The day after Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he was going to run for governor of California, I decided to do an inside feature story on the recall from the perspective of a candidate.

I had run for Congress in 1996, 1998 and 2002, but running for governor was a whole new ball game.

I thought it would be a way to show people what the political system is really like. How speaking engagements are manipulated to give those in power more of an advantage. How those who support you expect favors. How the high filing fee and Write-In systems are discriminatory. How the electronic voting systems being established are, at least, suspect.

So, I announced my intentions with a press release to several state and local media outlets and set up a free web site, http://groups.msn.com/newsfromthenet.

My campaign was off and running and I was very surprised by the positive reactions I got from people.

Within a few weeks my publicity amounted to a couple of TV interviews with Channel 3 in Eureka and Channel 7 in Redding, and a short call-in to a national radio talk show before visiting the Women in Black and the Veterans for Peace in front of the Humboldt County Court House. The Eureka Times-Standard covered my campaign stop with a photo.

The Los Angeles Times did a feature story on the two other candidates from Trinity County and myself, publishing a photo of me in the doorway of one of my motel cabins.

I received encouragement from professors in three different university departments. But soon, it became apparent there was strong underlying hostility over the election in general. Some people were actually furious, and that hostile reality would be brought home to me in the form of debris crashing down the mountain behind my business and home.

I had been covering the Bigfoot Symposium in Willow Creek the weekend of Sept. 15. When I arrived home late that night, I found the whole mountain behind my place on fire.

My wife and six children were safe and hundreds of firefighters from all over the country were fighting the blaze, which grew to more than 5,000 acres before being contained.

The first night I cut trees in the path of the fire creeping down the hill and, with a small trickle, watered down the cedar shake roofs of our seven little blue cabins that had been converted into a bed and breakfast motel.

The next day, I fought fire around the 4,000 feet of water line leading from our dam, while doing repairs on it to restore water to our small community.

By day three, the fire had spread northeast up Big French Creek, where the terrain was steeper. Between the backfires set by firefighters and the falling debris, Highway 299 was closed off and on for several days.

Crime-scene tape marked two spots at the west and east ends of town; one very close to our property. The official cause of the fire is of an undetermined origin.

One evening I became stuck on the wrong side of the road closure so I decided to continue to Sacramento to file a federal court case in the morning, which I had been planning to use in challenging the Write-In system. My legal premise was that the filing fee for running for public office should be waived if one can not afford it, as other court filing fees are waived for indigence.

But I never made it to the courthouse.

My van, and only running vehicle, broke down and was towed before I could get back to it. It would be more than two days before seeing my wife and children again. They had no idea what had happened to me because the phone lines had been burned and no one could get through the road closure. After hitchhiking from Redding, walking over Oregon Mountain, and getting help from a CHP and CalTrans truck driver, I made it home about 3 a.m. with blistered feet and a broken spirit.

For three days I worked on two other cars I had and, thank God, got one running.

The governor’s debate was about to happen at Sacramento State University. The California Association of Broadcasters had stated they would let any candidate in the debate who polled at 10 percent participate. Since I received 10 percent of the vote in the Republican Congressional Primary in District Two in 1998, I faxed a request to be included in the debate. You may have guessed, I never heard a word back from them.

It was the hardest thing I ever did to put my name on a 4- by 8-foot sign and post it all over northeastern California in 1998, while pretending to be a politician and even harder this past fall to act like I might become governor of California. My motives were rooted in self-defense during those congressional campaigns, because of multiple crimes that had been committed against my family over our religious and political views, and the publicity generated from the races put a stop to that.

After years of fighting the system to help end homelessness through advocating the reopening of homesteading, it seemed only natural for me to run for political office, but today I’ve decided against ever running for political office again, and I may change my name, too.

Since September 11, 2001, it has felt like there is a big dark cloud hanging over my world. Every time it looks like the sky is going to clear up, another downpour drenches everything in sight; but the fires of hope and freedom can never be put out, only dampened.

Today, there’s a cloud hanging overhead and it’s starting to rain. The engine in the car I fixed during the fire blew yesterday. But I realize that all the dark powers in the world cannot take from us what is really important; belief in the power of good and the love that springs from it. That is something you never surrender.