Nostalgia for an Economy Long Past

There is considerable unease among environmentalists in the West about the character of the economic changes taking place. They brood over the “suburbanization” of the region as a result of the ongoing in-migration of new residents and the urban and ex-urban sprawl that accompanies them. Ranch- and farmland gets gobbled up; forested mountainsides get divided into upscale mountain retreats; and traditional livelihoods wither and die. Some have described this as the displacement of a “working” landscape and the knowledgeable working stewards of that land by yuppies looking for “playgrounds” on a grand scale who want to convert what were once working landscapes into “Barbie Doll” “pretty” landscapes.

Buried in some of these sneering critiques of the new economies that have been emerging in the Mountain West over the last three decades are several assumptions that need to be closely examined.

First, healthy, protected natural landscapes do not merely provide “playgrounds” and “pretty” amenities for “soulless” in-migrants. They provide a broad range of environmental services that are crucial to our physical, cultural, and spiritual health. Water quality, wildlife, open space, biological diversity, wildlands, ecological stability, clean air, stable climates, etc. are not mere “Barbie Doll” accessories.

Second, play, recreation, the appreciation and celebration of beauty, and the contemplation of the mysteries of the natural world and our intimate relationship with it are not spiritually inferior to work, commercial enterprise, and the utilitarian development of the natural world. We have broadened our spiritual horizons beyond those of our fundamentalist Puritan past and the Protestant work ethic that evolved from it.

Third, actively developing natural landscapes for commercial purposes is not the only way in which to productively and safely relate to those natural landscapes. For instance:

A miner engaged in tearing off the top of a mountain, soaking the crushed rock with cyanide, and then dumping the toxic remains into a valley does not necessarily have a superior cultural or spiritual relationship with that mountain than does a hunter, poet, hiker, mountaineer, or environmental geologist.

Or a farmer who plows up natural prairie lands and drains wetlands in order to plant a monoculture crop does not necessarily have a deeper respect for the prairie than a bird watcher, an artist, a water fowl or upland bird hunter, or an urban resident struggling to protect our remaining natural prairies.

Or a logger who is clearcutting an old growth forest does not necessarily have a superior relationship with the forest compared to a wildlife biologist, a visitor seeking spiritual solace, or a family that relies on that forest for irrigation water, a healthy fishery, or the natural backdrop against which it lives its life.

There are many appropriate, sustainable, and inspirational ways to relate to the natural world in addition to commercially developing it.

Certainly those who work the natural landscape to harvest nature’s gifts carefully and sustainably are likely to have an intimate knowledge of the natural world on which they rely for success, and that knowledge should help them avoid damaging the landscape. But they are not the only ones.

A timber company planning sustainable timber harvests needs to have that knowledge, but so do state and federal foresters who are seeking to manage not only for the harvest but also for all the other important forest values. And the same is true of the members of a local environmental group who are monitoring those harvest plans and also hike, and hunt, and picnic in the forests.

The third generation rancher who is trying to make a living today but also wants to pass on healthy and productive grazing lands to her children has to have an intimate knowledge of the natural processes governing the land. But so does the rangeland scientist who is trying to control invading exotic species, protect wildlife habitat, and reintroduce a historical fire regime. The local environmental organizations that are seeking to protect and rehabilitate riparian areas where they also fish, float, and hunt are also likely to have significant knowledge of the natural systems at risk.

What is important is not that people are working the landscape to survive or make money but that they are actively engaging that landscape in a knowledgeable and respectful way. There are many different motivations for and ways of doing that.

To focus exclusively on the ways and motivations of the past is to make an age-old mistake that should be familiar to Westerners. The mountain men sneered at those who drove cattle into the region. The cattlemen sneered at those who followed with sheep and those who sought to homestead and raise crops. Residents of the new trade centers sneered at the wild and reckless cowboys. Settled residents were disrupted and threatened by the rootless and wandering miners seeking instant wealth. Established businesses fought union organizers who followed the industrialization of the metal and forest products industries. Those union organizers were beaten, jailed, and executed, but they succeeded in turning what originally were lousy, dangerous, low paid jobs into what we now consider the region’s premier jobs.

The point is that the West has a historic pattern of sneering at whatever the new economy involves and romanticizing whatever preceded it, even as that predecessor shrivels and loses its capacity to support the population.

We are not linked to place only through commercial activities or through a difficult and threatening struggle to survive. Such a primitive materialist position is certainly inadequate in our contemporary world and a real threat to the very landscapes and communities that drew us to and hold us in this spectacular place called the West.