NOB HILL--I ran into Dave Plotsky Friday afternoon. He had just got out of court in a case involving Otero Mesa. Governor Richardson and State AG Patsy Madrid are suing the BLM for their decision to allow exploratory drilling in Otero Mesa. NM State Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons intervened in the case stating that he, not the Governor nor the Attorney General, had the right to decide what to do with that land. And he thought that the land should be producing oil and gas revenue for the state. So he wanted to join the suit on the side of the BLM against the Governor and AG.
Well, Last Friday the Judge disallowed Patrick Lyons intervention in the case...so now, I imagine, we go back to the original suit filed by Richardson and Madrid.
Dave was eating an ice cream cone to celebrate. He does get carried away. When Dave first came to New Mexico he thinned trees in the forests for a living. Dave loved being in the forests, but it was a tough way to make a buck. Eventually he got a law degree. Now he does a lot of environmental law and is active in worker rights. He has an office in the Nob Hill area on Girard just south of Central.
Many years ago, when we both had young boys, Dave and I often took them backpacking. Sometimes it was with Troop 9, BSA where I was Scoutmaster and he was the Assistant. Sometimes we just took the boys out by ourselves...many times right after school let out for the summer.
He became known for his camp cookery. His sardine/tofu stir-fry on a backpacking trip to Hillsboro Peak is still discussed late at night with a chuckle and nodding heads. But the most famous cooking episode occured one late afternoon in the Pecos Wilderness.
Dave and I and our two boys were up on Hamilton Mesa heading north when the clouds opened up and it began to rain and rain. We were down a slope from the top hiding under the spreading branches of a huge spruce. There was no lightning, so we stayed there for a while. Eventually we all got real hungry.
Dave reached into his backpack and dragged out a whole, limp chicken. He was pretty enthusiastic about roasting it, so we built a little fire on the downslope side where we had some space and threaded that bird on a stick. We took turns holding the stick and rotating the chicken in the smoke above the flickering little flames.
How long did it take to cook it? Maybe three or four hours. We're not sure if it ever really got cooked. We ate it when it was too dark to see what it looked like.
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