A Film Worth Its Cost

It’s always hard to completely resolve the conflict that arises from using technology as a platform for discussing environmental concerns. The simple fact that one has the technology available to use implies that it was manufactured somewhere out of something. Where did the gold contained within the computer I am using to post this come from? If you don’t know, then I’ll tell you; from a mine. And along with it came all the associated environmental implications that accompany mining operations.

As it was me who created a demand for its product, I am responsible for that mine’s existence. Yes, I would like to tell you that mining has a significant impact on the environment and that I am against the proposed mining operation looking to tunnel under my local wilderness area, the Cabinet Mountains, but that would only serve to further reveal my hypocrisy. “So you’re telling me that you don’t like mines via a network of copper wire.” Yeah, no one is buying that.

Still, here and there, gems come shining through that, despite the impact of their manufacture, speak loudly enough to our sensibilities that they drown out the hypocrisy ensured by their existence. One such example is a recent documentary film about the proposed Pebble Mine near Alaska’s Bristol Bay entitled Red Gold.

If you dig deep enough into Red Gold you will find it is filled with just the stuff I am referring to; it took a helicopter to get that shot of the Bingham Canyon mine. But the power of the film is undeniable. Yes, we need gold mines, it says; but maybe we don’t need one right here. Perhaps fish and fishermen have a rightful place beside video cameras and computers. If it takes a film to get us to ask ourselves this question, maybe it’s worth leveling another hilltop to make it.

Someday, we are going to be forced to make some really hard decisions about what it is we truly must safeguard. It isn’t today, but it is definitely coming. At some point, a choice will have to be made between things that sustain us and things that merely convenient. Its inherent hypocrisies (you can’t run a fishing boat or float plane on salmon guts) notwithstanding, Red Gold is just the type of dialogue that needs to take place on the subject. If you get the chance, I highly recommend it. And if at all possible, walk to the theater.

Good Luck With That

We don’t have cable or satellite, but in between episodes of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show streamed from ComedyCentral.com on Brandi’s laptop, we have been known to watch the occasional 80s flick from my collection of bargain DVDs. Brandi has a second hand TV she got from a friend, an old tube behemoth that weighs a ton, which has been sitting on the floor in a corner of the living room. We have talked about getting some sort of stand to put it on ever since she moved into the place, but the floor was working out well enough. That is until we got dissed by a six year old.

Our friends Jake & Lisa Pintok were over the other night for pizza and a game of Balderdash. Their young boys Ashton, Zachary, and Andrew came along as well. After a couple rounds of rather imaginative Balderdash answers, Lisa put a video on the television. This was an attempt to distract either the boys or Brandi & I; we’re still not sure which, as it was equally successful with both groups.

Before the video began, Zachary gave us all a concerned look. Since he had eaten most of his pizza and hadn’t injured one of his brothers in a while, everyone was curious as to what might be the problem. When Lisa asked him what was wrong, Zach’s answer was, “Their TV is on the ground.”

Fact was we had wanted to get a stand for the TV from the beginning, but we were trying to be responsible about it. Did we need a stand? Obviously, from Zach’s comment, yes we did. So much for reduce. We looked at all the second hand stores in town and watched craigslist; no luck. Okay, no love for reuse or recycle either. Wal-Mart was looming, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet, even if it meant suffering kinks in our necks from watching our ground bound television all winter.

Myself, I believe one of the central tenets of responsible consumerism and conservation is to obtain as much as possible from local sources. We live in Western Montana and there are trees everywhere. Let’s build a TV stand ourselves, I told Brandi. We spent her lunch hour drafting up some plans and took a Saturday trip to the lumber yard. Sure we could build it, we discovered, but not only did I not have the tools for the job, wood alone would cost us twice what we would pay for a pre-fab TV stand at Wal-Mart.

Now, I’m sorry, but this is too much to bear. I don’t care how you measure it; if you think this is the most economical way of doing business, your math is flawed. There is simply no chance that cutting trees in Canada, making particle board from them, shipping this wood to China, manufacturing a TV stand out of it, and then shipping the TV stand back to Montana is less expensive than it would be to cut trees in the Bitterroot, mill lumber in Darby, truck it to Hamilton, and have me bang together a funky TV stand on my own. Even if the math supported it, which I’m sure it doesn’t, it makes absolutely no sense to do things this way.

We need to change our business model if we are ever going to overcome the hurdles facing this nation and this world, this generation and those to come. The product path I describe above sounds ridiculous, but it is the reality more often than not. Given tax laws, wage disparities, and cheap fuel costs, I’m sure it appears profitable in the short run, but it is not viable over the long term. Not only that, it is irresponsible; economically, environmentally, and socially. It takes advantage of foreign workers, it wastes resources, and it robs from the local community. It may have worked for a time, but that time has passed.

Certainly, we could have lived without the TV stand. I’m not going to argue that point. The best thing we could have done is just ditch the TV altogether, but sometimes it’s good to temper the ideal with reality. Given the TV stand, the point I want to make is that I live in the woods alongside a bunch of loggers and carpenters who are unemployed due to a failing economy, and I can’t even find a TV stand made from local hands out of local lumber. Instead, thanks to poor mathematics and smoke & mirror financial deceptions, it makes more sense that I buy one made in China from Canadian pulp wood.

All I can say is: good luck with that. If you need me, I’ll be watching Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Don't Be Scared, Cobe

I’ve been hanging out in Hamilton with Brandi. We met this past summer while we were both working wildland fire in Kootenai Country. She is pretty amazing. When I first met her, she was quite the conservationist, but I’ve been doing a real good job breaking her of such sensible habits as only driving when she has to, walking to the store, not buying things she doesn’t need, and turning off lights when she leaves a room. We have been getting along very well, and I have high hopes for us, if we can only get past Alaska.

As I mentioned, I was working on the Kootenai when I met Brandi. I’ve been working in fire management since 2000, and one day I had an opportunity to take a new position within the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, working dispatch in Lincoln County where I grew up. At the time I took the job, I was working in Missoula and getting awful tired of that town. The job on the Koot seemed like just the ticket; I could stay at my pop’s cabin for minimal rent and get the dogs out of the city. Besides all that, I had planned on moving back to Troy anyway, to research and write a novel. This was perfect.

That attitude didn’t last too long. A funny thing about hometowns; no matter how much you change while you’re away, or think you do, they always seem to bring you back around to who you were. By the time fire season 2008 was getting started on the Kootenai, I was looking for a way out. One day at the office, my buddy Slick Rick and I got talking about Alaska. Working in a dispatch office, you’re always trying to find something new to Google. That’s what I should do, I said. I’m gonna Google jobs in Alaska.

One Google search and two emails later, I was filling out an application for a new dispatch job with the State of AK Division of Forestry in Tok, Alaska. If I thought the job on the Kootenai was good, this was great. The job announcement was for the position of lead dispatcher, which meant I would get the supervisory experience I hadn’t been getting a chance at here in the Northern Rockies region. And talk about peace and quiet to write; Tok was literally in the middle of f’n nowhere, despite its dubious distinction of being the first Alaskan town after Canada along the Alcan. I’d already gotten all I needed out of Troy as far as research for the novel. When they offered me the job, I was on top of the world.

Not because of the job, however. The job offer had taken on a rather bittersweet flavor, actually. No, the reason I was on top of the world, as I told my pops the afternoon it happened, was because Brandi McCoy called me. Sure, I’d been subtly pursuing her, but it was more due to the fact that I couldn’t NOT pursue her than through any belief that it would truly amount to anything. Still, it had amounted to something, and that something has turned out to be much more worthwhile than I could ever have imagined.

So now we’re preparing to say our goodbyes. The ferry to Alaska pulls out of Bellingham, Washington, on February 20th, and the dogs and I will be on it. How’s that going to work out, you ask. I don’t know. Brandi is an absolute beauty, in every sense of the word, so I’m feeling a bit insecure about the situation, as you might imagine. We have been at each other’s throats lately, to be perfectly honest. We’re both just scared, I guess. It’s been pretty good, this thing we’ve found, and we’re worried we might lose it. And we might.

Brandi is going to get her own dog. I’ve been fighting it tooth and nail, but I couldn’t tell you why if you asked. I would give you a lot of reasons, but I couldn’t really tell you why. My best guess goes something like this: Siberian huskies were what I brought to the table; if she has one of her own, where does that leave me?

In Alaska, I guess, but there will be plenty more on that later. Check back.

Hypocrisy Reigns

Don’t get me wrong. I know I’m a hypocrite. Certainly, the best thing I could do for the environment is drive my shiny Chevy pickup off a cliff. Am I going to do that? Of course not, at least not as a favor to the environment. Maybe because I am too busy fiddling with my iPod (one luxury I don’t have) or updating this blog from my web enabled cell phone (another item I haven’t procured … yet), but not to save the rainforest or anything nearly as noble as that.

To be quite plain, unless we are all going to live in skin tents or grass huts like aborigines there is no lifestyle choice that isn’t going to selfishly degrade the environment. I know that, and I’m not going to try and pretend that I don’t. But this is a blog, and it just wouldn’t seem right if I didn’t editorialize at least a tiny little bit. And, hey, if someone wants to bring back the buffalo and let folks chase them around with a bow and arrow, I’ll be the first to sign up. But I know it wouldn’t change anything if I did, unless everyone else did it as well. We all know that’s not going to happen, so I’ll try to remain realistic.

Of all the things I would like to say on the subject, the most important, I believe, is that we are never going to be able to buy our way out of any predicament. There is nothing new under the sun, and a lot of fine people before me have already addressed the issue of a growing human presence and the extensive environmental degradation associated with it. Somewhere in there, some bright individual came up with the perfect solution to the problem, if you’re willing to accept that there even is one.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

The thing I always find is that most of us fail to realize that those words are placed in order of importance. I see a lot of “green” interest in recycling projects. Well, that’s a good thing to do, I suppose, if you’re not willing to start at the beginning. Maybe you’re easing into it; I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that the first word, reduce, describes the action that is going to produce the biggest results.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve definitely gotten lazier. My willingness to reduce has certainly tended to subside. I have more possessions, more detritus. I’m better with the second two, but reduction has become less of a priority. Perhaps I’m losing my idealism, but I hope not.

And maybe that’s not as true as I think. In some facets of my life, I have reduced, significantly. When I’m hungry, I don’t just buy a meal off the shelf. I’m buying whole foods and making things from scratch more often. I’m happy with simpler things, like a board game or a good book. The habit of driving around in circles looking for something to do has certainly curtailed since my youth.

Still, I have more. A computer, the internet, a gas swilling V8 powered pickup truck. Does this make me a bad person? Probably. Am I able to change it completely today? Don’t I wish. For all my hypocrisy, I will tell you this though, with perfect honesty. My vision of an ideal existence is barely getting by on the merits of a piece of land and my own hard work. Right now, I just don’t have the money to get my start. But if someone pointed out a homestead to me and said “Everything you need to survive is right here on this farm. If you never ask for one more thing you can have it” then I would do just that.

So if any of that piques your interest, check back. For now, Brandi and I are taking our skis up to the pass and letting the dogs run.