Comment by typeformer

I grew up in Livingston MT just a 20 min drive from the Crazies, I know these trails, and this is one if the saddest things I have ever read on HN. Now I live on the West coast but I miss Montana all the time and visit whenever I can. To be honest, I really can't fathom how terrible things have gotten politically with the likes of the despicably corrupt Zinke and Gioforte. Personally, I watched everything change so fast, 7 years maybe, it started with the spec houses and the big money from the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky. My father was a carpenter on a ugly 12 million dollar monstrosity, complete with a heated fucking driveway, cut out of what use to be public land, and used solely by Microsoft execs a for a few days a year. This big money then led to Bozeman blowing up with no smart growth plan, just all sprawl and box stores now. And already it has become the next Boulder, with it slew of bourgeoisie shops downtown, and yes, a great outdoorsy place to live, but only if you've got the Do Re Mi. Oracle is there in Bozeman now, and Google and FB are rumoured to be coming soon too...but tech per se isn't the main force killing MT, or the west, it's mostly our values that are. Perhaps, I can write a geat Montana story about a forrest service ranger, who leads a double life cutting fences, torching wasteful vacation mansions, and getting into conflicts with poachers, extractors, and rich asshole "ranchers" and developers. Maybe one day soon the beauty, majesty and stillness of MT will only be saved in stories, or maybe there is still a chance we can change out values and change our ways.