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Renewable towns
Posted
at
10:30 am
Trendy cities like Seattle are scrambling to make it to the top of international “green” lists, but some communities were onto that gig years ago – before Al Gore won the Nobel Prize, before threats of global warming scared the urban masses into action, before it was, well, cool.
Polebridge, MT has a year-round population of 12. The hamlet, located just outside the western border of Glacier National Park, is only reachable by 30 miles of treacherous dirt lanes.
“It’s the road that tries men’s souls,” one lifelong resident told me after my car bumped and jostled its way into town one weekday morning in July.
Hand-scrawled signs greet visitors who approach the town:
“Slow down! People breathing.”
“Local dogs at large. Leash your pets.”
It’s clear that the law in Polebridge is written by the people who live there. There’s also a vague suspicion that the glares residents shoot at anyone who litters are probably more painful than any sentence a judge could issue.
There are two places for visitors to stop in town: the Northern Lights Saloon, which set up shop in a small log cabin. Next door is the Polebridge Mercantile and Bakery, a charming general goods store where the owner has been pulling tarts, pastries, brownies and muffins out of the oven for 18 years. The two buildings are separated by an emergency gas pump, selling fuel for $5 per gallon.
Tasia, the waitress and bartender in the Northern Lights Saloon who has no problem serving beers to vacationers at noon on a weekday, is the granddaughter of pioneers who settled in Polebridge in the early 1900s.
Those early pioneers operated on an unspoken set of rules that are still enforced by sneers and sarcastic comments the otherwise friendly residents have tucked away and at the ready. Here are a few lessons from Polebridge:
- If you bring it into town, pack it out. It’s okay to throw away the napkin you used to eat a pastry at the Polebridge Mercantile in a garbage can in town, Tasia said, but curses will be showered upon anyone who dumps a weeks-worth of camping refuse in the Mercantile’s trash bin after emerging from the forest. Garbage trucks don’t make stops in Polebridge, Tasia said. Residents pack out their own garbage, so they’re careful to keep the loads as small as possible.
- Why not walk? While visitors mutter about the dust coating their Volvos and Audis as they putter between the saloon, mercantile and the vistas surrounding the town, residents take long walks from their cabins in the woods to the town center.
- Keep using it! Most of the vehicles in town are old trucks, being used until their very last breath, then fixed and used again. A frayed volleyball net is set up in the middle of town, and it doesn’t look like residents are feeling the need to replace it anytime soon An eco-trendster might look for the latest high-priced soy-based version, then spend a bundle to have it shipped halfway around the world.
- Avoid the grid. The entire town of Polebridge runs on solar panels, generators and other power sources that have no connection to large utilities companies. Some of the town’s solutions are greener than others, but the point is that the people in Polebridge build what they need, and are careful to keep consumption low.
- Be neighborly. Tasia told me that when a medical emergency occurs, the entire town quickly caravans the injured person to a hospital in Kalispel or Blackfish, the nearest cities. Taking multiple cars may not be the best way to save on gas, but the people of Polebridge have identified an important priority: if one man is down, that man’s contributions to the town are at risk. When everyone has a job that is vital to the town’s survival, the health of each person is critical.
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