw water from this or that lake or river every year until the end of time, others that their right to hunt or fish on their territory would never be infringed.

But the natural abundance those promises were based on has been squandered by generations of mismanagement. In the Klamath Basin, in Southern Oregon and Northern California, where I live, Klamath tribal members haven’t been able to exercise their “exclusive right of taking fish in the streams and lakes,” as protected in a 1864 treaty, for decades, because the fish keep dying.

And here's the bit that sums up what Bundy is up to (note, it potentially involves violence):   

A handful of far-right agitators connected with the infamous anti-government cowboy Ammon Bundy spent $30,000 to buy a plot of land adjacent to the closed headgates of the main irrigation canal, and they are publicly threatening to force them open. The gates are controlled by the Bureau of Reclamation and blocked with bulkheads. Heavy machinery would be required to move them. The farmers Grant Knoll and Dan Nielsen are giving interviews from the shade of a large, circus-striped tent by the headgates: They see their promised water allocation as private property that the federal government has stolen from them.

And then Anita Chabria and Hailey Branson-Potts reported for the Los Angeles Times that Bundy, in suburban Boise, Idaho, was arguing that the shortage of housing was a reason to end public land ownership.  The headline is "Ammon Bundy seizes on housing shortage in new bid to take public lands in Idaho."  Here's a salient quote:

Bundy is reframing the decades-long but narrow fight of his father, Cliven Bundy, against the Bureau of Land Management — the other BLM, as it’s known here — into a platform with broader appeal. He wants to use the governorship to wrest ownership of federal land for state control. It’s a campaign aimed at voters dreaming of wide open spaces and homes they can afford, wrapped in an idealized view of western life where land and resources are limited only by an unwillingness to use them.

Neither America nor the Gem State, he told the crowd, can survive the liberal creep of growing cities or the economic toll of too few houses for too many people. To “keep Idaho Idaho,” as his slogan promises, growth needs to happen out instead of up, as he puts it.

The federal government is “forcing everybody down into big cities and where they’re just surviving,” Bundy said in a recent interview with The Times. He spoke from his home outside Boise on five acres of apple orchards in an agricultural area known as Treasure Valley, surrounded by public lands.

Of course, Bundy and his family have long pressed for an end to federal government ownership of land.  That's been their signature issue, as covered here, regarding the 2016 seizure of the Malheur Wildlife Reserve, and other issues.  

Rural ambulance service under threat, especially in the West

This topic has been covered by two major media outlets in recent months.  First the New York Times' Ali Watkins reported a few months ago out of Wakashie County, Wyoming, population 8,533.

Then NPR's Aaron Bolton reported yesterday out of Dutton, Montana, population 316.  Bottom line:  

[S]agging [Medicare and Medicaid] reimbursement and volunteerism mean rural parts of the U.S. can no longer rely solely on volunteers but must find ways to convert to a paid staff.

The lack of anonymity and community aspects of this story caught my attention, though the following excerpt focuses on other practical and fiscal issues, too.  

Communities need to find ways to stabilize or convert their volunteer programs, or private services like his will need financial support to keep responding in other communities...

But lawmakers' appetite for finding ways to fund EMS is limited. During Montana's legislative session earlier this year, DeTienne [until recently Montana health department's EMS and Trauma Systems chief] pushed for a bill that would have studied the benefit of declaring EMS an essential service, among other possible improvements. The bill quickly died.

Back in Dutton, the EMS crew chief [Colleen Campbell] is thinking about her future after 17 years as a volunteer. Campbell says she wants to spend more time with her grandchildren, who live out of town. If she retires, there's no guarantee somebody will replace her. She's torn about what to do.

"My license is good until March of 2022, and we'll just see," Campbell says.

I can't help thinking about the parallel between EMS volunteers and volunteer fire departments, which have been the subject of many posts over the years.    

Postscript:  On July 8, NPR ran this story on the expanding urban-wildland interface in relation to fire danger, and it includes the topic of volunteer fire departments and their struggle to respond adequately to wildfires.

Good (local) news regarding judicial diversity, out of California's Inland Empire

Byrhonda Lyons reported some surprisingly good news about diversity among California trial judges for CalMatters last week:  61% of the trial court judges in Imperial County, California are people of color! Imperial County is not rural by the U.S. Census Bureau definition, nor is it nonmetropolitan by the definition of the Office of Management and Budget.  It is, however, rural in the California imaginary, part of the Inland Empire and with a highly agricultural economy.  

The county is one of the state's poorest and most diverse (85% Latino), hugging the Arizona state line and the Mexican border.  Here's a segment about how diversity on the Imperial County bench came to be.  The short story:  it began with personal initiative and persistence: 

Contentious elections have been critical to transforming the bench in Imperial County.

Located just 17 miles from Mexicali, Mexico, the California town of El Centro is the seat of rural Imperial County, where Latinos have been a majority for decades. White people long dominated the bench. In 1980, then-Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Matt Contreras to be a judge of what were then called Municipal Courts. Contreras became the county’s first Latino judge — and the only one for another decade.

By 1990, Juan Ulloa, having been skipped over for an appointment, bypassed that traditional process and gambled that voters would elect a Latino judge.

“It was common wisdom,” he said, “that it couldn’t be done.”

That year, a Superior Court judge retired, clearing the way for Ulloa to run for a newly vacant seat. He lost. Four years later, another judge retired, and Ulloa ran again, facing off against Roger Benitez, now a federal District Court judge best known for rejecting California’s assault rifle ban.

Since the state began collecting diversity data on judges 14 years ago, governors and the voters have helped Imperial County go from two Latino judges in 2007 to five in 2020 — rising, falling and coasting along the way.

Now Latino judges make up half of the 10-member bench. Two Latino judges were appointed by Brown, one in 2016 and one in 2018. One was appointed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009. The other two won in elections.

Said Ulloa: “Once we proved it could be done, the doors opened.”

In all, 40% of Imperial County’s judges first got the job by campaigning for election. That’s exceedingly rare in California, where counties can go decades without a Superior Court challenge.

“The Imperial Valley is such a close-knit area that people want to make sure they know who they are electing,” said Judge William Quan, an Asian American native of the valley. Quan ran twice, losing once before and winning in 2014.

“You learn to appreciate that. And maybe that has bred this thinking that I will run for election versus appointment because we understand the people. We know them and we’re comfortable enough to be able to ask for their support.”

While elections can diversify a bench, they can also have the opposite effect. Latina Judge Ruth Bermudez Montenegro, appointed by then-Gov. Brown in 2012, was unseated by Judge Brooks Anderholdt in a primary election a mere few months later. Eventually she won another judgeship and now is a magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. 

The other good news is that the California Supreme Court is the most diverse judicial body in the state:  

[F]ully 71% of its judges are people of color, creating one of the most diverse Supreme Courts in the country.

I'm glad the story notes that now infamous federal district judge, Roger Benitez, lives in Imperial County. 

Here's another post about a lawyer, my former colleague Cruz Reynoso, who started his career in Imperial County where he eventually worked for California Rural Legal Assistance.  This part of Judge Ulloa's biography-- reminded me of Reynoso, who was the first Latino to sit on the California Supreme Court.  Ulloa was thwarted in his first few efforts to get a seat on the Imperial County court--by getting a gubernatorial appointment or getting recommended by the local bar.     

[Ulloa] figures his legal work representing employees in discrimination suits and inmates seeking better jail conditions deemed him “too radical” for an aspiring California judge at the time.

Be sure to read the entire CalMatters story for a nice rural "lack of anonymity" angle at the end. 

A prior Byrhonda Lyons story about the lack of diversity among California trial court judges is here, and the blog post about it is here.  

California migration patterns driving rural(ish) gentrification and, perhaps slowly, changes in local politics

The Los Angeles Times reported a few days ago under the headline, "Wealth, class and remote work shape California's new boomtowns, as people flee big cities," and the focus of the story is El Dorado County, California (population 181,058)--specifically the planned (but unincorporated) community of El Dorado Hills, population 42,000.  

Among the new booming counties is El Dorado, the birthplace of the California Gold Rush, which has absorbed a flood of Bay Area transplants who, in search of affordable homes, well-rated schools and access to the outdoors, have packed up their U-Hauls and headed northeast.

“It’s really just an opportunity for people who have felt pent up and squeezed in the Bay Area and felt handcuffed that they had to stay there,” said Jon Yoffie, a real estate agent in El Dorado Hills.

Many recent arrivals are young families and retirees looking for more land or following their adult children.

* * * 

El Dorado County has held on to its small-town vibe, residents say, but newcomers are making it both more expensive and more diverse.

Bill Roby, 67, and his husband James moved to El Dorado County from the Bay Area in 2005, where they settled on six acres in Shingle Springs, a rural part of the county with larger plots and open space.

“It’s a very rural environment where I can’t even see my neighbor’s home,” said Roby, who, like the majority of El Dorado County residents, lives outside of the two incorporated cities of Placerville and South Lake Tahoe.

Before moving, Roby, who worked as an operations manager for a nonprofit organization, felt that he was always competing for room. Now the executive director of the ‎El Dorado Community Foundation, Roby said he has seen not only a dramatic surge in the number of people migrating to the region since 2020, but also a heightened degree of civic engagement. In the last year, Roby said, there has been “a lot of scrutiny” over local positions, such as who is being chosen as the commissioner of a Board of Supervisors committee.“People have time, they are paying attention and they’re raising ideological concerns,” he said. “I think that encapsulates the big conversation going on in El Dorado County: Where does the community see itself?”

Though he hasn’t experienced animosity, Roby has heard some locals say that they want to maintain their region’s more conservative, underdeveloped aura, and fear that newcomers are changing that character. Some 41% of active voters in El Dorado County are Republicans, according to 2020 data from the county’s election department, while 31% are Democrats. Another 21% are registered with no party preference.

“Out of my three neighbors, two have moved because they felt the county was becoming too liberal,” Roby said.

Here's a prior post about sprawl in El Dorado County.  And a few other posts that are revealing about the county's politics are here, here, and here.   Note the "Preserve our Rural Lifestyle" heading in this El Dorado County post, from 2008.

Coronavirus surging in rural Africa

 The Associated Press reports from Zvimba, Zimbabwe, about 70 miles from Harare.  

For Pelagia Bvukura, who lives in a rural part of north-central Zimbabwe, COVID-19 had always been a “city disease,” affecting those in the capital, Harare, or other, distant big towns.

“There was no virus for us. We only used to hear it was in Harare or other towns or when city people died and we buried them here,” she said recently, referring to the custom in Zimbabwe where those who move to the city often are buried at their family’s rural home.

That is changing now. A new surge of the virus is finally penetrating Africa’s rural areas, where most of the continent’s people live, spreading to areas that once had been viewed as safe havens from infections that hit cities particularly hard.

With facilities in the countryside ill-prepared to fight the coronavirus, residents like Bvukura worry that the next graves being dug could be for their neighbors — or even themselves.

* * *  

“It is now on our doorsteps. It’s scary. We don’t know how to protect ourselves. We have never dealt with such a problem before,” she said.

"Rural" used 13 times (12 of them in dissent) in today's Supreme Court decision on voting rights in Arizona

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision today in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, a voting rights case.  The decision that will be roundly and soundly criticized from the left for upholding Arizona restrictions on voting.  I could jump on that bandwagon, albeit without expertise because I am not a voting rights scholar.  Instead, I'm going to focus here on the unusual amount of attention that "rural" drew in the opinion, more than I've seen in any Supreme Court decision I've every read (which admittedly is not exhaustive as I am not a scholar of constitutional law).  The issue here is similar to that which I've written about a great deal in the context of abortion:  when is a regulation too much of a burden on a fundamental right--whether it is the right to get an abortion or the right to vote?  

In Brnovich, the dissent argued that rural residents--especially "rural Native Americans" because of the distances they must travel to reach a post office or polling place--are inappropriately burdened by an Arizona law that prohibits ballot harvesting.  Here's a representative quote from the dissent: 

Arizona’s law mostly banning third-party ballot collection also results in a significant race-based disparity in voting opportunities. The problem with that law again lies in facts nearly unique to Arizona—here, the presence of rural Native American communities that lack ready access to mail service. Given that circumstance, the Arizona statute discriminates in just the way Section 2 proscribes. The majority once more comes to a different conclusion only by ignoring the local conditions with which Arizona’s law interacts.

The critical facts for evaluating the ballot-collection rule have to do with mail service. Most Arizonans vote by mail. But many rural Native American voters lack access to mail service, to a degree hard for most of us to fathom. Only 18% of Native voters in rural counties receive home mail delivery, compared to 86% of white voters living in those counties. See 329 F. Supp. 3d, at 836. And for many or most, there is no nearby post office. Native Americans in rural Arizona “often must travel 45 minutes to 2 hours just to get to a mailbox.” 948 F. 3d, at 1006; see 329 F. Supp. 3d, at 869 (“Ready access to reliable and secure mail service is nonexistent” in some Native American communities). And between a quarter to a half of households in these Native communities do not have a car. See ibid. So getting ballots by mail and sending them back poses a serious challenge for Arizona’s rural Native Americans.  (emphasis added)

The majority relegated its response to a footnote (footnote 21) that replied primarily on the U.S. Postal Service's functioning to suggest these rural voters will be taken care of:

The dissent’s primary argument regarding HB 2023 concerns its effect on Native Americans who live on remote reservations. The dissent notes that many of these voters do not receive mail delivery at home, that the nearest post office may be some distance from their homes, and that they may not have automobiles. Post, at 36. We do not dismiss these problems, but for a number of reasons, they do not provide a basis for invalidating HB 2023. The burdens that fall on remote communities are mitigated by the long period of time prior to an election during which a vote may be cast either in person or by mail and by the legality of having a ballot picked up and mailed by family or household members. And in this suit, no individual voter testified that HB 2023 would make it significantly more difficult for him or her to vote. 329 F. Supp. 3d, at 871. Moreover, the Postal Service is required by law to “provide a maximum degree of effective and regular postal services to rural areas, communities, and small towns where post offices are not self-sustaining.” 39 U. S. C. §101(b); see also §403(b)(3). Small post offices may not be closed “solely for operating at a deficit,” §101(b), and any decision to close or consolidate a post office may be appealed to the Postal Regulatory Commission, see §404(d)(5). An alleged failure by the Postal Service to comply with its statutory obligations in a particular location does not in itself provide a ground for overturning a voting rule that applies throughout an entire State.

That seems a shaky defense given the recent performance of the U.S. Post Office, along with proposed changes to its performance. More analysis to follow in a future post. 

Hmong pot farmer shot and killed by Siskiyou County law enforcement amidst fire evacuation

I blogged yesterday about the "officer involved shooting" of a white teen in Arkansas.  Another incident of law enforcement killing a person in a rural setting is in the headlines today, this one out of Siskiyou County, California, population 44,900.  The Siskiyou sheriff's department said the man pointed a gun at officers.  Here's an excerpt from the Sacramento Bee's coverage:    

Four officers shot and killed a man after he fired a gun at them as they tried to stop a vehicle at the entrance to a large complex of cannabis farms under evacuation Monday evening from the 13,330-acre Lava Fire in Siskiyou County, the sheriff said Tuesday.

The officers tried to stop a man at the Mount Shasta Vista subdivision after the fire crossed Highway 97 north of Weed, Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue said. The 1,641-lot subdivision has been converted into a massive network of marijuana grows run primarily by Hmong families.  [The man shot and killed by officers was Hmong]

“They made contact with the driver. And at some point, the driver exhibited a firearm, a handgun, and pointed it at the officers,” LaRue told The Sacramento Bee.

The eyewitness report of a firefighter at the scene seems to contradict the law enforcement account. A resident who lived near the shooting said he heard about 60 rounds fired.  And here's more context from the Bee report:

The shooting comes in the wake of the sheriff’s office aggressively enforcing local ordinances seeking to eliminate the massive proliferation of marijuana farms in the rural county along the Oregon border. Siskiyou County has banned large-scale cannabis cultivation.

* * *

The growers, most of them of Hmong and Chinese descent, have accused local authorities of racial discrimination, and they’re pursuing a federal civil rights lawsuit.

The county disputes that their crackdown has been racially motivated, citing a rise of violent crime and unsafe living conditions inside the grows.

A recent post about the marijuana business in the area is here, based on a New York Times feature on nearby Weed, California.    

The Etna Police Department has reported that its officers were involved in the incident.  Etna, population 737, is west of !-5, but their officers had been east of I-5--an hour's drive from home--assisting with fire evacuation and other related public safety needs.   

Rural teen shot by law enforcement during puzzling traffic stop. What does it tell us about race and rural law enforcement?

 A 17-year-old man was killed by a sheriff's deputy in Cabot, Arkansas a few days ago.  I first saw the story reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.   Here's what Ashton Eley reported on June 24, when this was the lead story on the website: 

A Lonoke County deputy shot and killed a 17-year-old early Wednesday during a traffic stop near Cabot, authorities said.

Hunter Brittain of McRae was driving a truck on Arkansas 89 just south of Cabot when he was stopped by Sgt. Michael Davis of the Lonoke County sheriff's office. The stop "ended in a shooting incident," according to a news release from the Arkansas State Police, which is investigating.

About 6 p.m., the crowd of protesters demanded answers about Brittain's death, chanting "Justice for Hunter," a phrase that also was displayed on signs and white T-shirts worn by many outside the sheriff's office.

Brittain's uncles, Jesse and Harley Brittain, said their nephew was trying to fix the transmission on his truck at Mahoney's Body Shop near Cabot. At the time of the stop, they said he was test-driving it so he could go to his construction job the next day. Another 17-year-old boy was with Hunter Brittain at the time of the shooting, family members said.

The crowd chanted several times "No Justice, No Peace" -- a slogan associated with protests against racial injustice and police brutality.

Harley Brittain [Hunter's uncle] said demonstrators planned to return today and possibly Friday, as well. He said they held the event for Hunter Brittain, who was white, but also because of police violence around the nation.

"It's happening everywhere. It's happening all the time. This is close to home. This is family," he said. "We're about to light a fire under this whole thing. We're not stopping here."

I thought the implicit reference to Black Lives Matter was interesting, and I wondered if BLM protestors--including Black protestors--were coming to Lonoke County to protest.  

Then, today, I saw that Vice had picked up the story.  Here's how they frame it: 

Early on June 23, before Davis stopped Hunter, an aspiring NASCAR driver from McRae, Arkansas [population 682, in neighboring White County], the teen had been fixing up his truck so he could make it to work on time, Jesse Brittain said.

Hunter had just fixed his transmission and taken the truck out for a test drive when Davis pulled him over, according to the teen riding with Hunter and his uncle’s knowledge of the incident.

“The shifting linkage in the truck was messed up, so when they pulled up, the truck was rolling back,” Jesse Brittain told VICE News.

That’s why Hunter went to get the antifreeze.

After Davis fired, Hunter “sustained a gunshot wound and was transported to a North Little Rock hospital, where he later died,” the Arkansas State Police said in a short statement last week.

Jordan King, the teen with Hunter the night of the incident, told local ABC affiliate KATV that Davis didn’t say anything to Hunter before shooting him. Another deputy showed up and handcuffed King for hours, though Jesse Brittain said the teen, who’s also a family member, was never charged with any crime.

“All they were doing was working on the truck,” Jesse Brittain said.

Rebecca Payne, Hunter’s grandmother and his guardian at the time, told VICE News that authorities have told her little about what happened to her grandson. It wasn’t even the sheriff’s office that told her Hunter had been shot, but other people who were at the property where he was killed, she said.

“I guess I don’t trust any police right now,” Payne said. “Won’t nobody tell us anything. The body hasn’t been released. None of the information has been released to us. We’ve been told a lot of different things.”

Lonoke County Sheriff John Staley said in a video statement posted to his office’s Facebook page last week that “like everyone, I want to know exactly what happened.” He added that Arkansas State Police will investigate and that his office has provided the agency with body-cam footage, though it’s unclear how much of the incident was captured. The family has not seen any body-cam video.

The story references a Tweet storm that went viral, which is here: 

The bio for "Read Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler" is: 

All of this reminds me of my earlier post from about a year ago regarding what we should do when law enforcement behave badly toward relatively powerless whites.  In this case, Hunter may have been lacking power because he was without parents, under the care of his grandmother.  Does that mean he was poor?  perhaps?  also, he was from a rural part of neighboring county.  The deputy who shot him was from an exurban county that is part of the Little Rock metro area.  White County is one more ring out from that, a micropolitan county, but also part of the Little Rock-North Little Rock Metropolitan Area. 

P.S.  On June 30, 2021, KATV based in Little Rock reported that the Brittain family has engaged the same lawyers who represented George Floyd's family, including Benjamin Crump.  That story featured this from Moesha Foreman, apparently the Black woman shown in the video clip at the KATV link: 

Moesha Foreman didn’t know Hunter but met Scott Hendrickson, who is family friends with the Brittains, in passing at a gas station. She decided to join the Justice for Hunter movement.

“I’ve been to protest Black Lives Matter, all lives matter. I’ve been to all the protests and it’s just got to stop,” Foreman said.

She said regardless of what color you are or who you are, you should not be shot down by those paid to protect and serve you.

“You have other actions to go by. You have (a) taser, pepper spray. You have other options to go by before you can take a person’s life,” Foreman said.

To this, I sent this Tweet, which referenced the blog post above: 

And that is close enough in theme (cross-racial coalition building) to this from a few days ago that I'll post this here, too: 

Nostalgia for the rural, farming in China

Here's the story from the New York Times,  "At this Instagram Hotspot, All the World's a Stage (the the Buffalo's a Prop).

The morning mist was still thick between the banyan trees when the farmer appeared in the clearing, an ax slung over his shoulder as he led a water buffalo on a rope leash. In the slanting sunlight, unhurried and companionable, the two picked their way through the undergrowth, a vision of the rural idyll.

Then, when the farmer reached the other end of the clearing, he turned and began his trek again. And again. And again, in a constant loop.

“Come over here a bit!” called out one photographer on the edge of the glade in southeastern China.

“That’s the way!” said another photographer, shouting out directions and encouragement.

“OK, no need to walk anymore!”

With that, the visitors called it a wrap, satisfied they had gotten the perfect photographs of the bucolic scene.

Be sure to click through to the story so you can enjoy the photos.   It seems that people--and I don't think this is limited to the Chinese--want to dream about/fantasize/fetishize/feel connected to where their food is coming from.  The story's subhead speaks volumes in this regard:  "Photographers are flocking to a rural county in southeastern China for its quaint scenes of farmers and fishermen — made to order."

Nudges from farmer/Senator Tester on the bipartisan infrastructure bill

By this account from Politico, Senator Jon Tester--the only farmer in the Senate--played a critical role in brokering the bi-partisan infrastructure bill that was announced last week.  Here's the story's lede:  

Nearly every day over the last week, Jon Tester insisted that the Senate’s latest bipartisan alliance had to seal an infrastructure deal before the next morning. After several whiffs, his nudges paid off.

With talks among his group and President Joe Biden moving along sluggishly, the burly Montana farmer had a plan in mind as he repeatedly urged his colleagues — publicly and privately — to wrap things up.

“You have to push positive vibes if you’re going to get a positive result,” Tester explained of his strategy. “You’ve got to talk about success if you’re going to achieve success.”

This communications strategy is one Tester touted in his book, Grounded, which I reviewed here.  See the last chapter, with the "to do" list for Democrats, which suggests that framing and language matter.  

A rural Nevada travelogue, on foot

This is from today's Las Vegas Review Journal, as reported by John Glionna.  The headline is "A Wild Walk Across Rural Nevada." 

Eric Poulin noticed it early on: rural Nevadans rarely paused when they spotted him and his backpack along paved roads, but they always stopped on the more neighborly dirt tracks.

That’s how he encountered the old rancher, who slowed his diesel pickup as Poulin trudged west between the Monitor and Toquima mountain ranges near the town of Belmont.

When locals encounter pedestrians way out there, they’re usually in trouble, their vehicles disabled somewhere nearby. They need water, directions, medical assistance or at least a lift to the nearest telephone.

Poulin needed none of that. Sure, he’d take a bottle of cold water if you had one to spare or, better yet, a cheeseburger, but he was just fine, thank you.

When the rancher asked where he was headed, the 38-year-old Michigan native described a circuitous, half-mad 950-mile expedition across some 17 mountain ranges in central Nevada, a scant part of the route along established trails.

Poulin was bushwhacking across a veritable lost world, through hidden box canyons, seas of prickly sagebrush, dead-tree thickets and imposing walls of thorns. He’d been disappointed by numerous false mountaintop peaks, discovered places where only wild horses make the trails. He slept cowboy-style under wondrous star-filled skies you didn’t see back home in Michigan.

And he was recording it all on video, plotting the coordinates of a new route he christened the “Basin and Range Trail,” so that other intrepid through-hikers might one day follow in his footsteps.