Chapter 4

A New Start

The Iron Range, Upper Michigan: 2008

“Albert, are you there?” It was almost 7am. Albert was just returning to the cabin for breakfast after making his morning rounds to his experiments. It was Jeremy’s mother on the loudspeaker—a small concession he’d made to continue communication with the outside world. Sometimes he turned it off. It had a way of interrupting the peace of his life. Without his wrist unit, he couldn’t talk to her until he got back into the cabin. He didn’t wear it all the time—same reason he sometimes turned off the speaker.

“Hi, how are you!” She heard the screen door slam as Albert called out his greeting. Her smiling face was clearly visible on his television screen. He didn’t have his camera turned on but the microphone picked up his voice well.

“I was about to leave a message and sign off, but then I knew you’d be out and about and waited for you to get back.”

Albert began pouring a cup of coffee. “How’s that son of yours doing? Don’t suppose I’ll hear much from him now that he’s finally earning money and up to his ears in frogs.”

“Oh, he’s doing just fine. They’ve got him training in Chicago for three months, and then he’s off to Indonesia to start his pilot project. He’s really excited. Did I tell you he finally married Cherry?”

“How come I wasn’t invited?”

“You know he had no money for a big wedding. They had it here right after graduation. That way she can go with him. Believe me, she’s not too excited about Indonesia. But that isn’t why I called. I’m calling to invite you to the Wolf Summit in Yellowstone”

“Wolf Summit? What Summit?” Albert hadn’t heard of any meetings on wolves.

“Senator Udall is calling a meeting of all wolf experts to discuss alternatives for reintroducing wolves to Western rangelands. As you know, we’ve got a lot of opposition from ranchers and settlers. He’d like to get everyone’s input before going ahead with legislation. It’ll be July 10^th through 13^th at Mammoth Springs in Yellowstone. Can we count on you?”

“Okay, Gladys, I’ll be there—email me the particulars.” You know I can’t refuse the Senator from Idaho. Along with the President, he’s one of those that’s going to get us through.”

“Well, I have to run. Goodbye until I see you there.”

“Bye.” Albert began deciding what he’d eat for breakfast.

President Gore was in his second term. The Bush years had ended badly. Just when the economy was recovering from the excesses of the rush to Internet commerce, electricity deregulation set off a series of fossil fuel price escalations not seen since the MidEast Oil crises of the 1970s. The rush of new, inexperienced companies into electricity production and distribution increased demand as many new power plants were built to lower electrical cost. Even with reserves from the Alaskan refuge, strategic stockpiles, and deep drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, shortages in the United States sent ripples through the worldwide economy and supply chains. The limits of gas and oil production, long predicted in the annual The State of the World and other publications, were running headlong into burgeoning demand and driving prices sky high.

Escalating gasoline prices changed driving habits overnight. SUVs, the sign of 1990s prosperity, were hurriedly traded in on gasoline-electric hybrid station wagons getting 80 miles per gallon. For commuting, people jumped to bicycles, mopeds, and small electric cars. For the first time, Americans took seriously insulation, solar passivity, and a host of energy-saving technologies largely ignored before. The price of everything requiring fuel to produce was affected, including food. Lifestyles changed rapidly—forced by economic necessity.

Air pollution in the cities had become a critical issue. Pollution of the world’s water supplies was close behind. There were no more living coral reefs in the ocean. The excesses of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries had come to roost on the children of the 21^st.

President Gore declared environmental war. Global warming, shortages, and dangerous pollution were finally reaching the consciousness of the American people. Congress, no longer obligated to big money lobbying by the McCain Election Reform Act, were pulling together to back the President’s bold and radical plan. The United States could not afford to go the way of the rest of the other resource rich countries—a two-tier society with a very rich elite and the rest struggling to live in an ever more degraded environment. The United States had to lead the way out of the morass the world was slipping into. Global warming could then render the coup de grace.

While most Americans were stockholders by nature of their retirement accounts they did little to exercise their voting rights. Elite insiders ran most corporations and mutual funds. The Corporate Reform Act removed stockholder interest as the overriding driving force for corporations. Taxes and other limitations were imposed to reduce excessive individual wealth. Tax loopholes were closed. Incentives were restructured to benefit society and the environment. Corporations could no longer lie to the public and get away with it. Some cried, “Socialism,” and protested in the streets. Congress saw no other direction to go.

Approaching 8 billion and growing fast , the realization that there were too many people on the Earth was hitting home on many fronts. A cure for AIDs had been found, but more and more people were dying from it each year. Most of the diseases conquered in the 20^th Century were running rampant in regions where pollution and overuse had rendered the land unproductive. These blighted areas, visible from space were growing like a disease upon the planet. To those, like Albert, in the know, the efforts underway looked feeble and hopeless. As long as we valued human life over all other, we appeared to be doomed to a way of life not seen since Dark Ages.

To counter the growing sense of helplessness, Gore also declared that we were going to Mars. If we could make something of that cold, barren, waterless landscape, then, perhaps, we could save the Earth. Following the lead of Kennedy, he declared that we would be on the planet in ten years, 2018. It was ambitious, but just what was needed to focus a beleaguered people. Unlike the race to the Moon, Gore invited every country to participate in any way they could.

The flight to Jackson was smooth. There were no crowds at O’Hare or Denver. The cost of jet fuel had virtually eliminated air travel for the masses. Albert took the 20-passenger shuttlebus to Mammoth Springs. The other riders were mostly tourists and Park employees. He didn’t see anyone going to the Wolf Summit. He used the time to look out the window and commune alone with one of the wonders of the natural world.

They drove past many areas burned in the fires seventeen years before. Weather bleached sticks that used to be tree trunks covered the hills and valleys. They jutted above the new, green growth, barely reaching fifteen feet. Trees grew slow at this altitude. It would take a hundred years for the forests to return to what they had been. Albert knew the value of buffalo, deer, rodents, and wild fires in thinning the forests. It was a hard lesson to learn.

Still, it was beauty that only nature can create--from wild flowers to multicolored geysers, Yellowstone was unique. Unlike most tourists, Albert knew it would all someday be gone—blasted away. Sitting on top of a super volcano, nature would reclaim the Park and its inhabitants in a single, violent, eruption. Aside from Krakatoa in the Indian Ocean in 1883, recent history had not recorded such a cataclysm. But it was coming. Not this trip. No serious seismic activity had occurred since the 1959 Lake Hebgren earthquake. Seismic activity would likely precede any eruption.

Mammoth Springs was as he remembered it. The Old Fort Yellowstone buildings, built for the Army during their protection of the Park until 1917, looked Spartan. The utilitarian nature of the Mammoth Springs Hotel was contemporary, but a far cry from the elite, country club conference centers dotting the land from Virginia to Vegas. But it was an appropriate venue—reachable by the constituents involved.

He saw her when he was checking in, then later, after dinner, when he went out on the porch to view the elk grazing the hillside just across the valley. Her blonde hair, more gray than blonde, framed a face that while still beautiful, bore the creases and concerns of a lifetime. Her small frame, smartly dressed in white pants and bright yellow shirt, gave the appearance of someone energetic and fit. She stared at the elk for a few moments, then turned, and went back inside. Just then, Gladys appeared with a drink in each hand and sat down beside him.

“Who is that?” Albert’s interest in the strange woman had made him forget his manners.

Gladys didn’t seem to mind. She handed Albert his drink and pulled a napkin from her pocket for him to put under it. “Oh, that’s Anne Compton—you know—of the California Comptons? She works for Senator Sturgeous of Montana. She doesn’t have to work, but she’s thrown herself into this campaign. Do you want me to introduce you?”

Albert had heard of her. She had come a long way to this place. Born to privilege, she grew up in Atherton, and attended private schools. Her father, John Compton, was the long-standing conservative Senator from California, fully behind Goldwater on the Vietnam issue. By the time she was fourteen, she was skipping school, hitching a ride to the City, and hanging out with hippies in Panhandle Park. There was always a concert at the Fillmore Auditorium, Winterland,or the Avalon Ballroom. She’d sneak in past the servants near morning, and then have breakfast with her mother, none the wiser.

While she tried acid once, she didn’t like the marijuana scene, seeing how it made people cocky and talkative, but unable to be industrious and creative. Instead, she fell in with a group of new colonists, bent on setting out and starting over. They were bright, rich kids like her who didn’t smoke or drink. At sixteen, she left for school one morning and ended up in a commune near Mendocino. Her first summer there was idyllic, but the snow and rains of winter nearly drove them out. After Christmas, their original group of thirty had dwindled to nine. The locals--sheep farmers, fishermen, and timber cutters--were amused by the new arrivals, but didn’t like them squatting on their land. They tried to grow vegetables, but the forest yielded little for all their efforts. They soon abandoned the idea of being pure vegetarians to eat squirrel,quail, and deer when they could get it. One commune member spent 60 days in jail for shooting a deer out of season. At least he had good food and the rest had venison to eat. Anne learned a valuable lesson—how hard it is to survive in the wilderness. After a second summer of poor crops, the new colonists drifted back to the City. Their commune was abandoned to the forest. With her Daddy’s pull, Anne entered Vassar that fall.

Anne emerged from Vassar four years later with a degree in economics and a new sense of purpose. Returning home, she spent two more years at Stanford getting her MBA. With her sisters from Vassar, she formed a series of businesses in the 1970s. While they gained some attention in the press, none of these businesses, geared to Women’s needs, ever took off. Seasoned from her entrepreneurial experience and with the urging of her uncle, she was made senior vice president for marketing at Compton Enterprises in 1981. Positioned to take advantage of Reagan’s largesse and trickle down economics, she became the consummate yuppie. With newfound personal wealth, she built a beach house in Malibu; bought high-rise apartments in San Francisco and New York City, and a ranch in Montana; gathered a stable of Mercedes convertibles; and took the company Lear wherever she wanted.

But she was unsatisfied. From her days in the commune, there were men around, but she never married. Maybe it was her wit, her money, or her beauty—whatever it was, she was just too intimidating to men. Her lifestyle precluded adopting children. She’d even thought of being a single mother, but abandoned that for the same reason. By the 1990s, the drive to earn money not longer pleased her. She resigned her post to head the newly formed Compton Foundation. She started to champion causes—birth defects, AIDs, World Hunger, the rain forests. After a decade of this work with small rewards but little progress, she retreated to her ranch in Montana. After a couple of years trying to nurture a small herd of wild horses and buffalo, she’d joined the Senator’s staff, gratis, just to get back into the action. That’s why she was there.

But that attractive man she’d seen on the porch. “Was he here for the Summit?” She made a note to herself to ask Gladys. She didn’t have too.

Albert wasn’t into horses, but a pre-breakfast ride to the Springs had been scheduled for 6am, so he got up early and went along with the program. To his pleasant surprise, the woman he’d seen, Anne Compton, was walking over to the stable too. Breaking into a jog, he caught up with her.

“Hi, I’m Albert Repaul!” He was slightly out of breath as he slowed beside her. “Gladys told me that you are her with Senator Sturgeous. Mind if I join you?” He fell into walking beside her.

Anne smiled slightly at his bravado. “Good to meet you, you must be at the Summit, too.” She didn’t offer her hand, but her smile grew.

“Yes, I reintroduced wolves to Upper Michigan.” It wasn’t a proud statement, just a fact.

Anne understood. He started telling her about his wolves, but they reached the stable and had to saddle up.

Albert liked both feet on the ground. As much as he loved animals, horses were among the dumbest. He was never sure if his ride would try to throw him as he swayed along. This ride was different. He kept admiring the skill and grace of Anne as they plied the terraces and climbed to a commanding view of the sun rising over the valley. They talked easily about mutual concerns. They were already close friends when Gladys joined them at the breakfast table. Albert couldn’t remember being this giddy since he met Esther. In some ways, Anne reminded him of Esther.

The Summit was the classic confrontation. Environmentalists on one side, and ranchers and settlers on the other. The timber and mining interests were not there. This was one fight they weren’t interested in. As much as they were part of the problem, Albert hated seeing the ranchers decline. The settlers were another matter. They had been coming to the West since Hemmingway left Cuba for Montana in the 1950s. Now, everyone who made in America wanted to buy his little piece of peace, quiet, and mountain air. The trouble was, some areas were fast becoming just like suburbia, and small towns like Jackson and Billings were becoming the boomtowns of the century.

Ranchers were a beleaguered lot and strange bedfellows with the settlers. Between questions about their practices, economic pressure, and the onrush of settlers, their hundred and fifty year way of life seemed to be coming to a close. The Great Plains Indians, who the ranchers had pushed out, had four hundred years to flourish with Spanish horses. How long would the settlers last? No one wanted to compromise his or her way of life, no matter how little time was left.

The Office of Land Management’s pitch made sense. Reintroducing wolves had been studied for twenty years, beginning with natural sites like Isle Royale, and then with experiments like those in Northern Minnesota and Yellowstone. Wolves limited coyote populations. Wolves guaranteed the genetic strength of elk, horses, buffalo, moose, prairie dog, and other wild animal populations. Wolves did affect unguarded ranch animals and pets. Humans seemed to have few encounters with the furtive wolves.

Range dogs had proved to be good at protecting livestock.

The best thing that came out of the Summit was the wireless fence. Livestock could be fitted with a receiver collar, ear clip, or implant that would sense an adjustable proximately to a high frequency transmitter. The closer the animal approached the transmitters, the more painful the amplified signal in the receiver would become to the inner ear.

Transmitters were small, reliable and cheap. They were either battery or solar powered and could be fastened to fence posts, trees, or rocks. Their placement depended on the range they were set for, usually ten to fifteen feet, along an existing boundary. Once an animal came within range of the transmitter, the pain in its ears would immediately cause it to pull back away from the boundary. Young animals would quickly learn where the boundaries were. Once learned, conditioned animals never crossed the boundaries again. A threshold could be set so that no permanent damage would come to an animal forced into the range of transmitters against its will.

Maintenance costs of the brightly colored transmitters had proved to be less than maintenance of traditional fences. Ranchers and settlers could dismantle a section of fence at a time, gradually returning their property to open range. Boundaries would still be clearly marked by the transmitters and surveys.

Humans and wild animals would be free to cross boundaries at will.

Strict new rules for trespass and off road vehicles were already in place. Camera technologies had already reduced illegal trespass to new lows. Rules for the harvest of open range animals like buffalo and wild horses were being developed following wildlife hunting rules practiced and improved over a century. Picking off the alpha male for a trophy would no longer be tolerated. Harvesting of the weak and sick would be required.

The best benefit of the wireless fence wasn’t obvious. Since ranch animals would not graze within twenty to thirty feet of fencerows, they would become fallow. These ungrazed strips would provide food for wild grazers, cover and nesting places for wild animals and birds, and reseed sites for wild grasses and plants from the wild prairie. Ranchers may periodically cut or burn these fencerows, but their value in restoring wild habitat coud not be underestimated.

The dissenters, after much debate, agreed to reintroduction of wolves in mountain areas—the Rockies, Bitterroots, Big Horn, Sierras, Black Hills, and Cascades—but not to farm and ranchlands until the new fencing system and introduction areas proved successful.

Except for when Albert presented the results of his twenty-year experiment with wolves in the UP, Anne sat with him throughout the Summit. They ate together, walked together, took morning trail rides together, and talked. Their practical idealism, honed by years of experience, clicked. They both hated to see the Summit end.

Albert hurriedly changed his return plans, called his nephew to check on his experiments, and left Yellowstone northward into Montana with the Anne and Senator’s entourage.

He was a real dude on Anne’s ranch. He rode more than he cared for as they followed the fence lines and determined where she would put in the new wireless technology. Her foreman, George, who was half Mandan, welcomed the change, ran things on the ranch.

When they returned, tired and sore from a hard day’s ride, Anne invited him to join her in the hot tub on her deck as they walked to the house. When Albert confessed that he hadn’t packed a swimsuit, Anne just smiled and said, “Oh, that’s okay.” She went to the kitchen for some wine while Albert admired the view from the deck of the ranch house and checked the temperature of the water.

When Anne arrived on the deck with a Chardonney and two glasses, Albert pulled the cork and poured two glasses. They raised the glasses, tapped them, and Albert said, “To the open range.”

Anne responded, “To the open range.” She smiled broadly and began unbuttoning her shirt. Soon, with her shirt off, she was unbuttoning Albert’s shirt. Albert was focused on the freckles on her white skin below the tan line on her breasts. Finally, he looked up to see her eyes, staring lovingly into his. She was unbuckling his belt.

Albert was in good shape. But Anne had obviously taken care of her body. They crawled into the soothing waters of the hot tub and sipped their wine. As the sun set they talked like old friends. Albert hadn’t felt this excited since Esther.

Hungry, they left the hot tub and toweled dry. Handing their clothes to Albert, Anne winked and said, “Could you please take these to my bedroom. I’ll get us some food.”

Albert lingered a bit in Anne’s bedroom, looking at her framed pictures of her other lives. The room was feminine, but clearly western ranch, with large, natural wood furniture. It did not look like the bedroom of a millionaire. With his towel tried to his waist he returned to the kitchen. He smelled steaks on the grill on the deck. Anne still totally nude, was making a salad at the counter. He couldn’t help but admire her bare butt and back. She had either been tanning nude or wore a thong swimsuit.

“Do you want the horses ready again in the morning?” George startled Albert as he barged into the kitchen.

Anne turned toward him, pensive for a moment. “Yes, but not until 10, we’re tired and will be sleeping in a bit.” She smiled slyly. George smiled and nodded in recognition as he backed out of the kitchen.

“In case you’re wondering, ‘Yes’, I’ve had him. It was mutual. He’s one hellava man. It gets lonely out here. Since my days in the commune, I’ve been comfortable with sex. Having no kids helps. George has an ex-wife and three kids to think about. We’re in different worlds He’s native to this country. I’m just passing through—a settler. And a couple of young ranch hands, too. They’re all so full of hormones. Those prostitutes in Billings just take their money and run. Do I shock you?” She waved the knife about as she talked.

Albert was growing a bit redder than his sunburn. “No, the older I get, the less concerned I am about things like that.” He didn’t tell her how jealous he’d been of Esther’s attraction to men.

He moved to her side and picked up his wine glass. She smelled great as she cut up mushrooms, her breasts jiggling to her exertion. He could feel her heat. He could feel himself stirring beneath his towel.

After a flurry of ecalls, Anne joined him at New Wilderness in September, just as the fall colors were bursting forth. She stayed the winter. They were married in Ironwood in the spring. Albert’s family was happy. The Comptons were happy. Albert was no longer alone. When travel costs permitted, they returned to the ranch to oversee George’s fence renovation. It took three years, but Anne’s ranch became a model for other ranches in the area. As the fencerows grew, more grouse, pheasants, and foxes were seen.

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