manure @ Oroville

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

Linda B. Merims lbmerims@curl.com
Here's an edited down version of a post Patty Carey-Stedman sent
in two years ago about Land Between the Lakes campground, and my
reply regarding the state in which I found the Great Smoky Mountain
Cade's Cove equestrian camprground:

Patti Carey-Stedman wrote:

[Regarding the horse camping facilities at the Tennessee Valley
Authority's Land Between the Lakes park in Kentucky...]

>My only gripe about the facility is actually more of a commentary on
>the users....  Upon arriving after dark on Sunday evening, there was
>not a single clean stall to be found.  And I'm not talking stripped
>clean, I'm talking free of more than a foot of
>hay/straw/manure/wetness.  Pretty disappointing to be stripping stalls
>at that hour, particularly when you read the rule about cleaning
>stalls before you leave....  We were also really shocked to find so
>much trash, especially beer and pop bottles/cans (and mostly beer, I
>might add) alongside and on the trails.  I've never ridden on trails
>so heavily littered...

And my reply...

This speaks very strongly to something I learned at the Clemson
conference on "Horse Trails in Forest Ecosystems"  last month.  About half the 200+
attendees were employees--federal, state, local--of various government
agencies that administer parks and forests that have horse trails...

Some of the most interesting conversations I had were with these
government people over lunch and at breaks.  There is a very strong
feeling among many park rangers that horse people just don't pull
their weight when it comes to supporting the park...

Anyway, after the conference I went to visit my sister who lives
in Norris, Tennessee.  I began to "scout out" Tennessee as a great
place to perhaps spend the following fall trailriding with my horse...

As part of this scouting I visited the Cade's Cove horse camp ground
in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park.  I was appalled.
Besides being a woefully inadequate facility for both horses, riders,
and rigs, the place was FILTHY.  You know how there is "clean barn"
smell and there is "dirty barn" smell?  Well, this place stunk.
The "stalls" for the horses were ankle deep in urine-soaked straw
that the last users had simply left there.  The manure pile was strewn
over half the campgrounds, stunk even worse, and it looked like
it hadn't been hauled out in at least a month.  I wouldn't take
a horse in there overnight, nor would I care to spend the night
in such vile surroundings.

Now, clearly the park was falling down on its own responsibilities
to keep the horseman's camp ground clean.  But the horsemen using
the camp had taken no responsibility on themselves at all for at
least cleaning up their own filth.  I looked around me and I wondered
if there was any local group affiliated with the campground who
would try to clean up after their irresponsible brethren.
Mostly I wondered why the Great Smokey Mountain National Park,
with its 12,000,000 visitors a year to worry about, was still
tolerating horse camps within its borders...

Quoting myself,

Linda B. Merims
lbm@ici.net
lbmerims@curl.com
Massachusetts, USA