TIM 

My acquaintance with Tim began in the alley behind the Environmental Center only 2 years ago. 

I was helping to build the fence around the Kansas Avenue Learning Garden.  As I walked up the alley to enter the Environmental Center, I noticed a figure with a felt hat, and cigar leaning over the hood of his truck. “Hello”, I said, the figure acknowledged with a “howdy”, and we entered into a short conversation.  I noticed a map heavily creased, from folding and unfolding,   the gentleman was intensely studying, spread out over the hood of his truck. “What are you checking out”, I asked and he said the “Middle Fork of the John Day”. “I love that area”, I said and Tim mumbled around his cigar, simply “yes”!

As I began working with the Environmental Center more frequently, my conversations with Tim usually took place around his truck.  Parked in his usual spot, backed up outside his “Oregon Wild” office, we would briefly chat, I would ask about chukar hunting and elk spots, and he would respond briefly, always with a twinkle in his eye, and then we would go about our business.

When I began working on the Environmental Center’s 25th Anniversary Celebration last October, I would pass Tim’s office door on a regular basis. I frequently noticed a hand written note on the door “Tim will be out of office”…….. and the dates…………., will return ………and the retuning date. …. Oregon Wild’s Eugene office may be able to assist you.

On the Monday morning after our big Celebration event, we had a large amount of beer left in the kegs. They had been kept on ice and when I saw Tim at his truck that morning, “Hey Tim, we have lots of beer left, got any growlers?”  He thoughtfully flashed a quick smile and said “no, but just a minute.” He immediately went to the back of his truck, propped open the rear fold up door on the camper shell with a stick, (to keep from slamming down  on his head) and began rummaging around inside the truck. He emerged with several plastic gallon milk jugs, shaking out any old liquid substances, as he walked from his truck back to the shed where we had the kegs.  We had a great time filling those milk jugs, pouring off excess foam, and topping each jug off!

I did not have the pleasure of Tim’s company on a hunting, camping, fishing or rafting trip. Nor did I have first hand knowledge of the details of his work on wilderness preservation, nor experience “Lillebo’s Rule of Rounding” to add more acres of wilderness in a legislative trade off. Many of Tim’s long time friends and associates eloquently expressed these stories at his “Gathering of Family and Friends” yesterday at Aspen Hall. I did have the pleasure, of many brief stories, the most detailed of which was his rafting trip in Alaska last summer, the large number of bear encounters, the running low on food. You could see in his eyes the love of wilderness, of all things wild!

I developed a true feeling of Tim’s spirit, through those moments around his truck. I felt a kindred spirit, a connection that feeling the wild, knowing the wilderness brings.  Even though I only knew him through his stories, his smile, his wit, his joy of filling milk jugs with beer!

The last time I saw Tim was the week before the big snow. The hand written sign on his office door was still up “Tim will be out of office…..” but he was back! We briefly chatted and went to work.

So even now, as I miss seeing his truck parked in the usual spot, knowing that physically he is “out of office” his spirit is there, his spirit never left, and will always be with us. His spirit and love of all things wild will live with all who were so fortunate as to cross his path, or share a story.

So I raise my glass and propose a toast “To Tim Lillebo, may his spirit live on in all of us, yes, live in the wilderness forever”!

Graydon Murphy

When I was in the Coast Guard I had a boss named Allen who referred to successful underlings as “Allen trained men”. I think a lot of folks would be proud to call themselves Lillebo trained.

I met Tim in 1975 or 76 when I was a Prairie City High School student. The Wilderness Act was just over a decade old and I’m not sure there was any such thing as an environmentalist. Probably the closest in those parts was the new owner of the Oxbow Ranch, Dan Lufkin, a founder of Earth Day back in 1970. Grant County had its very own Strawberry Mountain Wilderness. The Forest Service was an entirely different organization, for better and worse, than it is today.

Tim put together an eclectic group that named itself Grant County Conservationists.  Tim’s charisma and our periodic outings to various wild places held the group together. While I knew, or at least thought I knew, a lot about that country Tim and that group taught me a lot more. I got acquainted with the writings of Edward Abbey, USFS practices, and a bigger view of conservation. He and I put together a panoramic view of the Strawberries and drew in the wilderness boundary with magic marker. Surprisingly, the wilderness was mostly rocks.

For the next 10 years a high point of coming home was catching up with Tim and doing something outdoors. Our close association faded so I can’t say what kind of statesmen he became. I can say the fire in his belly and passion of his actions made him a one-of-a-kind Viking in my book. I like to think a little of his spirit rubbed off on me.

The Practicing Conservationist

By RIC BAILEY

February 14, 2014

A “Conservationist?” You bet. The last time Tim Lillebo threw anything away was back in '79, and that was only because the two inch chunk of jerky had morphed into petrified venison, virtually unchewable. He leaves it for the voles.

Want a clearer picture of the consummate Conservationist? Let's go on a hike with him:

You are immediately struck by the backpack, an early ancestor of the Trapper John, possibly owned by some U.S. Cavalry captain in the Civil War. Stained with elk blood and sweat, held together with duct tape, it is built for spurious abrasions and is somewhat functional. “Onward!”

At a break on a knoll with a stellar view, Timmy yanks out the “whiskey bottle,” a predominantly shapeless piece of plastic besotted with five-pointed stars drawn skillfully by its owner. It sports a precarious amount of George Dickel, which Timmy audibly proclaims is not the cheapest whiskey available (it is the third cheapest). “Care for a splash?”

It doesn't take long before you recognize this guy is filled with giddiness in sharing his special place with you- fostering a relationship with the very soil.

Our mentor and guide has lots of food on the hike, which he shares selflessly: soda crackers he jacked from a restaurant, for starters. And oh yea, the only reason he went to the restaurant was because it was happy hour at the D.C. establishment, and for the price of one $1.50 drink you got all the munchies you could stomach. That was dinner, the crumbs he stashed in his brief case (an old brown Food Mart shopping bag) is sustenance for the hike. He was easy on the Oregon Wild budget.

Also along for the hike is a plastic bag, circa 1993, which dwells inside another more ancient plastic bag, which contains a newer bag, which after painful anticipation and a lot of effort, eventually reveals five coddled potato chips.

At this point, one thing you realize is that Tim has a limited vocabulary. Maybe it's part of being one with the land, maybe it's just conserving breath, but he never uses the words “I” or “me.”

Ah! And the binoculars! At first glance you figure they're bound for a museum until you witness him actually try to look through them. “Check it out, check it out, an olive-sided fly-catcher!”

And the grande finale? The maps. Map after map after map. Some of them display lands hundreds of miles away. But, “What the hell, we might get there eventually.” Each map has to be pieced together, ragged shards barely bound by alternating strips of scotch and electrical tape.

That trademark felt hat is a distraction amid the salvaged booty of the hike guide. It has a story. On a 1984 Hells Canyon float trip, Tim and friend got cast out of the boat in Waterspout Rapid. The bold tow-head was hollering (in exhilaration, not terror) and flailing. Yet he was not making his way back to the boat. In the midst of the aquiline turmoil, the ten foot waves and boiling holes, Tim went straight for the hat. At camp that evening, he's asked if it was a gift from Teddy Roosevelt. “Naw,” the Conservationist responds, “Found it in the woods hunting a few years ago.”

If you did go on a hike with Timmy, wherever you went, you were familiarized with every rock, every tree over 20” diameter, every spring and each and every meadow. He knew where the elk were, where the pileated woodpeckers tend to hang out, and the scientifically-documented niche of each and every critter and scrubby bush in the hallowed web of the ecosystem's precariously balanced life.

And the only reason those big trees are still standing, that stream still offers wild trout, the ridge bears no road scar and the meadow is green and clean, is because when the bulldozers and bovines threatened, your hiking companion was there.

In Timmy's world, nothing was wasted or depleted. Nothing was abused or defaced.

One last thing: you never had to build the fire, in fact you didn't dare. It was a sacred process from pine needle to cottonwood twig to pine bark to fir branch. It was a cleansing, a progression that produces a warmth more poignant and personal than any fire you ever dreamt. “Stay warm, rascal.”

Ally of the wild wood, conscience of eastern Oregon's natural soul: our beloved friend, the practicing Conservationist.

Although I knew Tim as a friend during his Prairie City days we also had a Forest Service relationship.  A good friend and mentor let his employee type appeals for Tim.  Tim at one time had complete run of the Prairie City Ranger District Office as in those days we felt we had nothing to hide from him.

There was the Strawberry Mountains Forever willderness additions campaign.  During one employee oreintation every single seasonal employee and a few permanents wore Strawberry Mountain Forever T shirts.

In 1979 I was on a fire that I had beat smokejumpers into on Baldy Mountain.  We were in a place that you would never expect to run into anyone and I look up and here comes TIm.  He asked us why we were spending money and putting out such a poor excuse for a wildfire.  We had a good chat and he was spot on about how pointless and foolish suppressing these fires was/is.

On another occaision we were having a field meeting with ranchers, timber purchasers and conservastionists on the N Fork of the Malhuer River.  We were by Crane crossing a very rough spot even for a truck.  Well of course here comes Tim in a tiny rental car bottoming out and he was laughing and asking if we thought he could get back out.  He did but just barely.

Another time my Boss and I were looking at a unit to burn in the Dans Creek Isham area.  It was still snowy and as we pulled up to our unit in a FS truck (they were still green back then) I see two people walking quickly up the road like they did not want to get caught.  I recognized Tim and called him over.  We had a great chat and a week later one of our projects was in the Oregonian with a smiling Tim.  

I spent half a lifetime in the forest working with people who could only see the trees.  Tim saw the Forest.

There were a handful of environmentalists in Eastern Oregon in the mid 1980s, and sometimes we encountered threats of violence. To counter the fear-reaction, Tim and Ric formed a small, exclusive club for people who'd received three or more death threats. They called it “The Few, The Proud” (like the marines hitting the beach). I remember well the day they inducted me. I had moved over to Enterprise, Oregon and was working closely with Ric as we re-established Hells Canyon Preservation Council. I'd gotten several threat calls, and we'd talked about it, and I'd decided not to let it scare me off, but the guys didn't want to leave it at that. So one fine day, they picked up Loren Hughes, another legend of Northeast Oregon, took me out to Hat Point, and inducted me into the club. If I was presented a certificate or official charter of admissions I have it somewhere. I don't recall the details of the ceremony for reasons that will soon be apparent; but I remember the ceremonial whiskey-drink, and the wonderful view, and becoming officially one of the Few, the Proud, environmental activists in the region. Death threats? Breather phone calls? To us, it meant we were doing our jobs.

In late fall, the crisp cold weather of the Blue Mountains trends toward snow and sleet, as the hunting season came on and the hunters from faraway places would gather. Tim, an avid sportsman who supported his table with his rifle, had other hunting plans on many of those days. (As a vegetarian, I found these visits difficult at first, but as in so many things, Tim changed my set ideas about morality, hunting, and relationship to the land. I learned that these deer and elk hunters weren’t there for trophies, but for food. They were part of a larger cycle of predator and prey that I had been citified out of in two generations. )

We were in the midst of the flurry of forest management plans that were being developed in the mid-to-late 1980s, Tim’s goal was to reach out to the hunters who came to the National Forests in our area. We would start out in late afternoon, visiting the campgrounds, driving the roads, looking for campsites. It would be cold, frequently sleety, and darkening fast, but Tim swore that was the time to visit. “They’ll be back at camp by now” he would explain. “They want a fire and some supper.” We’d pull up and stop near a campsite. Tim would reach and rummage for his materials…the latest iteration of a management plan, maps, paper, and hop out.” C’mon, Katie!” he would exclaim, rubbing his hands. “Let’s bag some hunters!” When we reached the edge of the camp, Tim would give a shout. “Hello the camp!” he would yell. “C’mon in!” would come the reply. He’d walk up, and say, “Been huntin’ here many years? Git anything yet?” and admire the kill. Often we would learn that the hunters had been coming to the same area for a couple of generations. It was the time that the men would get away. Tim would continue. “Did ya know that according to the new forest plan, this place we’re in is prob'ly gonna be lclearcut? Can’t tell ya how long this forest is gonna be here in one piece.” He’d pull out the maps, spread the forest plan, and explain what ONRC was trying to do about the plan. “ Let me give ya the address of the guy to write to,” he’d say. He’d search his pockets for a pencil, rip off a slip of paper, write the contact information, “and here’s our number in Portland, too,” he’d finish. “Thanks for your time, folks!” he’d conclude. And off we would rumble in the darkening forest, looking for the next camp.

Driving westward from Vale to Prairie City, there’s an area along Highway 26 where the road ascends in a long northward swoop, rising along an armored slope until it crests and descends, sweeping gently southward again. That north slope, formerly in Ponderosa pine, had been logged both above and below the highway in the not-too-distant past, and the post-clearcut area had come back in tall spindly lodgepole pine. Every time Tim approached that grade, he would begin to build up a head of steam. He would stop his talk of the meeting just past or strategies for the next one, or the need to get the cows out of the creeks on BLM lands. His two warning signs of fulmination would appear: he would fall silent and his always-pink cheeks would take on a warmer hue. By the time we would be well up the grade, he would burst, his arm sweeping out the open window of his pickup. Look at that!”he would exclaim. “Just take a look!” This used ta be Ponderosa! Now it’s nothin’ but … pecker poles!” Not gonna be anything but pecker poles ‘til after we’re dead.” Then he would calm a bit, with the occasional exclamation escaping. “Pecker poles!” he would mutter, “pecker poles.”

Tim had a couple of horses that he pastured about a half a mile from his house. Just about every day in that winter, we would take a break and go over to check on them. It was a cold walk out there, but the snow crunching underfoot, the sun, and the walk was a welcome break from the hours of sorting books, papers and maps. After checking the horses, we’d head back to Tim’s yard, where in absolute contrast to his office, his wood pile was always neatly cut and symmetrically stacked in a long series of windrows. “Firewood’s important, Katie! He’d say. “Don’t let it get wet or lie on the ground. Keep your firewood and your firewood’ll keep you.” We’d bring in firewood and take care of other chores during the few remaining hours of daylight, and then when we’d get back into the house, he’d bustle around in the warmth, pulling down this and that, getting ready for supper. “How ‘bout a little whiskey-drink, Katie?” he would ask, rubbing his hands briskly. Nobody I knew could never say no to one of Tim’s toddies.

I would work every day from morning to early afternoon on organizing his first famous office, the front bedroom of his old ranch house in Prairie City, in which he had vertical-filed decades’ worth of correspondence with ranchers, fishermen, miners, loggers and millworkers as well as his colleagues in the environmental movement, friends and citizens, state and federal land management plans, maps, forest service timber sale comments and appeals, similar correspondence on BLM management plans, old photos, letters and miscellania. I started out by taking over the living room, taking everything out and organizing it piece by piece. There was never a forest plan that was too old to keep. “Valuable stuff in there!” he would exclaim, “never toss out how they used to look at the forest.” As we emptied the office, he began to build shelves for the forest plans, neatly organized by forest and year. He took the door off the room’s closet and built a map rack in the space. It took up every inch from floor to ceiling, but at last we had sorted every map and labeled its place in the rack. We bought some battered but serviceable file cabinets, and likewise filled them with an organized file system. There’s room to sit down here!” he would exclaim, awed at the sight of a clean desk top. “You better keep me out of here, Katie!”

When I arrived, with my little car full of my belongings, I found Tim up in that attic. He was scratching his head and muttering “what am I gonna do with these?” “These” was his collection of deerskins, gained from his many hunting expeditions, which he’d scraped and salted and stored up in the attic “until he got back around to ’em.” They were stiff as boards and the best you could say was the hairy side was better to look at than the other. We took a look at the rafters of the attic, and got to work, storing the deerhides up there, and I proudly told my citified friends that I was the only person I ever knew who was rich enough to have a fur ceiling.

Moving In To the Attic

My first job with ONRC was to organize Tim Lillebo’s workspace, a job that was funded by a donation from Ric Bailey, who was an ONRC board member and a fearless advocate in his own right for Hells Canyon country. I moved from Olympia, Washington, where I’d recently graduated from The Evergreen State College, to Prairie City, where I moved into the attic of Tim’s house. It was mid-Fall of 1986. Now, that attic was cold, and this was the heart of eastern Oregon with winter coming on, and the only heat source in the L-shaped room was a small vent in the middle of the floor, above the woodstove on the main floor of the house. But there was an alcove on the south facing wall of the attic that faced the Strawberry Mountains, and Tim had thoughtfully tacked up a beautifully drawn profile image of the skyline, with the creek drainages neatly inked in and labeled. I would wake at dawn and watch the light grow on those mountains, and study the map with the mountains themselves glowing in the window.

To get to my penthouse home, I would walk out of the warm kitchen of the house into the enclosed back porch, which was always cool enough for Tim to store his hunter’s supply of meat and canned goods; I would walk outside around the house to the south-facing sun porch, enter the sun porch and make my way up the dark stairs to the attic. The porch and stairs were enclosed, but unlit and unheated. I would put my next days’ clothes, folded to avoid wrinkles, under the covers of my bed, which was covered with an effusion of blankets and quilts, and then change into my sleeping costume…new socks, my heaviest long johns, and a flannel nightgown, plus a knit hat, and I would dive under the covers and pull them right over my head, and hold as still as possible, trying not to shake with the cold, until the growing warmth helped me to relax. Then I could peep my nose out from the covers for fresh air, and fall asleep.

The Roads Don’t Count

As I became more familiar with Tim’s approach to gaining active participants in forest plans, he began to urge me to get over my shyness and participate, and even initiate conversations with people in our journeys to the hunting camps. “Hunters come from all over,” he told me, “but they know this land, and so do the ranchers. If you want to get ‘em involved, you got to know the land too. Roads don’t count!” he would exclaim. “Ranchers aren’t gonna listen to somebody who looks at the land from a roadmap. You got to know the creeks and the rivers. You got to know the trails. Then they know you know what you’re talkin’ about, and they’ll start listenin’ to what you have to say about it.”

This was a life-changing lesson for me. I’d gone to college and gotten a degree; I studied forest and riparian ecology; I studied political economy. I knew how the legislative system worked; I had experience with environmental law. But what I learned from Tim was that if we didn’t have the support of people who depended on the lands and waters…hunters, ranchers, fishers, recreationists, we would just be one voice among many. And to get the participation of people, we had to know the landscape as well as the system. In that arena of landscape as well as system, Tim had no master. He was one of a kind.