(Note: a longer version of this essay is here.)
On the dust-blown fringe of Butte,
Mont., at the core of one of the nation’s largest Superfund sites,
lives an amazing paradox. Its genus is Canus, but its species would
have to be called extraordinarius. I doubt there’s another mutt
like this on the planet.
The mysterious, mostly
wild mongrel has survived for 16 years in a 5,000-acre moonscape,
the acidic, heavy metals-laden confines of the Berkeley Pit and the
town’s only remaining active mine. Ironically, the dog’s only help
in hanging on has come from the compassion of active and retired
miners.
“He really is a neat dog,” says Steve
Walsh, operations president of Montana Resources, whose employees
have adopted the dog as their mascot — as much as the dog will
allow, anyway.
For years, workers on the night
shift have put out food and water for the dog whenever he’s shown
up. They’ve also installed a shanty doghouse at the base of an
enormous hill of waste rock. Feeding time, around 7 p.m., is the
only occasion when the dog can be expected to appear in all his
unsightly glory. Most of the time, he’s an elusive creature roaming
the wasteland.
“God only knows what he does all
day,” says Ron Benton of Montana Resources. “You’ve got to wonder
why an animal would choose a place so forlorn.”
Not a single blade of grass, nary a tree, shrub
or weed can survive on the sickly yellow and burnt-orange crust
that dominates the dog’s home. This is the kind of soil that eats
men’s boots, let alone the paws of any normal dog. The water in the
Berkeley Pit can dissolve metal, and it kills most forms of life.
That was proven dramatically seven years ago, when 342 migrating
snow geese landed in the pit and died before they could take off.
“It’s unbelievable how (a dog) could live in a
place that’s supposed to be so toxic,” says veterinarian Ed
Peretti, who has tried and failed to track the mutt. With the same
admiration the miners show, the vet says, “He’s one tough dog.”
The miners have a name for the dreadlocked dog.
They call him fondly “The Auditor,” because he seems to show up
when they least expect it. They have proudly placed numerous
snapshots of The Auditor in a glass display case in the company’s
main office, alongside ore samples and award plaques.
But The Auditor is getting old, over 100 in dog
years. So the miners add baby aspirin to the dog food, trying to
ease his arthritic limp. Somehow he hangs on. Perhaps this
perseverance comes from his origins in the gritty town from which
he likely wandered. Mining began here in 1864, and went through
many booms and busts, with the last big bust in the 1980s, when the
historic Uptown District and the Berkeley Pit were declared a
Superfund site. The Superfund designation extends fully 130 miles
downstream, where tailings settled all along the Clark Fork River.
Today, things feel tenuous in Butte, which sits
atop what is said to be the most intensively mined ground on the
planet, riddled with thousands of miles of abandoned tunnels,
stopes and shafts. Butte’s population of about 35,000 is less than
half what it was in the heyday. Many of the old brick buildings are
vacant or underused.
The mining workforce alone
once totaled 15,000, but now just a couple of dozen miners hang on,
capping tailings, doing some revegetation and water treatment at
the pit. With just the skeleton crew of miners on duty, concern has
grown that some day there will be no one to work with The Auditor.
The dog won’t let anyone pet him. His fur is
matted and hangs down, and only his snout is visible. The miners
believe all that insulation helps, especially during the brutal
winters, and anyway, they can’t get close enough to trim the fur.
One miner was able to earn enough trust to shear the dog’s bangs,
to help it see. The miners say, if you have the chance to take a
close look, the dog has beautiful eyes.
It’s the
same with Butte. Just as the dog has adapted, the town has adapted,
living amid a toxic landscape, building a new economy on the money
brought by a Superfund cleanup. If you can look past the town’s
ugliness, it’s become a beautiful place, defined in a way few
people understand, astride the Continental Divide, decorated by the
old headframes.
Both the town and the dog keep
showing up against the odds.
—
Matt
Vincent is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org).
He is a reclamation specialist for Butte-Bow County, Montana, and a
part-time reporter for the Montana Standard in
Butte.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
