The View from BZN
Bozeman’s airport as a microcosm of changing times.
After a recent return from Texas with a new Lab puppy, I headed through the terminal looking for what is known euphemistically as a “Pet Service Center.” As one who travels frequently with dogs, I welcome these new amenities, although in this case, Keta decided that the floor in front of Gate B1 served the purpose just fine.
I watched a flood of new arrivals surge past me on their way to baggage claim like pink salmon swimming upstream to spawn and die.
As I waited while the puppy sniffed, I watched a flood of new arrivals surge past me on their way to baggage claim like pink salmon swimming upstream to spawn and die. My first impression was that I had stumbled into a cowboy-themed costume party. Hats! Fringed leather jackets! Boots, oddly free of dirt and that other stuff real cowboys have to step in! Groups traveling together reminded me of nervous Americans arriving in third-world airports I’ve flown through all around the world, and I could imagine familiar, anxious dialogue. Will anyone speak English? Is the water safe to drink? Do we need bear spray?
We can probably chalk some of this up to the hit TV series Yellowstone (which I refused to watch). Another media sensation—“The Movie,” with Brad Pitt, as it’s known in fly-fishing circles—no doubt contributed to a different phenomenon I began to notice several years ago, when every other male walking through the Bozeman airport started carrying a fly-rod case. (Today, this habit has become gender-neutral, a change I’m pleased to see.)
As someone who has flown with fly tackle all around the world countless times, this affectation strikes me as particularly silly. Any distant angling destination worth visiting will require more gear and clothing than you can stuff into a carry-on, so why not put your rod in your checked bag? I’ve heard people worry about getting their precious tackle swiped from baggage departments, but no one stealing luggage will give it a second look. They’d rather swipe your sunglasses, even if the lenses are cracked.
Besides, carrying tackle aboard is fraught with greater potential problems, especially for those carrying one of the trendy cases that includes reel and rod as one unit. Some security sources will insist upon making you strip all the line off the reel and throw it away in the name of safety. But then why are they letting you board with that rod tube in the first place? If I were on an international flight seated beside a nervous stranger wearing a “DEATH TO AMERICA” t-shirt, I’d rather he were armed with the nail clipper that was confiscated by security than a three-foot metal tube that looks like a cop-show blunt weapon. TSA doesn’t seem to have any consistent policy addressing these concerns, but I suppose they’ll figure it out someday.
“Back in the day” may be a tedious way to begin any story, but I find myself deploying it ever more often when writing about Montana in general and the Bozeman area in particular. I’ve been around long enough to remember when the airport didn’t even have a control tower, making it equivalent to facilities in, say, Rundu (Namibia) and King Salmon (Alaska). Wait—check the latter! Built to supply the military during WWII’s Aleutian campaign, King Salmon had a control tower long before Bozeman.
Ours finally arrived in 1999, another milestone in a decades-long history of expansion. In 2013, Bozeman officially became the state’s busiest airport, as measured by number of enplanements. My own home in Lewistown is roughly equidistant from Billings, Great Falls, and Bozeman. Historically, wife Lori and I almost always flew in and out of the former and almost never the latter, but by the time Keta piddled on its floor, Bozeman had become our go-to point of entry to the world airway system.
Like it or not, the Bozeman airport has become a focal point of contact between locals and visitors.
The frivolous nature of this opinion piece is directed not at the airport itself but at the rapidly changing demographics of its users. I have no idea how many airports I’ve visited around the world, but as of now I can’t think of a terminal with more striking architecture or better functional design. Back in the day (I just can’t help myself), destination departures meant first a puddle hopper to a nearby hub (Seattle, Salt Lake, Denver, or Minneapolis), followed by hours of waiting around, gagging down airport food, losing baggage, missing flights, and all the other factors that make airline travel such a pain in the ass. Nowadays, however, Bozeman airport offers non-stop service to any part of the country, and as a first or last stop on a long trip by air it’s about as pleasant and efficient as airports get.
However, once outside that terminal, weirdness rears its head again, largely driven by explosive growth in the area’s popularity as a tourist destination. The traffic lane immediately adjacent to the exit is now reserved for Important People departing by commercial ground transportation. Parking has become a nightmare. If cost concerns force to you use what we now call the Peon Parking Lot, you’d better pack a lunch before the hike to the terminal. Indoor parking now rises toward the sky like a monument to those privileged enough to use it.
Then there are the fleets of private jets parked on the tarmac, reminding those Important People that they have yet to make it into the Very Important social class. Studies continue to document the astounding contribution private air travel makes to climate change, but those jets do provide a convenient way for VIPs to attend environmental conferences so they can help save the planet.
Like it or not, the Bozeman airport has become a focal point of contact between locals and visitors. Blaming outsiders for all one’s problems sounds disturbingly Trumpian, and I’m not suggesting that we do so. However, I reserve the right to laugh at their foibles and protest their occasional arrogance. We had all better get used to it, for given Bozeman’s recent growth trajectory, this clash of cultures isn’t going away anytime soon.
