Collapse_ How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond [17]
Also like Stan Falkow, I was immediately overwhelmed by the Big Hole’s setting: a broad flat valley floor covered with meadows and meandering creeks, but surrounded by a wall of seasonally snow-covered mountains rising abruptly on every horizon. Montana calls itself the “Big Sky State.” It’s really true. In most other places where I’ve lived, either one’s view of the lower parts of the sky is obscured by buildings, as in cities; or else there are mountains but the terrain is rugged and the valleys are narrow, so one sees only a slice of the sky, as in New Guinea and the Alps; or else there is a broad expanse of sky but it’s less interesting, because there is no ring of distinctive mountains on the horizon—as on the plains of Iowa and Nebraska. Three years later, while I was a student in college, I came back for the summer to Dick Hirschy’s ranch with two college friends and my sister, and we all worked for the Hirschys on the hay harvest, I driving a scatterrake, my sister a buckrake, and my two friends stacking hay.
After that summer of 1956, it was a long time before I returned to Montana. I spent my summers in other places that were beautiful in other ways, such as New Guinea and the Andes, but I couldn’t forget Montana or the Hirschys. Finally, in 1998 I happened to receive an invitation from a private non-profit foundation called the Teller Wildlife Refuge in the Bitterroot Valley. It was an opportunity to bring my own twin sons to Montana, at an age only a few years younger than the age at which I had first visited the state, and to introduce them to fly-fishing for trout. My boys took to it; one of them is now learning to be a fishing guide. I reconnected to Montana and revisited my rancher boss Dick Hirschy and his brother and sisters, who were now in their 70s and 80s, still working hard all year round, just as when I had first met them 45 years previously. Since that reconnection, my wife and sons and I have been visiting Montana every year—drawn to it ultimately by the same unforgettable beauty of its big sky that drew or kept my other friends there (Plates 1-3).
That big sky grew on me. After living for so many years elsewhere, I found that it took me several visits to Montana to get used to the panorama of the sky above, the mountain ring around, and the valley floor below—to appreciate that I really could enjoy that panorama as a daily setting for part of my life—and to discover that I could open myself up to it, pull myself away from it, and still know that I could return to it. Los Angeles has its own practical advantages for me and my family as a year-round base of work, school, and residence, but Montana is infinitely more beautiful and (as Stan Falkow said) peaceful. To me, the most beautiful view in the world is the view down to the Big Hole’s meadows and up to the snowcapped peaks of the Continental Divide, as seen from the porch of Jill and John Eliel’s ranch house.
Montana in general, and the Bitterroot Valley in its southwest, are a land of paradoxes. Among the lower 48 states, Montana is the third largest in area, yet the sixth smallest in population, hence the second lowest in population density. Today the Bitterroot Valley looks lush, belying its original natural vegetation of just sagebrush. Ravalli County in which the valley is located is so beautiful and attracts so many immigrants from elsewhere in the U.S. (including even from elsewhere in Montana) that it is one of our nation’s fastest growing counties, yet 70% of its