Myths Of The American West
- colin7931
- May 27
- 39 min read
Today Doug opens the container with author Betsy Gaines Quammen.
Doug begins the episode reflecting on his first experience moving to the western US where the natural beauty of the outdoors was overwhelming and he encountered an overarching sentiment of distrust and anger towards himself as a newcomer as well as the government authority who was employing him. That same mentality has persisted and is playing a role in the current effort to sell off our public lands.
Doug is then joined by Betsy Gaines Quammen who has written multiple books on the culture of the west, and discusses the multifaceted relationship between local narratives, environmental stewardship, and the politics that threaten our shared landscapes.
Note: This episode was recorded before the failed republican lead effort to sell off 500,000 acres of public lands in Nevada and Utah.
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Episode Transcript:
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:00:04.000 - 00:06:56.930
Welcome to Open Container. I'm Doug Schnitzspahn. I'm a journalist, writer, and overall lover of the outdoors.
I fought wildfires, reported on national politics, published magazines, and I've worked long hours stacking mud.
On this podcast, we're going to have an open conversation about culture, conservation, policy, business issues that matter the most to the outdoor community.
Let's get some When I first came out west to work on public lands, to try to do my part to save them, and to learn about myself in wild and open spaces, I encountered a lot of anger. Much of it was justified, but so much of it, I've come to realize, stems from something we're all experiencing. The world, our planet.
Everything feels like it's getting smaller, and with that, we're all losing a basic sense of freedom. There's nowhere I feel that freedom more than out in the big open landscapes of the West.
My first gig for the Forest Service was in Dillon, Montana, in 1993.
I'd come straight from Boston and New Jersey, and suddenly I was living in a small ranch town making next to nothing, doing work that many locals didn't like.
I worked with a ranch hand who was making some extra money with the Forest Service, and he was quick to tell me how much people out there hated the government. That was strange to me. I thought I was doing a good thing.
One day we were driving a Forest Service truck down a dirt road when a battered old pickup came flying past us on the washboard road. The driver flipped us the bird. Being a good boy raised in New Jersey, I gave it right back. My companion freaked out. You can't do that, he said.
You're in a government rig. I don't care what rig I'm in, I told him. If someone gives me the finger, I'm giving it right back.
As I said before, there's a lot of distrust and anger out here towards people like me.
Even though I've never made much money and I've lived a pretty simple life, I get labeled as an elite and worst of all, as an environmentalist simply because I want to speak for things that have no voice. That, to me, is the job of an advocate, as my friend Mike Medbury, a great environmentalist and teacher, once said.
Another time, that first year I ran into a rancher fixing fence. He came up to me as if he were going to attack me and screamed in my face, where were you born? I wasn't sure what to say.
I mean, New Jersey is part of the United States. But according to him, I was nothing more than an invader on his land. And in some ways that's fair. He had worked hard here.
His family had worked hard here for generations. Just like my family had back in New Jersey running greenhouses. In that way, we were similar, both simply Americans.
Still, I couldn't help but laugh thinking about my mom's side of the family. Her ancestors came here as pilgrims in the 1600s. Did that make me more American than him?
And of course, the greatest irony of all, both of us were living on land taken from native people. Did he feel it was his right to have this land?
I bring all this up because we're in a very dangerous time when it comes to the future of our public lands. Recently a provision to sell off 500,000 acres of public land in Utah and Nevada was removed from the Republican led Congress's reconciliation bill.
But this is an old and ongoing fight. There are many, especially in the west, who want to get rid of federal public lands.
To try and understand why, I spent some time reading the thoughts of Utah Senator Mike Lee.
Speaking to the Sutherland Institute, a conservative group in Utah, Lee feels that the federal government controls public lands like a monarch, and that they're only enjoyed by elite rich people aspenizing everything and shutting out hard working people who just want to use the land. I tried to read his comments with an open mind, but a few glaring things stood out.
First, land protected by the federal government is land for the people. All people. Public lands are open to everyone.
It's the private land that sell off, bills create that ends up locked away, turned into massive homes in places like Aspen. Senator Lee also seems to believe that selling public land could create affordable housing. Well, that's a noble idea. I just don't see it happening.
Developers buy land to make money, not to create low income housing. Ironically, the idea of using public land for housing sounds more like socialism than something conservatives would typically promote.
And the greatest danger in selling off public lands is that they'll never come back. The planet is shrinking. We're encroaching on the last wild places where we can still feel that freedom.
I can understand the feeling that the federal government is squeezing people out, but that's just not how it works on the ground.
The people who want to remove land from federal control want to extract resources, make money for a few, or close it altogether, creating the kind of feudal system Senator Lee claims is happening now. I personally want the land to be preserved. As the great biologist E.O.
wilson once said, half the planet should be reserved for the millions of species we share it with. Species whose survival is integral to our own.
We need a better way of understanding the world beyond simply extracting resources or seeing land as something to be owned and used at will. That should be our legacy.
I know these are supposedly radical ideas, and yet as the planet continues to shrink and the anger around us continues to rise, it seems the freedom of our own souls and the survival of wild creatures may be the only things that can save us. My guest today studies and writes about the myths and realities of public lands in the American West.
Historian and writer Betsy Gaines quammen received a Ph.D. from Montana State University where she studied religion, history and the philosophy of science.
Her dissertation focused on Mormon history and the roots of armed public land conflicts occurring in the United States. She is fascinated at how religious views shape relationships to landscape.
Her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Daily News, and the History News Network. She is the author of American Zion, Cliven Bundy, God and Public Lands in the west and True Myth and Mending on the Far side of America.
Now let's open the container with Betsy Gaines Quammen. Here we go. I am extremely excited to be here with Betsy Gaines Quammen, the author of True Myth and Mending on the Far side of America.
Betsy, it's great to have you here today.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:06:57.649 - 00:07:02.490
I am so happy to be here. This is wonderful. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:07:02.490 - 00:07:14.690
Doug. Great.
Well, we're going to start out with a big question and I wanted to ask you what is our biggest question, current misconception about the American West?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:07:16.370 - 00:10:03.800
Okay, that's an interesting question. The whole book True west is about misconceptions and I have a couple of answers for that.
I'm writing another book right now actually and have just finished writing a chapter about dam building and I've been thinking a lot about water and the misconception that water follows the plow.
This goes back to mythologies that were shared with homesteaders to come out west and to live an agrarian life that they may have enjoyed in Europe or on the eastern, or rather the eastern part of the United States. But this myth that the west could support agricultural communities has really led to some very ill conceived ways of manipulating water.
And so we look at what's happening with the Colorado right now and the fact that communities and towns and cities and water projects have been built with this notion that the west had a sustainable water supply. So water or rain follows the plow, I think is an enormous myth that we're coming up against right now.
During the pandemic I think that there was an old myth that the west is hail and hardy, that it's a place where disease, again, is not found. That also was spread by land speculators to convince homesteaders to come to the west and live this healthy life.
And so that was also something that during tuberculosis, or rather when people were trying to address tb, they came out west because the west had this healthy environment. And so this has been passed on again and again. And as a result, we had Covid refugees coming out west. They really have changed western communities.
At the time, there was a lot of pressure put on small medical clinics in tourist towns that got overwhelmed. I'm thinking in particular, Blaine county and Ketchum and Haley.
That area had one of the highest Covid rates in the country because people thought, oh, I'll go to Sun Valley, because that's healthy. And, you know, as a result, they were bringing in Covid.
So, again, based on a mythology, we have this idea that the west is healthier than the rest of the country. So those are two myths that I considered. I think I'd add one more, and I know you asked me for just one.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:10:03.880 - 00:10:04.840
Oh, no, no, that's fine.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:10:05.560 - 00:10:52.840
The other, I think I would add is the west is a blank slate. We know that this is a place where people have lived since time immemorial. The tribes describe their history as such.
And there was this idea that moving out west, it was free land.
It was a place to establish either a homestead, or, in the case of the most recent land movement, people who have money that they can afford to buy western properties are out buying outbidding people who have lived here because they have this idea of free land. Blank slates, again, perpetuated since white settlement.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:10:53.640 - 00:11:15.320
Yeah, that makes me think, you know, when I first moved out west, I was working for the forest service, and I had an angry person come up to me, face me right face, and go, where were you born? And I was like, what does that have to do with anything? You know, in, as you say, in a landscape where we are only recent inhabitants.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:11:15.560 - 00:12:09.860
Right, yeah. No, and it's a thing.
I mean, in writing this book, I had wonderful conversations and interviews with my native friends and the fact that they can trace their ancestry back generation, generation, generation. I mean, what are they saying now? 21,000. Is that right? 21,000 years. I think they found footsteps and white sands. That's a lot of generations.
But in Montana, I've been here 32 years, and I'll never be a Montanan because the white people who established their homesteads and still have ranches. I talk to a wonderful fifth generation rancher, but you've got to be here for generations before you're a real Montana or a Westerner.
And it's a thing.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:12:10.660 - 00:12:26.180
Sure. And there's a lot of respect to that.
Those people, their generations worked hard to be here and settle this land and they're feeling a lot of pressure right now. Right. With so many people coming into places that generations have lived pretty undisturbed.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:12:26.980 - 00:13:49.920
Yeah.
No, I mean, it's funny because my friend Lance, who is a fifth generation rancher in Terry, Montana, population 600 or less, when we were talking and I told him that I moved to Montana for graduate school in environmental studies, he said, oh, you're one of those carpet baggers.
You know, again, I've been here 32 years and I did come to work on conservation issues, which he's not super crazy about outsiders coming in and talking about policy, talking about environmental initiatives.
And, you know, he gets quite angry when there are sort of federal managers that come in and tell him, you know, he needs to do certain things about the sage grouse. And so it is really interesting.
I mean, I think the book was a really good exercise for me in understanding the very many ways that the west is understood depending on people's backgrounds, people's vocations, people's culture, people's economic sort of standing. I came to really understand the west as a constellation informed by a great deal of mythology as well.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:13:50.240 - 00:14:11.740
Well, and one of the great things in your book I think you make very clear too, is that you are not coming in with one certain viewpoint.
You're trying very hard to listen to very different viewpoints and you think how important that is and try to learn from people you might disagree with. Where you say, I think you say there's some really bad actors out there not to have to listen to them.
But in general, you're trying to take in all the stars in that constellation. Right.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:14:12.620 - 00:15:03.420
I mean, I really feel like it's imperative, especially in the moment we're in right now, to really understand why people feel the way they do and to listen to that. I mean, I never misrepresented myself.
I talked about everything from vaccines to George Floyd and Black Lives Matter to politics to Trumpism to environmental issues, public land, and was forthright. But I also was very, very interested in hearing how people perceived the west, what kind of cultural lens they were looking at the west through.
And it was actually really great. And so, yeah, it was also very helpful.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:15:04.460 - 00:15:25.180
Yeah, there's this one quote that really stood out to me in the introduction of the book where you write that right now there is too much being asked of the West. It sits between history and expectation. A place saddled with hopes that it can't fulfill. And it made me wonder, what can the west still give us?
What myths can we find or explore out there?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:15:26.140 - 00:15:31.900
Well, and I hope that I make it abundantly clear in the book how much I love the West.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:15:31.900 - 00:15:32.540
Oh yeah.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:15:34.380 - 00:16:43.080
And I do think it has enormous, enormous amounts that it gives us. I mean, for one thing, the land, we are so lucky out here to have public land. I think it's the greatest gift that the west has to offer.
And so that I truly believe is an enormous, enormous treasure. I also believe that the west has a place, for better or for worse, for, for understanding what it means to be an American.
I truly believe that there is a real. Whether Americans understand it or not, understanding the west really is a very important basis for understanding how Americans see themselves.
Whether it's the idea of rugged individualism, whether it's the idea of cowboy mythology pulling up by the bootstraps. And I do say for better or for worse, I'm not sure that's a.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:16:43.080 - 00:16:43.440
Great.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:16:45.840 - 00:18:55.200
Sort of notion if it's left unexamined. And yet it keeps getting repackaged and repackaged and repackaged.
Whether it's in politics and the cowboy myth is used to represent this sort of masculinity. And not to say there's anything wrong with that, but an unexamined masculinity, an unexamined notion that I can do it on my own.
And this sort of, again, I think it's really, I keep saying unexamined. I think it's really important to understand that so much of Western development has been subsidized. So much of it has been due to water manipulation.
And so when I do talk about these things, I do, I really want to convey the fact that we can believe these. Or rather if we understand that mythologies need to be unpacked, then I think mythologies are important to being a human.
I mean, we're a myth making species. But I also want to say that we are exposed over and over and over and over and over again to Western mythology through pop culture.
And most recently it was Yellowstone, which in my community, in my, you know, Bozeman, Montana, it completely changed my community.
I mean it, it became way more expensive, it became bigger and, and people had this notion of Yellowstone believing that that was real life and it's not.
It's so, so we, we, you know, whether it's Zane Gray or Hopalong Cassidy, Sheridan and Kevin Costner, we keep getting exposed to various packages of Western mythology.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:18:56.160 - 00:19:17.040
Yeah. And the west now, I mean, it's so different. Right. Digitalization, post Covid.
You know, people working from home, you know, especially I think, where you live in Bozeman, it's really, the people coming out there are not coming out there to kind of run cattle and try to homestead. They're coming out there to try to work from their laptop and fly to LA once a week. Right.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:19:17.040 - 00:19:35.040
I mean, yeah. Or, I mean, you know, it's. It's becoming, I mean, people. And I believe our Governor Gianforte want to imagine this place as Silicon Valley, Montana.
And so, yeah, it's. It is. It's really, really changed.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:19:35.760 - 00:19:56.170
And that's, you know, damaging both, I think, Right. To the national need for public lands and also for that old mythology of the west, the people who've been there so long.
It seems like there's a lot of conflict when you get people coming in for Silicon Valley in a place where people have been homesteading and ranching. Right.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:19:56.890 - 00:22:13.920
Yeah. And I have two answers to that question because I think it's a good point.
Number one, wealthy people coming in here are buying ranches that were working ranches, and they're turning them into hobby ranches.
So you have the idea of a family, a family ranch that was putting food on the table, and it's changing to a ranch that is just for weekends or just for two weeks a year, or really a cosplay ranch. So I think that's happening, and that's heartbreaking because family ranches in these communities are so important to community integrity.
And if you have somebody just, just flying in and out, that's not somebody investing in the community.
The other thing that I would sort of argue, and this is something that I found out, and it doesn't take a lot of exploring to see this, but the people who are moving into Bozeman have no idea what exists outside of maybe the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.
I mean, maybe they'll go hiking, but they don't understand the west as a place that's not just a fancy tourist community where everybody's wearing Patagonia.
That this really is a place where we have our Indian reservations, we have our small Western communities that are ranching communities that we've been talking about. We have places like the Bakken oil field, which. The boom and bust.
The communities that sometimes are flush with money, sometimes they aren't and so it's really important, I think. And I have friends that have moved to Bozeman in the last couple years, and I have nothing against people moving out here.
I moved out here, but I think it's really important for people to be curious about places outside of their fancy mountain communities.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:22:14.800 - 00:22:38.450
Yeah. And I think there's a basic, you know, not.
Not to say one thing's better than the other, but I think when you or I moved out to Montana, you kind of had to. There. There you weren't connected to the rest of the world. Right. You had to hang out with hunters. You had to be a part of the local community.
And now when people are online and able to telecommute from anywhere, they don't have to engage as much in the local community in that way. Right.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:22:39.720 - 00:24:18.300
Yeah. And I think that's a really good point.
I mean, I remember that when I moved out to Montana, seeing elk in the back of some guy's truck, you know, right outside of my house. And I remember, you know, I grew up in Ohio, and then I went to college in Colorado. College. And was in Colorado for five years.
And then kind of, I was in Hood river for a minute, and I lived in Nairobi for nearly a year. And then I came out to Montana, which actually that, you know, was, to me, felt very Western. And. And I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, elk.
Dead elk in the back of a truck. And. And it was something that I had to, you know, understand. Like, these people are amazing. You know, they're.
They're huge conservationists that they. They have delicious. I mean, I remember the first time I had elk back straps, and I thought, oh, my God. God, those are good. But it is.
It is a transition for somebody who maybe didn't grow up hunting and you worked for the Forest Service. I mean, there's so many people out here who work on public lands, who work for the government.
And I find that to be an interesting idea in the fact that the west has always thought of themselves as anti government. And there are a lot of really good federal jobs and people living out west who until very recently had good, secure jobs.
Right now, we're trying to see how that's going to be navigated. But in any case, I 100% agree with you.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:24:18.780 - 00:24:39.610
Yeah.
And it seems too, that, as you said, the kind of recent homesteaders, we're pushing for outdoor recreation, how important this is, as you said, then we're having people coming in maybe for just that, but that can be just as damaging to communities and maybe even to public lands. Right?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:24:40.730 - 00:26:40.290
Yeah. I mean, I think it's. And this is something that I've had to learn.
Again, it's an evolution of understanding the west and examining your own preconceived notions or ideologies. As a conservationist, I always thought that recreation was low impact, that it wasn't consumptive, and that's just not true. It is extractive.
And I think it's really important to come to terms with that. And we've heard that expression over and over again, loving a place to death. Well, it does happen.
And the more people who come out here to fall in love with the west, we see degradation that we need to address. And I also see people, and I write about this in the book people, very wealthy people coming out and wanting a quote, unquote, wilderness retreat.
You know, a compound that's in the woods.
But we end up building gilded wildernesses and we end up disrupting elk migration paths, and we end up degrading water so that wealthy people can have a wilderness retreat. So I think that your point is really well taken.
You know, it used to be I felt like, oh, my gosh, recreation is a way for rural communities to have an economic, you know, driver and not have to do mining, logging, grazing.
But the truth is, is that mining, logging, and grazing have put food on people's tables and fed families, whereas recreational jobs can be seasonal and they can pay, you know, pretty low wages. So, again, it's just a matter of sort of examining our preconceived notions and being in conversation with each other so that we can do better.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:26:41.170 - 00:26:49.010
So we've talked a lot about public lands. In your estimation, kind of. What are public lands, both maybe in myth and reality?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:26:50.610 - 00:27:33.350
Well, I mean, public lands, they're native homelands. I think that's always important to understand. And the way that public lands, I mean, we had the commons. These were lands that weren't.
Weren't snapped up by homesteaders at very cheap prices. And so the commons were. We had the tragedy of the commons. We saw the overgrazing. We saw these lands that weren't being taken care of.
And so as the government, I'm afraid that I'm not doing the most beautiful job in explaining it, but this is kind of the way I navigate it.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:27:33.350 - 00:27:33.870
Sure, yeah.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:27:34.820 - 00:28:34.140
The government had these lands, and we started to see. And this kind of comes into your question about the Sagebrush Rebellion.
In order to manage these public lands, we began to have environmental laws, we started to have established national parks, and we had the Forest Service and Then we had the Taylor Grazing act. And I'm not necessarily going sequentially. I know that my dates are a little off, but.
But the Taylor Grazing act and managing grazing land led to the Bureau of Land Management and led to grazing regulations with managing public lands. You know, we had nepa, which is the National Environmental Policy Act, I believe, and.
And Flipma, which is the Federal Land Management Protection act, or Policy Act.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:28:34.940 - 00:28:35.260
Flip.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:28:35.260 - 00:28:53.180
It's a P. It belongs to one of those words. And then the Endangered Species act and the Clean Water Act.
And then, of course, you had the Wilderness act, which actually, I think predates the Endangered Species act in Clean Water Act.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:28:53.180 - 00:28:53.740
It does. Yeah.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:28:53.740 - 00:30:48.450
But. Yeah, and so you had these. These lands, and then they were managed in certain ways.
There were more regulations that got us away from unregulated extractive practices, which did cause consternation in rural communities. And with that, consternation became rebellion. And so you started to see the kind of roots of the sagebrush Rebellion.
But in my first book, I write about how these started way in advance. And that's the American Zion. That's when I did my research on Cliven Bundy and his, quote, unquote, religious war.
So that book really addresses how public lands and the way that they're perceived, so reflective of where we are right now in terms of what conservationists want to do and what they feel is important in terms of addressing public land protection and what people like Cliven Bundy and these states rights folks and the Koch brother, sort of ALEC folks want to do with public lands. And that's where we are right now. I mean, those ideas were put in Project 2025.
And we see with Doug Burgum and the latest hire, and I believe her name is Budden. I should know this. I was just. She's the attorney who represented Cliven Bundy. Helen Bund. It's not Bundy. Anyway, I should know this.
I was just reading about her. But these are folks that really want to drill, remove regulations and liquidate public lands.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:30:48.690 - 00:31:06.350
Right. And I mean these, as. I think you referenced the tragedy of the commons. Right.
The reason we ended up having these regulations and these laws and these policies was that without any regulation, it's just an absolute mess and the resource is drained and ruined for everyone in the end. Right?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:31:07.230 - 00:31:58.250
Yeah, absolutely.
And I, you know, it's really, really important, and it is funny because I have talked to ranchers and I understand in principle why regulations are a pain in the ass. At the same time, it's imperative. I mean, you know, we really do have to protect our waters, we have to protect our wildlife. We have to prot.
You know, our riparian areas. And so, of course, nobody wants to be told what to do. But this is not private land. This is public land.
And so we need to protect it for other people besides somebody who might have a lease on it.
And I do want to just say, forgive me for being a little bit rusty on some of the things that we're talking about, because I wrote about this all in my first book.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:31:58.410 - 00:31:59.210
Yeah, of course.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:31:59.210 - 00:32:10.070
And so it's been a minute since I've. I've been sort of immersed in land use policy and some of the legal implications.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:32:10.550 - 00:32:37.820
Right. But shockingly, this stuff is coming back now. Right? I mean, I think I. Oh, God. I know that it first began. Right.
I know that, you know, it first began back in the 40s, right. That this idea of rebellion against public land.
But maybe we've talked about it a bit, and, you know, can you tell us what the Sagebrush Rebellion is and why it's still relevant now? And it is what you wrote about in your first book, but that it's all of a sudden back at center stage right now and has more power than ever, Right?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:32:37.980 - 00:36:11.830
Yes. And, you know, it's funny, because I actually write about a meeting in the 30s about regulating.
Well, actually, it's about an idea of maybe making Escalante a national park. And it's back when the national park sort of.
I mean, this was a time where it was really heady and exciting to be thinking about establishing national park in America. It was the time when Americans had such great pride in their lands and their natural wonders.
And so the Park Service was really eager to find places that were gorgeous. And they were looking at Escalante back then. This was way before it became a national monument and the controversial place it is today. But.
But it was really interesting to look at the minutes of these meetings between ranchers and federal officials, because you can tell they're getting mad. But the quotes are like, well, I know I sound a little hot under the collar, but I don't. And I mean, that's the feeling.
You could see that there was still decorum, there was still respect, and that devolved the ranchers. And again, these were ranchers in Utah.
So when I looked at the origins of the Sagebrush Rebellion, I was looking at Nevada and Utah, and I was looking at some of the later generations of folks that had been involved in these early discussions in the 30s, but they had gotten really angry about the laws that were passed in the 1970s, again, regulating what they felt they had the right to do, whether it was ranching or.
Another thing that really made people angry were roadless assessments going in and looking at roadless, the rare surveys, roadless areas on BLM land which hadn't happened. And BLM land, of course, is where a lot of these folks had grazing allotments. So. So we started to see some real resistance to that.
And we started to see bills in states saying that we want to pass a bill so that public land is managed by the states. Out of that came the Wise Use movement, which I think is a precursor to the Tea Party.
In a lot of ways, the roots of the Sagebrush Rebellion really permeated Republican politics. And, I mean, Ronald Reagan sent a telegram to the Sagebrush Rebels. I think it was a telegram saying, I support you.
We saw William Perry Pendley, who's still involved. He's one of the authors of the sections on public lands in Project 2025.
And he was a big Sagebrush republic and involved in the Reagan administration. So these folks that were fighting federal oversight of public land, we see them in great power today.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:36:12.230 - 00:36:36.800
And when I look at this as someone kind of on the outside with very little power, I think, why do you have the right to have all this land that is owned by my government? It feels very selfish to me that you think that this land just belongs to you and you can have it and do whatever you want with it.
What do you think their response would be if I ever were to tell them something like that?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:36:37.359 - 00:39:04.040
I think that's a really good question. And I've thought a lot about it, because you go to a Bundy rally and they talk about we the people. And I just want to say, excuse me, excuse me.
I'm one of we the People. You're one of we the People. I mean, they have a very narrow definition of we the people. And I find that vexing and frustrating, just like you.
And so I think they have a very different sense of what is legal. I think, and I write extensively about this in my first book, the Bundys are Latter Day Saints.
And there's a lot of Latter Day Saint ideology that they build into their justification for their land use war. Part of it is prophecy.
Part of it is the fact that because the Mormon Church was established in, I guess, the Book of Mormon, I think, came out in 1830, there was this notion that the First Amendment was really important to Joseph Smith in protecting the freedom to practice religion. And so they, in essence, have the Constitution as part of their religious sort of doctrine. This is a religious document to them.
And so they believe the Bundys, not the entire Latter Day Saints Church, but, but the Bundys believe that they have a better understanding than the Constitution than you are me or a constitutional scholar.
Because there, there is this sort of, and, and again, I, I, there's been prophet after prophet that's talked about this relationship that Mormon people have with the Constitution, including Joseph Smith. And so it's a complicated rationale.
It doesn't make sense, but it's deeply embedded that Cliven would feel like he's more entitled to public lands and decisions than you and I are and billions of other people.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:39:04.040 - 00:39:05.600
Right? Millions of other people out there.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:39:05.600 - 00:39:07.360
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:39:07.760 - 00:39:31.350
So now we're in very real danger of this happening, right? We're in very real danger of kind of a small radical group taking over, selling.
And one of the biggest things I always heard when I worked in conservation was that conservationists were going to lock it all away, lock it all away from everyone. But there's no more locking it away than making it private. Right. But this is a reality. This might happen.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:39:33.110 - 00:41:43.040
Well, that's what is in the works.
I mean, that said, I think that there are a lot of people out there, and I'm really, I mean, there are so many coalitions of people who love public lands. And it is going to be a fight.
It is going to be, you know, and I just spoke at the Montana Conservation Voters, their annual meeting, and I had to think about, okay, what is hopeful here? Because Donald Trump wants to sell the land. I mean, he wants that money. They're looking at it as assets.
I mean, I read an article today about Doug Bergen, Bergman. Bergam. Sorry, Bergam. Yeah. Who's looking at public lands as an asset sheet.
And so this is something that there's real consideration in not only, you know, extractive practices, but really selling. And selling is permanent.
If conservationists wanted to look at establishing wilderness areas that you weren't able to mine, for example, that land could be, or, excuse me, that law could be overturned at a certain point, when the land is sold, it is sold. It's no longer ours at all. But, no, this is a real danger. And they are getting so close to trying something awful.
And I just, I want to believe that through legal channels, through protest, through coalition building, from the tribes to hunters and anglers, to conservationists, to the, you know, outdoor industry, to families who love to go to national parks every summer, that this is going to be a big Outcry against terrible things, potentially terrible things.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:41:43.120 - 00:41:54.160
Yeah. It seems so incredibly unpopular with everyone else. Right. But as you said, you're dealing with a few zealots, right?
People who believe it's their right by God to do what they want with these lands.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:41:54.480 - 00:42:29.850
Yeah. And the folks that are involved in quote, unquote, you know, stewarding our lands are. They don't care. They don't care about wildlife.
I mean, these are oil execs, and these are folks that have never set foot on public land. And Doge, the folks that are making those calls, they have zero connection to what we know is the best thing that we have as Americans.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:42:31.460 - 00:42:41.220
So how can we flip the switch? How can those millions of us who do care, who spend time in these places, how can we make a difference when faced with this?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:42:42.820 - 00:45:51.210
Well, good question. And it's really daunting right now. I don't feel like I have a magic bullet, but I think that there are things that we can do.
Join nonprofit organizations that are working hard to protect public lands that are launching lawsuits.
And I just talked to Tracy Stone Manning a couple of weeks ago in preparation for this speech that I gave, because I was thinking, God, what can we be excited about? Or what can we at least feel hopeful about? And she's now taken a position as the Ed of the Wilderness Society. You know, she was a.
Under the Biden administration, the head of the blm. But she was saying, this is going to be a fight and what we might have to do, and this is not ideal.
This is not a great sort of Band aid, but nonprofit organizations might have to step up and really look at being involved directly on public lands, doing some of the work that agency folks did for the interim. She said, you know, I kind of equate it to being in a developing country and doing conservation work over there when there's no government support.
And again, that's a terrible Band aid, But she said, you know, we might have to do that in order for them not to make the argument, well, we can't afford to protect public land, you know, and we're managing it so badly when we know they've laid off all the folks that were. That were working to working on public lands, to. To do fire control, to do trail maintenance, to do trash pickup, that kind of thing, to give cpr.
And so, again, that was one of her ideas when we were kind of brainstorming that nonprofit organizations might have to step up into different roles. As I said, I do think they're going to be a ton of Losses.
Call your representatives, call your senators, call your Congress members, keep telling them how important that these places are to us. We're seeing in Montana. And again, it's hard to tell how much our leadership's going to go to bat.
Zinke seems, Representative Zinke seems to be out there a little bit more than our senators. Although our senators did not vote to put public lands on the table for sale a couple of weeks ago.
So, you know, they are listening to us because there are a lot of people in Montana that revere public lands. And so political pressure works. And then I do think it's going to take rallies.
I think there's going to need to be visible actions that people take and they organize and they get out there to protest public lands. Now I wish there was another magic answer, but I think it's going to take multiple fronts.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:45:51.610 - 00:46:12.250
Do you think policymakers and politicians might be surprised at how many people are willing to fight for public lands? How many people just might show up, you know, even for the volunteer stuff with shovels and then to protest?
And how many people really, you know, I don't think it's been pushed in this way before. Do you think they might be surprised at the resistance they get from everyday people about this?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:46:13.850 - 00:47:42.500
I want to believe that it's going to be. Be motivating in ways that we haven't yet seen.
I think that this is a bipartisan issue and I think that folks that may have voted for Republicans and again, I want to say it is bipartisan, but I think sometimes people care very much about public lands but like other policies that, that Republicans represent.
And I think that when we get folks who not only are voting for those leaders who may be inclined to not be as supportive of public lands when they get the voters reaching out to them and also their donors, which I'm hoping that that is going to be pressure that's helpful to get our politicians to move in the right direction. What scares me is that it all gets so fast tracked that people don't have a chance to understand what's happening. And that's what it seems.
I mean, it's kind of a shock and awe administration right now.
The stuff that's happening is so fast that I don't think people really understand just how dire things are right now in terms of public land lands taking.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:47:42.580 - 00:48:16.510
Maybe a step sideways.
I think, you know, another you've brought up a bit is indigenous involvement on these lands too, that, you know, we had Bears Ears Monument, which was, had indigenous management on it, right? Indigenous People are a big part of these lands as well.
And I know there's a lot of criticism leveled at American conservation that it's racist and based on colonialism. How much do you think those ideas will play into the future of public lands, if at all? Or will those Indigenous concerns just get pushed to the side?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:48:18.430 - 00:51:30.380
No, I mean, it's funny because one of the things that we've seen is this administration comes sweeping in and attack the diversity, equity and inclusion. And that has been particularly harmful in my state to Indigenous communities. And Indigenous communities are protected in Montana's constitution.
So I think people are recognizing evermore how imperative our Indigenous communities are and how imperative their voices are.
And I also think I've been, as I mentioned, I'm writing this new book, and yesterday I was working on traditional knowledge and the idea that, and this is something that I feel is incredibly important in considering Indigenous ways of seeing land, that it's not commodified, that things are essential because they are like water is life when you look at the standing rock, waterkeepers, animals are ancestors, that the land is sacred.
And so I really feel like Indigenous ways of seeing are exactly what we need to be thinking about in fighting the idea of the commodification of resources and public lands. Resources is such a reductive word. And so I really, really feel like that's where we need to keep going back to and thinking.
And yes, you're absolutely right, conservation is a colonial idea. Roosevelt was a racist.
And so when I have written about these ideas, I want to say that we need to know the history of conservation in order for us to move forward.
So I think it's really important, understand the history and then to create better ways, to create coalitions, to create collaborative management schemes, which I think Bears Ears is a perfect example of collaboratively working with the tribes to create a great conservation project. And so, yeah, I think. I think I do believe that we can learn really valid, vital lessons from Indigenous ways of seeing.
At a time when diversity, equity and inclusion is being attacked, I think it's ever more important for us to understand that incredible value, to get behind those principles and become ever more inclusive.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:51:30.780 - 00:52:11.670
And I think, you know, and when you say inclusive here, I think going back to what you said before about public lands being nonpartisan, too, it seems also that in wild places that are protected as public lands, everyone can have sort of a spiritual experience, whether you're very, you know, regimented and LDs like the Bundys, and in a very small, certain sect of that, whether you're an atheist and, you know, don't believe in some higher power, but you still feel something out there. Right.
Whether you're indigenous, whether you're an animist, you know, whatever, we all, It's a place where we all feel a sense of, of spirituality and connect to that. That's someplace we all connect. Right?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:52:13.190 - 00:55:23.390
Yeah. I mean, I have a.
I, I actually, I have a little bit of a different way of seeing things because LDS worldview and I would argue that this extends sort of into some realms of Judeo Christianity. There is an idea that utilization is sacred, so that when you're utilizing the land and you're pleasing the eye of God.
With Judeo Christianity, there's the idea that God created the land for human use and that we have dominion. And I think those principles really drive the way that we have seen land.
Now, I would say that with Thoreau and with Emerson, and this was a way that, that white people began to see the land as sacred, that it was, you know, something in and of itself without being developed, that was really important and that would go back to. That could tie back to God created the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea, and it was good.
Again, I know that Emerson and Thoreau had very different ways of seeing the world than being biblical, but I think that there's overlap there. Now, the reason why I'm bringing this up is not to say that we can't have spiritual experiences, and many of us do on public land.
I think that that's one of the reasons why this idea of awe, this idea of being part of nature, this idea of seeing such extreme beauty, whether you believe that it's God's creation or whether you, in the fact that this is the way the world is ever evolving, those are really beautiful.
But I also think, again, and I know I've made this point several times during this podcast, is that in order for us to understand different notions, we can't leave anything unexamined. And so Clive and Bundy would not. Not be awed by the land in the same way we would be.
And there are very sort of troubling Judeo Christian notions that reinforce what is happening right now with pushing extraction, with commodifying land, with the notion that humans have dominion. Dominion is a very, very, very dangerous notion. So that's not to say that we can't go out and love the land because we can.
I just, I think it's really important for us to understand all the layers. So I'm sorry to be a. Was that kind Of a buzzkill answer?
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:55:23.630 - 00:56:02.850
Not at all. No. That's a fantastic answer. I know this is something that you've studied and written about.
I mean, it's interesting, right, Because I think that, you know, humanity in general, you know, within the past, maybe even 20 years, we've gone through an incredible change where it's obvious when the first LDS settlers came out there, it was them against the wilderness, and they needed to create dominion. They were really fighting a battle against wild places.
And now, all of a sudden, we're at a space where we could wipe them out completely in an instant where we do hold dominion over the world. I mean. I mean, we're more powerful than it. We really are.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:56:02.930 - 00:56:03.410
Yeah.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:56:03.570 - 00:56:04.610
To our own detriment.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:56:05.490 - 00:58:38.120
I have a couple answers to that, too. The way that the early Mormon settlers went out to the land, they settled around water sources. And so they were agrarian, and they settled.
And so this, I think, is really fascinating. They talk about the struggle of early pioneers. They talk about how difficult the circumstances. Circumstances were.
These grasshoppers eating all their crops, the floods that were wiping things out. And then you look at Southern Paiute, and this is the area I was looking at, particular because I was looking at where the Bundys are living.
Southern Paiute talk about how abundant the land is, how God gave them the best peace. It's the same land, but the way that they were living on it was very different.
One group was following seasonal abundance, and one group said, we're gonna plant stakes and we're gonna make it work right around this water source. Well, that water source happened to be part of the abundance of the Southern Paiute. And so I do think that there are different ways of seeing land.
Now, that said, you're absolutely right. Now, humans can control everything. We control the water, we control wildlife. Hab.
It's not my favorite book, but I think the notion is really interesting. Playing God in Yellowstone, we are playing God. And so our wild places, quote, unquote, are very managed.
I would also say, again, I'm always trying to argue with myself that indigenous landscapes were also managed in ways as well. There were fires that were burned. There were. There were irrigation systems. There were things that were planted.
So, again, the word wild, as we well know, is a complicated word that also needs to be unpacked, because these lands that white people came out and said were wild were actually. They'd been lived on since time immemorial. So, Doug, you'll have to forgive me. I'm always trying to turn over every stone And.
And see things from every perspective. I'm not always great at it, but I don't mean to. I always feel like I'm kind of a. Kind of a spoil sport.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:58:38.360 - 00:58:42.120
No, that is the sign of an intelligent and compassionate mind.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:58:43.640 - 00:58:51.160
Well, I have my moments. Not very many of them, no.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:58:51.640 - 00:59:48.810
An incredible amount of them going. You know, I'd like to go deeper into this idea of the spirituality, though, that we experience.
Experience in wild places, because I know it is so essential, not just to your writing, but to you yourself.
And you were talking about Emerson in Thoreau and another of the Romantics, I think a lot about, I turn to is Wordsworth, and he talks about moving away from the primal experience of nature. Even in our personal lives.
When we're younger, we're going to go out there and trail run, we're going to mountain bike, we're going to mine, we're going to gr. You know, all these things kind of go together. Right? But. But then as we age, even we see something more sublime and spiritual.
And he writes that I, so long a worshiper of nature hither, came unwearied in that service, rather say with warmer love, with deeper zeal of holier love. Do you see that evolution taking place, you know, not just as we age as individuals, but perhaps as we age as a culture?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
00:59:49.370 - 01:01:34.950
I hope that. I hope people.
What worries me is that people have become so connected to social media and so disconnected from nature, and it's so important for us to allow or to encourage young folks to get out on the land. And I do think, I mean, we're seeing more and more people use, recreate and be out on the land and fall in love with the land.
And I think that's really great. I think that your point is extremely well taken. That, that again, recreation and connection to land.
When, When I started out, you know, I was a backpacking guide, I did trail running. I mean, you know, it was. It was. It was endorphins was my relationship to land, even though I loved it. I, you know, but.
But endorphins were a huge part of it. And, And I do think it's imperative not only for being considerate of the land and, and to think about.
About ways to be reflective in preserving it, but also in terms of evolving as a human.
I think that you're absolutely right that the more we back off of asking the land to provide us something, whether it's ore or grass for our cows or endorphins, the better relationship we're going to have with it and the calmer and more peaceful will be as members of an integrated and interconnected world.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:01:36.230 - 01:02:08.080
Yeah. And I think you. I mean, you mentioned before there's some Judeo Christian history of dominion, but isn't there also a current of integration?
I think of St. Francis, of course. Right. Of this idea. And you have worked with Christian and other religious groups that are involved in conservation.
And I wonder, why don't we hear more about these religious groups that are really working for conservation and seeing this aspect of religion and the land working together.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
01:02:08.960 - 01:05:02.100
Yeah. Okay, so I have a funny story. When I was working with religious leaders, I was primarily working in Mongolia and Bhutan.
So I was working with monks, Buddhists, who really. I mean, that's the whole idea of everything is sentient and interconnectedness.
But I was also working with evangelical Christians who at the time were very involved in climate activism. And so I was thinking about this a lot because there was a ton of attention to this back when we were working on it.
And that would have been in the mid-2000s. And something really weird happened.
There was this guy named Richard Cizik who was a very, very outspoken evangelical Christian who was very worried and very involved in climate activism, very worried about climate change. And he began to affiliate with a number of conservation groups and he was kind of celebrated and he was in the. He was in Vanity Fair.
And it was a really provocative picture of him in a natural environment. And actually it was kind of a cartoonish natural environment, but he was walking across stones, he was barefoot and. And immediately he was attacked.
And he was attacked by folks saying that he looked pagan. And he was attacked because he was affiliating with non evangelicals. And he was just absolutely taken down.
This guy who I had great admiration for because he was really bringing in constituencies that had not been involved.
And I believe, believe truly that at that point, the fossil fuel industry was so embedded with the Republicans that it was an intentional takedown, that they did not want evangelicals being outspoken about environment. And so Richard Cizik was. He was absolutely brutalized and he had done such fine work.
And so there is a reticence these days for conservative religious groups to be involved in conservation. The Mormon Church has.
They do have activists, they have climate activists, but this just is something that was gaining an enormous amount of momentum in the 2000s, and it just stopped. And I, as I said, I think it was absolutely intentional.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:05:02.660 - 01:05:44.180
Well, Betsy, I know you play a little humble, but I think you're an incredible source of knowledge and resource.
And your books, American Zion and True west are must reads for anyone who's interested in understanding the complexities of politics and public land and the essential nature of the west for the American identity.
And we could keep talking and talking, but we're getting near the end of the show and coming up to the question we ask everyone at the end of the show that I think you are very excited for, started answering before we were on. And that is with all of this we've talked about, that sounds pretty dire, pretty bleak. What gives you hope?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
01:05:45.700 - 01:07:14.500
Yeah, I just want to say thank you. I do appreciate that a lot. I do get a little bit. Sometimes names and dates and sort of sequences fly out of my mind. But thank you.
What am I hopeful about?
I'm hopeful about the fact that there are so many people and so much potential for coalition building that we really do have the engagement and the love and, and I don't want to sound woo woo, but we're looking at fighting a battle for love, not for money. And, and I, I'm not going to say that I. At the end of the day, we're going to triumph in everything.
I, I think that we're going to see some real heartache. But I also know that we are going to fight so hard and that we're going to fight together and that we have right on our side.
I know that that really matters because we cannot lose the lands that, as I've said over and over again, are the most important, important piece of being an American.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:07:14.980 - 01:07:26.180
Well, that's great stuff and super important. And again, American Zion, True west, your latest. The book you're working on now is gonna be on water. When will that be? When will we be seeing that?
Betsy Gaines Quammen
01:07:26.340 - 01:07:50.980
Oh no, it's actually, it's on ghosts. It's ghosts. It's a book on ghost stories and ghost stories attached to certain places.
So the water story is about ghost stories around D dams, but it's also about what dams do. And you know Mark Reisner's wonderful book, Cadillac Desert?
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:07:50.980 - 01:07:51.940
Oh, of course, yeah.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
01:07:52.420 - 01:08:23.510
He talks about the west having a future haunted by scarcity. And so I talk about water from that perspective.
So it's me layering the idea of being haunted on a lot of different places and buildings and landscapes, but then also ghost stories because I love ghost stories. So it's kind of my way of winding through landscape and history and ghost stories.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:08:23.910 - 01:08:35.120
Amazing. We all love ghost stories here too. So how can people find out more about your books? How can they follow you?
How can they get involved in any way you want them to get involved? For bubbling.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
01:08:36.309 - 01:09:31.459
They can follow me on. I'm on Facebook and Instagram and Blue sky and I think I'm just Betsy Gainesquamin or B.G. quammen or Betsy G.
Quammen, one variation or another of those. But I'm and also, please join your favorite conservation group. I love Wild Earth Guardians. I love Montana Conservation Voters.
I love Greater Yellowstone Coalition.
There are so many, many wonderful organizations out there and if you have a little change in your pocket, I know right now times are hard economically, but support a group that you know is fighting to protect public lands.
And pay attention to when there's going to be actions, rallies, letter writing campaigns, because we're all going to need to be involved in this effort, this campaign and this fight.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:09:31.699 - 01:09:37.939
Thank you Betsy. Again, such an honor to have you on. I'm a big fan of your work and your books and it was a great conversation.
Betsy Gaines Quammen
01:09:38.099 - 01:09:39.859
Thank you Doug. This has been great.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:09:42.419 - 01:10:10.830
Thanks for imbibing Open Container, a production of Rock Fight llc.
Please take a second to follow our show on whatever podcast app you're listening to us on and send your emails and feedback to myrockfightmail.com learn more about about Betsy Gaines Quammen and her work@betsygainesquammen.com our producers today were David Karstad and Colin True. Art direction provided by Sarah Gensert. I'm Doug Schnitzfahn. Get some thanks for listening.