Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared M. Diamond Read Free Book Online Page B

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 °f 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 w ere 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 ul timately 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 own high school graduates leave the valley, and most of those leave Montana. Although population is increasing in the Bitterroot, it is falling in eastern Montana, so that for the state of Montana as a whole the population trend is flat. Within the past decade the number of Ravalli County residents in their 50s has increased steeply, but the number in their 30s has actually decreased. Some of the people recently establishing homes in the valley are extremely wealthy, such as the broker age house founder Charles Schwab and the Intel president Craig Barrett, but Ravalli County is nevertheless one of the poorest counties in the state of Montana, which in turn is nearly the poorest state in the U.S. Many of the county's residents find that they have to hold two or three jobs even to earn an income at U.S. poverty levels.
    We associate Montana with natural beauty. Indeed, environmentally Montana is perhaps the least damaged of the lower 48 states; ultimately, that's the main reason why so many people are moving to Ravalli County.

    The federal government owns over one-quarter of the land in the state and three-quarters of the land in the county, mostly under the title of national forest. Nevertheless, the Bitterroot Valley presents a microcosm of the envi ronmental problems plaguing the rest of the United States: increasing population, immigration, increasing scarcity and decreasing quality of water, locally and seasonally poor air quality, toxic wastes, heightened risks from wildfires, forest deterioration, losses of soil or of its nutrients, losses of biodiversity, damage from introduced pest species, and effects of climate change.
    Montana provides an ideal case study with which to begin this book on past and present environmental problems. In the case of the past soci eties that I shall discuss —Polynesian,