Demand more transparency - Fight for Montana

In autumn, that mournful season that stifles the lighthearted sounds of summer, larch turn golden and, against the Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine, light up the Seeley-Swan Valley like a votive-filled cathedral in Rome.

It’s something to behold as you stand in awe of the magic wand of nature, whose invisible hand has crafted an infrastructure that rapacious people want to market to a public hungry for natural experiences touted by Hollywood.

At Holland Lake, we’re seeing a docudrama (like TV’s Yellowstone) play out with the U.S. Forest Service and Utah-based ski giant POWDR proposing to triple the size of the quaint Holland Lake Lodge and turn it into a “soulful” experience for visitors to an area that’s the crown jewel of the largely undeveloped valley.

To stand at Holland Falls is to imagine what this landscape once was: wild, undeveloped and nestled in between the Swan Mountains and Bob Marshall Wilderness and the craggy peaks of the Missions. This valley’s where the sun crests one mountain range and sets behind another. It includes a wildlife corridor that’s largely untrammeled by humans and allows visitors to drive between Glacier and Yellowstone.

It’s also the ancestral land of the Pend d’Oreille, Salish, Kootenai and Blackfeet.

What’s occurring here is emblematic of what’s happening these days to Montana, where hucksters see a raw diamond like Holland and want to cut facets in it to sell to visitors who crave natural experiences.

But the Forest Service’s representatives stumbled in announcing this huge development, which needs a special-use permit to operate on public land. The Service lost the public’s trust because of a confusing public scoping process and a failure to be transparent when this project was hatched.

After mulling POWDR’s proposal since April, forest officials released project details Sept. 1 and said they’d accept comments until Sept. 21.

Thousands of howls of protest prompted Forest Supervisor Kurt Steele to extend the comment period to Oct. 7 and schedule a Seeley Lake meeting Oct. 4. In a press release, Steele took no responsibility for a “lot of confusion” about his intention to use a “categorical exclusion” (CEs are used for minor projects), condescendingly insinuating that we don’t understand the arcana of Forest Service bureaucracy.

All that we who own the public land are asking is that the Service be transparent so we know the rules and can comment on substantive issues. Such a project and extensive human impact will negatively affect the area’s character, threatened and endangered species, water and air quality and traffic.

Experts will point out the flaws of this proposal for a lake that doesn’t need a developer – an “adventure lifestyle company that inspires every human being with cool experiences in awesome places” – to create a “soulful experience.”

If I want such an experience, I’ll hike to Holland Falls or walk among the grove of giant larch that soar like cathedral spires near Seeley Lake. Those places are free, open to all and shared by us.

This vanishing Montana – it’s worth fighting for.