Saving ourselves
Westerners are a diverse group, but through our love of land we may find a common ground.

Story by Julie Titone, Photography by Brian Plonka
The Spokesman-Review

Brian Plonka - The Spokesman-Review Don Heidenreich of Spokane secures his fly rods after fishing on an autumn evening at Hauser Lake in North Idaho. "I love fishing in the fall. The colors and the way the fish work the surface makes this a wonderful place to meditate. I've been fishing here for 20 years." - Don Heidenreich, fisherman.

That's pretty much what it means to be a Westerner as a new century approaches.

Beyond those traits, many of us have little in common. What other bond might there be between the young software engineer inline skating in Spokane and the

Indian elder digging roots on the Colville Reservation? How else might the miner in a Kellogg unemployment line be linked to the telemarketer in a Coeur d'Alene cubicle?

If what links us is a strong attachment to where we live, then what divides us is how we perceive the place. Consider, for example, what we see when we look at a tree.

"It's board feet, it's dollars and cents, it's habitat," says forester Steig Gabrielsen. "It's a beautiful living thing."

Few would disagree with his descriptions, though many will debate until death the order of their importance. Some people avoid the discussion out of frustration or indifference. And a growing minority of Westerners will argue passionately that nature and economics should never be ranked, because neither can be preserved without protecting the other.

Is there a way to get beyond wrangling and save what everyone values about the West? Could be.

What follows are some approaches that might help us save the West from overuse and overregulation, keep our towns from disappearing and our cities from growing out of control. The ideas come not only from professional cogitators, but also from the motorcyclist who finds freedom in the mountains, the farmer who fell in love with her land at first sight, the mortgage lender who recharges his batteries by walking in the woods.

Rugged individuals unite
Tough, self-sufficient, a boulder holding firm in the current of life. That stereotype of the Westerner is alive and well, probably because there's so much truth to it.

Gabrielsen fits the mold. The lanky Hayden Lake, Idaho, forester has been tending corporate timberlands for three decades. He's fiercely proud of how he treats his own tree farm. With equal bluntness, he can criticize government land managers and praise people who fought to preserve wilderness.

He certainly can't imagine living anywhere else.

"You know the best kind of meal I can eat in Idaho?" Gabrielsen asks. "I either shot it or grew it in my garden, or my wife baked it."

Such self-reliance and individuality are among the great strengths of the West, says Mike Lee, a writer and sometime environmental activist who lives in Bayview, Idaho. But they can also keep people from looking at the big picture, he says.

"We all know what's best, and nobody's going to tell us how to do things," he says. "Rabid self-interest can lead to prejudice and not thinking of the needs of other people."

Another Western trait, the barn-raising neighborly spirit, can motivate the John and Jane Wayne types to sit down and talk problems through. When they do, the results can be impressive.

"People who are resistant of other people's rules usually have a strong creative streak," says Mary Vasse, community program officer for the Portland-based nonprofit, Sustainable Northwest.

Individuals with a capital "I" are often entrepreneurs, she notes.

Daniel Kemmis, director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West, agrees. Kemmis, former mayor of Missoula, says business people can be a driving force behind revitalized cities and protected landscapes.

"It's possible for people to come to see that attractive surroundings and well-preserved ecosystems are the strongest base possible for the enterprises they want to carry out."

Be nice, listen up
Westerners have little chance of identifying common goals if they can't speak civilly to each other - which they often have trouble doing.

"It comes from just distrusting other people's agendas, and also being burned in the past," says Vasse. "People have a lot of anger."

Mike White faces rage in the forest sometimes, when people are annoyed by the sound of his motorcycle. But if hikers make snide remarks or give the finger to the Coeur d'Alene rider, they won't get a rude gesture in return.

"I take off my helmet and talk to them," says White, a cabinet shop maintenance supervisor and president of The Panhandle Trail Riders Association. Likewise, White controlled his own anger when he learned the U.S. Forest Service wanted to ban motorized vehicles from 72 miles of his favorite trails.

"We came up with 19 or 20 trail riders and went in to plead our case. Other people were wanting to stand back, saying, 'Let's sue.' I've always been one to try to work things out," White says.

It's up to everyone involved in natural resource debates to model good behavior, says Kemmis, and for community leaders to insist on it. "When I was mayor, I was always chairing public hearings. I did not shrink from giving the little sermon."

A hearing is the worst place to get people to actually hear each other, says Michael Kingsley of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He's regularly hired by cities and towns to help them identify a happy future and find ways to achieve it. He says it's important to hold meetings on neutral turf - a church basement, a community center - and have someone in charge who encourages active listening.

"It usually allows people to get things off their chest," he says. "It can cause really moving conversations to take place."

They're from the government and . . .
During talks aimed at deciding which forest trails will be open to motorcycles, White's approach was "just common sense, talking to people." He even enjoyed dealing with Forest Service employees. But, he acknowledges, "Some people think I'm part of the conspiracy just to be in there talking with them."

Suspicion of government is spreading faster than knapweed. Paul Sommers, a senior research fellow at the Northwest Policy Center, thinks that will be the case as long as candidates seek public office by running against the government. "You're maiming government at the same time you're trying to protect it."

One solution is for people to judge every government worker and program individually, and to assume that they are capable of change. Kingsley pointed to the U.S. Postal Service, saying it has started considering the opinion of townfolk when locating a new post office.

"Five years ago, they would have put it anywhere they damned well pleased. It was a small, straightforward example of pure bureaucratic stupidity."

Federal agencies must learn to be genuine partners, not senior partners, Kemmis says. He's encouraged that state and local governments want to handle wildlife protection and similar tough tasks. "They're going to fail once in a while. But, let's face it, the federal government has failed once in a while."

Better than rules and regs
Tom Reese is part of the government and proud to say so. The native Montanan came back to the Northwest after a 17-year detour to Southern California, where his work as a private landscape architect wasn't satisfying his urge to shape the environment. He's now an urban designer for the city of Spokane.

Though he deals with rules and regulations daily, he thinks they're a sorry way to get things done. They only enforce a minimum standard. They don't encourage excellence, he says.

Whether the issue is dealing with sprawl or landscaping a boulevard, Reese thinks pride should be a community's guide.

"Do we want mediocrity, 'That's good enough'? Or do we want to be really good? It doesn't mean that it has to be complicated or expensive. It means doing it right."

For Reese, doing it right means reflecting the natural environment in a people-friendly urban landscape. For Gabrielsen, Idaho lands manager for Crown Pacific Limited Partnership, it means making tree-by-tree, acre-by-acre decisions about what gets cut and what gets planted.

"I believe the forester is responsible for the job from start to finish. From marking trees to hiring the contractor, to seeing that the slash and erosion control are taken care of," he says. "If it gets to be a specialist type of deal, no one is responsible for the job."

Gabrielsen says he's scared to death of regulations that would go too far, especially any that would keep him from harvesting on his own tree farm.

Dianne Green is surprised to find herself lobbying for stronger regulations although she, too, makes her living from the land.

She owns Greentree Naturals, a Sandpoint-area farm where she avoids using pesticides. She doesn't need government inspectors to keep her on the green-and-narrow path.

"I initially fought the rule that said I couldn't use an organic label unless I was certified," says Green. "Then I saw southern Idaho farmers who were 'only' using Roundup once a year, so they figured they were organic. I ended up changing my tune completely."

It's not your father's economy
Green manages a farmers' collective, which includes her Greentree Naturals. "I want to create a community food system, have enough small farms to provide as much locally grown food as possible," Green says. "My produce is more expensive than what they get out of Spokane. But because it's within 24 hours of the field, it's a no-waste product."

The "added value" of freshness matches the philosophy of Vasse, the Sustainable Northwest organizer. Westerners must change the way they do business, she says, if they're going to survive.

"Rural communities have a history of selling everything at bottom price: chips, beef, trees. They have no control over prices, over boom and bust cycles that affect not only the economy, but people's spirits as well."

Western communities have something to sell that wasn't even defined a century ago: quality of life. But they also have an obstacle to overcome. As Pwint Htun diplomatically puts it, "this is not one of the most diverse places. That's one reason a lot of minorities have a hard time staying here."

Htun, a software engineer, was recruited to Spokane by Hewlett Packard after she graduated from the University of Washington.

She came for a challenging job with a quick commute, for skiing, rafting and skating on the Centennial Trail. Still, folks back in Seattle thought that Htun, a native of Burma, was nuts to make the move. They feared she would face discrimination.

"A lot of my friends and professors said, 'Do you know what you're doing?' The only thing they get on the news about that area was that Hayden Lake stuff."

If she ever moves on, Htun will miss her favorite spot at Riverside State Park, where the music of the rapids helps her relax. "This is something that I'll never have again anywhere I live," she says, "this beautiful place five minutes from my house."

Getting off the sidelines - or not
The Tubbs Hill natural area is one places that Mitch Driller of Coeur d'Alene finds therapeutic. The mortgage lender, who has multiple sclerosis, is convinced that frequent contact with nature's energy keeps him out of a wheelchair.

Like Htun, Driller doesn't get involved in natural resource controversies.

"If I did, it would drive me crazy. There's so much out there about the environment," Driller says. "I think Mother Earth will take care of herself."

There's no way everyone is going to be at the table hashing out issues such as wildlife protection, says biologist Greg Schildwachter of Missoula.

"People don't have the time, they have other issues that are important to them - Social Security, crime, education," he says. "We have to find people who do have the time and energy to study the details, make proposals and present them to the government."

Schildwachter represents the forest industry in a coalition of logging, labor and environmental groups. To avoid a government plan that would be acceptable to no one, they came up with a joint proposal to reintroduce grizzy bears to the Bitterroot Mountains.

Schildwachter doesn't whitewash the difficulties of working with "the enemy." Still, he finds "it's really enthralling and gratifying when you can come out the other end of a hard-fought negotiation, and know that you have protected your interests - and you've helped achieve somebody else's interests at the same time.

"Too often we think of negotiations as a staring contest in which someone will lose."

Lee, the Bayview writer, says he's learned a lot from his participation in the public debate about logging, and he thinks foresters have, too. He wishes more folks were comfortable joining in the fray. He never regretted speaking up against logging on Bernard Peak or nearby Farragut State Park. He won the first battle, lost the second, but found both experiences empowering. "You can change the course of things."

On the Colville Indian Reservation, Barbara Aripa fights for protection of cultural resources. She scolds other elders who complain that logging harms their huckleberry patches, but don't show up when the tribal council is approving timber harvest.

"I tell them, you come and speak up! Tell them what you want, and how you want it!"

This land is my land
Aripa finds solace at Owhi Lake, where the wind tells the same stories her grandmother heard. When Lee seeks inspiration, he lounges with his notebook on the shore of Lake Pend Oreille.

Rula Awwad-Rafferty is renewed by the sight of Moscow Mountain.

People need places that make them feel whole, says Awwad-Rafferty, an assistant professor at the University of Idaho and adviser to the architecture department's Center of Community Design and Rural Planning. She is convinced that people can work through their differences and build on what's unique about the region.

"I've noticed with the farming community and the university that, when people here want to do something, they'll do it."

Westerners who've spent half their lives fighting for their own interests are ready to do business differently, Kemmis believes. They have street smarts. They know their way around the statehouses and city halls.

"When those people who have been adversaries start working together," he says, "the system doesn't have a chance."

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