Summer is fast approaching. You can feel it in the air - leaves on the trees, the soil drying out, the roar of chain saws cracking through the stillness of the dawn. All the beauty and pain that summer brings. The call of the wild brings us to the places we cherish and to the points of destruction. We ask ourselves, "How to do it this year?"

Here are a few tips for those of you who have decided that nonviolent civil disobedience and direct action are effective means to achieve your goals. Many of the ideas that follow are ones that were tested at Cove/Mallard last summer. If you don't have a working knowledge of basic blockading and safety techniques, please don't go out and try these contraptions.

Whenever putting an implement on a roadway to stop machines, the first step is finding the narrowest spot on the road, or the choke point, at least a mile from the area you are defending. Many people like spots with very steep slopes on either side to prevent new roads from being built around the blockade. (This has happened often, even when it violates the law or costs an exorbitant amount of money.) For this reason, some people think the ultimate choke point is a bridge.

Once your point is established, many things can miraculously appear overnight. Slash is a great tool for slowing down the industrial machine. As many of us know, yarn is one of the worst things to ever happen to chain saws. It completely gums up a saw, sometimes permanently. If the workers are warned, 16-penny nails work great too. One or two bumps into the nail leaves a saw so dull it won't cut at all. The poor loggers spend more time sharpening their chains than clearing the road. Wire and acrylic yarn are great for making it impossible to pull a slash pile apart by hand. Another way to make slash piles ultra effective is to build them over lock down positions (like a sunken dragon), "weaving" the slash into a dense structure, wiring, nailing and yarning it all together as you go.

An additional way to use slash is to buy extra time to set up actions. In Idaho, activists discovered that scattering small obstructions in a Freddies' path, even one log just big enough so they can't drive over it every ten feet, really slows them down. This is more effective than building huge piles of debris in a couple of spots because it makes them move their rig ten feet at a time. Just getting in and out of the vehicle takes way more time than moving the slash. This tactic has been used so successfully that one time it took a Freddie almost an hour and a half to drive a half mile, leaving plenty of time to secure a nasty little lock-down in the road.

Double tripods are a variation of the time-honored classic. The double tripod is essentially two tripods with a long pole suspended between them. The pole between them should be approximately five-feet longer than the tripod poles. The tripods' apexes should be set the length of a tripod leg away from each other. The pole should be pulled up, anchored and then lashed to the tripods. Attach a hammock filled with two arrestees to the pole.

One last little secret to share with all you free staters is the dragon's roost. This is a sure headache for Fred for years to come. The basic design is two 18-foot culverts, cabled together, standing on end. They are erected with a climbing rope anchored at the top, buried in the road about three feet or so, rebarred down and cemented in. Use the climbing rope to get up the culverts. Pull up tons of dirt and rocks, and fill the culverts to a few feet from the top. Fill the top three or four feet of one with cement, fitting a lockbox in the top. Now, mount a platform across the top of both culverts. Leave an arm hole in the platform to fit over the mouth of the lockbox. This setup allows for all the pleasures of home. The dragon's roost is basically a free state device, requiring some time to complete. If you ever try this, it is extremely important that there is plenty of cement below and all the way around the lockbox.

Just remember, the resistance is constantly evolving and so must our techniques and tactics. Don't stifle yourself into ineffectiveness. Be creative. Be innovative. Try something completely different to keep them guessing and keep it wild!