Donovan Kelly

Last weekend I formally declared our deck to be a wilderness area.

At the time, it seemed a stroke of brilliance. No more sweeping or painting the deck. Wilderness areas must, of course, be allowed to return to their natural condition. Our unpainted deck was already taking on a very natural seedy appearance. Now it's the law.

Wilderness status also meant that people could no longer land planes or drive motorized vehicles across our deck. True, motorized vehicles had not yet become a major problem, but with all the push for new roads to ease traffic congestion, one can't be too careful.

My son, the official family environmental expert, told me I also should remove my birdfeeder from the deck. In his expert opinion, the feeder was upsetting the natural order of the wildlife. I ignored him, naturally.

I also learned that we could no longer name things, like "The Deck Chair," within the deck wilderness area. The rules say that geographic features within wilderness areas, like mountains, shall remain unspoilt by application of formal names, except when there exists an overriding need for formal place names for management or safety reasons.

My wife insisted that we should continue to call the deck's largest redwood feature "The Picnic Table," because the formal name was vital to long established management practices. Like when management announced that "Lunch was ready" and found it necessary and useful to announce at what exact geographic place it was ready at.

I dutifully submitted her proposal to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which rules on all proposed names for geographic features used on federal maps. The Board informed me that our picnic table had to be dead for at least five years before we could even consider honoring it with a name. Upon being told of this ruling, management suggested that I go eat lunch at the unnamed and illegal birdfeeder.

Things got worse. An aide to a well known senator from a well-known western state arrived to inspect my wilderness area. He warned me that his fellow ranchers viewed any new wilderness areas as an invasion of their rights to raise cattle wherever they wanted. To avoid investigation, I should immediately withdraw my application for wilderness status and open up my deck to cattle grazing. Behind him lurked a herd of hungry cows carrying chain saws.

Properly cowed, I undeclared the deck a wilderness area. Go ahead and land your planes here. But even worse than the roar of motorized vehicles racing across my deck is the sad unnatural sound of me sweeping and painting.

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(Kelly writes from his non-wilderness deck in Hamilton. They can be reached at donovan@donovanwrites.com.)