Greg Tollefson - September 28, 2005
Five Valleys Land Trust
Mount Jumbo
Earlier this week I had the opportunity to join with Bob Henderson, a wildlife biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in sharing the story of the public acquisition of Mount Jumbo with members of the Montana Recreation and Parks Association at their annual convention here in Missoula.
The title of the presentation was “Challenges of Wildlife Management in the Urban/Wildland Interface,” but we weren’t very far along before it became apparent that we were really there to tell how a community came together to protect a cherished part of the landscape that shapes it.
And while we rambled on, spinning the tale of the Mount Jumbo Campaign, with all its fits and starts, setbacks and complexities, and ultimate success, I was drawn back to April Fools’ Day of 1997. That was the first day that the mountain was open to public use after the long hard winter of 96-97. The mountain had been closed all winter to avoid disturbing the herd of elk that relies on its open, grassy slopes for winter range. You may recall that the two feet of snow that fell on Christmas Eve of 1996 stayed on the ground for months. That winter was one in which the elk did not need a bunch of people tromping around their winter range.
I had planned to start that day with a brisk climb to the summit of Mount Jumbo. With many others I had been involved for several years in moving the more than 1600 acres that the mountain comprises from private into public ownership, and the long winter of not being on the mountain had made me hungry to see the view from the top again.
I wanted to get up there and try, once again, to imagine what our valley had looked like to the great explorer and mapmaker David Thompson that late winter day of 1812 when he climbed what he called a “high brown knoll” and looked out on the mountains to the west to try to discern the route that Lewis and Clark had taken from the valley on their journey west, seven years earlier. I imagined Thompson up there, his latest map in the making unrolled across his knees, studying the landscape. According to his journals, Thompson had a beautiful, clear day to take in that view. In 1997 that wasn’t the case. It was a cruddy day with low lying clouds and drizzle. So I decided not to go.
The little hike I had planned was meant to be something of a private celebration, because just a few days earlier, the last small piece of the Mount Jumbo acquisition puzzle had fallen into place, and the years-long task had been completed.
First, of course, I had wanted to celebrate the simple fact that our community had managed to protect the mountain for the people of our valley to enjoy for generations to come, and of course for the wildlife that lives on and depends upon that mountain in one way or another for its own survival.
Over the previous winter, rarely a day passed that had not been spiced up by someone’s excited report of wildlife activity on the mountain in full view of downtown Missoula. People started keeping spotting scopes and binoculars handy in downtown offices. That doesn’t happen in just any old town.
For others, the receding snows on Mount Jumbo, that winter and every winter since, reveal the neat, horizontal lines that trace the multiple shorelines of Glacial Lake Missoula and hint at the catastrophic floods that resulted when the lake emptied more than forty times those thousands of years ago. At full pool of course, the summit of Mount Jumbo was but a tiny island in that vast inland lake. And when the ice dam that formed the lake gave way, a torrent of water as much as 2000 feet deep would roll out onto the plains of eastern Washington, carving the landscape ahead of it and leaving Mount Jumbo high and dry as it is today.
And as I thought about all this the other day, I was reminded again that the effort to protect Mount Jumbo says something very positive about our community, one that is as well-known for its sometimes acrimonious public discourse as it is for its ability to work together when the time is right.
Well, things have changed in our valley since those days back in the mid-nineties when many of us were focused on that mountain and little else. Yes, the mountain is there as it now always will be, and so is Mount Sentinel. But our city and the broader community of western Montana are growing and changing almost faster than we can keep track of. And the landscape from which we derive so much is changing right along with everything else. And sometimes that change occurs in ways that fill us with dismay or sadness, and a feeling of helplessness in the face of the forces that drive it.
So, this week, as Bob Henderson and I related the story of the heady time of the Mount Jumbo campaign and as I thought again about all the growth and change going on everywhere around us, I took some solace in remembering what this community is capable of when an idea catches fire and the collective shoulder is put to the wheel of what seems in insurmountable task.
Now, as city and county government begin to look again at the landscape with an eye toward identifying what needs to remain intact, what merits protection, and where the opportunities are ripest and most attainable, it shouldn’t hurt one bit to remember those lessons of the past.
I don’t pretend to know what will come of discussions and deliberations designed to address these issues. But I do know that the residents of our valley and our part of the state share our connection to this magnificent landscape and the natural blessings it affords us. And when the time is right, our community will again rise to the challenge.
With Mount Jumbo, it was a collective effort involving the City of Missoula, the Montana Dept. of Fish Wildlife and Parks, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Save Open Space, the Five Valleys Land Trust, countless professional groups, community groups and organizations and thousands of individual supporters who all thought that mountain was worth their time and effort.
It can happen here again. It will happen here again.
I’m Greg Tollefson for the Five Valleys Land Trust
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