To the Editor:

If I want to train to be a Navy SEAL or to join the IDF at age 50 in the middle of the night when it’s cool and the sun is down, I’m going to do it. Most would agree that, for serious folks such as myself, a treadmill just doesn’t provide the best long-distance training for military readiness. It can be good, but needs to be in concert with cross-country running, free weight training, swimming and other extreme-endurance training.

The upshot of this letter is to get my point across that, if you don’t like me performing long-distance training between John Day and Prairie City, then you should have allowed “low-elevation” Grouse Mountain State Park to go in and right-of-way access could have been provided for law-abiding, conscientious athletes like myself to run or bike straight to the park from John Day. I don’t like to dredge up the past either, but this one has been slow cooking and needed to come out on paper.

I know Agenda 21 when I see it. Owyhee Canyonlands and other attempts to lock up precious metals and other resources in order to act as a down on our national debt, under the guise of beautiful, sparsely populated country, which it certainly is. Other examples are NEPA analysis of climate change, or was it freeze-thaw waste of time and money analysis? “Journey” can also in my opinion be considered a form of locking up lands for more reasons than simply an important wildlife migration corridor to the Kalmiopsis or Marble Mountain Wilderness areas so that wolves can eat salmon carcasses on Wooley Creek or Taggarts Bar. But Grouse Mountain would have been a very special place for many local athletes, hikers, picnickers, campers and bikers. The low-elevation trail system would have been much longer than the Fossil Beds and much closer to John Day. So please get used to my long-distance training at night while it is cool and before the sun comes up and creates any more skin cancer in me.

Scott Cotter

John Day