Multimedia

The Sage Mountain Center

In 1989 Christopher Borton and Linda Welsh moved to Montana with the dream of establishing an educational retreat center. Today, they own and operate the Sage Mountain Center, located about 30 minutes east of Butte, Mont. Their love of the natural world drives them to share the knowledge and experience gained through twenty years of sustainable living with all who pass through.

Recently, NewWest.net photographer Graham Coppes spent the day with Chris and Linda gaining insight into their unique lifestyle.

From The New West Blog

Yellowstone Wrestles with Wireless

Yellowstone National Park is considering a wireless communication plan that could lead to more cell towers, backcountry webcams, wireless internet access in stores and hotels -- and, opponents say, a compromised wilderness experience.

“People go out into the wild to be in nature,” says Bill Boteler of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “They don’t go out to be surrounded by cell phone towers and gadgets.”

From The New West Blog

Video: ‘Still Howling Wolf’ from High Country News

High Country News has just released a short film, Still Howling Wolf, describing the 13-year-long effort to reintroduce gray wolves in the Northern Rockies and exploring the passionate and complicated feelings the animals inspire:

guest commentary

‘Log, Baby, Log’: A Bailout for Montana’s Timber Industry

There is an aggressive effort behind the scenes to "bail out" Montana's timber industry with an ill-conceived initiative divorced from economic reality and any concept of sustainability.

Led by the Missoula Area Economic Development Corporation, this initiative is based entirely - and, up to this point, only - on a "wish list" that was put together by the timber industry.

The basic premise of MAEDC's initiative, which in August was given to state officials, legislators and the Montana Congressional delegation, can be summed up simply: Log, Baby, Log. The initiative calls for "immediate action" to increase national forest logging by 330%, double state land logging and a bizarre plan for the state to seize control of a million acres of national forests, purportedly for even more logging.

Montana's Wilderness Drought

Massive Public Lands Bill Leaves Out Montana

I've written extensively about Montana's Wilderness drought, 26 years and counting without Congress designated one acre of the Big Sky State as Wilderness. Now, Congress seems poised to pass S. 3213, a massive public lands bill, a collection of 90 wilderness and watershed protection bills covering almost every state.

For Montana wilderness advocates, it's another in a long line of no shows. In fact, Montana gets less than zero.

New West Book Review

Marathon Woman: Rachel Toor’s “Personal Record”

Personal Record: A Love Affair with Running
By Rachel Toor
University of Nebraska Press, 164 pages, $24.95

Rachel Toor, who earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana and currently lives in Spokane, came late to the sport of running. She writes that she was "a bookish egghead who ran only to catch a bus," never competing in high school or college meets or even casual jogs, and didn't lace up her sneakers until encouraged to do so by a boyfriend when she was "on the edge of thirty." But then she took to the sport with the fervor of a convert, hiring a coach, joining running groups, and participating in marathons, ultramarathons, and a sport called "Ride and Tie," in which two runners and a horse complete a course of between 30 and 40 miles. In her new essay collection, Personal Record, Toor immerses the reader in the world of long-distance running, examining her bruised, muscular body, the contents of her closet, her pantry jammed with energy gels and protein bars, and her love life in the process of explaining what running means to her and describing the experiences the sport has given her.

Rachel Toor will discuss her book in Missoula at Shakespeare and Company on October 14 at 7:30 p.m.

From The New West Blog

Senate May Take Up Broad Public Lands Bill in November

A collection of bipartisan bills that would protect land and rivers and limit energy development around the West -- the Omnibus Public Land Management Act -- may make it to the Senate floor in November, the Jackson Hole News&Guide reports.

From The New West Blog

Amtrak to Consider Restoring Western Routes

With Wednesday's passage of a veto-proof $13 billion Amtrak funding bill, Amtrak will consider restoring two bygone Western routes, the Pioneer and North Coast Hiawatha.

The Pioneer, from 1977 to 1997, connected Seattle and Chicago via Oregon, Southern Idaho, Utah and Colorado. The North Coast Hiawatha, from 1971 to 1979, diverged from the Empire Builder and ran through southern Montana and North Dakota.

Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo and Montana Sen. Jon Tester introduced the amendments.

TROUBLE IN GLITTER GULCH

Meltdown Hits Snow Country

While Wall Street was trying to regain its staggering losses and Congress was reaching for a way to prop up the economy’s tumbling dominoes, it was party time at Vail.

At the foot of Beaver Creek Mountain, 1,000 people came last Friday to nibble caviar and sample from the ice-carved vodka bar at its newest luxury lodge: a half-a-billion-dollar world of ski valets and spa treatments, all in a LEED-certified, eco-friendly setting.

The world’s woes can seem far away in these playgrounds of the Masters of the Universe. But the economic meltdown is having its effects here, too. Foreclosures are rising. The once-meteoric real estate industry is sputtering.