by Kelly Edwards

Eight or ten years ago, when I was around the fiftyish mark in my life, a small dream of mine became a reality, when complementary longings arose (no not that kind!), between me and a friend. He needed a little cash to buy a piece of his dream in Costa Rica, and I longed for an affordable foot hold anywhere near to the North Fork of the Flathead River. What resulted was my acquisition of his little cabin, which sat on an acre of land in the township of Polebridge, Montana . This is an area to which I have returned time after time over the years. Come June, as soon as I was finished teaching and loosed for the summer, I happily traipsed over thousands of miles, driving from California, or Texas, or Illinois to reach this beautiful river valley in far northwest Montana. What seemed at first remote, the end of the road, the furthest northern reach of the US border, came to feel more like the Canadian Riviera, and I was dying to get (a piece)(the peace) of it.

Then, as if on cue, when everything seemed to be falling into place nicely, a series of tanglesome and unexpected financial obstacles leapt up just as we were set to sign the deal. The financial shenanigans of the fraudulent rat bastards in charge of the institution in which I kept my own and my children’s pittance of cash savings caused the implosion of the whole investment company. Instant bankruptcy and so, zee money, she disappear! This was actually the beginning of a nationwide meltdown that I had somehow neglected to notice, but at the moment what bothered me was that it threatened to undermine my little deal. Those funds were to have been a substantial down payment for the cabin, which would have kept the mortgage payments nice and low. We held a family conference, considering pros and cons, trying to strategize and to form an alternative plan. There weren’t a whole lot of alternatives available however. No money, no cabin. But, so, yeah, in the midst of the chorus of wounded screams of real estate and financial tycoons nationwide, and with the last flickering glimmer of hope for rising real estate prices, and the promise of rapid appreciation in an agony of death throes, I floated a loan.

You know when I say dream cabin? You need to understand what I am talking about. After all, we all have dreams, and each of them is unaccountably unique. This little jewel that I acquired was by all measures, a modest one. How shall I describe it? Built about seventy years ago, by rough and self sufficient types, it had not a single true 90 degree angle. The lumber used was strong, but on the scrappy side, sort of whatever came to hand over a period of time, while funds were accumulated for the project. Passed from hand to hand through a series of owners, this somewhat impromptu structure became increasingly eccentric. At the time that I became the proud owner, it had become known as the `Bat Chalet’, for reasons that are too clear to mention, and it sported a tall, stone, irregular, and sharply tapering chimney, which gave it the look of something out of a child’s fairy tale. Attached to the chimney, inside the cabin, was a stove created from a 55 gallon barrel, outfitted with a smoke stack that swayed in a state of imperfectly jointed instability, threatening to disassemble at the slightest insult. The floors were of ancient, smoothed plywood, the ceiling of the downstairs living room presented an elegant convex curve, sort of like a Turkish pillow and fabric ceiling, only made of wood; very old wood. Inside (Thank heavens, as lots of folks up there have them outside!), was a manually powered water pump drawing from a well dug right under the kitchen floor and a real cast iron sink, and next to it a propane gas stove, greasy but fully functional on both back burners. The upstairs attic was mercifully dark, no beam of light entering to reveal the accumulated rubble of fifty years of use by creatures human and otherwise, and anyway, I didn’t have the urge (or the courage) to look very deeply. Outside, was a humble one-seat outhouse, with an awning in front which gave a little shelter in rain or snow conditions, and a crescent moon cut out of the back wall for freshness, a pretty rare commodity in that well used and tightly closed space. So as the song goes, “…no phone, no pool, no pets…” Well, there were some pets, and at night they were busy searching for anything they could find to eat, scurrying, buzzing, and flapping around, long after I was in bed, working my way towards sleep, by way of a prolonged battle between elation and horror.

Let me also clarify that when I say `township’, I’m talking about the place you pull into after a 24 mile drive on a gravel, dirt, stone road guaranteed to shred tires under six ply. The maximum posted speed limit is 35 mph. but the actual survivable velocity is more like 20 mph. (in summer dust), and 10 mph. (on winter ice). The trip up this final leg of the journey gives you plenty of time to detach from the stresses of city life and work. Actual retinal detachment is also possible. When, and if, you arrive at the Polebridge turn off, you enter into a place that feels as if someone has turned back the clock, to say, the 1900’s (except perhaps for the sound of a young rocker, practicing his licks on a drum set, in back of the stage built for the ‘Aurora Music Festival’ the annual gathering of all things alternative). This is a town that boasts one general store, The Polebridge Mercantile where an effort is made to meet all basic needs and to cater as well, to the good coffee and great fresh baked pastry maven in all of us. The Northern Lights is the saloon-cum-restaurant-cum-local -live-music venue-cum-community volleyball court where adventurers meet and eat and compare feats. The third piece of the commercial trilogy of Polebridge is the not to be missed, verging on famous, North Fork Hostel. It’s the multicultural center of the town, where you may meet anyone, from anywhere, at any time, doing anything…..and highly encouraged in this behavior (as long as it doesn’t adversely affect the environment), by the Hostel-Meister, Oliver. He hails from Germany originally, but has gone entirely native, in every sense of the word. Captivated twenty years ago by the beauty he found in and around the area and the lifestyle of relative freedom, he simply never left. Oliver created a niche for himself by becoming an indispensable assistant in and around the hostel, which was owned and run at the time by John Frederick, an earlier wanderer, stopped dead in his tracks by his love for the area, who with characteristic adventursomeness established the guest hostel, organized the force of the community on a variety of issues, and over the last 30 years in residence, has come to be known as the honorary mayor of the community. He is a wild and wily original, an indomitable, fearless, force behind the many activities in defense of wilderness protections and preservation of North Fork watershed from extractive industries (logging, mining), over development and speculative subdivision.

Year round residents are relatively few, due to the harsh winters and far remove of the North Fork area. In fact people in general are fairly few in number, and the overall demographics of this community are somewhat difficult to convey. Actually, I’d bet that they defy categorization in any collective or useful fashion, and that a statistician might just go right out of his/her mind trying to crunch any numbers based on this group of individuals. The citizens of the North Fork are variously, descendents of original homesteaders, environmental activists, painters, potters, outfitters, photographers, wealthy magnates and owners of log cabin castles complete with hot-tubs and orchid green houses, drifters, wolf biologists, snow birds from Texas and Florida, Oxford scholars taking a break from their doctoral studies, counter culture and alternative life style types, vegans, hunters, peak baggers, lotharios, musicians, and itinerant souls searching for themselves, some of whom are well off the track.

In a very short time I, like others, have come to love this place and the living river that runs through it, like nowhere else on earth. The North Fork Valley, in which Polebridge is located, extends for many miles from north of Columbia Falls, up to and across the Canadian Border. The North Fork Road, which runs the full length of the valley, roughly following the course of the river, used to give access to southwest British Columbia. It is no longer an open border crossing point, and the road at the old check point sports a six foot high bull dozer sculpted berm , a `severe penalities’ warning sign, several remote controlled cameras, and the occasional white Border Patrol pick-up with agents checking to see if some misbegotten terrorists or smugglers might try and breach the divide. Truth is that they’re far more likely to end up discovering a patch of huckleberries or with a little luck, maybe catch a glimpse of a big chocolate colored bull-moose, a pair of wolves crossing their territory, or a lone grizzly bear on the prowl. People who venture up this far are there to back pack into Glacier Park’s more remote areas, or else to `put in’ to the river in kayaks, canoes, rafts and even the occasional adventurous inner-tube rider set to spend the day floating the river, watching for wildlife, nesting eagles and kingfishers, pulling into a quiet beach for lunch or a quick nap in the sun, and arriving in the late afternoon at a `pull out’ point, ready to join friends at the Northern Lights Saloon for drinks or dinner and to share the stories of their day on the river and consider the latest community controversy.

Throughout this pristine valley where elk, and deer, and wolves, and bear, and mountain lions, are all still present, loops the magnificent North Fork of the Flathead River, finding its way southward, through the untrammeled natural beauty that surrounds it on all sides. To the east, where the sun rises, are the craggy mountains, the `crown of the continent’ which form Glacier National Park, and still shelter small patches of snow well into July. Below the peaks a dramatic skirted expanse of dark green forest. At the base of the forest a wide spreading meadowland divided with grace and whimsy by the powerfully flowing pristine river that gives life to everything around it, as its waters flow southward to meet the Middle and South Forks, joining together to form the enormous body of water which feeds the immense Flathead Lake.

The North Fork River runs along its ancient ever changing course with an equally changeable temper and mien, according to the season and the dictates of nature. In summer it runs alternately clear, deep and calm or thrashing and boiling its way through rock gardens, giddily swooping around sharp turns carved into the surrounding terrain during raging snow melt floods. In winter it is a ribbon of ice covered pewter, its power hidden, a quiet whisper, buried under a blanket of deep snow. In fall, with the water at low ebb, in the early mornings, pockets of chilly mist linger low on the water and later in the day its quiet pools reflect the brilliant gold of the tree leaves basking in the sharp sunlight of autumn. In the spring swollen, milky, glacier-melt torrents plunge and roar, pulling and shoving with such force that trees and boulders are loosed from their moorings, and rolled around haphazardly as the river rises in tumult, and breaks free of the last year’s boundaries.

It is this great River that gives life to the valley and all the creatures in it. It is the key to the existence of everything around it. It is a river that we in the community of Polebridge fight to protect from all potential sources of damage and degradation, working together to create long term protective and sustainable conditions for these waters that travel through the land we love. Seeking a permanent ban on extractive industries upstream across the Canadian border in the headwaters area, limiting the subdivision of properties and development throughout the valley and along the banks of the river, developing the means to regulate and avoid recreational overuse or abuse of the river, and creating binding zoning and growth plans. As a community up against some very strong odds, we are holding the line in defense of the North Fork of the Flathead.

I discovered this river and the great joy that it brings to all who know and love it, pretty well along in the arc of my lifetime, and what I know is that I and many others who came before me and the many that will be here long after me, will spend years of their lives working to protect and preserve this river we love.

That’s my `river story’.

I don’t know who to credit with this, but it was on my old website and should be archived here!

GRIZZLY WIDE PASS — No one knows for sure when humans first discovered this impossible place.

Perhaps it happened on a warm summer evening like this one, an awe-struck group of backcountry travellers watching the mountain goats brave an amphitheatre of sheer rock atop southeastern B.C.’s Flathead Valley.

Then one billy goat breaks from the herd and adopts a methodical track along a barely perceptible switchback rising to the top of a hanging valley. Watching from a distance, you can almost sense the laboured breathing as he follows the receding alpenglow ever upwards to the clouds.

He approaches a final exposed rim below 2,982-metre Long Knife Peak and pauses while the winds tear at the last of his shaggy winter hair. And with a final grunt, he shoulders into the rock face and melts completely from sight.

The man who has led us here, Harvey Locke, first heard of this place from Andy Russell, the legendary guide-outfitter whose territory encompassed this remote region of the Rocky Mountains.

“It’s the width of a grizzly,” says the former Calgary lawyer who’s become one of North America’s foremost conservationists. “If Andy Russell hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have believed it was here.”

NARROW CRACK IN THE ROCK

The next morning, not to be outdone, our group of nine hikers follows the same rocky zig-zag path up the hanging valley, passing rock walls painted with yellow and orange lichen.

Russell described his own ascent thus in the best-seller Grizzly Country: “The ledge was littered with goat sign, and in one spot we found the week-old track of grizzly. At the top of the rim we squeezed through a narrow crack in the rock and came out on another broad ledge overlooking a vast sweep of country beyond.”

Russell would be impressed with my hiking company this day: Pat Morrow, the mountaineering superstar from Invermere in B.C.’s East Kootenays who, in 1986, became the first person to hike the tallest peak on seven continents.

Morrow’s major expedition days are behind him. At 56, he suffers from a bulged disk in his back and requires help to haul the bulk of his gear, including a video camera, on our four-day hike through the contentious Flathead.

Still, he seems to levitate up the mountain, arms behind his back as though strolling through VanDusen gardens.

As we approach Grizzly Wide Pass, Morrow is first to proceed through and be staggered by the beauty.

“Whoa,” exclaims the explorer who has seen much and is not easily impressed. “This is world-class.”

A SWEEPING VIEW

Pulling myself up onto the final rock slab and inching closer to an expected abyss, I am rewarded by sweeping views of Montana’s Glacier National Park. Mount Cleveland, tallest in the park at 3,190 metres, is visible in the distance, and a strange glacially scoured rock feature known as a nunatak in the foreground.

The closest thing to an international boundary marker is a remnant patch of snow laced with fresh wolverine tracks directly below me. Not much farther away, two mule deer bucks take shade beneath a rock overhang. And the warning cries of hoary marmots pierce the thin mountain air as a golden eagle patrols overhead.

One member of our hiking group, Joe Riis, sets up a remote camera on the rocks overlooking the pass to capture goats, grizzlies, or anything else that might pass through. “I guess I’m getting known for this remote stuff,” says the Wyoming photographer, who freelances to National Geographic and is next off to capture B.C.’s spirit bears for the BBC.

Grizzly Wide Pass (Locke allows he might have created the name rather than obtained it directly from Russell) is so spectacular that nature artist and Order of Canada recipient Clarence Tillenius came here in July 1961.

To this day, his painting is part of a grizzly diorama on display at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

Over the years, Russell gave up the gun for the camera and became a champion for the iconic omnivore and its imperilled habitat. He even suggested this quadrant of B.C. become a national park, taking its place alongside Glacier National Park and Waterton Lakes National Park, visible to the immediate east in Alberta.

Russell, who died in 2005 at age 89, was neither the first nor the last to issue a conservation clarion call for B.C.’s Flathead Valley. Locke notes that the legendary John George (Kootenai) Brown, first superintendent of Waterton park, touted the idea of an expanded park to serve as a wildlife “breeding ground” in 1911.

A century of failed lobbying and planning processes later, a coalition of conservation groups from the U.S. and Canada (with funding from U.S. foundations, largely based in Seattle) continues to campaign for national park status for much of B.C.’s Flathead Valley and an end to contentious natural resource projects.

They describe the convergence of the Flathead, Waterton, and Glacier as the Crown of the Continent, its various streams making their way to the Pacific Ocean, Hudson Bay, and Gulf of Mexico.

1,000 VASCULAR PLANTS

The Precambrian rocks here are the oldest in the Canadian Rockies at more than one billion years old; sedimentary layers contain fossils of stromatolites, single-celled algae that represents the earliest life forms on Earth.

The Flathead region is also home to more than 1,000 vascular (stemmed) plants, a dazzling summer array that reflects prairie, Pacific, and even boreal influences.

Harvey points along the route to Labrador tea, a plant near the south end of its range, and sky pilot at its northern limit. “In the Flathead, the rules don’t apply,” he asserts.

B.C.’s Flathead River is known to Americans as the north fork of the Flathead River, which is designated a National Wild and Scenic River, its undammed waters eventually flowing to the Columbia River.

A report by the U.S. Wildlife Conservation Society in 2001 described the Flathead as perhaps the “single most important basin for carnivores in the Rocky Mountains.” Because wolves, grizzlies, wolverines, marten, and lynx move across the international border, this is a “landscape that must be managed as one integral, ecological unit.”

The U.S. Department of the Interior reported in 2008 the Flathead “hosts one of the most diverse and unique native aquatic ecosystems throughout North America,” including B.C. spawning habitat of the threatened bull trout.

Not surprisingly, proposals over the years for open-pit coal mining and coal-bed methane exploration in B.C.’s Flathead Valley have generated concerns on both sides of the border, including from American senators in Montana, about the impact on world-class wildlife ecosystems and on water quality downstream.

The Outdoor Recreation Council of B.C. named the Flathead the province’s most endangered river in 2009, while American Rivers rated the U.S. side of the Flathead the fifth most endangered.

That kind of publicity can have a chilling effect on industry.

TEMPORARY VICTORIES

BP (British Petroleum) announced in February 2008 it is not proceeding with plans for coal-bed methane exploration in the Flathead. And the provincial-federal environmental process for Cline Mining Corporation’s proposed coal mine in the Flathead headwaters is stalled.

Still, conservationists consider these only temporary victories in light of provincial land-use plans that still permit resource extraction.

Their campaign is pushing for 45,000 hectares, including the Flathead River east to the continental divide at Waterton Lakes National Park, to be folded into Waterton.

Another 300,000 hectares west of the Flathead River and north to Banff National Park would be declared a provincial wildlife management area. Such a designation would allow connectivity to other protected areas to the north and would allow logging, hunting, and all-terrain vehicles respectful of wildlife values.

Mining, coal-bed methane, or oil-and-gas extraction would be allowed, but not in the Flathead.

Conservationists claim to have the public on their side, citing a 2008 poll that found seven out of 10 Kootenay residents supported a national park in the Flathead.

But some powerful opposition remains.

Kootenay East Liberal MLA Bill Bennett resigned as mines minister in February 2007 over an e-mail sent to Maarten Hart, a veterinarian and president of the Fernie Rod and Gun Club who had complained about the government giving hunting allocations to guide-outfitters at the expense of residents.

“It is my understanding that you are an American, so I don’t give a s— what your opinion is on Canada or Canadian residents,” Bennett wrote.

“As someone who has spent the past six years working my ass off for my constituents, I am not about to take that kind of bulls— from someone who, for all I know, is up here as an American spy who is actually interested in helping the U.S. create a park in the Flathead.”

FORCES NOT JOINED

While hunting and conservation groups have joined forces in several areas of the province, including the Northern Rockies near Fort St. John, on conservation issues, not so in the Flathead.

The B.C. Wildlife Federation, boasting it represents 35,000 hunters and anglers either through individual or club memberships, argues a national park in the Flathead is “completely unnecessary and will only detract from the use, enjoyment and economic benefits of this region to the British Columbian economy.”

The federation adds: “Montana politicians must also respect that the Canadian Flathead is B.C.’s jurisdiction and that within Canada’s acknowledged international obligation to steward waterways upstream from the U.S., we will manage the Canadian Flathead in accordance with responsible British Columbia standards and policies.”

Locke explains that politics makes for some important differences in the shared Flathead ecosystem.

Animals are protected in Waterton and Glacier, but vulnerable to legal hunting should they cross into B.C.

Grizzly Wide Pass is actually located within 10,921-hectare Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park, a wilderness open to hunting.

The Ministry of Environment says that hunters killed the following game animals in the Flathead in 2007: 62 white-tailed deer, 35 elk, 15 mountain goats, 14 moose, eight mule deer, six black bear, one bighorn sheep, and one grizzly.

Harvey says it is B.C.’s “dirty little secret” that hunting is widespread in provincial parks despite the fact that only about two per cent of British Columbians are licensed hunters.

TIMBER CUTTING ALLOWED

Locke, who is conservation vice-president of The Wild Foundation based in Colorado, also notes that the boundaries of Akamina-Kishinena were drawn by the province to allow timber cutting in lower-elevation Akamina Creek.

And he argues that B.C. Parks is so short of cash that there is almost no on-the-ground management or enforcement of hunting activities.

Our hike up Grizzly Gulch Creek to Starvation Pass and ultimately Grizzly Wide Pass had no signage and parts of the trail were plugged with fallen trees.

“The deadfall takes the edge off the trip,” confirmed Alberta backcountry horseman Ross Taylor, whose party of two was the only one encountered during our hiking trip about 100 km south of Fernie.

The debate over the future of the Flathead continues to gain steam and international recognition.

At a June meeting in Seville, Spain, the 21-member world heritage committee of the United National Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (including Canada) voted unanimously to send a mission to “evaluate and provide recommendations on the requirement for ensuring the protection” of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. The park was established in 1932 and became a 457,614-hectare UNESCO world heritage site in 1995.

“Protecting this valley is not a loss for B.C.,” argues Montana-based Will Hammerquist of the National Parks Conservation Association, who attended Seville with Fernie’s Ryland Nelson of Wildsight to lobby for a successful vote. “It’s an area we are fortunate to share. Let’s work towards that.”

The official position of Parks Canada is that B.C.’s Flathead remains an “area of interest,” but that a national park feasibility study cannot proceed without support from both the B.C. government and aboriginals.

The Ktunaxa first nation, whose B.C. bands are spread between the Invermere and Cranbrook areas, has agreed to the study, but so far the B.C. government is not budging.

Or talking, it would seem.

Bennett did not respond to The Sun’s request for an interview. Nor did the the ministry of intergovernmental relations, which has the lead on the Flathead issue.

Locke remains optimistic. He prefers to think that the B.C. government is being “reflective rather than uncommunicative” and that it is weighing its options for the transboundary Flathead as the conservation groundswell spreads