Pure as the driven snow, Miss Piedra. 🙂
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Out here, government employees aren’t nameless and faceless, one or more of the 800,000 workers adversely affected by the government shutdown. They’re our partners, they’re members of our communities. They visit our local farmers markets, and their kids and our kids are classmates. We work together for common goals.
Yesterday, as I was driving out of Spring Creek Basin, our lead BLM law-enforcement ranger, Tyler, was headed into the basin, in uniform and driving his BLM vehicle. He and his law-enforcement fellows have been required to be on the job – without pay – but I know him and others like him well enough to know that it is at least moral duty, not simply required duty. It’s a duty to protect the resources of our local community, which, in our case (as in most across the West), is large, wide and sprawling, not easily connected.
And yet, on the Sunday before government resumes operations, Tyler was in Disappointment Valley, headed toward Spring Creek Basin, checking on our mustangs and the range that sustains them.
We ARE connected. And we’re grateful for our neighbors. We hope the (temporary) return to business is for the good of all our government-employed neighbors.
