Decked by a Booby Trap

The day started off wonderfully with breakfast on the deck with my Shyla. She seems to feel some responsibility to watch me but she dozes off with her head up when she's soaking up the rays at breakfast.

Then her head starts to nod. She fights it though, admirably!

I remember when Shyla first arrived and my disappointment that she didn't seem to love summer breakfasts on the deck. That has changed!

She was wide awake soon thereafter, romping through the fields that have only a few flowers left. Behind her, you can see the outline of the Continental Divide, where snow field still abound. I hope to be up that high very soon!

After my time with Shyla, my day went south, precipitously. The most notable part was that I was being a good citizen when I got decked by a booby trap in the camping area where the vagrants were until recently. I was riding that forest road, checking the fire rings in the vacant campsites, to make sure that there wasn't anything smoldering (there's a fire ban in place).

At one campsite, I glided toward the fire ring, and I was abruptly knocked to the ground. My elbow hit the ground hard and started bleeding again (the same elbow as I hurt in CB - and now I know that I have a bone chip from that fall so it hurts).

I had no idea what had happened. I stood up, totally dazed perhaps partly because I hit my head too when I fell. I couldn't see any reason for my fall. After my head cleared, I saw it. Fishing line was hung across the entrance to the campsite at neck level. Fortunately, I am short, and I was leaning downward so it hit me in the helmet. It could have been far worse.

I hung stuff from the vagrants' garbage pile on the fishing line to make it visible to the next person.

And then I went to call the cops. I left a note on a piece of paper found in the vagrants' garbage saying that I (the "reporting party or RP") had put the garbage on the line to make it visible.

To my utter dismay, the deputy concluded that a camper had made a line for hanging garbage, and it was not a booby trap. I think his conclusion was totally due to me hanging things on the line to make it visible.

In my opinion, things have gone waaaaay too far around here. I'm at the end of my patience for the police who seem to always give the benefit of the doubt to the "visitors" rather than to the locals who face great risks from the careless and even evil behavior of the "visitors".

There seems to be a growing population of transients who choose not to have homes. They are in their 20's and wander the country. They live in the forest, leaving almost daily to panhandle and trick people into giving them money. They trash their forest "home", and then move on. I am aghast at how many piles of human feces and toilet paper are near those vagrants' former encampment. I actually started to count yesterday, and I stopped at one hundred piles that I could see from the forest road.

It's a problem plaguing much of the west, with forests being trashed and being "taken over" by these transients who harass anyone who wants go through their encampments on legitimate trails. I'm done with being patient. Things need to change now.

Sorry for the rant but I am very upset. My whole body hurts after being decked by a booby trap in the very place I love the most - our forest.