Between Grass And Sky: Where I Live And Work

Rising from the Condos

R I S I N G F R O M T H E C O N D O S 1 9 4 Near my ranch in the Black Hills of South Dakota, development is way ahead of residents’ understanding of its consequences. Few of my neighbors are ready to discuss how we might control the events unfolding among us. Most of us are still at an early stage: whining about how we’re going to lose the things we imagine we treasure. Clean air and open spaces, wildlife and hunting , small towns where a handshake seals a bargain. We haven’t begun to admit that besides the romance of ranching, which provides much of our state’s wealth in cash and environmental benefits, we also stand to lose income from our number one industry, tourism. In fact, anyone who suggests such a thing, as I regularly do in essays and speeches, may be invited to “go back where you came from” by tourism officials and ranchers both. So when I heard that my friends J. David and Jane Love had donated land in Jackson to help create affordable housing there, I wanted to know more. Like many nonresidents who enjoy visiting Jackson, I’d lamented the town’s changes. I’d easily assumed its residents were unconcerned about the ordinary people who must live and work in a community where costs of living are higher than average. In addition, I am a ranch-owning widow with no natural children and a deep commitment to preserving ecology. Western tradition would dictate I leave the ranch to members of my extended family. All firmly established in ••• Hasselstrom/157-220 6/13/02 10:55 AM Page 194 nonranching professions, they’d probably sell it to the highest bidder—who could blame them? So I’m exploring ways the family ranch might remain just that: a small rural business that will sustain not only a family but wildlife and native grass. A land trust offers one possible solution, and the Love story a way to learn more. h Most Americans regularly see headlines like this: “new subdivision planned—explosive growth predicted.” The language of expansion is becoming familiar everywhere even though many westerners think it’s all happening in their hometown. “cost of living going up—wages lag behind inflation rate.” The reports have become so routine we may yawn and turn the page. But the announcement that inevitably follows gets our attention: “property tax rate will rise.” All over the West, the name “Jackson, Wyoming” is invoked in community discussions as a graven image of the “evils of development.” To many of us, the Wyoming resort stands for the “cancer of change.” But thirty years ago Jackson residents who loved their valley’s beauty and atmosphere said, “We don’t want to be another Denver,” or maybe “Las Vegas,” or “Vail, Colorado .” A writer for the Wilderness Report of December 1977 defined the con- flict in Teton County, Wyoming, with the headline: “beauty or the beast of development?” Among westerners, militant language is common in talk of change. We speak of being “under siege” as we “fight” to preserve our way of life, repeating the same arguments—though the name of the city cast as the living symbol of “what is wrong with growth” may change from year to year. Jackson already had a housing shortage in 1948 when J. David Love and his wife, Jane, moved their four children into an unfinished basement on Clark Street. On the shoulder of Snow King Mountain, their home was so far out of town no one would deliver milk. They couldn’t afford to hire a carpenter , so they began improving the house themselves. “A window a year,” says Jane. “I was very keenly aware of contemporaries who didn’t have a place to live,” David adds, explaining that they lived in the basement five years before they could afford to move upstairs. The family wintered in Laramie where David, adjunct professor of geolr i s i n g f r o m t h e c o n d o s • 1 9 5 Hasselstrom/157-220 6/13/02 10:55 AM Page 195 1 9 6 • b e t w e e n g r a s s a n d s k y ogy, established and supervised the U.S. Geological Survey’s research...