My son Sander and I dawdled for a while on the summit of Swan Peak one scorching afternoon last August. From where we stood, we could have imagined ourselves to be in the center of a world made up of nothing but a sea of wild and untracked country.
Beginning at our feet, the Bob Marshall Wilderness sprawled away to the east, beyond the sparkling waters of Sunburst Lake at the foot of Swan Glacier, down Gorge Creek to the South Fork of the Flathead, and far away to the south. To the south and east, I could pick out the distant ramparts of Scapegoat Mountain, Observation Point, and the rest of the Scapegoat Wilderness to the south and east. To the northeast, I pointed out where the Great Bear Wilderness joined with the others to create one of the largest and most wonderful blocks of wild country around. Turning to the west, MacDonald Peak, Mount Harding, Grey Wolf towered over the rugged Mission Mountains Wilderness in the summer haze.
What we could not see, from where we stood, were the roads creeping up canyons and winding up slopes on both sides of the Swan Valley, in some places to the very edge of wilderness boundaries. Also blocked from view were the summer homes and trophy palaces that have been sprouting on the landscape far below amid habitat critical to grizzly bears, elk, lynx and the whole array of wildlife that depend upon on wild country.
We could not see that the swath of wilderness that met our gaze is but a tiny part of the vast landscape of western Montana, or that much of what remains wild out there also remains unprotected.
Some of that land at our feet to the west and north along the spine of the Swan Range was once proposed for wilderness designation. But now, with the passage of time and the blades of bulldozers carving routes where game trails and pack trails once provided the only access, the necessary wilderness qualities have been eroded. Over time, it can happen anywhere.
Sander had not quite reached his first birthday when the last Montana wilderness legislation to pass Congress went down in flames, victim to politics and perhaps the fact that the bill was not quite good enough for some ardent wilderness advocates.
I can remember how good it felt back in 1988 to know that a bill had finally passed. No, it did not include protection for some of the places I thought should be included. But it protected a whole lot of wilderness. And I remember my dismay at the angry voices that rejected that wilderness bill as inadequate.
Some things don’t change.
At long last, we again have a wilderness bill on the table that has a good chance of passage. And I, for one, am extremely pleased and hopeful.
Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act is far from perfect. But the same could probably be said for every other piece of legislation that has ever designated new wilderness. It does not protect some places I would certainly like to see protected. And there are compromises in it that don’t make me want to jump with joy.
Like many folks, I would like to see a workable statewide wilderness bill that would protect all the remaining deserving lands in one fell swoop. But that bill is not on the horizon.
Thanks to the clear-eyed dedication to wilderness protection and willingness to put in years of hard work on the part of many who love wild country, what we do have is a chance to protect 600,000 acres of wild lands that need to be protected.
Yes, there are many things about the bill that still need to be wrangled. There are questions that still need to be answered. And there are details to iron out. That is to be expected.
Another 20 years down the line, I hope that Sander can stand atop a peak somewhere in western Montana and remember back to the day in his youth that the land he surveys was designated wilderness and protected forever.
This is our chance.
Greg Tollefson is a freelance Missoula writer whose column appears each week in Outdoors. He can be reached at gtollefson@bresnan.net.