Making history in Camp Meeker

Years from now, you’ll all say you were in the room where it happened. You’ll all say it, but only thirty or so of you will not be fibbing. History was made on a rainy Tuesday evening in Anderson Hall when the Park and Rec Board voted 4-0 to approve the purchase of the three hundred-odd acres of wild land from St. Dorothy’s, with funding provided by the Ag and Open Space District, funded by sales tax dollars from us and from all Sonoma County residents.

In a typical month, Park and Rec Board meetings are sparsely attended. The five board members grind through water system minutia, voting to approve minutes, to fund the maintenance of Anderson Hall, to liaise with Gold Ridge on Fire Department matters, and so on.

Until last Tuesday. A Board subcommittee has been working for months with St. Dorothy’s and with Ag and Open Space on a truly historic deal. The land uphill from Camp Meeker has been in the hands of the Chenoweth family and with St. Dorothy’s for decades, vulnerable to the threat of sale and development that all wild land is vulnerable to. Now, it will be in the hands of all of us who live in Camp Meeker. The Camp Meeker Community Forest. The room was packed.

You could feel the emotion in the room as the Board discussed, for one last time, the enormity of what they — we, because we elected them — were taking on. After a good hour of discussion, comments, question and answer, the Board voted, and everyone stopped waiting to exhale. Four votes to none.

The deal is not done until the signatures are on the paper, but let’s just say the church has been booked and the dates have been sent out. Unless somebody gets cold feet, it’s going to happen. We will be working through a lot of detail as rubber meets road, and some hypotheticals will become real.

All those postage stamp lots are, legally, one big parcel because at one time Boss Meeker owned the whole pie. Then he started scooping out little pieces and selling them. What was left was all the leftover scrips and scraps in between — scattered from each other, but legally what remained of the original pie. Learn that, live it, love it, and we’ll talk more next month.