Buffalo Commons ...

As promised (or threatened) yesterday, here are a couple of key paragraphs from the infamous "Buffalo Commons" article by Frank and Deborah Popper. It's easy to see how inflammatory this was. Looking at it, though, it's pretty clear to me that the Poppers' predictions aren't likely to come true ... and that, on a broad scale, at least, they probably shouldn't.

Still, the article points out that there are issues that we as Montanans will certainly have to face. For me, the biggest one is the changing cultural landscape of the northern plains -- many of the towns are dying, and it's harder and harder to keep young people from leaving. At the same time, farms and ranches continue to consolidate, and more and more of them become corporate rather than family endeavors. Someone needs to figure out how to solve those problems, or the culture of the northern plains as we know it will cease to exist someday ... and that will be terribly sad.

We believe that despite history's warnings and environmentalists' proposals, much of the Plains will inexorably suffer near-total desertion over the next generation. It will come slowly to most places, quickly to some; parts of Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Texas, especially those away from the interstates, strike us as likely candidates for rapid depopulation. The overall desertion will largely run its course. At that point, the only way to keep the Plains from turning into an utter wasteland, an American Empty Quarter, will be for the federal government to step in and buy the land -- in short, to deprivatize it.

...

The federal government's commanding task on the Plains for the next century will be to recreate the nineteenth century, to reestablish what we would call the Buffalo Commons. More and more previously private land will be acquired to form the commons. In many areas, the distinctions between the present national parks, grasslands, grazing lands, wildlife refuges, forests, Indian lands, and their state counterparts will largely dissolve. The small cities of the Plains will amount to urban islands in a shortgrass sea. The Buffalo Commons will become the world's largest historic preservation project, the ultimate national park. Most of the Great Plains will become what all of the United States once was -- a vast land mass, largely empty and unexploited.

Big Open ...

At an academic conference in Missoula back in 1987, a man named Robert Scott presented a paper that inaugurated a controversy that's still simmering. The paper, titled "Saving the Big Open: The Case for a Great Plains Wildlife Range," proposed intentionally depopulating much of eastern Montana and turning it into a wildlife preserve called the Big Open. The notion garnered more attention that fall when Frank and Deborah Popper published an article called "The Great Plains: From Dust to Dust," that expanded the idea to other states while announcing that the depopulation was inevitable. In the piece, the Poppers stated that the initial settlement of the area was the "largest, longest-running agricultural and environmental miscalculation in American history."

It was, of course, a difficult statement for many to hear. I had (and still have) mixed thoughts about it all, because I love exploring that country and its towns and its cultural landscape ... but at the same time, I know that I'm watching much of it fade away forever. If I were in charge of tackling the issue, I honestly have no idea what I'd do.

I'll post a more detailed quote from the Poppers' proposal tomorrow, but for today here's a paragraph from the beginning of the piece -- a description of the Plains as planners see it.

The Great Plains are America's steppes. They have the nation's hottest summers and coldest winters, greatest temperature swings, worst hail and locusts and range fires, fiercest droughts and blizzards, and therefore its shortest growing season. The Plains are the land of the Big Sky and the Dust Bowl, one-room schoolhouses and settler homesteads, straight-line interstates and custom combines, prairie dogs and antelope and buffalo. The oceans-of-grass vistas of the Plains offer enormous horizons, billowy clouds, and somber-serene beauty.

Railway drama ...

One of my very favorite made-in-Montana movies is one that you've probably never heard of: Danger Lights, a black-and-white drama released by RKO way back in 1930, in the early years of the talkies. The film is mostly a romantic drama with a fairly standard and cheesy plot -- two railway employees battling for the affections of a young Jean Arthur.

But the railroad setting makes makes it both historically noteworthy and lots of fun ... those scenes were shot in Montana, along the Milwaukee Road's main line across the state. There are action shots in remote Sixteen Mile Canyon, and lots of evocative images of steam locomotives in the railway's Miles City roundhouse and yards. They're great views by any standard, made all the more interesting to me by their location ... and their portrayal of a legendary, now-vanished railroad.

One of the movie's most dramatic scenes is a nighttime tug-of-war between two locomotives, supposedly staged as the evening's entertainment at a railroad employees' picnic. Here's a screen capture of the event:

Montana moonrise ...

Last night was an absolutely stellar Montana evening. Driving east towards Bozeman a little after dark, I marveled at a clear, deep-blue sky and a huge moon, not quite full, rising over the Bridgers. It was gorgeous, and made the whole day worthwhile.

I didn't stop to take a photo, but the evening reminded me of a very similar one when I did, almost exactly two years ago. Here's the shot I took in 2007 ... I was near the top of Cottonwood Hill, a little east of Cardwell.

Poet laureate ...

I bet most of you didn't even know that Montana has an official poet laureate! We've had three of them, in fact ... the title was created in 2005, and recipients hold the position for two-year terms.

The first Montana poet laureate was a woman named Sandra Alcosser, who studied under Richard Hugo at the University of Montana. She now lives down in the Bitterroot Valley. Here's an example of her work -- the final two stanzas of a poem called "Approaching August":

Today I had a letter from France.
"What a truly civilized nation," my friend wrote
as she drank her morning coffee with thick cream
in a country cafe near Avignon. "To my right
a man in a black tuxedo sips raspberry liqueur
and soda."

Here on the same latitude we lie back at dawn
on the caving bank of the Bitterroot.
A shadow slips through the silver grasses.
And then a moth.
And then the moon.

Autumn sun ...

I'm a summer person, without a doubt ... but there's also no doubt that this is a fine time of year in Montana. The winter light makes for striking photographs, and the snowy mountains can be extraordinarily evocative. And of course the sky is as big as ever.

Here's a shot I took last Saturday, driving south through Beaverhead County. Those are the Centennial Mountains in the distance.

Sports under a Big Sky ...

I promise you all that this is absolutely NOT going to turn into a sports blog ... but I have one more football photo for you. I ended up in the small town of Lima last Saturday afternoon, and watched one of the playoff games for the state 6-man high school football championship. The game pitted a plucky co-op team from the little towns of Reed Point and Rapelje against an evil squad from Dubois, Idaho.

It was a close game, but in the end the Reed Point/Rapelje Renegades were a point short. Regardless, though, it's hard to envision a finer setting for a football game than this:

Bozeman Halloween ...

I confess that I'm not really much of a fan of Halloween, so I devoted yesterday to another of my small-town drives ... but I got back to Bozeman in time to stop by the town's historic Story Mansion. The Friends group that supports the facility had decorated the outside of the place in honor of the day, and were handing out treats on the front porch. It was all quite a success, and the old house looked extremely cool: