Dave Simpson: Harriet Delivered When No One Else Could (Or Cared)

The old, abandoned camper insert sat by the side of the Forest Service road for eight, maybe 10 years,  mashed down a little further by the snow each winter.

Inside was a mess. Pots, pans, junk, an old sleeping bag wadded up and chewed by critters. You could easily imagine a body being in there. So nobody camped there for years.

I'd see it most summer afternoons as I buzzed past on my ancient Yamaha three-wheeler, going to my favorite spot along the Medicine Bow River. (A cold can of Pabst tastes swell up there.)

On the way back, I'd pass the abandoned camper again. I called it the haunted camper. You couldn't say the Forest Service wasn't doing anything about it. One year they put a sticker on the side, then left it for another few years. (The camping limit is a couple weeks.)

Some folks were charitable about it, wondering what happened to the owners. But it just made me mad. Shoving a camper insert out the back of a pickup and dumping it on the ground takes effort, and leaving your mess for someone else to clean up takes gall.

Every Labor Day weekend up there in the Snowy Range, we have a neighborhood picnic to mark the end of cabin season. There are a few dozen cabins in our area, and attendance is good.

Two years ago, my wife and our son came up for the picnic in her Subaru SUV, which has pretty good ground clearance. But the road had deteriorated so badly, strewn with boulders and pot holes, that on one stretch she had our son walk ahead to point the way, so she wouldn't high center on a rock, or puncture an oil pan.

“I'm never coming up here again until they fix that road!” she said at the picnic.

Some warned us not to complain, or the Forest Service could propose that we take over maintenance, at huge cost.

But, it's a Forest Service road. And it's not just us using it. Campers, hunters, anglers, and folks making their way to an observation point high above use the road.  (On a clear day you can see all the way to Casper Mountain from up there.)

And it's supposed to receive some minimal maintenance every two years, according to the Forest Service. But none of us had seen a grader there in about a decade. The road was returning to what the government's “roadless rules” means return to “native base.” Leave it to the hiking granola eaters, some would prefer.

So last fall my wife sent an email to our congressman, Rep. Harriet Hageman. Photos showed what the road used to look like – adequate for a passenger car to negotiate – and the boulder-strewn mess that it had become.

As icing on the cake, my wife included a picture of the abandoned camper insert by the side of the road, a sure sign of Forest Service neglect. For years.

Within days of that email arriving at Hageman's office, a cabin owner saw the abandoned camper insert being hauled down the mountain by a Forest Service crew.

Glory hallelujah.

Even better, last week there was a road grader up there, working on the road. The toughest stretch – known as “the Beaver Slide” - is still treacherous, but folks are overjoyed at the work that has suddenly been done. And thankful. (I'd like to buy the grader driver a beer.)

I'm thinking about calling it Hageman Road.

You don't read much nice about office holders these days, but “constituent service” is more important than ever, given the massive size of our bureaucracy.

In this instance, Harriet Hageman – and her staff - cut through the red tape and somehow got the Forest Service to do what it should have been doing for years, doing some minimal maintenance on the road.

Even hauling off the haunted camper insert.

So, don't say anything bad about Harriet Hageman around my wife.

If you do, she'll tell you – as they say in Oklahoma - “how the cow ate the cabbage.” (Not good. Been there. Heard that.)

And the little camp site – the camper gone and the site all cleaned up - has a stunning view of the Medicine Bow River, meandering through a peaceful meadow.

Bingo.

Dave Simpson can be reached at: DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com