Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front – Something Sacred
Aldo Leopold spoke of “a sense of place.” When one comes to know intimately a special wild place, one feels the sacred there. We touch the earth and are touched by it. We may not own the deed, but we can get very possessive of a place, especially when we become possessed by its extraordinary landscapes.
The Montana Rocky Mountain Front is my special place. From Choteau’s Airport Hill, I can see fifty miles northwest across Birch Creek to Feather Woman Mountain. From there southward seventy-five miles downrange stands Caribou Peak above Falls Creek. Filling the spaces between are Walling Reef and Old-Man-of-the-Hills on Dupuyer Creek; Mount Frazier and Mount Werner in Blackleaf Canyon; Choteau and Baldy and Rocky and Ear — mountains feeding the Teton; and Chute Mountain above Deep Creek. Castle Reef and Sawtooth guard the Sun River. Across Ford Creek, Crown Mountain and Steamboat keep watch over the Dearborn, and Scapegoat pierces the distant horizon. And that’s only part of it.
The Front was “backbone of the world” to the Blackfeet and other Native Americans and to the ancients who trekked the Old North Trail. The peaks and ridges were vision quest sites. They’ve been called by different names, but these same mountains remain little changed by millennia. Little more than two centuries ago, no white man had ever seen them, yet now they are sacred in many non-Indian eyes, just as they remain so to the traditionalists of the tribes.
Forest Service evaluations score the public lands along the East Front of the Montana Rockies as the finest unclassified wild country in the lower 48 states. Its scenic splendor is unsurpassed by any undeveloped landscape on earth. Biologists place it in the top one percent of wildlife habitat in North America. The Front is sacred to a growing number of people.
But, as one old-timer who grew up beside the Rockies says, “It’s almost like the original temptation. We have this incredibly beautiful place that we can either leave alone or go in and grab the apple.” Yes, there are those who wish to build roads and carve mines and drill sites here to prospect for potential resources. Their cry is “Jobs! Revenue! Profits!” I hold no grudge against them, but in this case I agree with the great majority of folks who have said, “Leave the Rocky Mountain Front alone. Save this magnificent landscape in its wild state for future generations. Let it be.”
Many people wish to preserve the Front as home for eagles and elk, grizzlies and goats, jack pine and juniper, and other plants and critters, some endangered. Certain economists predict long-term benefits of saving it far outweigh short-term profits to be gained from industrial development. Backcountry recreationists believe too many roads already intrude on public land. And many scientists urge that all remaining wild country be set aside as a baseline from which to compare our mostly developed world.
There are lots of reasons for saving the Front, but the purest I’ve heard came from a crusty old Montana native who told his congressman, “Some places on earth should be left alone even if solid gold lies beneath them. The Rocky Mountain Front is such a place.” I agree. For me, these special mountains and valleys, in and of themselves, are reason enough. I know them like brothers and sisters and cherished old friends. I keep returning to them. Always, they touch me. I suspect I am possessed by them.
Wallace Stegner described America’s remaining wilderness as our “geography of hope.” The wild horizons of the Rocky Mountain Front and Bob Marshall Wilderness symbolize the geography of hope for an entire continent. It is an extraordinary land. I trust we can keep it. Something there is sacred.
