Friday, 31 Jan 2003
BOISE, Idaho
"Good advice doesn't come in a box marked 'good advice.'" So says David Frum, a former presidential speech-writer. As I walked through the office this morning, Frum's words rang true. All good leaders know that one of the most important things they can do is surround themselves with talented people; that's where your good advice will really come from.
Stupendous scenery in central Idaho.
Photo: Steve Bly.
It's all about the team, and here at the Idaho Conservation League, we're lucky to have a very good one. As executive director, I get credit when things are good, and can take the blame when they aren't, but in truth everything here is always a group effort.
Take today: Justin is tracking the soaring stock price of an Idaho mining company that nonetheless says it can't afford to stop dumping toxics into a North Idaho river. He's outraged and calling our lawyer. Linn and Jamie just got back from Washington, D.C., where they were briefing national groups on our White Clouds wilderness work and are already planning new meetings to advance our agenda. Liz, eight months pregnant, has our membership system ticking like a watch, and has helped tremendously with our work with foundations, relieving me of a load I once carried.
John just returned -- with a nasty cold -- from a long meeting set up by one of our U.S. senators to discuss declining elk numbers in North Idaho; now, he's shifted gears and is working on the Owyhee Canyonlands. Lauren came back from a tour of industrial dairies and is over at the statehouse in front of the nation's most conservative legislature defending a local public-interest provision these animal factories want stripped from our water law. Rachel is helping ensure that our members know about this public policy rip-off, and is providing a way for them to meaningfully respond. We'll also celebrate her engagement this weekend at Lauren's house.
Bugling elk -- part of the soundtrack to wild Idaho.
Photo: Steve Bly.
Jonathan, based in our North Idaho office, made the newspaper today because the U.S. Forest Service listened to us and will keep a timber sale out of a key roadless area. Mary Beth recently finished the design work for our quarterly newsletter and sent it to the printer, and has helped me with the photos for this column. JR has his finger on the pulse of timber sales throughout the state, and implements a broad program of agency oversight. Suki has run through the most recent budget numbers, met with our agent about insurance issues for staff, and was going to race in a major Nordic event we're cosponsoring this weekend, until she toasted a shoulder. As deputy director, she helps keep me sane.
Vicky and Andrea are processing the bills and checks, helping prepare for our upcoming board meeting, and are our front lines on the telephone, ensuring that calls go where they should and that members and the public get the service they have come to expect from the Idaho Conservation League.
I'm honored to work with these folks. They teach me a lot.
Canoe on beautiful Upper Priest Lake in northern Idaho.
Photo: Jay Krajic.
We are lucky. We work every day to protect one of America's most blessed places. The autumn bugling of elk, the lone moonlit howl of a wolf, or the crack of crashing bighorn rams are all sounds of wild Idaho. So is the scream of the fishing reel with a wild steelhead on the line, a gasp for breath on the top of Snowyside Peak, and the cry of "yes!" after a kayaker's first whitewater roll in the Payette. The cry of the wind, the rush of a river -- this is the soundtrack for our work.
I've loved Idaho from the moment I first saw it, but it was in Washington, D.C., that I decided to make a life of protecting it. It was 1984, and I was a bone-tired volunteer watching the late afternoon light stream across the old Sierra Club conference room on Pennsylvania Avenue. It was a Friday, just like today, and I'd walked the halls of Congress all week talking about this wonderful place called Idaho. I guess you could call it an epiphany. It was right then, literally, that I decided I'd do whatever it took to get a job doing this. And as the philosopher Robert Hunter says, "What a long, strange, trip it's been." I wouldn't trade it for anything.
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