Best Friends Animal Sanctuary/ Process Church

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Best Friends Animal Sanctuary/ Process Church

Postby anon » Sat Jun 18, 2005 11:20 am

Best FRiends Animal Sanctuary is located in Kanab, Utah on 3000 acres which have been purchased by the group AND an additional 30,000 acres they have been given by the Bureau of Land Management. They have a yearly budget of about 20 million and are heavily supported by the entertainment industry. Have about 1500 animals at a time.<br>Here is the first of two parts of an article which appeared in Animal People in 1995. I couldn't find the second half. It talks about the "rumors".<br><br>Sanctuary at Angel Canyon: <br>Animal rescue mission settles in the desert <br>(Reprinted from ANIMAL PEOPLE, 11/95.) <br>ANGEL CANYON, Utah­­As The Outlaw Josie Wales, Kansas/Missouri border country farmer Clint Eastwood came home to find his wife and family massacred by Jayhawkers, picked up a gun, and swore bloody vengeance. The Civil War was over, but not the fighting. Killing whoever crossed him, Eastwood fought his way west, reluctantly gathering misfit sidekicks as he went­­a horse, a dog, an Indian, an abused woman, a child. Struggling to stay focused on murder, he found himself sidetracked by the effort of keeping them all sheltered and fed. <br><br>The bounty hunter sent to kill Eastwood or drag him back for a public hanging caught up with him at Angel Canyon, scoping out the situation before Eastwood knew he was there. Rather than risk involving his newfound second family in a shootout, Eastwood rode to Kanab, five miles south, to meet the bounty hunter in the town saloon. <br><br><br>But the bounty hunter, a man of patient wisdom, had decided not to take Eastwood. He was preparing to ride back home. <br><br>"I've never met Josie Wales," he said, looking the fugitive in the eye. "But if I did meet him, I'd tell him the war is over." <br><br>With the completion of The Outlaw Josie Wales in 1976, the "Little Hollywood" era was just about over for Angel Canyon and Kanab. At least 92 feature-length films and countless episodes of serial cliffhangers were made in the Kanab area, mostly westerns, but the sandstone terrain also passed for the Middle East in The Arabian Nights, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and The Greatest Story Ever Told. Kanab became Hollywood's biggest backlot in 1924, when nearby Johnson Canyon served as backdrop for Deadwood Coach, starring Tom Mix. Brothers Gron, Whit, and Chaunce Parry of Kanab earned a windfall fortune during the filming by taking the cast and crew to tour the many nearby National Parks and National Monuments: Zion, Bryce Canyon, Cedar Breaks, Pipe Spring, yet to be flooded Glen Canyon, and most distant, the Grand Canyon. <br><br>"An idea was born," recalls Dixie Brunner of Southern Utah News, the Kanab weekly newspaper. "If one movie company liked this incredibly scenic area, there might be others. Chaunce took aerial and backcountry pictures, assembled them ino a portfolio, and headed to California to peddle Kane County to Hollywood. The boys bought the motel that now bears their name on the bend in the Kanab River," which flows through Angel Canyon and Kanab itself. "Whit Parry housed the film crews. Gron provided the film sets, props, and people." <br><br>Of all the filming locales around Kanab, Angel Canyon was perhaps most popular, hosting the making of the Lone Ranger, Rin Tin Tin, and Six Million Dollar Man television shows, and features including How The West Was Won, Death Valley, Daniel Boone, and McKenna's Gold. But the popularity of the canyon took a toll. Hunters killed wildlife, looters dug up Anasazi graves, vandals carved their names into cliffs, and some even shot up petroglyphs. <br><br>The Anasaz, whose name means "the ones who came before," were the first known human residents of Angel Canyon. They grew corn, squash, and beans there for almost 1,000 years before mysteriously vanishing about 100 years before the arrival of the first Spanish explorers. They were peaceful people, leaving no evidence of ever having hunted in Angel Canyon and no trace of blood sacrifice. Their presence remains manifest in sandstone caves whose entrances have been squared off to resemble benign jack o'lantern eyes overlooking some of the Best Friends pastures; a kiva, or sweatlodge site; and stone circles that were once the foundations of wigwams made to store corn, much resembling today's far larger steel corn cribs. The Anasazi also left behind the petroglyphs, showing people, animals, and symbols indicative of the sun, moon, and water, as well as tracings of their hands, but no depictions of weapons or fighting. <br><br>Even the unknown Horace who carved a cross into the rock near the mouth of the storage cave on September 15, 1916 seems to have understood that this was not a place for violence. The cross is of modest size, low on the cave wall, and Horace apparently took care to avoid damaging the marks of the Anasazi. <br><br>Hopi descendants of the Anasazi still live nearby, as do Paiute and Navajo. Shortly after Best Friends arrived in Angel Canyon, Best Friends sanctuary senior staffers Michael Mountain and Faith Maloney recall, an old Paiute medicine man came to reconsecrate it. He spent a day alone in one of the biggest caves, a traditional gathering place for tribal elders, now used for tourist picnics and occasional wedding ceremonies. He told Mountain and Maloney when he left that the spirits of the canyon would be with them. <br><br>Mountain and Maloney are two of the cofounders and visionaries behind Best Friends, perhaps the most mythologized of all animal sanctuaries. Everyone's heard of Best Friends, through the widely distributed Best Friends magazine, emphasizing good news about animals, founded in February 1993; the Best Friends tables frequently set up outside supermarkets as far away as California; and the Best Friends online service (76550.2325@Compuserve.com, and soon to debut in expanded format via the Microsoft Network). Cyrus and Anne Mejia welcome and guide thousands of visitors, too. The visitors have made Best Friends "the second biggest economic engine in Kanab," according to Mountain. But Angel Canyon is seven hours by car from Phoenix, and almost as far from Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. In absence of familiarity, rumors start. <br><br>The first rumor, Mountain laughs, began only days after Best Friends bought their first piece of the property in 1984, and promptly dismantled the old movie sets to restore the natural scenery. They didn't destroy the historic sets; rebuilt, they now stand as a tourist attraction at a new site east of Kanab. But stories began about Best Friends being some sort of Afro-American militant commune, with designs on taking over the Kanab school system. <br><br>"Among all of us, we had about five children enrolled in the schools," Mountain says. "I don't think any of us were Afro-American." <br><br>But somehow the editor of ANIMAL PEOPLE arrived at Best Friends with the idea that Mountain came from the Virgin Islands. <br><br>"I wish I did come from somewhere as beautifully exotic as that," Mountain mused. "I was born and raised in downtown London." <br><br>There's also the rumor that Mountain and Maloney are a couple. "That's never been true," they agree. "We've each been married, but not to each other." <br><br>Mountain legends <br><br>Mountain is perhaps the most storied of the Best Friends. According to legend, he's a guru who took the name "Mountain" to symbolize the New Age power he gathered from the desert and used to woo his disciples, the Best Friends staff. "The key people, in terms of direction and policy of the sanctuary," Mountain admits, "are Faith, myself, Francis Battista, and John Fripp, our treasurer. Faith sets the basic direction in terms of the care of the animals, working with the other people who run the animal areas. I frame the Best Friends message, as expressed in the magazine, newsletters, and our other literature and presentations. Francis directs most of our outreach programs, which is why he's away from here quite a bit. John, as treasurer and general administrative person, keeps the wheels on track and the poop being scooped." <br><br>Best Friends staffers actually relate to Mountain more as departmental ministers to a prime minister. Mountain is the communicator who keeps everyone posted, whose typical description of colleagues is that, "She (or he) does things her (his) own way, in her (his) own style." <br><br>That's not exactly the way of anyone who imposes anything, and indeed Mountain is more often imposed upon, as the cheerful butt of many mild jokes. The idea that Mountain spends a lot of time meditating, for instance, may reflect his ability to think out and solve practical problems, while contemplating the spider spinning webs on the sink in his used trailer home, preventing him from drawing water. <br><br>Mejia, who spends a lot of time on the road playing guitar, singing songs of his own composition, and telling stories to help raise funds for Best Friends, especially loves telling Mountain stories­­like the story of the spider, whom he says Mountain hasn't disturbed in six or seven summers. Mejia introduces the closest semblance to mysticism at Best Friends in his own imagining that small birds rustling leaves are not only the ghost deer, who in legend lead hunters away from their quarry in Angel Canyon, but also do it on purpose. <br><br>As to the name Mountain, explains Mountain, "My parents were Alex and Dolly Mountain, and my grandparents were Mountains. At some point, back when their forebears came to England from Eastern Europe, they translated their Estonian Mountain, Hochberg or Huberg or something like that, as in 'iceberg,' an ice mountain, my grandma used to tell me, to an English Mountain. But all the Mountains I grew up with were born Mountains." <br><br>What about the secret mansion? <br><br>It isn't any secret, and it isn't a mansion. It's the newer of the two Best Friends office sites, with huge solar windows in the lunch room­­not anyone's drawing room­­overlooking the major Anasazi settlements. It includes two kitchens, a lavatory, modest living quarters for some of the staff, and of course office space, arranged around a semi-courtyard, so that it looks much bigger from below than it actually is. <br><br>What about drugs? <br><br>They drink coffee, all right, and even tea. <br><br>What about the cathouse and the teenaged slaves? <br><br>There were two teenagers among the crew of 40-odd people on site during the two days ANIMAL PEOPLE visited. One, sure enough, was a volunteer cat-handler. The other got up at dawn to spend the next several hours with the pigeons. Neither one seemed to have or need direct supervision. The cathouse, by the way, is called Benson's House, after Benson, a big grey tom, one of the more renowned of Best Friends' menagerie . Each of the three spacious wings of Benson's House holds numerous special-case cats: adoptables up front, injury cases in a more secluded area. Many of the latter were tortured by abusive people before rescuers brought them to Best Friends. Some have only three legs, some are missing ears, and some have lost eyes. Most, however, are affectionate. Their treatment at Best Friends has restored their faith in humanity. Instead of racing for the rafters upon our arrival, the majority descended to meet us. <br><br>They keep most of their animals in cages, out of sight around back. <br><br>Sort of. The original outdoor wire pens with individual doghouses and cathouses, predating the buildings, are still in use, pending the construction of more buildings when funds permit. But the wire pens are quite visible from the cat and dog buildings. Each dog or cat in such a structure is kept in a compatible social group. The layout allows for interactive play, sleeping either alone or curled up together, and opportunity to run and jump. Shade and water are available at all times. Though the structures are nothing fancy, they are kept clean. You won't smell much poop, even on a hot day. It isn't the ideal facility, Maloney explains. Yet you won't have to visit many shelters to see worse­­and to realize the high morale of the Best Friends animals. Shelter depression seems almost unknown. <br><br>What of the underground arsenal? <br><br>Previous owners of one part of the property enlarged a natural sandstone cave into a tractor shed and built a door on it. The temperature inside stays at a cool 55 degrees, all year round. Maloney finds it's the ideal place to store donations of dog and cat food. "I really work the telephones," she explains, "hustling donations of anything we can get, because we can always use it for someone. With 2,500 animal mouths to feed, money doesn't go very far." The oddest part of the arsenal rumor, Maloney continues, is that rural Utah is full of apocalyptic sects and survivalists who do have arsenals. Many of Best Friends' quizzical neighbors have arsenals. But most of the Best Friends crew, including Maloney, have never so much as held a gun. <br><br>How about their high-tech surveillance system? Best Friends doesn't like to discourage this rumor. They've chased a fair number of poachers away in the middle of the night. Best Friends magazine editor Steve Hirano admits to running the war room. "I work at night a lot," Hirano grins, "and from up here on the cliff, you can see jacklighting from pretty far away." <br><br>Hirano, in myth, is Best Friends' ninja. He confesses to some electronic virtuosity. <br><br>However, testifies Mountain, "Steven can hear one hand clapping. There are always odd stories circulating," Mountain continues. "They're pretty harmless, and there's a simple pattern to them. Depending on what's current in the news, there's likely to be an associated rumor about Best Friends. During the Reagan years, when Nicaragua was front and center, there was a story going around that we were actually a cover for training attack dogs for the CIA to send down to Central America. After the movie In The Line of Fire came out last year, there was another, that the star, Clint Eastwood, spends his weekends hiding out here. The director and the producer of the movie and most of the actors are members," Mountain confirms, "with the exception of Eastwood," who was, however, in Angel Canyon for the making of The Outlaw Josie Wales. <br><br>"For several months, a few years ago, when there were some scandals around Utah about Mormon cults conducting Satanic rituals, someone started a rumor about Best Friends keeping animals here for Satanic sacrifice," Mountain adds. "What the rumors have in common is that some people just cannot believe that there are other people who believe that animals they don't want are worth taking care of. So Best Friends can't really be an animal sanctuary­­we have to be about something else. To the best of my knowledge, there's nothing malicious about any of it." <br><br>(continued) <br> <p></p><i></i>
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