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© 2004 Rick Wong Introduction Essay for Montana 24/7 It's Not for the Meek By Charles S. Johnson Two centuries ago, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark burned up more expedition hours in what became Montana than in any other state. Gary Cooper learned to saddle up in his hometown of Helena before heading off to become king of Hollywood. Montana sent the first woman to Congress in 1916. Her name was Jeanette Rankin, and she was a pacifist who voted against both world wars. The French government made the late Blackfeet novelist James Welch, born on the reservation in Browning, a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. These are some of the epic names of the human figures that have dotted the immense Montana landscape, names remembered like an old song when it's 20 below and snow has buried the road. This big, bold state, as seen in the frank and tender photos contained in this book, affects most everybody who has spent any time here. Actually living here, however...well, it isn't for the meek. Surviving the elements, much less the economy, people tend to end up with what we call an independent character. Many Montanans are strong, silent types, restless for brute adventure, and not afraid of the road less traveled. Cusses who insist on doing their own thinking make the state tough to govern--despite a few visionary leaders, Montana's government has failed to live up to its model 1972 state constitution--but most Montanans wouldn't have it any other way. Even the hardiest Montanans struggle to eke out a living in one of the nation's poorest states. As usual, out-of-control forces--the weather, distant corporate boardrooms, and world market prices--dictate Montana's fortunes. Mining, which produced the jobs that kept Montana's economy booming for decades but left some awful environmental messes, has seen better days. The timber industry faces major hurdles to continued logging on public lands. Out in the drought-stricken fields and grazing lands, things aren't much better. Grain farmers can make more money from federal subsidies by leaving their land unplowed. Cattle and sheep ranchers can often make more in the short term by selling their families' historic spreads to developers, who subdivide them into tiny ranchettes. On the upside, some state officials have high hopes that university towns and natural beauty will lure clean, high-paying, high-tech jobs to western Montana. Tourism remains a bright spot. Montana's isolation has always attracted more than its share of writers, artists, and musicians. The space, it is said, forces them to fill it--to reflect and think and create. Celebrities come here for big spreads and long roads where they can be left alone; likewise, society's rebels and outlaws--the Freemen, the Militia of Montana, and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. This same vastness also requires Montanans to help each other--the way they raised barns together in the past. Farmers join to harvest a sick neighbor's crop, and drivers jump out of their vehicles to push a stranger's stalled car out of a snowdrift. With such huge and magnificent spaces, with so much potential to fill in around them, Montanans still tend to be optimists. Montana is, as farmers put it, "next year country." Browse    View All    It's Not for the Meek    Hearth & Home    Hard at Work    Montana at Play    Reason to Believe    Our Town Photos: 152 Photographers: 33 Towns: 66

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