Give This Man a Pole and He'll Tangle His Line

Buried amid the mass of random ramblings, tedious humdrum, and other exquisitely mundane revelations found on the typical Facebook newsfeed, one can sometimes unearth a real gem. I discovered one such pearl of wisdom just the other day, when my dear friend Josh Tallmadge posted a comment that really struck me. He said, “Thank god for fishing. If we have fishing, we have hope.”

This notion intrigued me. Josh’s observation seemed to be one of those that go a little deeper. It had a broader connotation, implications that went beyond the surface. It set my boat adrift upon the waters of philosophy. Might as well cast around a bit, I reckoned, and wet a little line.

The first thought I hauled up was that by its very nature fishing is an act of faith, at least for a hack like me. An accomplished angler will certainly argue that any real proficiency depends on a whole lot of skill, but I would venture that even they hold out a little bit of hope while they're waiting for a fish to take the bait. For those less consummate, fishing is the definition of optimism. We cast our net into the dark unknown and hope for the best, never truly certain of what, if anything, we might find.

The next thing I hit upon was the absolute imperative contained within Josh’s comment. Logically, if we accept his assertion as true, then its converse must hold as well. So it follows that, without fishing, we are without hope.

Problem there is, fishing is quickly becoming a delicate proposition. Fisheries worldwide are being depleted at ever increasing rates, overfishing threatens marine biodiversity, and human activity such as resource extraction, waste disposal, and power generation destroys habitat. One in five people relies on fish as their primary source of protein. Josh’s statement may have been made in regards to more personal considerations, but it was equally applicable on a global scale. Loss of fishing might dash the hopes of billions.

There is a wonderful old proverb that goes something like, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat forever.” I have long grasped this metaphor, but in the context of Josh’s comment I have come to see it in a new light. Nowadays, a person can go to market and buy a fish without ever having any idea of where it came from or how it got here. He has been given his fish, and today he will eat. But at what cost? The man doesn’t know. Perhaps there is something to be gained from “teaching the man to fish”, from creating a connection between him and what sustains him, something that offers hope for the future rather than just for the moment.

Lastly I landed at the realization that I need go fishing. Fishing for me is frustrating, since I typically meet with little or no success, mostly due to the fact that I have no idea what it is I’m doing. On one trip up the Blackfoot, after casting with my new Ugly Stik for half an hour to no avail, I handed my rod off to my buddy Tyler Hanley, who promptly caught three fish. Fishing is a learned skill, usually passed down from generation to generation. Tyler learned it from his grandfather, and Josh is teaching it to his boys. Since I want my son Keegan to learn it, my only hope is that there is some patient soul out there who is willing to teach me.

There is a reason why fishing so often appears in literature. Its connotations run deep, inhabiting the very depths of human condition. Fishing gives me faith, even if all I’m really doing is just throwing my line around. Josh is right. If we have fishing, we have hope. Thank god for fishing.

A less than able fly fisherman practices his dubious casting technique on the North Fork Coeur d'Alene river during an annual camping trip to Kit Price

If you are interested in getting out on some of the world's greatest rivers with one of the best guides in the business, contact Sean McAfee. His services can also be secured through these premier outfitters:

Kootenai River Guides

Emerging Rivers

The Adventures of Little Steve, Vol. 3

Winter has arrived in the Bitterroot. As if this wasn't obvious enough from the solidly frozen water in the dogs' dish or the icy glaze on every window pane, my good friend Jake Pintok called from the comfort of his desk in the Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor's Office to inform me that it was eleven below zero down in Sula last night. Personally, though the moon rising over the mountains was an amazing sight and bluebird skies are always appreciated, I could go for a little less cold and a little more snow. Brandi is of the opinion there is white stuff enough to test our new dog sled up at Lost Trail this weekend, but looking out from my writing nook at the rock hard skiff currently struggling to simply cover the grass in the yard, I am inclined to believe that the runners will probably be riding on pine litter instead.

The real disappointment in finding winter has arrived in Montana, for both Jacob and I, is the knowledge that neither of us put any meat in the freezer. Jake doesn't have much excuse, as he had smaller elk in his sights on several occasions and passed them up for a shot at a big bull, but then again he has the luxury of still having plenty of meat in his freezer from the bull he took two years ago, since he has yet to crack the nut of getting Lisa and the boys to eat venison. Brandi and I, on the other hand, live off the stuff, and though not completely decimated, the stock of steak and ground chuck stored in our freezer from the young bull I took last season is fast dwindling.

Hunting big game is hard, and it certainly isn't for everyone. It takes leg work and the ability to coldly and calculatedly take the life of one of God's beautiful creations. Even when it works out, it isn't necessarily as cost effective as buying half a beef from one of the kids in the local 4-H chapter. It is however, for most of us who engage in the practice, a connection to our farthest past, a link to the natural world and our place in it, and an endeavor that takes an infinitely greater responsibility for itself than ordering a quarter pounder at the McDonald's drive-thru.

So I'm sorry Little Steve. Your dad failed you in his oldest duty, that of putting meat on the family table. Will I save those final few packages of elk in hopes of ensuring that you grow up eating the stuff? Yes. But I have to say I'm more than a little disappointed with the way this season's hunt went, especially what with having wasted several opportunities. I'll tell you more about that later, when you'll better understand.

Stories of hunting success aside, things have been going rather well for Little Steve. At the very least Doc Laraway says he is progressing at a normal rate. He seems to get the hiccups quite often, and he occasionally sees fit to batter his mama's insides looking for a way out of the cozy cocoon she provides for him. Sitting here feeling my toes go numb, this rushing desire to get out and face life only serves to demonstrate to me the naivety of youth. If he knew how cold it was here in the house, I don't think he would be in such a big hurry to escape her warm confines.

The Greenest Lie on Earth

Though it may not have appealed to everyone, 350.org’s International Day of Climate Action garnered plenty of attention, making headlines on front pages of newspapers worldwide and resulting in over 19,000 images on Flickr. That’s quite an impression for such an innocuous number.

For those who don’t know, 350.org is an association of activists who believe 350 parts per million is the highest possible concentration of CO2 that can be present in the atmosphere without adversely affecting life as we know it here on Planet Earth. On Sunday, October 24th, the group held over 5200 events in 181 countries around the globe. Their goal was to heighten awareness about carbon dioxide emission and its possible contribution to greenhouse effect through visual demonstrations involving the number 350.

It seems that ever since the Age of Reason, everything has had to have a number. Though quite useful in terms of ratio, these specific magnitudes are insignificant, because assigning numbers never really changes anything. It wouldn’t matter if I said the speed of light was 299,792,458 meters per second or 7 billion; the qualifying consideration in the matter is that it’s a physical constant in relation to the rest of the universe, and no amount of quantifying is going to alter that fact. If people want to put the upper limit on CO2 at 350 parts per million; I say fine. It doesn’t make a difference whether it’s 350 or 750. The underlying assumption is that there is a physical limitation, a point beyond which any more carbon is simply too much.

Along with the iPhone, carbon is huge right now. Carbon cycle, carbon sequestration, carbon footprint, carbon sink, carbon offset; the terms conjure up concepts at once logical and quixotic. It’s like name dropping; just mentioning carbon instantly elevates a dialogue to a higher level, into a realm both influential and sublime.

I really don’t know how I feel about carbon, but I am quite certain about where I stand on carbon footprints, the evaluation of which is currently all the rage. That the practice is just a mechanism for the continuation of bad behavior is readily apparent from discussions regarding carbon credits and the proliferation of carbon exchanges. It’s a springboard for discrimination and elitism, a way of preserving an untenable lifestyle while maintaining an air of superiority at being “greener than thou”.

John Muir is quoted as having said, “Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe.” A personal favorite of mine, this musing was in the forefront of my mind as I read an abstract of an article by David Owen on Treehugger.com that claimed New Yorkers Are the Most Eco-Friendly People in the US - Without Even Trying.

Though interesting as an introspection, this assertion contains as much rubbish as a New York city garbage barge. In examining their respective carbon footprints, it is plausible that careful manipulation of the calculation’s scope and structure could result in a smaller quantity being assigned to an individual New Yorker household than to an average two car garage commuting ranch dweller in rural or suburban America, but arrival at this product is completely dependent upon process. Measuring the personal energy bill of an individual living in a New York high rise with central heating or the number of gallons of gasoline consumed by a subway riding Manhattanite without considering the carbon footprint of this attendant infrastructure, to say nothing of global environmental ties, is mere subterfuge. It is pure artifice, aimed at substantiating a standard of living while turning a blind eye upon its true price.

Deforestation in Third World and emerging countries is driven by the market pressures of wealthier nations. Clean air and water in America comes at the cost of dirty air and water in China. Beef served in Manhattan steakhouses is grazed in Montana before being shipped cross country to market. The carbon footprint of an average New Yorker is not contained within the city margins. It is imprinted upon the entire globe.

All figures aside, simple facts remain. There is no cleaner way to exist than through a simple agrarian subsistence lifestyle. This is the mode of living advocated in the philosophies of naturalists such as Muir and Thoreau; a human existence based on the stewardship of locality, not the sprawling disassociation of the contemporary American landscape. If each were left to rely strictly on their own means, the State of Vermont would continue to sustain itself, albeit in a much different way, long after Manhattan lay in ruins.

New York is a flower; a beautiful, fragrant flourish created and maintained by the larger organism that supports it. Although extremely efficient, our cities depend completely upon other regions of our country, and the world, for their sustenance. They are as inseparable from the whole as fruit from the vine.

Until the developed world moves away from an economy based on comparative advantage and cheap energy and embraces a system comprised primarily of provincial production architecture founded in basic natural processes performed at a local scale, there will be no hope for a balance between humanity and its global environ. Unfortunately, there is no easier answer, no science and technology that will save us, and no amount of statistical analysis will suffice to change our physical state. We must take ownership of our ecologic inclusion, make claim to the earth that sustains us, and root ourselves in its soil. We cannot push our impact to the periphery and deny the existence of what we cannot see. To survive, we must sacrifice. There must be dirt beneath our fingernails and muck about our feet, and we must accept it as our own. Like any catharsis, there will be growing pains. But I, for one, believe the call to arms that is the environmental movement is really only an expression of our deeper longing for a simpler existence and that we, as a whole, prefer life as a butterfly.

A Glass Half Full

I often find myself talking as if the glass were half empty. It gets rather annoying. Despite my rampant cynicism, however, there exists much in the world about which I am truly optimistic. Patagonia is one of those things.

I clearly recall that first encounter with one of their catalogs. The year was 1996, and I had just returned from a three month circumnavigation of the United States, a dirtbag exploration of the continent that included an excursion to Puerto Penasco, Mexico, and several frigid nights spent backpacking a section of the Appalachian Trail in Georgia. Signs of spring may have begun to appear in the south, but winter still maintained a firm grip on Missoula, Montana. After retrieving my wayward pack, which had gone errant somewhere along the bus route between Cincinnati and Chicago, I slogged through the snow up Rattlesnake Canyon to the house where my brother Jeb lived.

Thumbing through a copy of the company’s spring offering in his bedroom, I was struck by two things. The first was an extraordinary photograph of a climber performing a pinch grip front lever beneath a trailhead sign. The second was Patagonia’s announcement that their entire line of cotton clothing would be going organic.

Patagonia inspires me. Whether through the extremely motivational images contained within their catalogs or by their honest admissions about the unavoidable environmental cost of doing business, Patagonia provides me with exactly what I feel is so lacking in this world: something to believe in. To me, Patagonia isn’t just a clothing company. It’s a role model.

Patagonia is a throwback. Their aim is to make stuff that works, not stuff that sells. I bought my first Patagonia garment, an expedition weight Capilene pullover, in 1997. Twelve years later, it’s still goes in my pack on every outing.

The company’s commitment to conservation is unparalleled, yet they are the first to admit that they’re still a business and that everything comes at a price. In a post on the company’s blog The Cleanest Line, a member of their fabric development team is frank about the environmental expense of producing wetsuits. “Don’t settle for marketing “greenwash!”” the article cautions. A link from the Patagonia website leads visitors to the Footprint Chronicles, a mini-site where consumers can trace the journey of specific products and learn firsthand the environmental and social impacts of each purchase. Few companies seek to endow their customers with this level of accountability or exhibit such transparency.

Back in 1996, when Patagonia made the switch, they were one of the first firms to field an entire line of cotton clothing manufactured from organic fabric. They were at the vanguard of a movement, the goal of which was to reshape an industry. Other companies such as Sector 9 and Mission Playground have since followed suit, offering products today that allow consumers further opportunity to foster change through their choice in apparel.

Still clothing is only part of the equation. Patagonia’s whole approach is different. A careers page on their website claims Patagonia is always looking for motivated people to join the company ranks, especially if they share the firm’s love for outdoors, commitment to quality, and desire to make a difference. A paragraph at the bottom of the page reaffirms Patagonia’s ethic. “We work very hard to minimize our impacts on the environment, and we strongly believe that one person's actions can make a difference in the health of our environment,” it states. “In keeping with these values, we'd appreciate some sensitivity to environmental concerns in the preparation of your résumé materials. Please be environmentally responsible in the presentation of your information.”

It is a holistic approach that, to me, is captivating. It gives me pause, forcing me to reevaluate my own approach, my own route, my own line. Patagonia, I feel, is the corporate model of the future; industry that understands it has an obligation to seek ecologic integration as well as profit. It may still be business, but it’s business unusual.

Taking out the Trash

It was our first Saturday in Hamilton together since my return from Alaska, and we had intended on walking down to the Farmer’s Market with hopes of finding some fresh eggs to replace the ones now sizzling in the frying pan. While I set about burning breakfast, Brandi busied herself pulling played out pea plants from her garden and throwing them in the compost bin. She was only half done when I called her to come eat, so after Little Steve had his fill of pancakes we headed back outside to complete the task.

Our yard was in desperate need of some attention. It hadn’t seen much in the way of maintenance over the summer and had grown dry and dusty from constant dog frolics and indiscriminate watering schedules. Large quantities of husky down lay accumulated in every crack and crevice. As I could see it might be awhile before we’d be ready to leave, I grabbed a rake and began combing the ground.

I was still scratching at the hard pack and dead grass when Brandi finished her garden project, and her expression told me that a leisurely stroll through the Farmer’s Market had just been eclipsed by the more pressing needs of our own little plot. What better time to put in some work, we concluded, than Labor Day weekend?

Brandi had collected a large mound of pine needles and other debris when the snows had retreated last spring. It was slated for removal by our landlords, but months later remained heaped in a corner. After borrowing a wheelbarrow from one of Brandi’s co-workers, I scraped the ponderosa’s latest castings into several more piles, and we filled the pickup to capacity with woody detritus. Then we were off to the dump.

Admittedly, I had already given serious consideration to the roguish impulse that urged me to simply chuck the entire mess over a steep bank along one of the surrounding forest roads. It was all organic; with time, it would decompose. Bob had informed us that there would be a charge to dispose of it at the dump when he loaned us the wheelbarrow. I hated the idea of throwing away perfectly good money, but at least this way the worthless mess in our yard would one day be someone else’s pay dirt. Or so I thought.

We haven’t lived in the valley for long, barely a year, so it might just be a case of ignorance on my part. There may well be someplace here that processes organic material I have yet to discover. Still, I think the situation in the Bitterroot indicative of the general attitude toward refuse that prevails in this country. Our yard waste, I soon came to learn, would never realize its full potential as fertilizer. It wasn’t destined to become humus; it was nothing more than plain old rubbish.

I wasn’t aware at the time, but there is no landfill in Ravalli County. All waste generated in the Bitterroot Valley is taken to the transfer station in Victor for transport somewhere else. No effort is made to separate or categorically process the waste. My heart sunk as we were directed into a large steel building and told to empty the truckload of tree litter onto a concrete floor strewn with garbage.

A truck was parked on either side of us. One was filled with old broken furniture, the other household waste. The owners were busy dumping their loads upon the stained pad alongside ours. A small excavator stood ready to shovel the entire mess into a large compactor that oozed Styrofoam, broken glass, and kitchen litter. It smelled as if the entire building was rotting. We finished cleaning out the bed of the pickup, paid our fee, and drove away with the same thought bouncing around inside each of our heads.

“Would have been better off just dumping it in the woods.”

Although I sometimes postulate that a certain amount of organic detritus is in fact a necessary addition to a landfill if there is to be any hope for decomposition, I don’t see this tactic as being an effective waste stream management strategy. Gone are the days of perfunctorily plowing our waste out of sight, out of mind. Ravalli County in no way lacks open space; that it has no landfill only serves to underscore the gravity of the situation. Waste production has reached such a magnitude that nothing less than a comprehensive, systematic approach can possibly manage it.

Our breakfast nook is filled with recyclables. Paper, cardboard, glass, metal, plastic, are all arranged in neatly ordered stacks. There is little opportunity for the proper disposal of recyclables in Hamilton, so we haul them with us whenever we visit Washington. We have begun washing plastic baggies for reuse, and Brandi almost has me trained not to forget the fabric grocery bags when we leave for the store. Now that we have a compost bin, trips to the dumpster in the alley have decreased significantly. Even so, we need to do more.

Truth is our expectations, as a culture, are in need of a complete overhaul. Our entire attitude must evolve. We can no longer afford to pitch refuse haphazardly into landfills. We must resist our craving for disposability and lower our tolerance for garbage in America. Most importantly, we must come to grips with the fact that, since there truly are differences between pine needles and trash, there must be different ways with which to handle them.

Three R's and a Microbus

Hanging out with my brother Dagan is always entertaining. He is a boisterous character, and not above expressing his opinion, loudly. I hadn’t seen him since last July, but it just so happened that, while Brandi and I were driving to the Tri-Cities for her sister Alece’s wedding, he was making a pilgrimage north with his daughter Arianna and their buddy Stephen. Seizing the opportunity, I contacted Dag and made arrangements to rendezvous with him when he passed through Kennewick, WA.

My brother is passionate about machines, but he is truly devoted to that simplest of automobiles, the air-cooled Volkswagen. As a show of faith, he was making the 1000 mile trek from Petaluma, California, to Montana in his ’59 Type 2 camper conversion. Dagan had rescued the Transporter from a barn in Oregon years before and had restored it to a usable condition. It ran reliably, but as anyone familiar with classic Volkswagens will be quick to tell you, there is a reason why every VW owner can perform an engine swap on the side of the road.

When I hadn’t heard from him by the appointed time, I gave Dagan a call. Apparently attempting to cross the Central Oregon desert during the hottest part of the day was taking its toll on the camper. For the moment they were huddled in the shade of an overpass, my brother said, waiting for the Volkswagen’s motor to cool down.

If a VW is one thing, it is idiosyncratic. Facing one hundred degree heat, Dagan’s camper was floundering. Ambient air temperature in the Columbia River Basin was so high that the engine could no longer cool itself. Detonation was the result; the risk, a blown motor. Dagan, air-cooled aficionado that he is, knew better than to push the limits of his machine, even if he had brought along another entire engine, just in case.

After a short rest, the VW finally made Kennewick, and I met them in the parking lot of a McDonald’s restaurant just off Highway 395. Dagan prattled on proudly about the Volkswagen for awhile before segueing into one of his familiar rants.

“What I can’t stand are the people who want to crush all the old cars and ship them to Japan to build hybrids.”

Though he might not appear so, my brother Dagan truly is an environmentalist. He may not buy into the latest trends in green consumer culture, but at least he understands there is a hierarchy to the three big R’s of environmental responsibility.

First, reduce consumption wherever possible. Second, reuse everything. Lastly, recycle whatever remains.

An obvious necessity, recycling will never be the answer. Certainly, recycling is a great method for keeping waste out of the landfill, but recycling a perfectly useful old car in order to manufacture a new one? As Dagan notes, this doesn't necessarily a green footprint make.

Considering each vehicle’s carbon footprint in its entirety, it is highly unlikely that crushing a Volkswagen to build a new Toyota Prius would have any less environmental impact than simply continuing to operate the VW itself. What it does do, however, is allow American consumer culture to persist unchecked, with a clean, green, conscious. Move over, V-Dub bus; a new flagship for the alternative lifestyle has arrived. Rather than buying into the hype, Dagan goes green by reusing existing parts to keep his old camper on the road.

As widespread and pervasive as humanity’s impact has become, there is no choice but to recycle, with even greater scope and diligence than ever before. Still, buying newly manufactured goods, even those made from recycled material, has to be relegated to the final option, after alternatives of reduction and reuse have already been explored and exhausted. Clearly, everything that can be must be recycled, and consumers should be rewarded for doing so. But a conservation effort focused on manufacture and consumption, even if it does revolve around recycled materials and green technology, is missing the point.

Reduce. Reuse. Then recycle.

Volkswagen owners are a tribal bunch. After spying Dagan’s camper in the parking lot, several members of the local VW club joined us with their own aging Type 2s. Their discussion was animated, as any conversation among enthusiasts tends to be, centered wholly on Volkswagens and their relationship with this emblematic automobile.

Following the impromptu gathering, I bid farewell to my brother and niece and drove back to Brandi’s parents’ place. The bridal party had assumed control of the house, so I occupied myself by helping her father John set a fence post and finalize some last minute wedding preparations.

The next day Alece and Brandon were married in a beautiful ceremony ministered by Brandi in a neighbor’s yard. A reception dinner followed at the McCoy’s home next door, complete with a diverse assortment of liquid refreshment and the associated mound of discarded cans and bottles.

The McCoy’s are ardent recyclers, and they had made every effort to maximize recycling at the reception. Separate receptacles had been placed beside each trash bin in hopes of capturing as many recyclables as possible. Good use was made of them at first, but as the revelry continued on into the night, more trash and fewer recyclables found its way into the recycling containers.

When I wandered out onto the patio the next morning, I found Brandi up to her elbows in a large black plastic bag. She was happily digging plastic bottles and aluminum cans out of the trash. Shooting her a dubious look, I set to work myself, collecting frosting smeared beer bottles from the garbage and tossing them into a pile.

Knowing we can’t do everything, we must do what we can.

Fire, Oil, or Ice

Tok is cold, and there is no reason it should be inhabited. Surrounding lands don’t contain any economically extractable resources. The Coast Guard maintains a soaring antenna array here, but otherwise Tok exists as a junction of Alaska’s two most notable highways. Coming from Canada on the Alaska Highway, Tok is the place where you can either turn left and go to Anchorage or continue on to Fairbanks. Subsistence living and road kill keeps its thousand odd residents alive. Several nearby native communities contribute a few more souls to the census. Moose is common on menus, as is minus seventy on thermometers. Cut wood all winter through, and your house will still be cold in Tok.

Oil flows through Tok’s heart. Town smells of it. The oil burning furnace that heats my cabin spews exhaust fumes. All my clothes reek of burnt fuel. A carbon monoxide detector is requisite. I haven’t felt good since I got here, and I fear a minor case of monoxide poisoning. Not acute; just enough to give me symptoms enjoyably akin to dysentery. Still, it’s been negative twenty five most mornings when I drive to work. Poisoned has to be better than frozen solid.

Steamy exhaust pours from everything. A dirty pall drifts overhead. It isn’t as bitter cold as minus twenty five could feel, but standing around for long simply begins to freeze you. Burning oil holds the chill at bay. A scent of petroleum surrounds everything human. The electricity plant runs on it. Without it, little of Tok would remain.

Jeff Hermanns at Tok Forestry looks at countless acres of burnt spruce forest north of the Tanana River and sees another fuel source with which to satiate Tok’s appetite for combustibles. A massive fire scar, what remains of 2004’s Taylor Complex blaze, spans vast lands across the Tanana Valley State Forest. It is filled with standing dead wood, kiln dried by the fire’s intense heat. Jeff’s aim is to get Tok off North Slope oil and onto Tanana Valley biomass.

Biomass is not going to save western civilization. It would take many times the amount of arable land available in America to grow enough soybeans to fully replace diesel in the United States. All current biowaste production can account for only a fraction of what is necessary to keep us operating at existing capacities. Even if every possible acre of productive land in the world grew crops for energy, it wouldn’t be enough to power the grid.

Not so in Tok.

Tok, Alaska, is off the grid; its electricity comes from a diesel fueled generator at the AP&T power station downtown. Alaska Power and Telephone, who is significantly vested in oil futures I must assume, provides electricity to town and several native villages by burning petroleum. Jeff looks at the millions of board feet around him, considers the amount of electricity used by the local community currently, factors in the generation capacity of modern technologies and the cost of infrastructure, and still believes he can cut the price of electricity in half by fueling Tok’s power plant with biomass.

Because population is low in Tok, Hermanns believes Alaska’s state forest can sustain the local community’s fuel needs using just the timber harvest currently allowed. In theory, the allowable cut should leave forest reserves in quantities ample enough that at no time will another cut be precluded. A biomass fueled power plant in Tok would be capable of providing for all of town’s electrical needs while providing cheap district heat to entities such as the library, university extension, and emergency services.

Forest literally carpets Tok. It continues unbroken in all directions like a blanket. Spruce as thick as dog hair comes up nearly to my doorstep. Fire has threatened to raze town on several occasions, and potential exists for exactly such an event at any time. In defense, Jeff’s fire crew at Tok Area Office, funded by National Fire Plan money, treats hundreds of acres of urban forest, reducing fuels and creating fuel breaks along roads. Around Tok School, biomass from treated acreage is piled and left to dry. It awaits the chipper and biomass boiler Hermanns and Tok School’s grant writer, Scott McManus, intend to purchase with funds they have been granted.

It all makes great sense. Oil delivers more bang for the buck than biomass and is more easily transported. Despite AP&T’s resultant loss of revenue within the local market, biomass power in Tok frees up oil that could be sold elsewhere or, better yet, saved for future generations. An added benefit is timber industry in Tok, employing local workers to provide for local needs.

Tok School biomass project is smart and progressive. It lowers the threat that Tok School will be destroyed by wildfire and essentially guarantees the facility will be heated for the foreseeable future, oil or no. After the fuel reduction wood is consumed, chip wood will be purchased from local vendors.

The problem with Jeff Hermanns’ vision is that this is America. We’re not socialists. Education is about the only thing we are guaranteed, other than death and taxes. In theory, State of Alaska can’t develop infrastructure. That’s a service provided by private sector, for profit.

One might hope that native corporations in Tanana Valley would see the opportunity to invest in themselves by both funding and constructing infrastructure that benefits their own communities, but so far that appears unlikely. Subsidies foot much of residents’ heating and power bills, so most Alaskans simply continue status quo. Every tax dollar Alaskans give Washington is returned to the state twice fold in the form of federal funding, which minimizes the impetus to change. The constant flow of North Slope oil south is worth that much.

What Jeff in his role as Area Forester and the State of Alaska can do is continue to develop the potential for sustainable biomass harvest and extraction from the Tanana Valley State Forest and promote biomass industry within the local community. Someday rising oil prices will force Alaska to look to its forest resources for light and heat. For now, Jeff is running ahead of the curve, which is the definition of progressive.

The handyman called today to report what he found wrong at the cabin. I have no experience with oil furnaces, but my gut feeling that it was pumping exhaust gases into my living space was confirmed. Bad layout had caused the outlet pipe to collapse where it made a right angle. Fumes were backing up into the house, a potentially fatal situation. Pretty bad air, was how he described it.

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.