'Weather Report', Pinedale

Monday, March 24, 2008

By Brooke Williams

Jackson Hole, Wyoming - The University of Wyoming’s Creative Writing Department has developed a program called “weather reports,” in which groups of students visit Wyoming communities. Last week, I attended the Pinedale Weather Report. It began Friday night in the auditorium of their beautiful library, with 30 community members sitting in a circle.

Emilene Ostlind, a first-year grad student from Big Horn, Wyo., had made the arrangements through the people at the Pinedale Arts Council. Brendan Magone, another student from Montana, facilitated the meeting. The goal was to create a space that would allow community members the freedom and inspiration to talk about love and concern for their home. After short introductions, we heard literary readings illustrating how landscape and community are essential to us as human beings - part of our essence.

I heard later that this same group of people represented all sides of the contentious conservation/development debate that has been raging in Sublette County over oil and gas development.

Ostlind’s story was about hunting antelope with a friend, and it did what all good stories do - it took us into the heart of our own questions and dichotomies and reminded us of the possibilities inherent in being vulnerable. The stories, as all good stories do, dug through the politics and rhetoric, tapping into a deeper space where everyone in the room seemed to reflect on all the reasons they have stayed in Pinedale, what changes are affecting those reasons, and what can be done about those changes.

We went around the room, each person taking as much time as they needed to tell their own story. We heard from the rancher/mother whose two sons are trying to make a go of the family ranch in an evolving economy, supplementing their incomes by contracting their backhoe out to the companies drilling for oil and gas. We heard from the conservationist who expressed deep love for the place and the wildlife and concern for the children coming up who have a right to the same experiences she’s had. An older woman, who came to Pinedale 40 years ago, talked about the first library, one she helped establish.

“We had three sections,” she said. “Fiction, non-fiction, and religion.” When a few people referred to the word “change” in the negative sense, as in the changes brought on by current oil and gas development, another woman reminded the group of the positive changes that have helped make Pinedale the right place to live and raise a family – the right place to stay put.     “Sally’s library was a big change,” another woman reminded the group. “Look what that led to,” she said, referring to the room where we were meeting. The librarian spoke up, her words tinged with emotion: “In the end, after they’ve extracted everything they can get from here, I see nothing but a big, deep hole.”

In the end, we decided that change isn’t necessarily to be feared or avoided. The group seemed to agree that change is inevitable. “We can support change as long as we have a choice. As long as we have a voice,” one man said. “Right now, it seems that we have neither.”

After the meeting ended, Josh Olenslager, a University of Wyoming graduate student, summed up the event by saying, “I love listening to people who care about something.”
I agree. I have a good feeling that this first meeting won’t be the last. Although individuals may feel powerless right now, I believe that this diverse group, joined by love of the place they live, will discover a previously unseen force that they can ride confidently into a future that they’ll play a key role in creating.
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'Weather Report', Pinedale | Planet JH News Article: General News

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