Wilderness Heroes: Fabulous Volunteers

Our website would not have been possible without the help of many volunteers. Special thanks go to:

• Lex Hames, former Communications Director of MWA, who started the project, nurtured the interactive map, and wrote and wrote and wrote . . .
• Scott Bischke who contributed audio presentations for the Founders section
• Susie MacDonald, Diego Rivas, Dan Bennett, Bernie Rose, and Terry Meyers who all worked on the Chapter pages
• Gerry Jennings and Brenda Lindlief-Hall who edited materials for us

PEOPLE POWER
When the Saints Go Marching in, Things Happen. . .(From Fall 2006 Wild Montana)

Imagine your favorite wild place in Montana. Snowy peaks, clean water, wildlife, granddaddy trees, or the hush of the land might come to mind. But do you imagine people? Not the ones you meet on the trail, but those unseen folks who have preserved this incredible place? Well, you should. Every wild place in Montana has patron saints, and their spirits swim in the waters, ride the wind through the pines, and call out in the voice of the hawk or the elk. They’re not typical saints, though—most are still living, and few are meek and mild.

But in other ways, they are like real saints—everyday people infusing everyday tasks with otherworldly passion. Some lick stamps and bake cookies. Some coordinate special events, some network in their communities, others meet with politicians.

Still others produce newsletters, facilitate philosophical discussions, lead Wilderness Walks, take photographs, work with tribal leaders, appear on TV and radio, launch membership drives, host parties, write articles and alerts, or perhaps perform an occasional magic trick. And then there are the meetings—oh, the meetings!—chapter meetings, committee meetings, council meetings— many requiring harrowing drives on icy roads.

There’s another term for this dedicated group of Wilderness advocates: Montana Wilderness Association volunteers. These are the people who are the heart and soul of MWA, the ones who supply the hope, grit, sweat, and sheer dogged determination year after year that carries the Wilderness cause forward. Volunteers are the soil from which our organization springs.

Let’s look at the lives of a few MWA members to learn more about their heroic—and it is heroic—work, and to be inspired by their example.

AN UNEXPECTED CALLING
Some volunteers were surprised by “the call” but rose to the occasion. As microbiologist and sometimes magician Walter Walsh of Helena explains, “I was the kind of guy who complained a lot but didn’t do much.” A life-long hiker, he attended a Wilderness Walk one day and cracked a joke so hilarious he was asked to join the local board. And thus his Wilderness career was born.

Now, a few years later, he has served on the Wild Divide Chapter board, as a chapter representative to the State Council, and on the State Council Executive Committee. Walsh has also coordinated volunteers for a convention, clocked hours and hours of phone banking, and written countless letters to agencies and elected officials.

Margaret Webster, a law librarian in Billings, stepped up to the plate ten years ago when she was unexpectedly asked to serve on the Eastern Wildlands Chapter (EWC) board, which launched her into unknown territory. She took a class to learn how to create a newsletter—and another class to learn GPS mapping. As EWC president, she helped lead a successful fight to oust a private cabin from the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

Webster also co-chaired an MWA convention and helped launch a “Wilderness And” program. A quiet person, she found herself agreeing to television and radio interviews and becoming a master of ceremonies for major events. “When something needs to be done, you can learn to do it,” she advises.

THAT WHICH YOU LOVE. . .
Other volunteer focus on something they already love and turn it to the Wilderness cause. Ryan Sparhawk of Billings loves music, beer, and Wilderness (not necessarily in that order), so he utilized personal connections to launch EWC’s “Music for the Wild” event, hoping to draw in a younger crowd and introduce them to Wilderness issues.

“I’m not really good at going to meetings and discussing strategy,” he says. “I’ve found that my skill is making people aware of Wilderness through fun events.” And Wilderness-enlightenment-through-fun (not a bad credo) is just what he’s accomplished. The festival has grown in three years to an event that features three bluegrass/jam bands and attracts 400 people—this year it grossed $6,000 and Sparhawk expects the “wild” jamboree to be even larger in 2007.

Susan Colvin of Great Falls has had fun “horsing around” for Wilderness for over 30 years. A charter member of Great Falls Backcountry Horsemen and MWA’s Island Range Chapter, she has spent innumerable days in Montana’s wild backcountry, especially the Rocky Mountain Front. She has led horse-assisted weekends and media trips, and she talks to everyone she meets on the trail about Wilderness. “Every person you can talk to is another advocate you have.”

Colvin’s knowledge of the land helped her build political clout, which she leverages in meetings with local, state, and federal politicians. In the late 1980s, she joined a delegation to Congress to lobby for a statewide Montana Wilderness bill that passed both chambers (sadly, President Reagan pocket-vetoed it).

She also met with Lewis & Clark Forest Supervisor Gloria Flora in the mid-1990s to advocate a moratorium on oil and gas leasing on the Rocky Mountain Front—and that time with more success. Flora announced the moratorium in 1997. At every chance, Colville talks with other backcountry riders about the Rocky Mountain Front, working to strengthen the bond between traditional backcountry users, from hikers to horseback riders to hunters and anglers.

IT’S THE CONNECTION. . .
While alerts and newsletters draw attention to issues, most volunteers agree that the most important tool is a personal connection—sharing the Wilderness message with colleagues, friends, and family.

Anne Banks is anything but anonymous in Bozeman, her home for over 30 years. She has volunteered for a long list of recreation- or land-use-related groups in the area, so when a Wilderness issue comes up, she knows how to talk to a wide cross-section of the community.

“The fact that I have lived here and have connections gives me credibility. Some respectable gray hairs help, too!” she quips.

Farther northwest, in Heron, Judy Hutchins has pursued “strategic memberships” on committees and councils in the community as part of a decades-long fight against a proposed copper/silver mine under the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness. “There’s no silver bullet,” she says. “You’ve got to do everything you can think of.” That may mean sitting through years of meetings for a water quality council or other civic organization, but dedicated volunteers like Hutchins stick with it. The banter around town—over grocery carts and coffee cups—makes a big difference too, she says. Knowing the community is a special strength that volunteers bring to Wilderness advocacy.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Personal connections are both a primary tool and a major inspiration for many Wilderness advocates, especially when the trail gets long and dusty.

Missoulian Dale Harris, a State Council member, has been involved in MWA and Wilderness issues for over 30 years—so long that his life, his community, and his volunteerism are inseparable. “The people are so much a part of my life. I see them almost every day,” he says, and adds that they make the hard work fun. “I’m not doing this if I can’t have fun,” he insists—a bold statement from a man who serves on the national “Roadless Review” committee and travels cross-country each month to help preserve roadless areas nationwide.

Flathead-Kootenai Chapter member Susie Waldron also finds strength in people: “The board members are really close….It’s nice to be fighting alongside people with such similar goals and ideas.” She spearheaded a mentoring program for members in her chapter so they could lean on each other. FKC now has 30 mentors who personally contact 10 members each when important issues or needs arise.

When the going gets really rough, most Wilderness saints—er, volunteers—turn to the source of their passion—Wilderness itself. Colvin, who was both saddened and outraged by Reagan’s veto of the ’88 bill, goes in her mind to the Rocky Mountain Front. “I think the area is just magic. All I have to do it close my eyes and envision my favorite places, and I become enraged at the thought of losing them.”

MWA’s president-elect Joe Scalia, a psychoanalyst in Livingston, can turn to any wild place to remind him of the impermanence of humans and the permanence of the wild: “Our work is to revere something that is greater than us and our individual struggles.”

NEW APPROACHES, NEW ANSWERS
The environmental movement is changing, say Harris and Scalia—moving away from more combative approaches to collaboration. With those changes, the role of volunteers in a grassroots organization may shift a bit—but both agree that volunteers are as important as ever.

“‘Grassroots’ may be a hackneyed term, but we haven’t lost its importance altogether … If you give up the grassroots, you risk becoming just like the rest of the world … [Volunteers] are always out there working, getting things percolating,” Scalia says. “They create opportunities for all sorts of things to rise to the surface.”

Long-time volunteer Pete Bengeyfield, a photographer and hydrologist in Dillon, agrees: “The strength of MWA is its core support at the grassroots level—the strength is in people, not money.”

Harris suggests, however, that we may have to rethink what we mean by “grassroots.” “The old grassroots form letters or e-mail alerts don’t have much traction anymore,” he says. “We have to be the leaders.”

LEADING THE WAY
How to be the leaders? How can volunteers be most effective? The first rule for volunteers is to stay positive, proactive and creative—and to learn how to talk and listen in a new way. As Scalia explains, “The environmental movement’s changes mirror what’s happening in the global ‘community,’ where we need to talk to one another differently … if we are going to survive.”

Indeed, without thousands of Wilderness lovers dedicated to the land, Montana’s wild places won’t survive. But when each saint claims a corner or two of Montana’s wildlands, they keep Wilderness alive and thriving. Like the saints of old, they make the earth a more heavenly place.

And watch out. When they come marching in, that’s power.

Story by Former Montanan and MWA staffer Leeann Drabenstott Culbreath. Leeann now raises a son and lots of vegetables in south Georgia with her peanut pathologist husband, Albert. She gets her Wilderness fix at the Okefenokee Swamp, the third largest Wilderness east of the Mississippi. She says, “Y’all come!”