This paragraph from the article speaks to me as I wonder how we became a country so divided when we can unite in what we love and share.
"The opponents of Wilderness up here were not kind to Scott; they were not kind to me. When the woods near my house caught on fire, the politically charged fire department would not come to service the call. When an undetonated pipe bomb fell out from beneath a Forest Service truck, they said I had put it there. They set Scott's truck on fire, and there were of course occasional death threats. We carried pistols under our seats, kept shotguns by our doors. It was not a healthy time but we came through the other side. Now we have a wilderness bill introduced in Congress, and perhaps as important, we have a finer civilization, a community where people no longer believe it's a communist threat to have a local farmer's market or a conservation education program in the elementary school or poetry readings or music festivals, but instead view such things as the joys of life."
Rick and Scott showed courage, and in that courage, brought change. Scott created a big-time public radio station, and started broadcasting just over the state line, in Idaho. The radio station "was a steady and continuous voice promoting nothing but good things, nothing but tolerance and hope, and slowly, steadily, it helped secure the community, the frightened little mountaintop civilization he had stumbled into. Scott didn't single-handedly dream the civilization's new architecture or build its framework and foundation, but almost. With the ocean waters still so far away - a thousand miles away, and thousands of feet below - how can such a civilization go under? Such a civilization can never go under."