In the Red Desert with an Indiana Desert Rat

by Mac Blewer

Not too long ago, I visited WOC members Tom Dustin and his wife, Jane, at their campsite on Steamboat Mountain within the Red Desert, where they were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. Parking my bedraggled Subaru near the road, rapidly def lating tire and all, I hiked up the hill where an inviting light glowed from within a shadowed aspen grove.

“Welcome me boy,” came a familiar laugh and slightly gruff voice from the trees. “Welcome to paradise, East of Eden.” Bear hugs all around. Tom and Jane accepted my proffered watermelon and white wine and we settled into a long night of stories, including my favorite — the time that Tom was treed by a wild stallion not too far from here.

Tom Dustin has been one of the most vocal proponents of Red Desert protection for nearly four decades. Currently the Environmental Affairs Adviser of the Indiana Division of the Izaak Walton League, he first visited the Red Desert in 1956, hiking up Steamboat Mountain with his Wyoming friend Herb Pownall, at the recommendation of the late Dr. David Love.

“Dr. Love told Herb about all of these wonderful places in Wyoming that you wouldn’t normally go to, parts of the Red Desert and the Wind Rivers,” Tom recalls. “And of course we went. From on top of Steamboat Mountain you could see everything! The Winds, the Wyoming Range, Oregon Buttes….But what captured us the most beyond the magnificence of the desert was the combination of values that it had. Like no place on Earth! The Tri-Territorial Marker, the Sands, the Boar’s Tusk, the Oregon Trail, the wildlife…The Red Desert is as biblical and historic as the sacred places of the Middle East!”

Tom Dustin may live in Indiana, but I dare say that he knows parts of the Red Desert better than 99% of Wyoming residents do.

Born in 1923 in Weehawken, New Jersey, some of Tom’s earliest memories were of the walks that he and his grandfather, Johann Distler, took through northern New Jersey’s lush woodlands and along its winding streams. His first sense of outrage at environmental injustice was when developers cut down a neighborhood forest where he and his friends rode their bikes.

“We never got over that loss,” Tom says pensively. “The developers just took it away.”

In 1950, after Tom had graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in Technical Journalism, he married Jane McCullagh, a fellow student with a degree in Farm Operations. Together they camped throughout New York state, Wisconsin, and then, finally, the West, which they have visited consistently since. Their favorite landscapes include the Bridger-Teton National Forest, the Upper Green River Valley and the Red Desert.

After moving to Fort Wayne, Indiana, Tom pursued a career in managing technical advertising accounts. He and Jane co-founded Acres Inc., a nonprofit land trust that now owns and manages 45 dedicated nature preserves in Indiana. They also teamed up to fight for the protection of other areas in the state that they had visited and loved.

The first national campaign that Tom and Jane were drawn into was the successful 1954 effort to protect Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument from being dammed and f looded. Locally, Tom got involved with the Save the Dunes Council, which in 1966 successfully passed Congressional legislation to protect 13,000 acres of land — coveted by the steel industry — as the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

“It took eight undivided years of my life, along with my equally radicalized colleagues to get even this much,” Tom recalls. “We lost some of the best of it, but it was still worth every day of the struggle.”

Since then, Tom and Jane have remained passionately involved with local, regional and national environmental issues. Their efforts to enhance watershed protection in Indiana, especially for rivers such as the Wabash and the Big Walnut, have gained them friends, allies, and, inevitably, some enemies, including many in the energy industry.

“Mac, if you ever want to get someone off of your back for a year, burn their house down!” Tom wryly jokes. In 1994, when he and Jane were off visiting their son’s family in Oregon, vandals burned their house to the ground. Although an insurance investigator blamed the fire on a malfunctioning electric tool, another investigator’s report confirmed that the fire had been deliberately set.

“We lost everything,” he says. “But we rebuilt and got back many of our photos and paperwork from good friends. We don’t spend too much time thinking about it.”

Tom’s indefatigable dedication to environmental protection has obviously remained unwavering through the years. When I ask him about the future of the Red Desert and the environment, Tom replies, “This scenery is the stuff of wonder and of history. It is part of our heritage. And it is a matter of patriotism that we fight to protect it. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been to a place before. I may never make it to Alaska, but I have an obligation to protect it and to protect the choices of people who may want to go there some day. We have an obligation to protect the Red Desert, the Bridger- Teton National Forest and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It’s always worth the fight! After all, there’s a question of honor here! If we can’t protect this part of the Red Desert, then tell me what else is worth saving out there?”

As I look back on my days spent with the Dustins in the Red Desert, rambling around Essex Mountain and Steamboat Rim and watching northern harriers soaring over sagebrush draws, I am grateful for their friendship and for the choices they have made in their own lives. Tom Dustin may live in Indiana, but I dare say that he knows parts of the Red Desert better than 99% of Wyoming residents do. His love for the desert is undying, and his courage undeniable. Without Red Desert warriors like Tom and Jane, the Red Desert campaign would have long ago been brought to a standstill.

“I have enough strength left for a few more fights,” Tom laughs. “Just enough fight in me to keep those bastards out of a few last areas. Remember, there’s no sin in losing, but there is in not trying!”

Tom Dustin may live in Indiana, but I dare say that he knows parts of the Red Desert better than 99% of Wyoming residents do.