Do Those 'Keep Out' And 'No Trespassing' Signs Really Mean What They Say? By Kevin Franklin "KEEP OUT" SIGNS strike me as a sort of Pandora's Box. On the one hand, the sign clearly means stay away. On the other hand, reading a sign that says keep out makes you wonder, "Hey, what are they hiding in there?" Reading a cluster of "No Trespassing" and "Private Property" signs, I sit in my idling truck on the side of Highway 83, just south of Sonoita. "So, do they mean no trespassing on the adjacent property or on the road entirely," I wonder. From a U.S. Geological Survey map I know a road used to pass through this stretch of property and on to the National Forest, but exactly what the access rights are now, I'm unsure. There's nothing like a touch of ambiguity to propel the curious forward. I tentatively roll onto the gravel road. I pass a number of driveways heading off to little ranchettes clearly marked "private road." Those signs don't leave much on the bargaining table. However, the main road continues and I follow it. After about a mile I come to the National Forest boundary. A phone call later to the U.S. Forest Service confirmed this road is still open to the public. How long this will remain so is another question. Arizona's frontier vanished about 10,000 years ago, or maybe more, when the first Asian nomads wondered past the Grand Canyon. Ever since then, each group has had an ax to grind, often literally, with the new guy. Feuds abound between Hopi and Navajo, Mexican and Gringo, country folk and urbanite. With all the ruckus, the idea of public land, available to everyone, offers a certain sense of reprieve. People need a place to go and stretch their legs. A place that doesn't belong to someone else. And hey, for the same price we can even stick a few token trees and endangered species in there too--at least until we get tired of them. But the key to public land is access. As our state's population grows and space gets tighter, getting onto those public lands that lay just beyond the private property becomes more and more of a charged issue. With a big ranch, access often is not a problem. Even if the road cuts through the ranch house area, I've encountered many friendly ranchers who grant passage, asking only that you leave gates the way you find them and perhaps sign in. To me that's western civility and good multiple use policys in action. I curse the bastards who abuse that policy by damaging roads, stealing ranch equipment or shooting holes in water tanks. You can hardly blame a rancher for saying "screw you" and locking his gates. Be it for legal reasons or out of sheer good-naturedness, many don't. Access becomes more difficult when a ranch gets subdivided. When someone buys a chunk of land backing up to a National Forest, that shouldn't grant him exclusive use of public land as his personal backyard. The land wasn't part of the deal; and we, the public, certainly weren't paid for it. But sometimes the issue can be very gray. A case in point is the Chalauleau Gap area. A horde of signs with tenuous legal weight shoo people away. The signs stem from landowners fed up with motorcross and ATV users charging up and down the road at all hours of the night at break-neck speed. The landowners just want some peace and quiet. That seems reasonable. But what about friendly hikers or the the poor guy who wants to take his family on a picnic? They simply want to use their public land, as is their right. Take your pick: arrogant land baron or rogue moron. In Scotland the law of the land says anyone can pass if they turn no stones. "No Trespassing" signs on open land, even private property, are meaningless there. It works well. Hikers quietly pass, and landowners don't shoot at them from their windows. It seems outrageous that so many people have no comprehension of the effects of their own id-driven behavior. Our country is slowly being taken hostage by an army of morons who wreck everything from access to the bottom of Meteor Crater (clumsy oafs filing lawsuits) to the bear population in the Catalinas. They even got me so worked up I ran out of space to tell you about the beautiful canyon I eventually entered once I passed the ominous signs. Look for it in the upcoming weeks.

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