In 1982, Susan Marsh had
just arrived at the Gallatin National Forest in Montana. As part of the
Supervisor’s Office staff, she visited each of the five ranger districts to
introduce herself. Marsh narrates this experience in her forthcoming memoir, A Hunger for High Country:
At the Gardiner Ranger District I was greeted by a woman with graying
blond hair, a tanned face full of wrinkles, and dark, friendly eyes. She led me
down a hallway to a collection of map tubes and mismatched file cabinets where
half a dozen employees gathered at a folding conference table over day-old
doughnuts. Veiled eyes assessed me from under cowboy hats as I stood there in
my Birkenstocks. The district ranger was a tall, florid-faced man with sun
creases at the corners of his eyes. He had the long arms and large hands of a farmer.
When I held my hand out, he declined to shake it.
Today, Marsh joins us to
reflect further on this moment—and the overall climate of the male-dominated U.S.
Forest Service at the time—from which she managed to establish the prolific career
A Hunger for High Country recounts.
******
It wasn’t the first time I’d been snubbed – left standing there
alone and apparently invisible as a meeting ended and all the men filed out to
have lunch together – but it was the most blatant signal to date of how welcome
I would be.
In the 1980s, minorities, women, professionals other than
foresters and engineers, and other ‘newcomers’ had a hard time of it—at least
in the mountain west. People don’t like change, and we represented a lot of
change coming all at once. In my own case, I didn’t help make the changes any
easier to swallow for the old guard who were used to a predictable, familiar
way. I could have learned to be compliant and tell others what they wanted to
hear. I could have been less defensive and thicker-skinned about the insults –
everyone endures them, after all.
But what frustrated me as much as how people were
treated was how the land was managed – not as the crown jewel of the national
forest system, with six major mountain ranges and legendary trout rivers on the
northern border of Yellowstone National Park, but as just another
“multiple-use” forest that could have been anywhere. Trees were seen as crops.
A living forest was called “standing volume.”
Having held jobs in support of the timber program in Washington
and Oregon, this was not a new concept to me, but somehow it didn’t seem to
apply in a place of low rainfall and high elevation and spectacular mountain
scenery. Visiting foresters from the west slope of the Rockies found reasons to
chuckle over what was included in the Gallatin National Forest timber base.
“Hell,” one old forester from the neighboring Beaverhead National Forest said.
“They’ll have to load those pecker poles with a pitchfork.”
Ultimately, A Hunger for
High Country isn’t just about people like me who struggled to fit in. It’s
a portrait of the Forest Service, but not in the sense of airing a bunch of
dirty laundry—in the end, I defend the agency. It's also a portrait of the wonderful
wild places found at the headwaters of the continent and the world’s first
national park. I hope to illuminate the value of the national forests that we
are so fortunate to share and to relate my own story in terms of how these
precious forests helped heal my spirit and transform me—from an angry, resentful
person to one who is magnanimous and grateful for the experiences, good and
bad, that have taught me how to live.
******
Susan Marsh is a
naturalist and award-winning writer in Jackson, Wyo., with more than 30 years’
experience as a wild land steward for the U.S. Forest Service. Devoted to the
conservation of public land and a deeper understanding of the relationship
between people and wild country, her essays have appeared in a host of
magazines and anthologies. Her latest book, A
Hunger for High Country, will be available for purchase this November.