Dear HCN,
Dressed as Grammaw Maudie
Miller in 1843, whose brother Nathan is a mountain man, I do a
living history story about trailblazers of the Oregon Trail. I tell
about mountain men who opened up their 2,000-mile horse and
pack-mule caravan routes to wagons by 1840, making possible the
great migrations that opened and settled what was called “the
wilderness.”
Maudie tells stories about the fur
companies and lives of the trappers. She tells how in 20 years they
had the “boundless beaver exterminated, and put themselves right
out of business.” But 160 years ago there was no Sierra Club or
Idaho Conservation League. Environmentalists didn’t complain and
delay fur companies’ business by insisting that they trap only in
the fall so that the females could produce their new crop in the
spring, and the yield and jobs be sustained. So who did the fur
companies and mountain men blame for their reverse of fortune?
Themselves. Obviously.
Who do the timber
companies and their jacks and millers blame for the extermination
of the boundless forests and putting themselves right out of
business (HCN, 8/31/98)? Not themselves. Obviously. And if there
were no environmentalists today, and history were free to repeat
itself? Considering today’s technology, the picture is too horrible
to contemplate.
Mary
Inman
Twin Falls,
Idaho
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Reflections on blaming the environmentalists.
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