Fight Club

Reflecting on 25 years of pushing back. 

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches, or its romance.
—Teddy Roosevelt

For a goodly portion of this magazine’s early years, I used this space up front to pontificate about conservation—not just of our natural wonders and resources, but of romance: Bozeman’s unique culture and way of life. I figured it was our duty, given our platform, to fight for what we had—because if we didn’t fight, we’d lose it. The selfish men and greedy interests were popping up everywhere, it seemed, and it pissed me off. So I delivered my Sermon on the Mount, issue after issue.

At some point, it started to feel like a broken record. Does anyone care? Is anyone even listening? Am I just a pompous windbag, bloviating like an old, out-of-touch professor?

Besides, what can we do, really? Money is a formidable foe. Human greed knows no bounds. The pillaging can be delayed, distracted, interrupted, like a damaged rail line; but eventually, the train starts moving again.

And so Ed Abbey’s famous words began percolating through my consciousness:

It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the griz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.

Eventually, I stopped sermonizing and started celebrating. As a magazine, though, we never gave up the fight—after all, duty never dies—but each issue’s opening thoughts became more upbeat. Don’t worry, be happy. Stay positive. Live and let live.

Now, things have come full-circle. After 25 years, it is once again impossible to ignore the threats: rampant development, rapacious plundering, avaricious interlopers—all taking, taking, taking, from the land and from us. They’re destroying habitat, polluting rivers, and blocking access, all to bolster their already-burgeoning bank accounts. Worst of all, our limp-dick legislators are letting it happen.

Yep, I’m getting pissed again.

And it’s not just our land & water that’s being ransacked, but our culture, too. The assholes are everywhere, it seems, bringing their bullshit from wherever they left and imposing it on us. An example, trivial but telling: at a trailhead recently, a hoity-toity couple ordered me to restrain my dog, because they didn’t want it interacting with theirs. I glanced at their license plate and told them, restrain your own damn dog—around here, ours run free. (What I didn’t say is that our dogs are like us: friendly, well-behaved, and most importantly, properly socialized.)

Don’t get me wrong: Bozeman is still wonderful. But it’s also spinning out of control. The beauty, the riches, the romance… it’s all being skinned off, a layer at a time. The monsters are back, and they’re bigger and hungrier than before.

So, it’s time to fight again. I’ll do my best to rein in the dogma, but the train’s moving too fast, with too many bastards on board—we need a full-on derailment. Which explains why there’s a new exhortation bouncing around my brain:

When you were young, and your heart was an open book,
You used to say, live and let live.
But if this ever-changing world in which we live in
Makes you give in and cry,
Say live and let die.

Whether you’ve been here a year or your entire life, I urge you to join the fight—in between those rambles that Abbey talked about, of course. We have much to cherish, and much to protect. Vote with your ballot and your wallet. If our collective voice gets loud enough, then maybe, just maybe, we can check the greed, stymie the selfish interests, and keep the bastards from steamrolling our sacred heritage.