(This article appeared in a Grand Junction Colorado paper Daily Sentinel dated July 30, 1989, written by Heather McGregor, dateline Domingues Canyon. Used by permission of Daily Sentinel. It is followed by excerpts of letters Bilyie wrote to Lorraine H. James. The photo is his cabin in Little Dominguez Canyon taken by Wm G Baer in 2010.) Bill Rambo opens the back hatch of his 1987 Volkswagen bus, parked behind his weathered log cabin and a goat trampled fence, to lay out his four dimensional chessboard. Living alone between the deep red sandstone walls of Dominguez Canyon these past fifteen years, Rambo, 63, has all the time in the world to watch bighorn sheep, daydream and invent things. "I just chase one will-o'-the-wisp after the other," he said. He lives here in an 85-year-old log cabin in the middle of the wilderness, his childhood home three miles up the rugged slickrock canyon from the Gunnison River. His companions are a black and white dog named Jiggsie, a ragged 15-year-old tomcat and 28 goats with names like Saint Annie, Iris and Harmony. Milking them at dawn and dusk and slaughtering one or two in the winter - a task he hates - Rambo depends on the goats to provide his main source of food. He also dries apricots, and takes his water from the creek. He got sick from it once, years ago, and figures he's immune now. "I've had hikers here get cross with me because I couldn't give them any water. They couldn't believe I got my water from the creek," he said. Twice now this year, he's driven the 25 miles to Delta (Colorado) for supplies, mail, a haircut and his Scientific American magazines. He goes for months without visitors. But his radio picks up National Public Radio. Rambo savors the solitude. He said he's different from most people, and finds it tough to get along. But the morning of our visit, he drank three cups of coffee before meeting us at the Gunnison River, and told stories long into the heat of the afternoon. He told of his parents growing up in Ouray and Rico, and of his childhood in the canyon, moving bushel boxes of low-profit peaches, plums and apricots across the Gunnison River on a cable. Once, when he and his mother were in the box under the cable, its mooring collapsed and they dropped to the river. "My father rode his horse out into the river and saved us," he recalled. He laughed hard retelling stories of his father's hilarious teasing of relatives, and wept recalling his father's death 32 years ago, during a time of harrowing high water on the river. The fruit ranch saw its cultivated peak in the 40-some years when William and Lottie Marie Rambo irrigated the canyon bottom and shipped out tons of fruit, alfalfa and hay. For eight years after William's death in 1958, Rambo's sister, Helen Hyde, of Paonia, and her children kept the place irrigated. Since then, the surrounding desert wilderness has crept in, slowly reclaiming the homestead, bringing dust and drought, sun and wind to fray and wither the lush ranch. Rambo retired here in 1975 after a difficult civil engineering career at Wright-Patterson Field near Dayton Ohio. He said he was "the troublesome type", a whistleblower of the 1950's and 60's and lacked today's protection and was transferred away from controversies. But it was the Vietnam War that led him to resign in 1967. "I felt what little I was doing toward that effort wasn't a good contribution to human interest. I'm pretty convinced that was a terrible business, just like what we're doing now in Central America," said Rambo. He spent a few years in New Mexico and Denver, working different jobs, and in Paonia at his sister's home, caring for his ailing mother. When she passed away, Rambo moved back to Dominguez for good. Its home, and its in the middle of wild land that Rambo finds a comfort. Its also in the middle of a huge wilderness area proposed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. B.L.M. officials, like Grand Junction Resource Area Manager, John Singlaub, worried that Rambo's 320 acre fruit ranch could spell trouble for the surrounding 73,500 acre Dominguez Canyon wilderness. They feared the land would be sub-divided and sold, requiring a road into the area and bringing people and vehicles into this now hard-to-reach area. With the condemnation of Bridgeport Bridge, public access to the canyon is by boat or a long walk or ride in from high on the Uncompahgre Plateau. Rambo shared the B.L.M.s fears, and so he did something unusual. Last fall, he sold his land to the federal government for $55,750, with a lifetime lease allowing him to stay on until he dies. He wanted Singlaub to promise the land would become wilderness after he dies. "I would not have sold it to a Texas millionaire," he said. "There's something about the wilderness that's soothing. You just don't find that in settled areas." His time is spent caring for the goats and pursuing complex mathematical and engineering ideas, like four-dimensional chess, an electronic reading device for blind people and long programs on his computer. He powers the computer with a generator, and when he's running a long program, he has to get up in the night and refuel it. And he'd like to figure out an intelligence-based trapping system for the bighorn sheep planted in Dominguez Canyon. If their numbers have to be controlled, he said, could we build an intelligence system into the trap? That way, he said, "Only the dummies are trapped and harvested." These are the directions a mind can go without the pressure of society. Bill Rambo spent years thinking for society. Now he thinks for himself. "You've heard the statement, `Stop the world, I want to get off,'" he said. "Well for me, its, `Don't stop the world, I don't want to get back on.'" In a letter to Lorraine James dated June 21, 1994, Bilyie wrote: “Thanks a lot for the book (The Baer Facts). I think it is a fine and fitting tribute to Ed and Sophie Baer and their descendants. I never knew my grand-father of course, and only have the dimmest memories of Grandmother as a very quiet and gentle and wonderful person. “The book brings back so many wonderful memories, of tales Mother and Dad told and of our rare trips to Rico. “I remember the ‘Tie the dog loose story’ (tho’ I don’t think in Mother’s version Grandfather’s English was that broken.) Another Mother told was of one of his stories – of Germany before he left, I think—'And I looked myself out the window and I seen the militia the street coming up!' – A tale out of past times and one that could have significance for our own future, and all that has now survived – in my memory at least – is a sample of the broken english! “I think Dad admired him. I remember Dad quoting him, 'The longer you live, the more you outfinden!’ “Another tale from Dad: Cousin Murrey stayed with his grandparents for a time as a boy, and apparently stayed out too late of nights. Grandfather thought he’d scare him, and on Halloween he dressed up in a sheet and hid – was it in a stairwell? What grandfather didn’t know was that the family’s pet monkey (and Mother’s tales of how they came it get that monkey, the things it did, and how they got rid of it were some stories, too, but hazy in my memory) was following him. And this monkey pulled off a tablecloth and donned that, ‘monkey see, monkey do’. When grandfather yelled and jumped out at Murrey coming in, the monkey did likewise. Murrey fired off a stick of firewood (at the monkey, I hope) and yelled, 'Run, Big ‘Fraid, Little ‘Fraid will catch you.’ “And Mother would tell of the night Grand Dad thought the Unicurvy Mine (I’m sure that’s misspelled) on a mountain above Rico (was it on N---er Baby Hill?) was on fire – there was enough explosive stored in the (unused) tunnel ‘to blow up Rico’. He could see the mine timbers burning when he looked at it through his telescope. He was about to go to the neighbors to get help when my uncle confessed. They had set a lantern in a large can in the mouth of the mine. The ‘burning timbers’ were the bales that attached the top of the lantern to the bottom around the glass ‘chimney’… “There is one more story Mother used to tell, this one about Uncle Charlie’s romance with Blanche. It seems he admired her from afar but didn’t know how to meet her. So he volunteered to cut Mrs. Lincoln’s firewood. That didn’t work out too well, so he asked Mrs. Lincoln if she could send out one of her daughters to help hold the logs while he cut them. Mrs. Lincoln sent out the wrong daughter – so Charlie worked a little while, and asked Mrs. Lincoln if she would send out a heavier daughter, this one was too small. At this point, Mother says, Mrs. Lincoln began to catch on and sent out Blanche.” In another letter to Lorraine, dated May 19, 1995, Bilyie wrote, “You mentioned Bill Baer, one of my mother’s brothers. The folks used to tell how he and my other uncles helped them out when they were just starting out here. And helped string the cable across the Gunnison that we depend on so much (there was no road the remaining quarter mile to the bridge.) The cable rock, which was the anchor for the cable on this side of the river, still has the initials WB carved into it.”