fbpx

The Modern West

Leaders like the ones gathered next week speak for a region whose voices must be loud in the absence of sheer numbers

By Myers Reece

The American West is an idea as much as a region, and it’s a grand one. Its commonly associated descriptor “wild” no longer implies lawlessness as it once did, but it still aptly speaks to the landscape’s geography and culture. There is no purer form of freedom than the breathing room of sparsely populated mountains.

As more people discover the pleasures of Western living, either sampling it on vacation or embracing it by moving, the wide-open spaces that define us are now hosting larger crowds. With that transition come opportunities: new residents and visitors spend money here, buy and build homes, start businesses and raise families, usher in diversity and fresh ideas, and more. Together, we’re all shaping the modern West.

But the changes also bring dilemmas and conflicts, which are merging with organic transformations, such as market shifts that readjust our economic backbones and the usual revolutions and revelations that accompany generational turnover. In their wake we are left with existential questions over what the West is becoming, how it should get there, and how much it should resemble its previous iterations.

In a nutshell, those ruminations define political discourse here. Their gist isn’t unique to our region, and in fact echoes the anxieties of all societies, but their specifics are our own. We don’t have many public dialogues about homicide rates or subway overcrowding, but we turn out in droves for meetings about trail usage and timber harvests. We have a lot of natural resources and even more opinions about what to do with them. We squabble over bears and fish and fences, but mostly agree on the right to own guns and harvest our own dinner. We worry about families with deep roots getting pushed and priced out.

In particular, the inland Rocky Mountain states between the Pacific coastline and Midwestern plains share commonalities — demographics, voting trends, vast landscapes and meager populations — that distinguish them from their three West Coast neighbors. Out here, a mundane term like land use is treated as a fundamental matter of existence.

For those reasons, next week’s Western Governors’ Association annual meeting in Whitefish will be a much different affair than similar conferences of its Southern, Northeastern and Midwestern counterpart coalitions. It will be filled with men and women, one would hope, who recognize the distinctiveness of our issues and debates. A lack of Mountain West representation at the highest levels of federal government, media and business has often led the region to be misunderstood and overlooked. Leaders like the ones gathered next week speak for a region whose voices must be loud in the absence of sheer numbers.

The June 26-28 event will showcase some of the West’s most prominent figures, not only governors, but also corporate executives, Washington, D.C. politicians, activists and trendsetters, and other powerbrokers. Sure, there will be obligatory political theater and posturing. But there will also be discussions that set in motion substantive action, or inspire notions that impact our lives down the road, or simply foster critical brainstorming and dialogue, either new or ongoing.

If nothing else, it will be encouraging to see influential people who understand the American West’s most important concerns and truths leading meaningful conversations, trading ideas and airing apprehensions and analyzing solutions. It’s wild out here, but it’s not empty. It’s populated with people who wouldn’t live anywhere else, who care deeply about their home, and who hope their leaders care as much as they do.