Each year a herd of elk came down from the mesa as snows and the freezing winds blew in. As the oaks changed color and the aspen lost their leaves they moved to the shallow slopes along the river all along the watershed. Good grazing land with enough cover and far enough from town, roads and ranch stuff to give a sense of being able to come and go as you pleased.

One year a couple of guys who'd just bought a place up the way and weren't used to winters when things slowed down, unlike where they came from, decided to build a fence or more accurately padlock some gates and put up a chunk of fence blocking off where the elk normally go. Just so happens the elk that had always been free were inside that fence and were now the sole property of the newcomers as well. What a deal; they could let people hunt, buy and trade, you name it or just about. They even had a hunch that 'just about' part could be taken care of a bit later on if they could figure a way of influencing who got elected in town. - Piece of cake.

Hardly anyone noticed the sounds that weren't there next Fall up on the mesa where the elk should have been heard or along the draws down below. Like the sound of the wolf not long before or the songs and sounds of the drum from the camps only slightly earlier on that once filled the land; now only the sound of the wind wistling through the wire on the gate was to know. Whether that wire carried high speed baud or was covered with barbs it really didn't matter once the gate was closed; wire was wire and the gate was closed.

I'm going to kick up a storm if a padlock called 'protecting intellecual property rights' is used to shut the gate on free speech where it has always been heard. Kicking up a storm won't do a bit of good once we are locked in alone but the gate apparently isn't quite shut yet. I bet we can figure a way to keep those good old boys who would lock every gate if they could from fixing things to their own liking in town.