Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Grassroots Press: A Hike Made in Hell

My friends at Grassroots Press (http://www.grass-roots-press.com/) have posted an account by a constituent of a mythical hike with the Worst Congressman in History, Stevan Pearce (R-NM).

Pearce, who is owned by the oil, gas and ATV industries, opposes protection of southern New Mexico's magnificent mountain and high desert canyon country by designating them wilderness areas, despite a series of public hearings that disclosed overwhelming public support of the notion.

Here's what Greg Lennes of Las Cruces had to say on the Grassroots Press website:

Congressman Pearce accepted my invitation to enjoy a scenic hike to Fillmore Canyon in the beautiful tranquil Organ Mountains. We met at the trail-head. He was dressed in his hunting camouflage with a Remington 7600 pump action thirty-ought-six rifle. He also had a Dan Wesson 445 Revolver. I was startled and asked him why he accepted my invitation. He stated that he wanted to show me the illegals and Mexican cartel members hiding in the mountains.  As we walked he railed against the Bureau of Land Management calling them all “kooks.”


Our first stop was the La Cueva cave where Mr. Pearce commented that the hermit, Agostini-Justiniani was killed by the Mexican cartel during a drug deal. I mentioned that this happened in 1869. He responded he had a reliable source in two former long retired border patrol agents.


When we arrived at the stunning Fillmore Canyon waterfall, Mr. Pearce expressed his worry that we were walking into a trap. He pulled out his Wesson. Then I heard a gun firing at a nearby bush, and a yellow-billed dropped dead. As I looked at Mr. Pearce he had his Remington repeatedly shooting at the upper reaches of the canyon. A dune sagebrush lizard fell on his head. Pearce yelled that they are coming to get us and it’s time to leave or face death.


When we finally returned to our vehicles, Mr. Pearce lectured me that this should be a lesson to me that we can’t designate the Organ Mountains as a wilderness area. Instead he said he will propose to the Congress the closing of the mountains to all civilians and deployment of the National Guard to remove all the criminal elements concealed in the Organs. I woke up questioning if this was reality or a nutty nightmare.


Mr. Lennes's uncanny verisimilitude has only one flaw:

In real life Mr. Pearce would not have hiked: he'd have driven a big, snarling, smokin' ATV which might even have torn up the nest of the last remaining burrowing owl in the entire region.

After all, this is the guy who said we shouldn't use the abundant wind of the southwest to solve our dependency on fossil fuel (where he made his fortune).  Why?

"Aesthetics," he said.  "Some people think wind towers are ugly."