A little after lunch, about 15 women were crowded around a laptop in the Great Old Broads for Wilderness office in the manner of fraternity brothers collectively enjoying a YouTube video.
The women were watching footage from an unreleased documentary about Recapture Canyon in Utah – the site of a battle between locals who want to drive all-terrain vehicles through an off-limits area and conservationists who are apoplectic at the willful destruction of the environment.
As the footage played, one woman muttered about Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who enjoyed 15 minutes of fame for his militant stance against the federal government until he publicly philosophized about blacks’ happiness during slavery.
Talking about their political enemies in Recapture Canyon – who have proudly aligned themselves with Bundy’s “patriotic” defiance of the federal government’s authority – Shelley Silbert, executive director of Great Old Broads, smiled.
“They’re just unbelievable,” she said, laughing.
“It’s completely ironic that you can say you don’t believe in the federal government, then come in on ATVs waving the American flag and citing the Constitution!” said Ronni Egan, a former executive director of the Broads.
A sense of humor and purpose
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, a bawdy, indefatigable national wilderness conservation group based in Durango. The group is spiritually and aesthetically undaunted.
“You have to have a sense of humor if you’re going to call yourself a ‘great old broad,’” Egan said.
For almost a decade, a purple bra hung in the office’s window in full view of traffic on College Drive. It functioned a bit like a head on a pike in Medieval England, inspiring awe and a, perhaps healthy, fear of justice in anyone traveling by.
Purchased at a thrift store, the proportions of the bra suggest its original owner was an unusually well-endowed woman.
“Oh, it’s ample,” Egan said.
“At meetings, we tell people, instead of passing a hat around for money, pass the bra – because we want our cups to floweth over,” said M.B. McAphee, another former executive director.
Tattered from years of sun exposure, the underwire undergarment has been retired from window duties but remains in the office and probably will end up in the Center of Southwest Studies, which is starting an archive for Great Old Broads.
Broad horizons
This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, a piece of legislation that Great Old Broads is especially fond of.
For months, it has been celebrating the milestone, and in the way of all milestones, it has caused the conservation group to take stock of its own accomplishments.
With more than 5,000 members across the 50 states (and even a few in Germany), broads have done every kind of activism.
They’ve gone to Washington, lobbied U.S. senators, pestered congressional staff members and flooded congressmen’s mailboxes with hardback copies of Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West – a straight forwardly named 5-pound tome.
Broads are seeking wilderness designations for lands throughout the nation, and the group routinely signs on as co-plaintiffs to lawsuits protecting besieged wilderness.
Rose Chilcoat, associate director and veteran member, said the group’s work isn’t limited to one issue but spans issues relating to oil and gas, grazing, decommissioning roads in the Northwest where logging has taken place, restoring watersheds and monitoring land and forest management projects.
Silbert said there are “bands of broads” throughout the country. In group parlance, they are called “broadbands.” The men involved are “great old bros,” while young women and men are “training broads” and “training bros.”
Poster child for the mission
One battle into which Great Old Broads has energetically inserted itself – and refuses to back down – is over Recapture Canyon in southeastern Utah, where in 2005, Blanding residents illegally constructed a 7-mile-long trail for ATVs, leading to the desecration of archaeological sites.
Great Old Broads camped in protest near Recapture Canyon in 2007, hoping to publicize the environmental and cultural damage wrought by the ATV trail, which some locals supported as a source of income for Utah’s San Juan County.
During the Broads’ protest, hag masks – replete with dripping blood – were placed on the fence around the group’s campsite.
“I don’t see why little old ladies in tennis shoes should be so threatening,” Chilcoat said.
Another time, there was a less abstract warning: a sign with a skull and crossbones stating, “WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE: Members of Great Old Broads for Wilderness are not allowed in San Juan County by order of the San Juan County Sheriff and the Monticello BLM Office.”
Great Old Broads unflappably printed the sign on T-shirts, which the group sold.
In May this year, tensions continued to escalate, as about 300 ATV-rights activists demonstrated their opposition to federal protections by toting guns during a 60-vehicle ATV parade down the off-limits trail after rallying in a Blanding park.
The Broads weren’t in attendance this time, but they promptly denounced the illegal ride and merrily called for instigators, including a San Juan County commissioner, to be prosecuted in accordance with the law.
At the Broads’ office in Durango, the women recounted the ATV controversy like soldiers sharing savored memories of their favorite battle.
“It really is the poster child for the work we’re doing,” Chilcoat said.
Talk of Recapture Canyon stopped for a few minutes, and McAphee, 73, who led the group from 2000 to 2002, started talking about the Broads’ new logo, which features a slight woman journeying on foot through a stark, sunlit landscape.
“It’s the best logo you’ll see, and it really captures Broads,” she said. “You can tell that she’s an old woman because her boobs are sagging, she needs a cane and she’s hunched over. But she’s out on the land, in the wilderness, with bad hair – not in the city. ”
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
