Home of the prairie dog in the Northern Plains of Montana, we awoke on the ranch of Steve and Jeanne Charter this morning. I scampered up atop a grassy knoll to get a proper view of this Big Sky I’ve heard so much about. It indeed is a large sky, and a vast stretch of plains laid out all around, interrupted only by the underground home of the Charter’s and our bike and tent village.
My experiences are from the coasts of this country. I have only known a lifestyle where people truly live in connection to the land and the sea through commercial fishing. How unique it is I’ve always thought to know people who understand these natural processes with a direct connection to their natural environment. But my first time on the ranch, I see that a rancher is a fisherman of the land. They understand this land, details us from away can only read or study in the name of science. This country seems so much more comprehensible all of a sudden, connecting such basic fundamentals as food and land and the people of these lands.
Today was well rounded, in an attempted partial return of the Charter’s awesome hospitality and generosity we painted and plumbed a bit for them around the ranch. The afternoon held a thoughtful discussion in dealings with coal, tar sands and our fossil fuel loving lifestyles. Steve and Jeanne filled us with personal insight into their fight against big coal development, and protection of their ranching way of life. It was the expertise of a guest lecturer from a university course, except we came to them, their home and their lives.
I got thinking about my current life, living in a college town where people’s jobs, lives and daily interactions are not ruled by the land or environment, but instead by the inside of buildings or industry or academia. Is this not how workers can intertwine their values with the cause of the corporation, and disregard community’s people and environments they effect with their of their actions. The Charter’s issues effect all of us, we are all facing these issues of coal and fossil fuel development. Is the difference that they see the upfront damage and effects first only so we can see the full extent of the externalities from pollution and climate change later on in the limitless future.
Devin Trainor, Humboldt State University
You are to be commended on your journey and hopefully be very much rewarded for your efforts.
Unlike many energy enthusiasts, you may want to consider and contemplate what energy sources, in addition to wind and solar, we are going to use to meet future energy demands in ways that do not sacrifice people’s closely guarded life styles (both existing and aspired to).
Go Phil! Your my hero!
Wow! Love your insight about ranchers/farmers being fishermen of the land. Having grown up on the Saskatchewan prairies, I feel that deep in my soul; that connection to the land. And you are absolutely right in feeling that it is this connection to the land/sea that is going to be what saves us from ourselves. Roll on down the highway, and drink in the very land around you. You all rock!
Maple Ridge, BC