The following column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 17, 2001, mentions the Missouri Breaks National Monument:

http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/connelly/43024_joel17.shtml

In the Northwest: Country's natural heritage also deserves protection, by Joel Connelly, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Columnist

During these long weeks of early autumn, as a country copes with knowledge that it is no longer the world's safe harbor, the American Red Cross recently offered three sage words of advice: Take a hike!

The counsel should be heeded as part of the homeland patriotism generated by the terrorist atrocities of Sept. 11. We give it stirring voice in a pair of songs, "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America," that proclaim the nation's physical beauty.

Even the easy 2 1/2 mile walk to Barclay Lake, east of ../index off the Stevens Pass highway, recently provided a respite from the news barrage. The 4,000-foot-high north wall of Mount Baring more than qualified as mountain majesty.

The interlude set me to thinking what positive deeds are possible in a nation riveted on terrorism.

Wartime conditions bring out Americans' love of country, and put divisions in abeyance. A month after Sept. 11, Americans are voicing a greater faith in government doing what's right than at any time since Lyndon Johnson's presidency.

Government has taken a battering over the past 25 years. The country has dismantled federal safeguards, from regulation of banks and savings and loans to welfare guarantees for the poor.

"Markets were seen as smart and efficient, government as stupid and slow," Carl Pope, the Sierra Club's executive director, reflected in Seattle this week.

However, government is still counted on to provide one basic service -- security. Security is something that markets don't do well. Look at the short-term minimum wage workers at airport checkpoints.

Whither security in a new kind of war? On certain fronts, such as energy, a new kind of thinking is needed, especially if the terrorist threat hangs with us for years.The Alaska congressional delegation tells the country it must drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to guarantee energy security. A few days ago, however, a drunk with a rifle blew a hole that shut down the trans-Alaska pipeline for three days.

Wouldn't we be more secure if our new cars and sport-utility vehicles used less gasoline?

The Bush administration has pushed for a national energy plan that centers on construction of pipelines and nuclear reactors.

Centralized power plants and pipelines are highly vulnerable to attack by terrorists. Solar panels, fuel cells and wind energy offer far more dispersed sources of electric power. How would a terrorist blow up a wind farm?

A couple weeks after the Sept. 11 atrocities, Interior Secretary Gale Norton told airplane-wary Americans to find relief and solace through recreation and visits to national parks and monuments.

"We encourage everyone to draw inspiration from our greatest national treasures and let them serve as reminders that this nation will endure and prosper," Norton told a Denver audience.

To that end, the national treasures need security -- more than placing additional guards at the Washington Monument. Attacks on national monuments from within the government should immediately halt.

Before the events of Sept.11, Norton had embarked on a "review" of national monuments designated by former President Clinton. A panel named by Montana's conservative Gov. Judy Martz called for slashing the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument from 497,000 acres to just 90,000 acres.

The national monument preserves a stretch of river and high, rugged bluffs where, on May 26, 1805, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark first caught sight of the Rocky Mountains. He couldn't spell, but Lewis' journal reveals the music in his soul that day: "As we passed on it seemed those seens of visionary inchantment would never have an end."

"It remains one of the most isolated parts of the United States and ... is the least changed part of the Missouri," historian Stephen Ambrose wrote in "Undaunted Courage." A 165-mile canoe trip through the breaks helped inspire Ambrose to write his best seller on the Voyage of Discovery.

The bicentennial of Lewis and Clark's voyage is a little more than two years off. What better American experience from which to draw inspiration, and be confident in the nation's endurance? Appreciation of that experience will not be enhanced if a national monument is reduced by 80 percent, and if 21st-century history buffs find clearcuts where the explorers crossed the Continental Divide at Lolo Pass.

Past wars have centralized government, enhanced its power and spurred production. The Pentagon, built as World War II was about to engulf the United States, is a symbol of wartime government. In the new war, it became an immediate target.

Fighting terrorism requires thinking outside the box. In this war, decentralization and efficiency have a role in protecting the homeland.

As Norton correctly pointed out, an inspirational antidote to insecurity and uncertainty can be found in the history, heritage and beauty of the American earth. It, too, deserves protection.

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