News
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
A7
Goats getting shut out of wilderness
Packers at odds
with bighorn
conservationists
By Matt Entrup
EO Media Group
As far as locations for holding a
national convention go, the tiny eastern
Oregon town of Ukiah may seem like
an odd choice.
But to the 100 or so “heartbeats”
gathered for the North American Pack
Goat Association’s annual rendezvous
at a campground on the fringe of the
John Day Wilderness, the region lies at
the heart of the largest issue facing them
and their kind.
A growing number of goat packing
enthusiasts are coming into conlict
with public land managers over their
rights to access and enjoy areas that are
also home to bighorn sheep.
In Eastern Oregon’s Blue Moun-
tains, a proposed buffer zone around
bighorn sheep habitat would close the
range to goat packers entirely.
The reason, say those leading the
bighorn sheep conservation efforts, is
pack goats could potentially spread the
bacteria Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae
(sheep pneumonia).
EO Media Group/Matt Entrup
Charlotte and Clay Zimmerman pose with a goat named
Mocha, which is owned by Curtis King, at the North American
Pack goat Association national conference at Twin Ponds
south of Ukiah on Saturday.
It’s the greatest threat to big-
horn sheep populations, but NAPGA
co-founder Carolyn Eddy of Eagle
Creek said goat packers are being un-
fairly lumped in with domestic sheep
and goat farmers. It’s an issue they say
reaches beyond the classiication of
pack goats and delves into the turbulent
waters of civil liberties and public land
usage.
Eddy said it’s a tough situation “to
have to ight an organization that every-
body else loves.” It’s a ight NAPGA
has been slowly losing ground in since
its founding in 1999, and as bighorn
sheep are reintroduced to more areas
the goat packers’ territory shrinks.
“We’re not a danger to their sheep,”
Eddy said. “And we’ve spent as much
money and time trying to prove that as
they have on the other side, and there
just isn’t any research that backs (their
claims) up.”
Eddy doesn’t deny that domestic
herds could easily transmit sheep pneu-
monia to native populations and should
be kept far apart. It’s the idea that pack
goats are nothing more than livestock
that seems to be at the heart of conlict.
When it comes to the relationship
they have with their owners, Clay Zim-
merman of Evanston, Wyoming, likens
pack goats to the family pooch.
“My goats are my family, they’re
my pets, they’re my friends,” he said.
Zimmerman and his wife, Charlotte,
own and operate the only pack goat
rental service in the country, High Uin-
ta Pack Goats, which they founded in
1994 after purchasing their irst goats to
make hiking easier on Charlotte’s bad
knees.
Zimmerman doesn’t rent his “fam-
ily” out lightly either. His vetting pro-
cess includes a three-hour instructional
class at the family farm, and he won’t
send his goats out with a customer he
doesn’t trust.
Even then, there was audible disbe-
lief among those at the conference that
he could trust a stranger with his goats
in the wilderness for days at a time.
NAPGA member and conference
organizer Curtis King of Burbank,
Washington, raises and trains pack
goats for personal use and sale, and said
there’s a deep bond that forms.
“The training with these guys start
the minute they get home. Daily walks,
lots of interactions with their human
handlers. You have to become the al-
pha goat,” he said. “They’re as smart
as dogs. They’re as smart as pigs in my
opinion. Goats are a very intelligent an-
imal.”
Many owners of pack goats raise
them in groups of less than 10, and in
close proximity to their homes. These
goats are well tended and carefully vac-
cinated, said Eddy, and therefore much
less likely to be a carrier of sheep pneu-
monia, which was found in more than
80 percent of domestic commercial
herds tested in 2011 by the National
Animal Health Monitoring System.
The tight bonds with their owners and
the goat’s natural herd behavior also
ensure they won’t wander off and acci-
dentally come in contact with a bighorn
sheep.
HEAVEN
If you were an ancient
man, living two or three or four
thousand years ago, you knew
some things to be true in the
absolute. For one: the Earth was
flat. You could see it for yourself,
with your own eye. If it wasn’t,
things would fall off. It was
simple logic. It was as irrefutable
as “What goes up, must come
down.” After all, the air supports
nothing: not a boulder, not a
feather and Newton had not yet
observed “Gravity” so that it was
not recognized as any sort of force
pulling objects down.
You also spend many a
night gazing at the lights in the
night sky. Not the handful of
muffled lights that penetrate our
cities’ afterglow, but countless
stars, shimmering against a black
as ink moonless night. You
wondered at them and at their
movements, and over the ages you
noticed that they moved in a
rhythm that repeated, much like
the tides. By the time Jesus was
born the Zoroastrians had mapped
enough of the stars to anticipate
the one that would proclaim the
birth of the Messiah. That’s the
“Star of Wonder” that the three
Wise Men followed in the night
sky until they were led to
Bethlehem where they delivered
their gifts to The Newborn King
destine to rule the world. (Turns
out that it was probably a comet).
So when Moses brought
back the first five books of The
Bible (The Hebrew Torah that
included “Genesis”) that God
game him, and God spoke of a
“Firmament of Heaven,” it made
perfect sense that the lights, the
stars, “Floated” in this firm realm;
this “Firmament,” which lie above
the “Void” which was the air in
which all God’s creatures of the
land and of the air lived.
If you had lived in the time of the Hebrew
Prophets, you might very well have lived in a tent in
the desert. That tent would have been made of
goatskins sewn together. It would have had a pole,
or poles at the center of the tent to holdup the roof
and other poles around the outer perimeter of the
tent to give the tent headroom like a 20th century
circus tent. That portion of the roof between the
center poles and the outer poles wold sag under its
own weight between the poles enough so that when
it rained, the water would gather there. Left
unattended, the weight of the water would soon
build to the point that the roof would be “rent” (that
is torn or ripped). Comparing the immense power of
God and His “Nature” to the Mankind’s goatskin
roofs, Job writes: 8 He bindeth up the waters in this
thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them.
Job 26:8 (KJV: meaning from The “ K ing J ames
V ersion,” or “translation” of the Bible.)
So that, Job is referring to the rain clouds
“Above” as the “Waters.” This reference makes all
the difference in interpreting this next passage when
you realize that the “Waters Below” are the lakes,
rivers, oceans and even ground waters of the earth:
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in
the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters
from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and
divided the waters which were under the firmament
from the waters which were above the firmament :
and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament
Heaven.
Gen 1:6-8 (KJV)
This is Heaven as described in the very
beginning of The Bible. It describes our atmosphere:
that single “Sweet Spot” in the universe (predicted
by God) where Mankind can exist, and yet you have
probably never heard this interpretation before.
That’s because the Bible was “Sealed” to “Blind
Guides” and their church doctrines by the “Will of
God” until these very days. The Prophet Isaiah
wrote about the “sealing up” long before Jesus was
born. Jesus had this to say about it:
And when he had said these things, he
cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. 9 And
his disciples asked him, saying, What might this
parable be? 10 And he said, Unto you it is given to
know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to
others in parables; that seeing they might not see,
and hearing they might not understand.
Luke 8:8-10 (KJV)
“ That seeing they might not see ” is a
reference to Isaiah’s prophecy in “Isaiah 29:10 &
11.”
When asked which of the Ten Commandments was the first, Jesus
replied: The first of all the commandments is , Hear, O Israel; The Lord our
God is one Lord: 30 And though shalt love the Lord thy God with all they
heart, and with all they soul, and with all they mind, and with all thy strength:
this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater
than these. Mark 12:28-31 (KJV)
From this statement we get the “One Law” to rule Men and Women:
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It is for this reason
that Jesus taught in parable. Parable and metaphor is the on “True” measure
of true equality in “The Law.” It would be far better to have a nation of
Lawyers who were versed in equivalency of the “Balanced Scales” of parable
and metaphor, than what we have in the twisted wreckage of what is today
called “Law.” The Magna Carta, The Declaration of Independence and
“ 10 For the LORD hath poured out upon
you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your
eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath
covered. 11 And the vision of all is become unto you
as the words of a book that is sealed.”
Jesus also said this about Heaven:
17 From that time Jesus began to preach,
and to say, Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand (meaning within reach).
Matt 4:17 (KJV)
21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo
there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within
you.
Luke 17:21 (KJV)
Jesus revealed the “keys” that lead to that
Heaven when He taught His Disciples “The Lord’s
Prayer,” so that you would know what to pray for.
But how can you get there when most churches
make up their own prayers and leave you blind, and
deaf as well? You and your guides are enslaved by
the corruption of the world and yet you suffer from
a kind of “Stockhold Syndrome” in which you have
come to love your captivity out of fear of your
captors. If you want to uphold the law that
“Delivers” you to Heaven on Earth, you will need
to know more than those who hear but do not
understand. You must see the path for yourself.
20 For I say unto you, That except your
righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the
scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into
the kingdom of heaven.
Matt 5:20 (KJV)
The idea of this last bit of scripture is that
you are lost because you follow blind guides who
couldn’t even show you where Heaven was when it
was right there in the midst of us, as described at
the beginning of the Bible itself. Just as the
Pharisees denied Jesus because they awaited a
warrior King who would “Smite” their enemies, I’ll
wager that your “Church” awaits a “Second
Coming” in which Jesus “Smites” anyone who
doesn’t believe the doctrine of “YOUR” Church:
even though Jesus taught us to “Love our enemies.”
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they
shall be called the children of God.
Matt 5:9 (KJV)
Because God “dwells with the humble and
contrite,” if you want to understand His “Word”
The Bible, you and yours must first be able to be
wrong. To see with “New” eyes that see, you are
invited to read, read, read for yourself from “The
Book of Answers.”
George Bailey
Since the days of Moses, the
Wise Men and the Learned men
have been reaching to the void
of “Space” with their towers and
pointing to it with their steeples
and their domes and calling it
“Heaven,” when not one of
God’s living creations can exist
there. At the same time, they
failed to understand that the
“Firmament” referred to our
atmosphere. It is livable only at
elevations well below the peak
of Mt. Everest, which is less
than six miles high on a
shimmering planet 29,000 miles
around. This thin ribbon of
“Heaven” is the only place in all
the known universe in which
life can exist and God explained
it plainly 3,500 years ago (a
time, times and a half time): yet
no Temple Priest, no Rabbi of
Judaism, no Priest of
Catholicism, no Imam of Islam,
nor Protestant Clergy; but only
Jesus, has had their eyes opened
to this truth. “They were
destined for this.” God also
instructed that the atmosphere
is, indeed, “Firm,” as verified by
space travel, which confirms
that an object entering the
atmosphere at too shallow a
trajectory will be deflected, and
an object entering at too direct
an angle will burn up. The
“Heavens” fortell of The New
World, Australia and all the
Islands; and “The stars in
Heaven” reveals that light
travels in what Einstein called
“Photons.” Yet ALL religions
have denied God’s own proof of
His Omnipotent Knowledge in
order to protect their
“Doctrines.” Leaving only the
question: “If none of these
knows the location of ‘Heaven,’
how can they hope to lead you
there?” Come, let us reason
together.
The Constitution of The United States of America are all simply attempts
to codify this concept of “Balance” as articulated in Jesus’ “Second Law.”
Just as all Law is subjugated under The Constitution in these United
States by The Law, so is all Constitutional Law subjugated under the
balanced scale of equivalency as an expression of any given circumstance
in metaphor by order of God Almighty, as articulated by His Christ Jesus.
As to the first Law: the Bible speaks of the breaking of God’s
Laws as harlotry and infidelity, which is also metaphor. It is the most
hurtful of all betrayals to have one to whom you have committed your
SELF, to turn away from you and take up with another. So surely THE
GOD; who has created EVERYTHING for YOU and is Love, for God Is
Love, who offers you life in Heaven, and life everlasting to follow, if only
you will return His by following His holy ordinances; feels the pain of
your infidelity. So, Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
It would be wrong to characterize this announcement as an indictment against all clergy. To the cont rary, it is clergy who have kept the “Faith” in the “Age of Faith,” which has
now ended with the beginning of the Age of Reason. It is their misgivings that stand as testimony to the omnipotent nature of God The Father as foretold by Isaiah 29, made manifest in
this announcement. It is those clergy who have remained true to God’s WORD The Holy Bible (King Jame s and Revised Standard Edition 1952), who are best prepared to show you
what Isaiah 29 says, as well as other references you will need to know to find your way to “Heaven.”
Limited copies of “Fight Club 2.0” available at the Grant County Library free book section.
Paid for by Russ Denton