Three members of the Five Valleys Land Trust board of directions wrote in a recent Missoulian guest column that Five Valleys staff and board is continuing to serve the community during our current period of medical and economic crisis. Five Valleys cancelled its regular fundraising banquet and instead held an “Un-Banquet” last week, and is holding a virtual happy hour featuring brief organizational reports at 5:00 PM on April 17.
In their guest column, the Five Valleys board writes that, While scrambling to tend to our mission and retool operations to proceed into that uncertain future, we have been reminded again and again of the strength, resilience and generosity of our western Montana community. We have had an opportunity to ponder our community-wide tradition of activism in protecting and stewarding the wild and natural land and water that graces us here. And in so doing, we have been truly humbled.
Humbled by, and grateful to, those who came before to protect the places that have become vitally important in the life of our community in these darkest of times. None of those who envisioned what one described as the “graceful civic enterprise” of linking the community to the landscape could have foreseen the situation we face today. But, we suspect none of those local conservation pioneers would be surprised to learn the key role those places have played in the economic development and the quality of life in our community. And they would not be at all surprised to learn that when fear and doubt loom, so many turn to the natural world for solace and for joy. (Five Valleys photo of Mount Dean Stone)
