Where the Wild Things Are

-– John Muir

“Hey. Hey. HEY!” A voice below the trail shook me from my thoughts. “Come here, come down here. I want to show you something.”

An old man was in the creek basin below, propped on crutches, waving at me. My hiking companion, Louie, a gregarious Labrador retriever, had already bounded down the slope to the creek and was exchanging greetings with the man’s black, gray-muzzled dog. 

Deciding that an elderly man on crutches poses little security risk, I followed Louie down the ravine.

At first glance the man looked short, but it was the stoop that made him diminutive, and he was dressed in olive: olive-green hat, shirt and slacks. His eyes were vibrant blue, bright like those of an obsessive mendicant or a young child. I’d met this man before, I realized.

“You want to see a 1,000-year-old tree?” he asked.

“Is it petrified?” I said.

“No, it’s still alive just like it has been for centuries.”

Victory Comes to a Head

Raise a glass, Missoula: The Kettle House Brewing Co. won third place this weekend at one of the world’s biggest beer contests, the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colo. The bronze in the annual event went to Kettle House’s Cold Smoke Scotch Style Ale in the Scottish Style Ale category.

The GABF this year smashed all previous records by drawing more than 46,000 beer-lovers and attracting 3,038 entries from around the country and the globe, making it the world’s largest commercial beer competition, according to the Brewers Association, the group that puts on the event. More than 450 breweries entered the contest, in which trained tasters chose winners from among 40 or so beers in each of dozens of categories. 

Missoula Notebook

I was curious about the potential effects of Sen. Tester’s act on businesses like Sun Mountain, so—after touring the sawmill—I interviewed Tony Colter, the company’s plant manager and vice president. He told me that Sun Mountain’s mill and logging operations combined could potentially employ up to 300 people, but times have been tough lately. Today, only 120 people work in the mill and finger-joint plant, and about 50 people work in logging. Sun Mountain hopes Tester’s bill could help turn things around.

MORE PRESENTATIONS PLANNED

Montanans anxious to hear directly from Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) concerning his controversial Jobs and Recreation Act, S. 1470, will get another chance this weekend.

The senator’s press office announced today that Tester has scheduled two presentations on his bill, in Dillon and Bozeman, and assured Montanans that “Tester plans to hold additional open houses in other communities in the coming weeks.”

CIVILITY IS A WONDERFUL THING

If even one driver who hates cyclists reads this column (and next week’s column), I’ll not only consider it well worth the time I spent writing it, but also a big victory for public safety.

The vast majority of motorists courteously and safely share roadways with cyclists, but a very small minority not only aren’t courteous, but for some unexplainable reason fill up with rage whenever they see cyclists on the road ahead. Anybody who regularly rides bicycles on paved roadways knows about this minority. They not only think cyclists have no right to use public roadways but also show their anger by shouting obscenities and giving out the universal salute and even do all sorts of outright dangerous things like coming up behind cyclists blaring their horns, purposely passing inches from handlebars at high speed, or throwing beer cans and other objects, which become lethal missiles for somebody on a bicycle.

Boise Biking Heroine

The Idaho Statesman’s Brian Murphy had it first: Boise’s Oympic Gold Medalist Kristin Armstrong won the gold medal in the cycling world championship time trials Wednesday. In other words, she’s the fastest female cyclist on Planet Earth.

Murphy quotes her as saying, “It’s amazing. It doesn’t matter what year or how many times you become world champion, it always feels the same.”

Next she’ll compete in the international road race, which will be aired on the Universal Sports channel tonight (Wednesday) at 9 p.m. Mountain time.

After the road race, Armstrong plans to retire.  But Boiseans will never let that happen without a welcome-home-again party when she returns from Switzerland, and I’ll go out on a limb here with the prediction that it will be a doozy.

Armstrong’s roster of medals and awards is well-known by Idahoans, but what is less well-known is her persistent and affectionate work in promoting safe cycling and good bike trails and the health benefits for children from riding bikes. In July, she’d been home from Italy just hours when she participated in a public panel on cycling safety in downtown Boise, and her city rides with children and their parents are fresh in our memories after her 2008 Olympic Gold Medal win.

GUEST COMMENTARY

By the time sunrise had lit up the 10,000-foot Lima Peaks on Saturday morning, August 22, over 120 cyclists had already arrived in Lima, Montana, population 250, and set up camp at the Mountain View Motel and RV Park. A steady stream of rigs with bicycles flowed off Interstate 15 and by 9 a.m. sleepy little Lima was hopping.

Bicyclists from around the region drove to the southwest corner of Montana for the 2nd Annual Montana Backcountry Bicycle Festival, an event sponsored by the Montana Mountain Bike Alliance.  Billed as a fun mountain bike gathering that combined world-class backcountry singletrack and down home hospitality, the Festival’s goal was to demonstrate that Montana’s small towns can benefit from mountain bike tourism attracted by great singletrack riding opportunities--the holy grail for backcountry bicyclists. 

Missoula Notebook

Senator Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act would protect 600,000 acres of Montana wilderness, but it would also mandate the logging of 10,000 acres per year in Montana’s national forests. Several mainstream environmental organizations, such as Trout Unlimited, the Montana Wilderness Association, and the National Wildlife Federation, have joined with recreation interests and local logging companies in support of the bill. Meanwhile, other environmental organizations, such as Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Wild West Institute, find themselves agreeing with many motorized access advocates that this bill is a bad idea.

I recently sat down with Tom Reed, the Montana/Wyoming backcountry organizer for Trout Unlimited, to get his response to some of the main objections raised by the bill’s critics.

Missoula Notebook

If passed, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act would designate the first new Wilderness Areas in Montana since 1983, and I’m up here, in a plane provided by the non-profit Ecoflight, to get a first-hand look at what the bill would actually mean to miles of backcountry in some of the most cherished wilderness in the state. Down below me is the battle zone: forests and landscapes treasured by hikers, loggers, snowmobilers, mountain bikers, horse packers, anglers, hunters, and oil and gas firms, among others. The Tester bill aims to protect wild land while satisfying as many of these groups as possible. But can it succeed?

From the Flathead Beacon

A proposed travel and recreation plan for a section of the Kootenai National Forest has some mountain bikers in northwest Montana concerned that they could lose access to trails they have ridden for years. And though any new restrictions on trail access for cyclists are far from finalized, the case demonstrates how mountain biking, a relatively new sport when compared to uses like horseback riding or snowmobiling, can prove difficult for federal land managers to categorize.

The area in question is known as the Galton Project, a section of the Fortine Ranger District stretching from U.S. Highway 93 to the edge of the Kootenai Forest south of Dickey Lake. The Galton Project encompasses the Ten Lakes Wilderness Study Area (WSA), which was established in 1977. After a 2007 lawsuit settlement with the Montana Wilderness Association, the U.S. Forest Service is moving more quickly to establish travel plans for the Ten Lakes WSA.