Montana Gives Peace a Chance

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The scariest thing Robyn did was to go out looking for ATV riders. She found Joel Chandler, president of the Libby Ridge Riders, the county's only ATV club. Like everyone else in our coalition, Joel has his own special interests. He would like to see some loop roads established. With nearly 10,000 miles of old logging roads in the forest, I think we should be able to oblige him, much as I want nothing to do with the sound and sight and scent of the roaring machines that bring him so much pleasure.

Joel and Jerry kind of side together in our meetings. Motorheads, we call them jokingly (they refer to us as tree huggers). Perhaps better than any two people in our group, they understand each other and, I think, sometimes stop and wonder why they are spending so many thousands of hours in the company of environmentalists. But the more time we spend with these folks, the more we get to know them, the harder we try to find solutions. And yeah, we negotiate and try to avoid making threats, because when one of the snowmobilers or ATVers admits, for example, that those activities are the only thing their 16-year-old will still do with them, well, hell yes, we get it.

The Three Rivers Challenge has been an experiment in solution finding and community building. We each have a different vision of which part of our bill shines brightest: a goggled, helmeted Jerry, blasting his snowmobile through powder; Doug in front of his mill, greeting the loaded logging trucks ferrying sweet-scented whips of lodgepole, growling and grinding their way slowly toward Chapel Cedar at sunrise; and me, or someone like me, off in the wilderness somewhere, far away from all of this noise, climbing a steep slope, moving steadily through the forest under my own power, with no sound other than the exhalations of my own breath.

We met at least monthly, and sometimes weekly or biweekly, go­ing over every contour in the valley, it seemed. Arguing philosophies sometimes, and other times arguing specifics. It's a cliché to say that we laughed and cried and shouted, but it's true. A snowmobiler friend of Jerry's, shouting, crying, slamming her hands down on the table. Robyn flushing with anger, wanting to say something cutting but smiling her firm and steady smile, thinking, we can still do this. But we can walk away, too, if we have to.

You often hear the phrase, "The stars are aligning." But this time I think it's true. I think that finally we have come to a place where people are worried enough about increasing wildfires, and worried enough about finding work, that they no longer view my strange desire for wilderness as being high up on the list of things to be frightened of.

In Washington, D.C., too, where the Three Rivers Challenge now sits on the desks of the Montana delegation, things have changed politically. When all of you go in together, it gets their attention; they sit up straight and listen. It's pretty fantastic. In the past, I remember the knife-cut tension when we entered an office such as that of the conservative Republican representative Denny Rehberg. But last time we went, in September 2007, he said, in essence, that if everyone wants it, it's not his job to stop it; he supports community decisions.

We've got some new folks, new leadership, in Congress, and yet we still also have old-school political muscle, seniority. Our senior senator, Max Baucus, is chairman of the hugely powerful Finance Committee. Our charismatic governor, Brian Schweitzer, has long championed the kind of work we're doing and has congratulated the coalition on moving past the politics of division. Our new senator, Jon Tester, a Democrat and an organic grain farmer from eastern Montana, is extremely keen to help revitalize small family-owned manufacturing businesses, such as Chapel Cedar. "It's going to be hard," Tester warned us in September. Any time a wilderness bill comes up in Montana, powerful interests will try to shoot it down. You'll have to stand the heat for a while, he said. It was smart advice from a smart man.

To see all the other folks -- regular citizens -- walking up and down the sidewalks outside the Hart Senate or Rayburn House office build­ings, and to show your identification and go through the metal detec­tors in their lobbies, with their steps and banisters worn so smooth by the passage of hundreds of thousands before you, buildings in which so much of recent American history has happened, sometimes by dream and design and other times by chance, is mind-boggling, and I recommend it highly to everyone.

Be honest and civil, is my only advice. Tell them what you want them to do, ask if they can support that, and if they say no, ask what it will take to get them to say yes. They'll usually tell you to assemble a broad coalition of various interests. Which is what we have done.