Ecorover in the Queen City: Helena, Montana

There I was in Helena, Montana's capital, for two days. As a representative for the faculty union at My College, I engaged in pre-budgetary negotiations (along with reps from other faculty unions) with represenatives from our Office of the Commisioner of Higher Education. The sessions went very well and were cordial & collaborative--a welcome relief after having engaged in contract bargaining sessions with some of the same management folks.

And there are worse places in world to spend two days. First of all, Helena is just one hour from Butte, and it's a scenic trip over the Continental Divide at Elk Park and across the Boulder hill. Elk Park is aptly named, for sure enough there was a big herd or two out on the greening meadows. Still lots of snow back in the trees and on north faces, though, and I think the elk are about a week late returning to calving areas.

Helena is home to the Sleeping Giant Brewing Company/Brewhouse Bar & Grill. For years, the Brewhouse served the best barbeque ribs in Montana. I'm not so sure about that, now, for the latest batch of raspberry chipotle was wimpy at best. The ribs themselves had their usual succulent, slow smoked, texture & flavor. And they go well with the truly excellent Tumbleweed IPA. Let's not forget the fully ripened and smoked jalapenos in the sauce next time, though!

The MEA-MFT put us up at the Wingate near the airport. It's an interesting neighborhood, with modest homes on small, grassy lots and a sort of anything-goes approach to things like putting your truck up on blocks for curbside repairs and erecting huge amateur radio antennae towers:

There are some real gems in the 'hood, like this classic little "dollhouse:"

The neighborhood is very flat, so I put in a couple of brisk miles without ever raising my heartbeat, and before I realized I should get back to the hotel for my usual early bedtime. In walking around uptown Butte, you KNOW when you've walked a mile or so, given the steep hills and 6,000 foot elevation. Still, a pleasant walk. Early the next morning I repeated a shorter version of it and was pleased the notorius mule deer of Helena's residential streets were out and about:


That day's negotiating session was in the Capitol Building (constructed 1896-1902). The Irish revolutinary and early Montana governor Thomas Francis Meagher (bronze, 1905) greets you as you approach the statehouse:

Inside, there is lots of art, including a few bronzes of Montana's finest, including Jeanette "I cannot vote for war" Rankin (1880-1973), a pacifist that served Montana in the U.S. House of Representatives and voted against U.S. involvement in both World War I and II:

And Maureen and Mike Mansfield (U.S. Representative 1943-53; Senate 1953-77):

The high, stained glass windows of the cupola (i.e. dome) is breathtaking:

And the murals decorating four sides of the cupola's base tell you a lot about how early 20th century Montanans felt about the role of Indians, Frontiersmen, Cowboys, and Miners in the formation of the young state:




Helena, Montana: a nice place to visit.

The Moulton Journal: Springtime in February?

Wow, it's been a hectic week. The return trip from Orono, Maine, class projects heating up & students needing help, faculty union-related business, participating in the Poetry Palooza at the Venus Rising Cafe (hosted by the Butte Silver Bow Arts Foundation, see http://www.bsbarts.org/)... It all makes me glad for cross country skiing, which provides a regular link to nature and an aerobic workout where the stress slides away like snow on a steep metal roof.

I packed my Fischer E99s (the SUV of cross country skis) to Orono, and had a few delightful mornings on the 25 km of trails that loop around the edges of the University of Maine campus. Here's one trailhead next to the athletic fields:

The trails are very flat compared with Montana skiing, and they are extremely well maintained. Lots of white-tailed deer and a few moose. Though a little wide for my tastes, what an asset to have in your college backyard! They get used a lot--cross country skiing is far more popular in Maine than in Montana. Most every town (Bangor, Old Town, etc) seems to have its own trail system, and there are connecting trails so that you can ski from point-to-point most anywhere in the state, it seems.

The weather was truly Maniacal: perfect snow and 25 deg F one morning, rain and slush the next morning, -5 deg F with fresh snow on ice the next... For an Allegheny Mountain boy like me, though, it was a joy to ski amid the mixed hemlock/white pine/hardwood forest. Few trees are more beautiful than the graceful hemlock with its gentle boughs:

Or the beech still clinging to its leaves in the middle of winter:

Back at The Moulton, weather was very spring-like last week. The snow on Big Flat (aka Moonlight Flat) set up firmly, making it possible to tour about anywhere you cared to go. So long as you were out in the open and not in the woods, the snow would hold you up. For skiers new to The Moulton, Big Flat can be reached from the south end of Neversweat or from where the meadow crosses Claim Jumper. The trails lie just to the east of Big Flat, and you're never more than a hundred yards or two away from the trails. Here's RTD, trying to catch up:

Our mid-elevation hills are often big open parks on the south and west slopes. The combination of wind and sun simply make these areas too dry for trees. I love the wide open space of Big Flat, and the panoramic views of the various mountain ranges that encircle Butte. Here's the view to the Butte Flats, airport, and Highland Mtns:

And the Pintler Range:

And Mt Powell, down the Clark Fork River valley near Deer Lodge:

Winter has returned, with six inches or so of snow overnight. It was icy and warm to begin with, but quickly settled into fluffy powder. Ski on!

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The Moulton: Montana's Finest Cross Country Skiing Area

Dominant Culture as a Guide to Philosophy?

I spent a day in Montana's capital city of Helena, working with other philosophy faculty to solve the "transferability problem" faced by students as they move from one college to another. The group consisted of me, three other old white guys (I think I was the youngest, though!), two younger women (one a Montana native, that is, Blackfoot), and a younger Filipino-American guy.

It's a noble effort. Bring together philosophy profs from the various units of the Montana University System. They then develop a list of universal course outcomes and come up with standard course names & numbers. The idea is to help students that transfer from one college to another in their quest for an undergraduate degree. General education requirements always contain some sort of philosophy courses such as "Introduction to Philosophy" and "Introduction to Ethics." Allegedly, when students transfer schools, they frequently lose credit for courses they have already completed, and then have to take (and pay for) additional courses that are substantially the same as what they've already taken...

It's a a noble effort, yes. Something like the search for a universal or world language.

Remember Esperanto? You know, the universal language that was to foster international peace & understanding. Esperanto was truly universal--that is, if your universe consisted of western culture. And if your ideal for a "real" language was based on experience with French, German, Polish, and Russian. Never mind those non-western languages. Forget Chinese. Forget Arabic. Siksika'? Forget it.

And that is, in part, how the first session of the Montana Philosopher Kings transpired. "Philosopher King?" As in Plato's Republic? That's the problem: dominant culture provides us a ready answer to what is "universal:" white, male, and western.

Suprisingly, we made remarkable progress in developing common course outcomes for "Introduction to Ethics."

For some reason, however, we tumbled like the Tower of Babel when it came to "Introduction to Philosophy."

Turns out "Introduction to Philosophy" means (to some, anyway) "Introduction to Western Philosophy." If the course is not about the specific philosophical problems and if it does not provide some historical overview of Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, etc. then it does not count as an Intro Philosophy course. By this measure, an introductory course called "Blackfeet Philosophy" certainly does not qualify.

This, it seems to me, is very wrong. Philosophy, even in its most narrow western definition as the Greek "love of wisdom" seems to be a universal phenomenon among human cultures.

The epistemological, ontological, and other problems raised by western philosophy are certainly interesting. But does western philosophy have a lock on these things? I cannot answer that question in a definitive, comprehensive way, since my knowledge of non-western philosophy is very limited. Sure, I have your educated person's token knowledge of Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and so forth. But from what I do know, any of these approaches would raise all the important questions and provide a basis for all the fruitful discussion that I believe is central to an "Introduction to Philosophy" course.

I recall my own Introduction to Philosophy course with the amazing Professor Martha Montgomery at Drexel University. Plato's Socratic Dialogues was our text. Socrates lived through that class, and so far as we students were concerned, Martha had sat with the old man on his deathbed when he drank the hemlock. There was little mention of Descartes or Hume or Quine, or of traditional names for philosophical "problems" such as Moore's disbelief, a priori knowledge, or mind-body dualism. Guided by Martha's talent for elenchus, however, the course left its mark on me and was instrumental in shifting my career away from engineering.

More recently, Thomas Nagel has taken a similar approach with his little book, What Does It All Mean?" Like Martha Montgomery, Nagel leads us through the process of philosophical inquiry without making it a lesson in the history of western philosophy or a laundry list of technical terms.

As a course fulfilling the general education requirement for "Introduction to Philosophy," I believe that "Blackfeet Philosophy" would serve perfectly well.

The Moulton Journal: Winter Solstice Party, Moonlight Ski

How often does the Winter Solstice occur with a full moon? With that happy coincidence this year, and a dump of fresh snow, a large group of friends converged on Don & Andrea Stierle's ("DnA") cabin at The Moulton. Highlights of the party included food (of course), dancing naked around a pyre (well, just kidding about that naked dancing), and moonlight skiing. Here's Andrea, the gracious hostess (for info on DnA's research, see the recent New York Times article at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/us/09pit-.html):

At least one of two things is necessary, I think, if you are going to live in Montana. ONE, you need to like snowy, cold weather and the kind of outdoor activities (such as skiing) that go along with it. And/or TWO, you need a good circle of friends with whom to socialize. Without at least one of these, you will gradually succumb to cabin fever as the blustery storms of November turn to the long dark days of December, or when the bright and sunny but frigid cold days of January and February turn to the brief false hopes of spring that come in March, or when winter settles back in for the duration of April only to give way to renewed false hopes of spring in May which leads to a big snowstorm in June that bends your lilac blossoms to the ground.

Here are some of those friends, heading outside and circling a large pile of beetle-killed lodge pole pine slash:

Don't stand too close--that's Bill "The Pyromaniac" Macgregor dancing around the woodpile, pouring on the gasoline (we really should do an intervention next year, and hand him a can of #1 diesel instead):

Feel the burn. Without the annual winter solstice pyre, the days would grow shorter and shorter as the light of the sun and all are hopes grew dimmer and dimmer. Next thing you know, we'd all be building religious shrines on the ridges, such as "THEIR Lady of OUR Rockies" (see http://www.ourladyoftherockies.com/). Thankfully, that's not happening. This crowd will settle for a good old pagan bonfire:

And a ski, helped out by the Good Samaritan Groomer (aka Paul Sawyer) who spent that morning laying down the corduroy. Turns out there wasn't much moonlight, thanks to a heavy cloud cover that helped keep temperatures at a reltively balmy 8 or 10 deg F. Here's Butch Gerbrandt, Emily Munday, and RTD at Amalgamation Junction:

At the Winter Solstice we are like Robert Frost's traveler (or Emily), standing long and contemplating alternative futures for the New Year. All good wishes for whatever path you take:

Giving Thanks for Environmental Activists

A version of this commentary aired on KUFM, Montana Public Radio, as part of a regular series I do for the Clark Fork River Technical Assistance Committee (www.cfrtac.org).

Elk season is over. It’s time to clean and put away the rifles. The snow is calling. Purple wax on those cross country skis will be about right.

Give thanks for Pilgrims and Indians and turkeys and elk. And thank the activists that helped bring environmental remedy and restoration to the Clark Fork watershed. Without activists, Arco-British Petroleum would have held even greater sway over the Environmental Protection Agency, and Montana’s Natural Resource Damage suit against Arco-BP might have died for lack of legislative support (i.e. funding).

Instead, Montana obtained 215 million dollars nearly a decade ago as a partial settlement. If we can believe a recent Missoulian newspaper editorial, Montana and Arco-BP will soon resolve remaining claims. Now that’s a holiday present!

The money we have received has done some good. A recent Fish, Wildlife & Parks electrofishing survey of Silver Bow Creek found significant numbers of trout. Most – including a few native westslope cutthroat trout – were found near the confluence with German Gulch. A few were found closer to Butte. Good on the Montana agencies and citizen activists that helped make this possible.

Butte’s George Grant Chapter of Trout Unlimited played a critical role, working with the Butte-Anaconda Greenway Board, insisting that the recreational project include riparian and stream enhancements. Furthermore, George Grant TU’s restoration project along German Gulch Creek – a Natural Damage Program funded project – enhances the overall restoration of our Silver Bow Creek watershed. Again, thank these activists. This stuff doesn’t just happen unless a whole lot of volunteer citizens put in a whole lot of hours at meetings, in writing grants, and on managing projects.

I’m an environmental philosopher, and believe "the glass is half full and the glass is half empty.” Retired FWP fisheries biologist Wayne Hadley cautions that we should not expect too much, too soon, of Silver Bow Creek. After all, there is a tremendous amount of toxic mine waste outside of the flood plain that is not being cleaned up, and that material may re-pollute much of the creek.

We’re in this for the long haul. I don’t reasonably expect to have good fishing in Silver Bow Creek within my lifetime. If, however, my daughter doesn’t enjoy good fishing in the creek by the time she’s my age, then my ghost will be seriously pissed. We don’t have to accept environmental degradation as "the price of progress," and we can make the world a better place.

The Natural Resource Damage Program will likely sprinkle more fairy dust around the Upper Clark Fork River Basin–about 14 million dollars worth in the coming year or so. Projects include the usual Butte and Anaconda waterline work, but also: more funding for the Silver Bow Creek Greenway; a trail and outdoor education center near Deer Lodge; and restoration work for a public park on Forest Service land near Butte.

Near Missoula, the Clark Fork Coalition should receive nearly three million dollars to remove additional contaminated sediments from Milltown–an amount over and above what the EPA requires under remedy. Ideally, the agency would have made Arco-BP pay for this. Instead, we must spend precious and limited Natural Resource Damage dollars. Still, it’s money well spent. Removing additional mine waste from Silver Bow Creek improved the creek’s environmental future, and removal of additional sediments at Milltown will do the same.

It’s not all clover and roses here in upper end of the Clark Fork River superfund site.

Those contaminated sediments from Milltown? Yep, they go to the Arco-BP waste repository in Opportunity’s backyard. Milltown sediments are a drop in the bucket compared with what’s already there. Still, how happy would you be living with a backyard toxic waste repository of 160 million cubic yards, extending over an area of more than five square miles?

There are no easy answers for questions about environmental justice at Opportunity.

A group of my students in the "Politics of Technical Decisions" class have a novel approach to this problem. They plan to stage a play using techniques developed by Brazilian, Augusto Boal. His "theater of the oppressed" is a popular tool for political dissent and public education in South America and Europe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Boal).

The production is titled, "Too Late for Opportunity?" The short, two-act play will be staged at the Venus Rising Café in Butte, from 3 - 5 p.m., on Monday, December 10th. To help resolve problems posed in the play, audience members are invited to participate by taking the place of an actor and redefining that actor's role. We’re inviting representatives from Arco-BP and the EPA, as well as Opportunity residents and the general public.

For more news about Anaconda, Opportunity, and other Superfund issues, please check out CFRTAC’s website at hyperlink www.cfrtac.org.

From Butte to Missoula, we deserve a clean, healthy, and accessible Clark Fork River. It’s your river. Wade in, and help make the future.

German Gulch Restoration: thanks to the David & Lois Layton family

Earlier this week, I attended a dedication ceremony in German Gulch near Butte. The surviving family of David Luther Layton, including his spouse Lois, four children, and many grandchildren, worked with the George Grant Chapter of Trout Unlimited to insure that their family property would be forever appreciated--by the general public. By transferring their beautiful 80 acres along German Gulch Creek to the US Forest Service and Montana state lands, the Laytons became part of a grand restoration project that benefits westslope cutthroat trout, other wildlife, and the public in general.

After moving to the great city of Butte in the heart of the northern Rocky Mountains in 1990, my hear soon fell for the Big Hole River. But, that very first year, I also discovered a delightful nearby trout fishing, hiking, and mule deer hunting spot. The small stream of German Gulch, a tributary of Silver Bow Creek in the upper Clark Fork River basin, was much like the freestone mountain creeks I had grown up fishing on the Appalachian Plateau of the Allegheny Highlands

Whereas the creeks of my boyhood held native brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), through German Gulch creek I became acquainted with the native fish of the west--the westslope cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii lewisi). Here's one, in the sampling tray of fisheries biologist Tim LaMarr:

Wow! Are these a beautiful fish, or what? As part of our natural heritage, a creature that evolved in this harsh post-Pleistocene landscape, they are a treasure. How lucky and bizarre, that the mine-polluted waters of Silver Bow Creek provided a poisonous barrier to prevent exotic, introduced rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) from hybridizing the native fish in German Gulch Creek.

In fact, it's amazing that native trout survived at all in German Gulch Creek. More than a century ago, the entire watershed was clearcut and placer mined--the creek's floodplain extensively terraformed by hydraulic and dredge mining for gold. A whole series of French, German, Chinese, and out-of-work Great Depression era miners worked the creek over from the 1870s to the 1930s. To add insult to injury, Montana Fish & Game dumped thousands of stocked trout from hatcheries into the creek before 1980. And yet, physically damaged though the watershed was, "cutties" held on in the headwater tributaries and then recolonized the main creek as the riparian habitat recovered from abuse.

Lying about midway between the towns of Anaconda and Butte, the German Gulch watershed is an important local natural resource. With the ongoing remediation and restoration of Silver Bow Creek, German Gulch Creek would be an important source of native trout and clear, cold water. Local hunters, anglers, hikers, and campers also had a long historical connection to and a deep appreciation for the area. As I visited German Gulch more often and talked about it with other folks, I came to understand how important it was as public land and as relatively pristine habitat:

When I was elected president of the George Grant Chapter of Trout Unlimited (GGTU) in 2002-2003, I made German Gulch Creek a priority. As good as it was, there were some problems, threats, and opportunities: selenium pollution from a recently abandoned open-pit, cyanide heap-leach gold mine; private in-holdings within Forest Service and state land that were ripe for development; aquatic and riparian habitat that could not recover from the physical damage wrought by placer mining; the threat of rainbow trout entering the creek as Silver Bow Creek is remediated and restored; an irrigation diversion that diverted the lower creek and severed the aquatic habitat connection between Silver Bow and German Gulch Creeks; difficulty with public access to the lower creek... German Gulch Creek was an eye-opening lesson: habitat that -- on the surface -- appears to be good and secure may be a high priority for our attention and protection.

GGTU began its German Gulch project with a small "Project Development Grant" of about $25,000 that I submitted in 2002 to Montana's Natural Resource Damage Program (NRDP). The money helped us to search titles, obtain appraisals, develop a conceptual plan for stream restoration, and complete other needed planning tasks. When Josh Vincent, an environmental engineer and Montana Tech alumni, joined the GGTU board, things got a lot easier. He brought needed technical and managerial expertise to the project, as well as a personal passion and appreciation for German Gulch. We submitted a second planning grant for about $25,000 in 2003. This helped fund more needed work, such as a redesign for the irrigator's headgate and a plan to remove a road built with toxic mine waste tailings. These two planning grants laid the foundation for the more than $1 million that Josh and I raised through grants in 2004. Though the bulk of the money came from NRDP, we also succeeded in obtaining matching funds from Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) Future Fisheries program for stream restoration work, FWP funds for a fish barrier to halt rainbow trout introgression, US Fish & Wildlife Service Fisheries Restoration and Irrigation Mitigation Program for a fish screen on the irrigator's headgate, and Montana Fish & Wildlife Trust funds for land purchases.

David Luther Layton and his wife Lois appreciated nature and enjoyed camping with their four children. After buying a parcel of about 80 acres (several former mining claims) in German Gulch, they began a family tradition of camping there. GGTU approached the Layton family in early 2004, with an inquiry about purchasing the family's land and transferring it to public ownership. The Layton property was astride the Forest Service and state lands boundary, and so the upper portion of the property would go to the feds and the lower portion to the state.

The Layton family was gracious and patient in dealing with GGTU. David was deceased, and Lois and her other three children allowed her son Matthew to represent the family. This greatly simplified GGTU dealings with the family, but it also spoke reams about the Layton family's solidarity, trust, and general sense of good will. During this time, I moved on to some other projects and Josh Vincent took on German Gulch project management for the Trout Unlimited Chapter. German Gulch was my baby, but it was raised by Josh. As I told the Layton family at yesterday's ceremony marking the tranfer of the land, it is easy to conceive and even birth a baby. Josh did the hard work of raising the child.

And what a ceremony it was. Held on site, here's Lois Layton (left):

The ceremony also proved to be a family reunion, including mother Lois and other family elders, gathered here around "rally rock" on the Layton property: Children David, Daniel, Sue, and Michael and their spouses:
And the grandchildren and the whole gang, along with some GGTU folks: We capped the ceremony with a hike down to the bridge crossing for a public trail constructed as part of the project. Here is Andrew McElroy (Boy Scout Troop 8 of Butte, Montana) with the bridge he helped design and build as his Eagle Scout project: And here is Josh Vincent (left), the good parent who has brought this project along to date, and who remains committed to the many other tasks yet to be completed: As Hillary Clinton famously wrote, "It takes a village to raise a child." Similarly, it takes a village to pull off a grass-roots based project of this magnitude. At the risk of offending some persons by forgetting to mention them, it is important to recognize some of the key supporters of and participants in this project.

First of all, the whole Layton clan: Lois, son David Michael and his spouse Robin, son Daniel Dana and his spouse Jane, daughter Sue and her spouse Eckelhardt Schulze, and son Matthew Steven and his spouse Christiane.

Next come fisheries biologists Tim LaMarr and Ron Spoon. Tim worked for the Forest Service at the time, and had been working for several years to survey native westslope cutthroat trout in German Gulch and to persuade his agency to invest in restoration. Ron is with FWP, and has worked tirelessly to assess and protect native trout populations throughout southwest Montana.

Kriss Douglass, a local FWP employee (now retired), early on appreciated the promise of GGTU's project, and helped convince her agency that it should be a priority. After Kriss' retirement, Vanna Boccadori supported the project and marshalled important tasks such as the required environmental assessement.

Hugh Zackheim at the FWP land's office worked closely with Josh Vincent on the title documents and other difficult tasks.

There were many others, some whose story is yet to be told. The rancher and irrigator with the water rights to German Gulch Creek has been as patient and generous as the Layton family in his dealings with GGTU. As the reconstruction of his headgate and irrigation diversion takes place, I look forward to continuing this story.

In the late 1990s, when I and a few others first began brainstorming a German Gulch restoration plan, no one could have imagined how much work it would entail nor how long it would take. My hat is off to Josh Vincent and his colleagues at George Grant Trout Unlimited for their dogged persistence in seeing this project through to its completion.

Other sources:

• Montana FWP documents, "Layton Decision Notice," 02.May.2007 at http://fwp.mt.gov/content/getItem.aspx?id=27476 and "German Gulch Trail Environmental Assessment," (01.August.2006) at http://fwp.mt.gov/content/getItem.aspx?id=19265.

• Montana Natural Resource Damage Plan, "2005 Final Upper Clark Fork River Basin Restoration Work Plan," (December 2005) at http://www.doj.mt.gov/lands/naturalresource/resources/projects/2005/finalrestorationworkplan.pdf.

Alpine Solstice Hike

The first day of summer blazed in with hot 80 deg F temperatures--a good day to head for the mountains. RTD and I loaded up, drove to the Pintler, and found the Many Miles Lake trailhead. Thankfully, our good hiking friends in Anaconda have (once again) removed the FS trail marker sign in an effort to keep the searching hordes out of the Last Best Alpine Cirque.

Looks like a good year for beargrass blooms. They don't flower every year, but seem to like these wet springs. Here are some at mid-elevation (c. 8,000 foot) level:

It was hot as all hell hiking up the steep trail that brings you over from Many More Miles drainage to Many Miles Lakes. My bad for getting a late start. Normally, I'm on the trail by 7 am in hot weather, but Jan, AJ, and I fished until dark last night. Oh yeah, AJ caught his first trout on a dryfly. I told him he had to eat that first one raw, and I think he would have if I could have kept a straight face just 10 seconds longer:

Anyway, over the ridge and into the cirque and wasn't RTD happy to find a snow field and cool down:

Just a little further, and we were at Many Cutthroat Lake. Wow, it's still spring here at 9,000 feet, with golden glacier lillies, purple roosterheads, and tiny spring beauties. The latter have been my favorite since I learned to spring turkey hunt in Pennsylvania on Big Flat at the headwaters of Kinzua Creek. There, I would hide and call in a gobbler, shivering in the cool early-May dawn while listening to the birds and admiring the first flowers of spring:

Like most places in western Montana, even this remote hanging valley was not left untouched by the ravages of the Anaconda Copper Mining company. The company was caught illegally poaching cord wood c. 1900 on the newly created National Forests (i.e. Forest Reserves), and had to abandon the stacked logs. There are dozens of these piles scattered around the lakes: Time for a cup of tea. It's nice to sit on a log, look over the lake to the edge of the world (the lake's outlet), and wait for the water to boil (oh yeah, and swat mosquitoes): No, believe it or not, EcoRover does NOT kill trout everytime he goes out. But there is nothing like a mess of fat cutthroats for supper: As I fished, the air cooled and the billowy cumulus clouds began to tower and develop dark underbellies. Just as I finished cleaning the trout and packing them in snow, the thunderstorm broke. It felt good to hike back across the ridge to the trailhead in a downpour, and the nearby lightning strikes along the ridge were only mildly terrifying. And, with a few beers stashed in the creek for the ride home, life is good no matter how wet you are.

Home Ranch Campout: Montana Beauty

RTD & I mostly car camp this time of year. The June weather and large lingering snowfields make getting around in the high country (i.e. backpacking) difficult at best. As a quick get-away last week, I headed to the Home Ranch:

On a large tributary of the upper Big Hole River, this place has it all. Excellent brook trout fishing in a handful of nearby creeks, and some very good rainbow trout fishing, too (the 'bows spawn in these tribs, and some large fish hold over at least until creek levels drop in mid-July). Lots of sandhill cranes, a few herons, the occasional osprey, etc. And gorgeous views to the Pintler as in photo of the old barn at the Home Ranch (above).

Firewood close by (here, a rack of lodgepole):

Elk cows and calves (usually, the elk stay several hundred yards away; this momma let RTD & I walk a short distance away since she seemed to think she & calf were invisible). The mother is in the willows at the lower left, and the calf is in the grass laying flat with its head down (look for the reddish-brown):

Where the deer and the antelope play (these two does ran off with their fawns, but then returned and posed after hiding the little ones):

And of course wildflowers: elephant's head, lupines, sunflowers...

The Home Ranch and Mule Ranch were former Anaconda Copper Mining corporation holdings. In addition to raising mules for the Butte mines, the company pastured sheep here--moving them back and forth to the Mill/Willow Creek area in the shadow of the giant (500 feet+) Anaconda Smelter stack. In this way, the ACM could maintain the illusion (and legal pretense) that arsenic and heavy metals fallout from the smelter did not harm domestic stock. This was an important element in the ACM's ability to prevail over the Deer Lodge valley ranchers in the "smoke wars" of c. 1900 to 1920--efforts by the ranchers to obtain compensation for harmful pollution. The properties became state property after the company had no further use for them, and they have benefitted enormously by limiting the degree of cattle grazing.

Alas, even a few years ago there were many grayling in these creeks, but let's not ruin my mood.

Old Ed says: "Get out there..."

The prophet Ed Abbey wrote, "Do not burn yourselves out... It is not enough to fight for the West; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still there. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends..."

I try to take old Ed seriously, and so in addition to working on Superfund issues in the crack-addict Clark Fork watershed and preservation issues in the clean-living Big Hole watershed, I do get out there. And so one fine afternoon colleague Chad and I (no pictures of him, just in case anyone wanted evidence of truancy) snuck off to "the dog hole" near Melrose. We were greeted by the sandhill cranes--including the one in the photo below and several that buzzed us, coming in low over the willows like pterodactyls.

And a few trout came to hand (and maybe a whitefish or two) like this fat brown that took an Okrusch Sparkle San Juan (my favorite form of bait, these days). Unfortunately, though there was a smattering of march browns, pmds, and other mayflies in the air and on the water, the trout were not looking up: it seems a little late in the spring not to have caught a fish or two on dries.

In the Big Hole, history is never far away. Here, a "date nail" in a railroad tie.

After a few hours of delight (Oh, how wonderful to live just 15 minutes from Montana!), it was time to head home. You can tell RTD is getting old--after 3 or 4 times swimming back & forth across the river, she is waiting at the truck. Good old dog and, here, looking especially noble.