North Forker Doug Chadwick has an excellent article on the National Geographic web site discussing Sen. Max Baucus’ decades-long efforts to protect the North Fork Flathead watershed and the reasons behind this work . . .
Daybreak on August 8 found me on a bank of the North Fork of the Flathead River in northwestern Montana, among the mixed tracks of deer, otters, and grizzly bears, marveling, as I have a thousand times before, at the near-magical transparency of these waters.
The bottom stones stood out as if on display under glass. Decades ago, my wife and I built a cabin nearby.
Across the river on the east bank, in Glacier National Park, the campers were stirring in their tents and the first cars were snaking up the Going to the Sun Road. But I was headed west that day, into the Whitefish Range, to see a man about the future of this valley.