6 minute read
The Mythos of the Wild West
from IdaHome--August
BY MICAH DREW
“I’m just so mad that there is smoke everywhere, and it’s so hot.”
“It’s really not what we were expecting.”
This year, more than ever before, comments like these are echoing louder across Idaho and the western states known for their scenic vacation spots. From the Gem State to Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, and California, visitors, recent transplants, and even longtime residents can be heard bemoaning another summer shortened by smoke and restrictions. Welcome to the West of 2021 and beyond, where the future is sure to offer another crack in the illusion that life in the Wild West is always magical.
Not that I’m a pessimist. I’m a journalist and it’s my job to deal with facts.
Fire season is not new to the forested Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest, but to many who have never seen brown skies or the eerie glow of flames from across a lake, the world can appear apocalyptic, jarringly at odds with the storybook images of beautiful mountains and blue skies that have long been peddled on postcards.
The idea of a ‘Wild West’ as an idyllic concept has been rooted in America’s mindset since its founding. Beginning with Lewis and Clark’s expedition, the concept of Manifest Destiny inspired a constant migration toward the setting sun that continues to this day.
PHOTO BY DANICA PETER
A Wild West, however, one that is pristine and ripe for the taking, is and always has been a contrived notion. The West has never been an empty land, bereft of people. That mythos started in the early days of settlers pushing across the Oregon Trail, fueled by dreams and the U.S. Government’s expansion strategy, and eventually led to the corralling and erasure of Native Americans and their culture.
The myth continues today. There remains a sense of privilege and ownership in western lands, whether from energy companies fighting for their rights to extract resources from public lands, tourists looking for new backgrounds for their social media posts, or transplants of the COVID cultural-shift to an era of remote work. The West keeps a romanticized hold on the minds of many people, and I understand why.
I was raised in Boise, and like many people from similar western communities, I spent summers among mountain vistas, diving into glacially carved lakes and generally gallivanting around our bountiful, wide-open wildernesses.
PHOTO BY HANS VETH
I have always taken the public lands I’ve recreated in for granted, for the simple reason that I cannot remember a time of my life without them. My earliest memories are of camping and fishing near Featherville, attending summer camps in the Sawtooth Mountains, and spending family vacations among the elk in Yellowstone or moose in the Tetons.
In my privileged youthful view, no thought was given to the policies that made public lands possible. Even with a healthy dose of Idaho history education in the fourth grade, I never realized that the areas I was playing in once belonged to Native peoples who had been reduced to a few names in my books, like Sacajawea and Chief Joseph. I paid no attention to the original intentions behind the establishment of national forests and designating wilderness areas. I simply enjoyed the ubiquitous luxury of knowing the public lands I grew up around were there for all of us to enjoy.
Today, public lands (and the communities that serve as access points) are being overrun by the very people they have been set aside for, and that overconsumption is destroying some ideals. Since COVID, a mass exodus has occurred. Urbanites by the thousands have moved to small mountain towns that offer good wifi and better views. A new term has been coined: “Zoom towns,” as ski towns and larger cities, like Boise, explode with relocators.
The growth has led to a multitude of problems. Mountain towns with heavy seasonal workforces like McCall and Sun Valley are struggling to keep workers around, or attract new ones, because affordable housing options are disappearing. From Whitefish, Montana, to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to Boise, Idaho, coffee shops, bars, and restaurants have cut hours or even closed entirely, lacking staff who have exited due to lack of housing.
The Wild West can now be defined by wildly inflated housing prices, driving out long-timers and decreasing accessibility for day-jobbers. Several reports in June showed that Boise had the fastest growing median home price in the nation, with Realtor.com showing a nearly 72% increase in the last four years, while data from the Intermountain Multiple Listing Service showed Ada County’s median home price rising 45% in the last year alone, cracking $500,000 for the first time.
PHOTO BY John Thomas
The dream of replacing freeway traffic with a lake or mountain view is idyllic, but today those views come with the consequences of population expansion and environmental unconsciousness. National Parks in the West have enjoyed record visitation in recent years, leading to online reservations and limited admissions. Redfish Lake is turning recreators away for lack of parking. Visiting Glacier National Park to catch a glimpse of grizzly cubs requires surviving bumper-to-bumper traffic. Checking Yellowstone’s webpage today, the first popup is red alerts on camping restrictions and fishing closures in lakes and streams.
And nowhere is America’s political divisiveness more rife than where the gentrified blue take up residence in historically red, rural communities.
This is the problem with writing realistically about the West today—it’s hard to please people who insist on holding an ideal in their heads.
PHOTO BY DAN MEYERS
In 2014, author Brendan Leonard wrote an article for the online Adventure Journal wherein he compiled the 17 Best Bad Reviews of National Parks on Yelp.
The chosen reviews included gems such as, “Doesn’t look anything like the license plate,” for Arches National Park and, “Every 500 feet a new vantage point of the same thing: a really big hole in the ground” for the Grand Canyon.
And yet, almost magically, despite the challenging realities and disillusionments, the West remains mythical, especially to me. The postcard images are true—a land where the rivers run clear, with jagged mountains touched by clouds, where it’s possible to run across moose and grizzlies and huckleberry bushes in one afternoon. Beyond the smoke and civilization, the West is still everything you dream of. I’m just wondering—are we loving that dream to death?
