Terry Zink has spent 57 years building a life in Montana’s backcountry. The 57-year-old third-generation houndsman from Marion—a remote town nestled deep within the Flathead National Forest—runs a small archery target business serving outdoor recreation workers and guides who, until recently, had steady employment managing America’s public lands. Contents
Those workers are disappearing. Their jobs are gone. And Zink, who voted for Trump in 2024, is watching his customer base—and his livelihood—vanish before his eyes.
“You won’t meet anyone more conservative than me, and I didn’t vote for this,” Zink told Politico reporters as he surveyed the damage. “You cannot fire our firefighters. You cannot fire our trail crews. You have to have selective logging, water restoration, and healthy forests” (1).
It is true, and I counter that with if you choose to live far away from people then you will be prioritized less. Things get fixed faster when there are more people affected, so when you choose to live miles away from anyone, when your power goes out it’s not a high priority. I argue that that’s their choice, and that it’s deserved when it also costs much more for that one person to have power compared to thousands of people getting power for relatively the same cost in an urban area. Harsh I know, but that’s how the money flows. They can always move to an urban area if they choose that services are more important than living rurally. More or less I agree with you, but I would tell them “you chose that”.