Nature is Our Common Ground
Photo: Blair Speed
By Kelsey Sather
“How many generations has your family been in Montana?” she asked, looking at me.
“Well, my Norwegian ancestors on my dad’s side homesteaded near Scobey,” I began. But the woman next to her was laughing, saying, “Yeah, how long have you lived here?”
I was in a circle with people I didn’t know, and we were introducing ourselves. The question had been a joke, but I didn’t realize it at first. Most places, it would be a strange question to ask someone you were just meeting. People typically ask what you do for work and for fun when you’re exchanging initial pleasantries—not your generational history.
But right now, Bozeman is not typical. Everything feels different in and around my hometown for the past few years, conversations included. People ask where you’re from when you meet them, and when I tell them I grew up here, graduating in 2005 from Bozeman High, responses range from surprise to awe, as if being born here was some kind of accomplishment.
I take pride in the hardiness my ancestors demonstrated when they were surviving as pioneers in northern Montana. I am grateful for my childhood growing up in a small town. I am thankful for my experiences in nature as I came of age in a house near the trailhead to Leverich Canyon.
Yet being born here isn’t something I earned; it simply happened. It was luck and privilege. However, in conversations surrounding origin in Bozeman, there seems to be this underlying (or sometimes overt) social currency implied in one’s birthplace. Being from Montana is at the top, with each generation adding increasing value.
This local social value system is of course symptomatic of the vast, irreversible, and often overwhelming changes happening on the land. It seems every week I drive around town, yet another cottonwood that I could reliably spot a bird of prey within gets chopped down and paved over. That fox den near the old tractor? A condo. Those aspens where elk once bugled? More pavement, more condos, more…people.
People. They want to live here. They value the beauty; they value clean air and water. They value the convenient access to nature, whether it’s a trail leading to a park or a trail leading to a peak.
Those are the values that nearly everyone moving to Bozeman shares. Beyond them? The overlaps diminish from person to person, sometimes steeply. Those people are too liberal; these people too conservative. Politics and ideologies divide. They create tension. They create, sometimes, hate.
The woman who joked about “how many generations” explained that she had just cleaned hurtful language off a bathroom wall directed toward Montana transplants. Beyond such reproachable expressions of anger is typically pain and fear. People fall in love with places, and when they change, it is sad and scary. And it can be hard to know what to do with intense feelings of loss.
No doubt, change is hard. While I value my ancestral roots in Montana, I recognize that this thread of my family’s history took place during a time of vast and irreversible changes much greater than what we’re experiencing today. Homesteading, mining, and broken treaties in the 19th century led to the creation of reservations for the twelve tribal nations who call this now-state home: namely, the Assiniboine, Blackfeet, Chippewa, Cree, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kootenai, Little Shell Chippewa, Northern Cheyenne, Pend d’Oreille, Salish and Sioux. When I begin to feel any creeping righteousness of my hometown being radically altered by transplants, I remind myself that all non-Native Montanans are descendants of transplants.
Even with this in mind, change remains hard. It hurts to watch wildlife habitat diminish and to see some of the world’s best soil for agriculture get buried beneath concrete. It hurts when the very thing that connects us all—nature—is diminished, because we need it. No matter our heritage and place of origin, we need nature.
Emotionally and physically, we need nature more than ever, and that’s why people are flocking to nature-rich places like Bozeman. Obviously, the irony is the very thing drawing people here becomes diminished when growth demands infrastructure. We are thus tasked to answer a complicated question: how do we preserve the qualities we love about this place amid such fast-paced change?
This is the question Gallatin Valley Land Trust seeks to answer. Will Bozeman ever be a small town again? No. But can Bozeman be a city surrounded by strategically conserved swaths of land that contribute to vital wildlife corridors and preserve nutrient-rich agricultural land? Can this be a place where people live and nature thrives?
Maybe. Given vision paired with action, yes. Take a look at this map. GVLT is thinking ahead. Their dedicated and skilled Lands team works to conserve open lands with the highest community and conservation values outside of where development can and should happen. Instead, GVLT focuses on projects adjacent to other protected or public lands within the organization’s service area in Gallatin, Park, and Madison counties. These conservation easements serve as vital winter elk habitat, generational farmland, and open spaces for minds and bodies to wander.
That is what makes conservation easements such a powerful tool in this era of change: they are multi-dimensional in how they work, but the commonality is antithetical to alteration. What is being conserved is customizable to the private property owner’s wants and needs for the land’s future. The legally binding agreement requires the willing approval of both parties signing.
Many of the families signing their land into conservation easements have lived in Montana for generations. It is a beautiful gift they leave for their fellow inhabitants, often without much public recognition for the immense value their agreements bring to new and old residents alike.
One of GVLT’s focus areas is Amsterdam-Churchill, which has some of the best soils in the state and is home to some of our valley’s oldest farming and ranching operations. This is an area I haven’t spent much time in until a recent journey. Red-tailed hawks and golden eagles perch upon fence posts, waiting for mice to run between potato plants. The land seems to yawn open, maintaining the state’s Big Sky epithet that can feel irrelevant amid the newer, taller buildings in Bozeman’s downtown district.
What makes conservation easements secured by the Gallatin Valley Land Trust extra beautiful is the fact that many of these agreements are struck between transplants working for the nonprofit and fourth and fifth-generation Montanans. The shared value of nature—whether for agriculture’s sake, wildlife habitat, or both—overcomes ideological or historical differences that may otherwise fracture and divide.
In a country that can feel more divisive than ever, finding common ground to nurture shared values within is an act against fear, against hate, and for a better future. As the fast-paced development we experience here happens across the world at large, ecological systems struggle to maintain integrity and stability. Our shared need and appreciation for nature can help heal our valley as part of the larger effort to heal our planet.
Kelsey Sather lives in Bozman, Montana. Her stories explore the complexities of human-nature interconnections. When she’s not writing, she can usually be found in the mountains.
