Baby Boomer Ranger

Sometimes there is a convergence of the Blog. For a while, I didn’t have much to work with, but lately, I can’t type fast enough!
Today, I was amazed at two email messages I recieved at work. I think that I am not alone… Others are out there wondering “what are we doing and why are we doing it?”

I want to share the first message from today. I’m not sure what this is saying and why are they telling this to me? So what are we going to DO? What are they talking about? “Transformation” rymes with “Re-Organization.” Say what you mean, and mean what you say.

Then, I recieved this. It is self explanitory.

Maybe we need another skill besides rowing!
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A Modern Day Forest Service Parable

The Old Forest Service and the Modern Forest Service decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River . Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the Old Forest Service won by a mile.The Modern Forest Service, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Old Forest Service had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering,while the Modern Forest Service team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. Feeling a deeper study was in order, Modern Forest Service management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised, in the National Rowing Plan,
that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Old Forest Service, the rowing team’s management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager, with none of them having any rowing experience.

They also implemented a new performance system that would make the 1 person rowing the boat more professional and accountable. It was called the “IFPM Rowing Team Program”, with meetings, classes and deadlines for the rower and a requirement to take 15 more courses on AgLearn. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses, but it never occurred to anyone to add additional rowers.

The next year the Old Forest Service won by two miles. Humiliated, the Modern Forest Service management abandoned the National Rowing Plan, laid off the rower not meeting the deadline, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Albuquerque Service Center as bonuses and the next year’s racing team was outsourced to private contractors.

Author Unknown

I like this kind of two-way communication: Shut up and do your work!

Row, row row your boat
Gently down the stream.
Merily, merily, merily, merily,
Life is but a dream!

Could this be a photo of the Benson Syndicate? This group was last seen in the vicinity of Oakhurst unfolding survey maps, copies of deeds, and old stories of bars, land purchases, land occupation, dirty deals and something called “Swamp and Overflow Land.” Why were these people, these government employees and private landowners meeting and discussing property boundaries, survey monuments and homesteads? I believe that the seated gentleman on the left bears a striking resemblance to a photo I once saw of Mr. John Benson, the diabolical mastermind of the bunch. If you have information on the whereabouts of Mr. Benson, please notify the authorities immediately.

The Benson Syndicate from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
“The Benson Syndicate was an organized crime organization in the western United States involved with General Land Office land surveying fraud, and headed by one John A Benson, a former school teacher and later a reputable deputy land surveyor.
The syndicate operated from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, was most active in California and headquartered in San Francisco, active from about 1875 to 1898, and was at its peak from 1883 to 1886. In California alone, at least 40 individuals were involved, and very probably more. Its modus operandi was to generate supposed demand for public land surveys (see Public Land Survey System) using fictitious land patent applications, followed by incomplete, shoddy, and/or outright fictitious surveys. These surveys were “performed” under contract to individual deputy surveyors, some of whom were not even aware that surveying contracts existed in their names, having been induced by Benson to sign blank papers which were later turned into contracts and other legal documents by Benson or his associates. Other times people with minimal surveying experience and/or lacking proper qualifications as deputy surveyors performed the work without the contracted surveyor ever being involved in any way. Often, an area under contract was surveyed only to the extent that was necessary to create plausible, but fabricated, survey plans and field notes for the remainder of the area.
Other times, entire contracted areas, usually consisting of more than one township (approx 36 square miles), were fabricated by syndicate members, with little or no work on the ground at all.”

OK, my timeline is off by a century or more. This may only be a group of good people looking for a pragmatic way to correct a miss-recoreded patent of a boundary line that everyone understood and respected on the ground for over eighty years, until a survey confused the beauracracy and challenged land managers to find a practical solution to a complex mystery of legal documents and land law precident.

I don’t think that’s as exciting as discovering the Benson Syndicate, but maybe that shows how things have changed over the last 100 years.

Sierra National Forest Good Neighbors who are also
“Caring for the Land and Serving People.”
Luke, Adeline, Karla and Hilary from the Muir Trail Ranch,
a beautiful private inholding in the John Muir Wilderness.