Frivolity Meets Politics

Anti-Tea Party Mob Storms Bozeman

For my money, there are few sins so egregious as the taking of yourself too seriously. I mean, really, what’s the point? We’re all going to eventually kick the bucket with an equal amount of kicking and screaming. Might as well enjoy ourselves while we’re here. So I knew I’d met a kindred soul when I ran into Brian Leland yesterday morning in downtown Bozeman. A local master electrician, he’s also the founder and organizer of “The Green Coalition of Gay Loggers for Jesus,” a tongue-in-cheek, don’t-take-yourself-too-seriously counterpart to a Tea Party demonstration being held in Bozeman the morning of July 4.

Thyme to Travel with Rochael Teynor

Simple Luxury in the Big Sky

Eager to escape the week’s workload and to celebrate our wedding anniversary, my husband, Mark, and I pull into the long driveway that delivers us to the doorstep of Steve Gamble’s Gallatin River Lodge. A rustic fishing and hunting lodge from the outside, complete with pond, mountain views, and deer foraging in the meadow (did I hear someone yell “cue the deer?”), the Gallatin River Lodge is anything but rustic on the inside. This little luxury inn sits on 350 acres just 15 minutes from downtown Bozeman.

Beetle Hysteria Again

Beetle hysteria has raised its head again, and I am not talking about the Fab four. A prominent article in the New York Times titled “Tiny Beetle Adds New Dynamic to Forest Fire Control Efforts” quotes many foresters and others who suggest that beetle-kill trees across the West will create larger wildfires and by implications are “destroying” our forests.

For instance, Montana’s State Forester Bob Harrington said as much at conference recently, as in the article. While it may seem “intuitively obvious” that dead trees will lead to more fires, there is little scientific evidence to support the contention that beetle-killed trees substantially increases risk of large blazes. In fact, there is evidence to suggest otherwise.

At the heart of this and many other media reports are flawed assumptions about fires, what constitutes a healthy forest, and the options available to humans in face of natural processes that are inconvenient and get in the way of our designs.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Going to the Sun in a Handbasket

When you look at a map of Glacier Park, Going-to-the-Sun Road looks like the heart rate monitor of a gay Filipino man when he heard that Michael Jackson died. It’s as twisted and bent as the plot of a Coen brothers movie. But you should go. For just a few short weeks during the peak of each summer, the entire road is plowed and passable, from West Glacier clear through to St. Mary’s (home of the $3.50 bag of ice).

We drove it the other way, though, and I’m glad we did. If you go east to west, like we did, your lane is the one hugging the mountain, not hanging out over space with nothing but a crumbling two-foot wall between you and an endless plunge to your death.

Rugged Stuff

My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad

This is a Father’s Day piece, but I didn’t want to post it on the actual date, because I was afraid that if my father saw me actually pay attention to the calendar, it might give him (another) heart attack. (He’s just about to get his Christmas present when I visit him at the ranch next week, if that gives you an idea of what kind of a schedule I keep…).

Opinion

Sotomayor Would Be the Most Experienced Justice on the Court

The core question of whether or not Judge Sonia Sotomayor is qualified to be a Justice on the highest court and legal authority in the United States can be answered. We can compare her record to that of the potential colleagues who currently comprise the Supreme Court. After all, the most important criteria to be examined in the consideration of the qualifications of any Supreme Court nominee is their federal judiciary C.V.—how much experience do they have with Federal law and Appellate Court Procedure, and most importantly in Constitutional Law?) Do they have experience judging cases that require interpretation of constitutional complexities? How qualified is Judge Sotomayor in this regard?

For that matter, how qualified are the current members of the Supreme Court?

Running the Bighorns is Well Worth the Pain

My training approach for the 30-k Bighorn Mountain Wild and Scenic Trail Run was completely unscientific. It basically consisted of running four or five miles around Sheridan with Lindsay and the dog two or three times per week after work. During this "training", I realized that I find road running boring without music and discovered I develop shin splints 20 minutes into every run. I'm not in love with running, I'm in love with moving quickly through the mountains. I'm also addicted to the idea of testing my physical and mental limits.

On the Range

Wild Bighorns Threatened by Domestic Sheep

At one point in my life I was very interested in studying wild sheep. I almost accepted a graduate research project at the U of Alaska to look at winter diet and behavior of Dall sheep in the Brooks Range. I wimped out when I realized that I’d be alone months at a time in a tiny cabin on the North Slope peering through a night vision scope to watch the animals in the near 24 hours of darkness of mid-winter forage in 50 below zero weather. It just didn’t sound like that much fun -- though definitely interesting. But for a number of years I read everything I could about wild sheep, and I continue to follow research and news about wild sheep to this date.

Wild bighorn sheep were once fairly common in the western United States and Canada. Some estimates suggest as many as 1-2 million wild sheep once roamed the West. By 1900, over-hunting, habitat degradation and perhaps most importantly disease transmission from domestic sheep to wild sheep had brought the bighorns down to an estimated 15,000. Today there are about 75,000 sheep in the western US and Canada.

While that is a significant growth from its low point, wild bighorn sheep populations are nowhere near their biological potential. There is no doubt in my mind that the West could easily support far more sheep were it not for one thing -- domestic livestock.

The State of Local Food with Dean Williamson

(Some) Milk Does a Body Good

There is a very quiet, national campaign afoot that you may want to learn about. True, it seems each new sunrise brings new national campaigns about something or other, and so I understand the activist-panic fatigue.

This one is a bit more intriguing, if only because it involves our kids. The Center for Food Safety has launched a national letter-writing campaign to change the milk being served in America’s schools. Change it for the better.