A Natural Woman

by Carole King

  A placer is a natural concentration of heavy minerals (such as gold) deposited by gravity and water. Placer mining involves the use of water to separate the heavier minerals from lighter materials such as sediment or sand. Panning, sluicing, and dredging are all methods of placer mining.

  “Placer” was one of many words I learned in my adopted state, where folks speak the same language as the rest of America—and yet not. Some words have different meanings in the Wild West than, say, on the South Side of Chicago, where “draw” could be a tie game between the Cubs and the Phillies, or it could be something an artist does. In Idaho a draw is the place between two hills down which water flows.

  In common usage, reference to a draw is made in the late fall when a man holding a rifle says, “Y’see that big bull elk up that draw?”

  “What drawer?” I asked the first time I heard a hunter use the word. I was imagining the place in my bureau where I kept my socks.

  “See’m up there?” he said, using the barrel of his rifle to indicate a standing dead tree toward the top of the hill. “He’s right behind that snag.”

  After puzzling for a moment over how a pulled thread on a sweater could obscure a bull elk, I queried, “Snag? Where?”

  The hunter pointed again to the standing dead tree, behind which were some branches. Suddenly some of the branches moved. They were the rack of the aforementioned bull elk, which had no sooner moved than the hunter raised his rifle, aimed, and Kaboom!! Suddenly the elk was no longer behind the snag up the draw. It was good luck for the elk (though not for the hunter) that the hunter had missed. When last seen (at least by me) the elk was bounding up the hill with his rack and the rest of him intact.

  In New York I had always understood a bar to be a place where you ordered whiskey, and a bench to be where you sat while you drank it. In Idaho, a bar is a flat piece of land along a creek or a river, and a bench is a larger flat piece of land higher up, not necessarily near water. In the context of mountains, “flat” can mean anything between horizontal and steeper than the face of a cow.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, in Idaho a bar can also be a place where you order whiskey and a bench something you sit on while you drink it. The town in which I vote has several of both kinds of bars and benches within the space of a quarter mile.

  To keep things fair and balanced, a future lesson could cover subway etiquette and priority positioning for hailing a taxi on Broadway in inclement weather. Hint: the optimum position is in front of a person who is already trying to hail a taxi, unless he or she is wielding a large umbrella, in which case you’d be better off looking for a bench in a bar.

  Then there’s the meaning of bar as in lawyer, and bench as in judge.

  Chapter Eighteen

  New Neighbors

  Among the first things Rick and some of his friends did after we moved in was to repair pasture fences and secure the coop, which we promptly filled with chickens. The coop had a small enclosure so the birds could range safely outdoors during the day. We were the delighted beneficiaries of the hens’ efficiency (with essential help from the rooster) in converting leftover food waste into eggs that tasted bright yellow compared to the bland off-white flavor of eggs from corporate poultry. The horses, mules, and goats must have thought they’d died and gone to heaven with all that space and grass. Our domestic cats stalked and pounced on rodents while our dogs chased the cats, the rodents, each other, and the feral barn cats we had inherited.

  My children’s and my activities that summer included unpacking boxes, cooking for ourselves and Rick and all the men helping him, eating, washing dishes, housecleaning, laundry, riding horses, milking goats, gathering eggs, hiking, gardening, baking, canning, swimming in the creek, and swimming in the pool. Rick’s activities included swimming as well as equine care, building, repairing various structures, and oversight of other people’s activities. It was a lot of work, but the results were commensurate with the amount of effort expended, as opposed to the naked, heartfelt labor an artist can put into a project for months or years only to watch it go unappreciated by an indifferent public.

  Charlie had just moved to a Los Angeles suburb with good public schools. Toward the end of the summer we agreed that it was time for Molly, now nine, to return to the public school system. Levi would stay in Idaho with me. Rick’s friend Che, now called Richard, would live in the caretaker cabin with his son, who was the same age as Levi. I would homeschool both boys.

  During the summer we had spread out and occupied most of the rooms in the lodge, but when I returned from delivering Molly to Charlie in late August (a delivery only slightly less painful than her birth) the cooler morning temperatures made it clear that we were going to have to contain ourselves in a smaller space within the lodge. The roof was poorly insulated, and there were too many cracks between the logs to chink them all before winter. Rick hung blankets over doorways to close off most of the rooms in the house. Our family would occupy two bedrooms above the kitchen, laundry room, and dining room. As with the multipurpose room in our cabin at Burgdorf, we would eat, read, sew, do crafts, and conduct lessons in the dining room. There was an indoor bathroom off the laundry room—two amenities for which I was very grateful. Though I already missed Molly, I knew she would thrive in California with her father. I had adapted to the size of the lodge and felt completely at home there. I was so glad to find peace and contentment in my new environment that I was unaware of a developing situation that would make it increasingly difficult to retain that perspective.

  The seller had told us that a couple in their sixties, Thurlo and Dorothy French, were the social center of a small group of summer homeowners four miles downriver. A couple of days after we moved to the ranch we had driven down to meet the Frenches and let them know that although I was planning to lock my gates, they and their immediate neighbors were welcome to drive through, and so were their guests. As Rick handed the paper with the combination to Thurlo, Dorothy surprised me by saying, “I’ve been listening to your Tapestry album for years. I just love your song ‘Beautiful’!”

  “Well, aren’t you nice to say that!” Then, quickly, to take the focus off me, I said, “Your home is so lovely. Did you build it or was it already here?”

  Dorothy was more than happy to talk about herself and her home. Our conversation continued along typical lines of new neighbors getting to know each other. The Frenches were so pleasant and hospitable that on the drive back upriver I remarked, “Aren’t we lucky to have such agreeable neighbors!”

  Our home lay along the Salmon River between Stanley (pop. 100) and Clayton (pop. 26). Farther downriver was the county seat, Challis (pop. 2,500).* In order to acquaint ourselves with our new community we had subscribed to the local weekly, the Challis Messenger. One popular column reported that this family had motored to Idaho Falls to welcome a new granddaughter and that family had driven to Salmon to visit an aging parent. Another column gave gardening tips while waxing poetic about seasonal changes in Round Valley and the surrounding mountains. There were obituaries, church news, 4-H Club news, and school news. I was inspired to characterize the writer of each letter to the editor with a simplistic, wholly subjective formula: if a writer expressed an opposing view she was opinionated; if he agreed with my view he was impassioned.

  The sheriff’s report detailed a bleaker side of the community. One of the most common incidents, particularly in winter, involved someone driving off the road into the river. Local residents had a saying: “There’s two kinds of people ’round here: them that’s driven into the river, and them that’s gonna drive into the river.” I had no wish to be included in either classification. More often than not, an excessive intake of alcohol by someone was involved. With three bars in Clayton and a handgun in just about every household, violence sometimes erupted in the form of a shooting. Sometimes the consequences were deadly. A few months after we moved in, a woman living a few miles upriver was arrested and later convicted of killing her husband with a shotgun. />
  There were also public notices in the weekly paper. By law, it was required that the minutes of the monthly meetings of the county commissioners be published in the Messenger. I found the minutes of little interest until one day in the summer of 1981 when Rick called me over to show me what he had just read. The minutes reported that Thurlo French had come to the meeting to ask the commissioners to declare the road that ran through Robinson Bar public. Thurlo went on to say that he hoped that a declaration of public road by the commissioners would force Carole King to open her gates so the public could continue to drive through her property.

  Excuse me??

  Chapter Nineteen

  Trials and Tribulations

  The next morning, Rick and I drove downriver along the steeply winding road to the Frenches’ place. When we arrived, the Frenches behaved as if nothing were amiss and warmly invited us in.

  Doing his utmost to contain his consternation, Rick stood his ground, looked down at Thurlo, and got straight to the point.

  “I was just wondering why you found it necessary to go to the commissioners to get something you already have.”

  Thurlo mumbled an answer that was difficult for me to hear, but it sounded as if he was saying he appreciated that I was letting them drive through my property. Then he said, more audibly, that although he had other ways of accessing his property, he liked driving through the ranch.

  “Only reason I spoke up at the meeting,” he declared, “is ’cause I wanted to make sure other folks could still come through. Hope there’s no hard feelings.”

  No hard feelings? Was he serious??

  He hadn’t denied that he said and did what the minutes reported. He and Dorothy continued to offer explanations and excuses that didn’t make any sense, nor did they answer Rick’s question. Finally, frustrated and bewildered, we left.

  Erring on the side of generosity, I continued to allow the Frenches to drive through the ranch. Even after we read that they and their neighbors were persistent in asserting that I had no right to lock my gates, I allowed all of them to drive past our home until the predictable annual occurrence of snow closed the road for the winter. At that point I sent a letter to the Frenches giving them one last opportunity to confirm that I had a legal right to lock the gates to my property. When they declined to do so, I thought, Okay. That’s it.

  First I notified the Frenches and their neighbors that they no longer had permission to drive through my property. Then Rick changed the combination. The next time we saw the Frenches was in federal court in Boise the following year.

  I’m not sure how much time or thought Custer County’s attorney put into the document she wrote on behalf of the county unilaterally declaring my road public. I had never seen or heard about the declaration of public road until I read about it in the Messenger. No one from the county had ever notified Rick or me. They simply declared my private property public and considered it a done deal. It was on the basis of no notice and no hearing that my Boise attorney advised me to file suit in federal court charging Custer County and the Frenches with violating my constitutional rights.

  At the trial the Frenches and other witnesses for the defense swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then they proceeded to say things that left me incredulous. As I watched people take the stand, one after another, and make allegations about the history of the ranch that impugned my name and reputation, I thought, How can they say these things with a straight face? Rick and I had given them the combination in good faith, and the Frenches initially had responded with appreciation. How did we become their enemy? Why were they doing this??

  I had suspicions that there were industrial interests not among the named parties. We were given to understand that the Frenches’ attorney was working for them pro bono. He also happened to represent a large mining company with an interest in access to the mountains above my ranch. And although I don’t recall this being disclosed to me before I bought the property, a Forest Service official had reportedly urged the commissioners to declare the road within the ranch public during my predecessors’ ownership.

  Few people in rural Idaho had the financial resources to fight the government. I suspected that those seeking to take my property were counting on my not having the will to fight back, but I had both the will and the resources. Even so, I started out slipping backwards. In the federal case, the county was on trial to defend its purported violations of my constitutional rights, but the opposing lawyer and his witnesses treated me as if I were the one on trial. When the Frenches’ lawyer puffed himself up and said, “We don’t cotton to outsiders coming in from New York and blocking public access to a public road!” I didn’t cotton to being characterized as the outsider in question.

  Pausing to gather indignation until it reached the bursting point, he expounded further, “Why, that road’s been public ever since the ohhhhhld stagecoach came through back in eighteen sixty-two!”

  With the location and history of the ranch and the roads and trails around it a matter of public record, I believe that the Frenches’ lawyer either knew or should have known that the road within the ranch had not been public since 1939, and that I wasn’t blocking access to so much as one inch of public land. But his claims were duly reported and widely disseminated. Few people outside the courthouse heard the truth. I had already fired my original Boise lawyer. Now I watched helplessly as a second Boise lawyer let far too many opportunities go by without making what even I as a layman thought were obvious objections to the defense counsel’s tactics.

  At last the defense rested. The judge ruled that he couldn’t deliver a decision until I could prove that I had been damaged, and I couldn’t prove that I had been damaged until I had proven that the road was mine to lose in the first place. The federal case was put on hold until such determinations could be made in the proper venue, which was state court. The “action to quiet title” that I would have to file would be decided in Challis, the very town from which the declaration of public road had emanated.

  The misinformation repeated most often by the Frenches and others was that the gates had never been locked in all the years prior to my ownership of the ranch. No one disputed that the entire length of Robinson Bar Road used to be the only road, that it used to be public, or that Robinson’s Bar had been a stagecoach stop in the nineteenth century. And everyone agreed that after the highway had been constructed on the north side of the river in 1939, Custer County had legally abandoned the old road on the south side, which by law gave ownership of the road to the adjacent landowners. Outside the ranch, ownership transferred to the United States Forest Service; within the ranch, to the ranch owner. That happened in 1939. With public trails available outside both gates, my assertion of ownership of the private road within the ranch would not deny any member of the public access to the public land around the ranch.

  The declaration purported to reclaim the road through a state law that held that a road, having been open to the public for five years and maintained at public expense for five years, could be declared public. My claim was that there was a constitutional defect in that law (and consequently in the declaration) because the law failed to provide for notice or a hearing.

  Before the dispute, local lore was consistent with what the seller had told me, that previous owners had locked the gates at least once a year to affirm their private ownership. But we couldn’t prove it because no one would come forward to testify to that on the witness stand. With the federal trial on hold pending a state court ruling, it seemed like a good time to look for another lawyer. It was a good thing Steve Millemann agreed to represent us when he did. Custer County was about to escalate the dispute.

  Chapter Twenty

  Criminal and Quiet Title

  It was a beautiful Indian summer day in October 1981 when three deputies drove up the river and parked outside the locked gate on the west side of my ranch. In full uniform, with hats, badges, and sidearms, they entered my property on foot. They
continued on to the residential area and headed for the lodge. Having already seen them approaching, Rick and I stepped out to greet them before they could knock.

  “Hi there!” I said brightly. “Pretty day, isn’t it?”

  “Yep,” one of them said, looking around as if to verify that this was indeed true. “Sure is.”

  “Been a dry summer,” Rick said.

  “Yep. Sure has.”

  “Creek’s gonna get lower before the snow flies.”

  “Prob-lee.”

  There were several more exchanges between the men about natural phenomena, during which I silently noted the incredible beauty of the blue sky and the sun shining through the golden aspen leaves quivering among the lodgepole pines. At last one of the deputies—I’ll call him Larry—broached the subject they had come to discuss. Almost apologetically, he volunteered that they had been dispatched by the sheriff and instructed by the county attorney to order me to unlock my gates and to arrest me if I didn’t comply.

  “Arrest me? On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds that you’re blocking a public road.”

  “On what does the county base its claim that the road is public?”

  The two deputies who weren’t doing the talking shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. None of the three men seemed to know exactly how to answer that question. However, they had been sent on a mission, and they didn’t want to go back to Challis with the gates still locked and me not in custody. They looked at each other.

  “Uh… I don’t know,” one of the other deputies hazarded. “You, Larry?”

  Larry didn’t. Nor did the third deputy.

  When they left, the gates were still locked, and I wasn’t in custody.

  The next day Larry came back alone. He was still in uniform but minus his hat, sidearm, and sidekicks. He had returned with the county attorney’s answer to my question about grounds for my arrest. It was the declaration of public road, which he handed to me along with a summons requesting my appearance in the criminal case of Custer County v. Carole King Evers.