“I think heaven’s right here. So’s hell. One person can be walking the clouds right next to someone enduring eternal damnation. And God is the land.” -Beth Dutton
Time is not something a family of 6 has in abundance, so when my husband and I sit down to watch a show, it’s usually long past its last episode and such is the case with “Yellowstone.” It is easy to be gobsmacked with the beauty of Montana- another travel agent might be busy telling you how many opportunities there are to book a ranch vacation! But this one will not. I watch Yellowstone as someone who grew up on a (far, far FAR) smaller working farm. We got up, mucked stalls, fed horses, mowed fields, and lived away from town- in more ways than one. It’s interesting to see people glamorize ranch life as the fabric of our society deteriorates- “all I want is a piece of land and to be left alone!”- but simultaneously cannot fathom getting up before 6 to work out. I don’t know John Dutton, but I did grow up watching local farmers and ranchers fend off the whims of God’s weather and developers such as the Ginn company come in and offer to build PUDs in our backyard for large sums of money. What is wrong is that we’ve abandoned our own communities for a chance at at photo on TikTok at the Yellowstone Ranch- not seeing that this sort of phenomenon is main bad guy in the show. There are so many articles floating around about residents lashing out at tourists overrunning their cities and towns- for good reason, I suppose. Tourist taxes, rethinking monuments and museum flows, cracking down on VRBO displacing residents. There will be nothing to visit if they do not. I advocate slow and sustainable tourism- I will never suggest an itinerary that has you running from one site to the next, because that perpetuates a cycle I don’t want to participate in myself- or for my clients. Slowing down and meeting people is one of the best parts about traveling somewhere new. Be a thinking traveler #onmysoapbox#travel #travelagent #yellowstone #sustainability #ranch