Stephen Fry in America

by Stephen Fry

  Bird:

  Western Meadowlark

  Grass:

  Bluebunch wheatgrass

  Motto:

  Oro y plata (‘Gold and silver’)

  Well-known residents and natives: Theodore ‘Unabomber’ Kaczynski, Norman Maclean, Richard Brautigan, Evil Knievel, Gary Cooper, Myrna Loy, George Montgomery, Sam Peckinpah, Peter Fonda, Carol O'Connor, David Lynch, Patrick Duffy, Dirk ‘A-Team’ Benedict, Dana Carvey, Charlie Pride.

  * * *

  Not for the first time I am forced to contemplate the melancholy truth that, in one significant way at least, Al Qaeda has won. Its victory in the interior of the United States may not be complete, but it is enough. Through one outrageous and atrocious act and the credible threat of more, they have ensured that America’s freedoms and conveniences have been unprecedentedly curtailed. Queuing up for security checks in every international and domestic airport, having one’s sun-cream, nail scissors and mineral water binned and one’s patience worn down, these are minor but palpable victories. No one dares say it in the queues as they build and build, it would be considered unpatriotic. That fact, that the truth itself is now unpatriotic, that too is a victory. Al Qaeda have cost the US and its citizens untold billions in time and manpower, in inconvenience and stress. And along the thousands and thousands of miles of international borders, they are costing American tax-payers billions more. New helicopters, thousands of new recruits. The bill is incalculable.

  Athwart the 49th parallel.

  Turner Bison System

  The ugliness of man seems a long way from the glaciers and mountains below, which create a landscape as monumentally beautiful as any I have ever seen. I drive the taxi from Helena, the state’s capital through the Gallatin Forest, skirting entrances to Yellowstone Park which is, frustratingly, closed to visitors between November and mid-April. But the Gallatin National Forest is beautiful enough, and takes me closer to my destination, Bozeman and the Flying D Ranch.

  Who is the biggest landowner in Britain? Most Britons would suggest the Crown. Followed by the Church. Followed by Trinity College, Cambridge and the Duke of Westminster. Or something similar. And they would have been able to proffer the same names for hundreds of years. But who is the biggest landowner in America, not counting the Federal Government? It is an individual who began buying tracts in a serious way only twenty years or so ago. He is now far and away the possessor of the most private land in all of the United States of America, owning ranches in South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, New Mexico and–which is why I’m here–Montana. In all he owns around 3,000 square miles of land. The land is used to graze bison. He has the largest herd in the world.

  Bison (often called buffalo) once roamed the Great Plains of North America (the vast swathe of steppe east of the Rocky Mountains) in unimaginable numbers, sustaining tens of thousands of Plains Indians who were nourished by their flesh and warmed by their hides. Then the Europeans arrived with their horses, their rifles and their scientific ways of killing. There were ‘bags’ of between 2,000 and 100,000 bison a day during the height of the slaughter. Within twenty years the numbers had been so drastically reduced that the entire species was under threat. Even William Cody, Buffalo Bill himself, pleaded for legislation to protect the herds. President Ulysses S. Grant and others deliberately squashed any bills for the bison’s protection, however, for they knew that if the bison went extinct then the lives of those pesky Plains Indians would be made immeasurably more difficult. Not America’s finest hour. So-called civilised men colluding to perpetrate both genocide and the extermination of an entire animal species in one fell swoop. Fortunately for the bison, one or two enlightened ranchers maintained small private herds and kept them alive. Since then they have bounced back impressively. It is estimated that there are now 500,000 bison in total, of which approximately 300,000 are in the United States and 50,000 belong to the Mouth of the South himself, Mr Ted Turner.

  Turner is best known in Britain for marrying Jane Fonda and founding CNN, but in America the Turner Broadcasting System also provides the popular channels TBS, TNT and TCM. An extraordinarily generous and, some would say, eccentric philanthropist, he has famously donated one billion dollars to the United Nations. As much, one cannot help feeling, to annoy the American Right who abominate that institution as for any other reason. I have no doubt that is unfair, but he does seem to enjoy his maverick status as one of the richest liberals in the world, taking time to insult equally the Iraq war, religion and the gun lobby. He also promotes environmentally sensitive land ownership and the protection of native flora and fauna.

  The ranch he spends the most time in is the Flying D, outside Bozeman, Montana. I drive through the gates and urge the reluctant taxi along mile after mile after mile after mile after mile of road until we arrive at the ranch house. He has consented to have breakfast with me and show me around the ‘spread’.

  A trim, silver-haired, sexily moustached sixty-nine-year-old, he stands and greets me in the log-beamed dining room in jeans and cowboy boots, every inch the rancher, affectionate dogs frisking at his heels and every inch the billionaire, attentive people lurking within earshot in case he should need anything.

  With Ted Turner, unwisely turning our backs on the bison.

  The front porch of the Flying D.

  While he is pleased to own these bison, he tells me, sitting down in front of a bowl of granola and bidding me do the same, the purpose is to demonstrate to the world that you do not need to keep them for charitable and environmental reasons alone. Unstoppable entrepreneur that he is, he has made a true-blue, hard-headed business out of the animals: Ted’s Montana Grill, of which there are now sixty branches nationwide, and which all bear the slogan ‘Eat Great. Do Good’. The bison steaks and burgers they serve are, claims Ted, higher in protein and lower in fat and cholesterol than any comparable meat. Nothing is frozen or microwaved and everything is as eco-friendly as he can make it. The take-away cups in the restaurants are made of corn-starch, the menus are printed on recycled paper, the soaps in the restrooms are biodegradable and the drinking straws are made of paper, not plastic. He is clearly most proud of this and is happy to dedicate the latter part of his life to promoting healthy and environmentally aware eating the American way: no arty-farty salady nonsenses, nothing but good red meat western style.

  Ted Turner has that characteristic I have always found in hugely successful entrepreneurs: a disposition to talk uninterruptedly without listening to anyone else who might be in the room. Years of power, of being proved strategically and tactically right in almost everything he has done and of being surrounded by sycophantic adherents have led to this trait no doubt, though to be fair it is also true that his hearing is not what it was and it is also true that he has no reason to suppose that I, or anyone else, can tell him anything he doesn’t know or anything even remotely interesting. I have no problem with his loquacity: I am here, after all, to record an interview with him and the more he talks the better, especially as his people have told me that I have only an hour and half before he needs to fly off to Atlanta.

  Again with the confidence and arbitrary certainty of the super-rich, he suddenly rises as if bored with my conversation (which he might well be since I haven’t had the chance to say anything more than ‘yes’ for the last ten minutes) and says, ‘Let’s go find some bison.’

  He has tens of thousands of them on this ranch, but that doesn’t make them easy to track down, for the Flying D is an enormous piece of land in which ten of thousands of brontosaurus could happily lose themselves without fear of discovery.

  After a consultation with a ranch hand, we drive off and–near a house belonging to one of Ted’s sons–we spot them. Shaggy-coated, goatee bearded and hump-backed, there is something primally satisfying about the shape of these vast creatures. Ted tells me that they are in fact, technically at least, dwarf bison, the really huge species having died out as recently as 10,000 years ago, along with American mammoths and elephants.<
br />
  Nonetheless, dwarf or not, these are far from friendly beasts and we dismount from the truck and approach with caution. Ted tells me that he is keen for his land to sustain, not just bison, but all kinds of native species. Prairie dogs, for example, which are gopher-like burrowing creatures regarded as a ‘keystone’ species whose presence will encourage all kinds of eagles, hawks, foxes, ferrets and badgers to flourish.

  We film away as close to the herd as possible and then Ted looks at his watch.

  ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘I have to go now. Stay as long as you like.’

  And he is gone. A likeable, stylish individual who seems to have got more pleasure from his money and done more with it than most.

  We finish up our filming without him and, after skirting the herd like hunters, we get our footage and leave the ranch. Ten bouncy miles later we are back on the public highway and heading for Idaho. But first we stop off for ten minutes to admire some wolves and bears in a small sanctuary on the way. Bison, wolves, billionaires and grizzlies all on the same day–I couldn’t be happier.

  IDAHO

  ‘I pour water on the Idaho side and it will make its way to the Pacific…I pour it a tad on the Montana side, and it will flow to the Mississippi.’

  Oh dear. I feel immeasurably guilty about my time in Idaho. It was just one of those things, one of those unfortunate logistical necessities.

  A glance at the map will show you how our journey down the Great Plains, from Montana to Texas, including Wyoming, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Oklahoma, is higgledy-piggledy enough without including Idaho on the itinerary. But include it I had to, for it would not fit into the next journey up from New Mexico to Washington State either.

  En route from Montana to Wyoming, therefore, I stop off at the state line that Montana shares with Idaho. I choose that particular section of the state line that is also the Continental Divide, for I have a piece to camera to do explaining this geographical phenomenon.

  No matter how hard I try and grasp the nature of landscape and terrain, it still astonishes me how much it is all a question of gravity. That there are floodplains, valleys, estuaries and deltas is all down to one ineluctable fact. Water will flow downwards. And if there is no downwards–i.e. if it is in a piece of flat land–it will not flow at all.

  The entire continental United States is divided in two, for fluvial or river-ish purposes. Water will either flow into the Atlantic or into the Pacific. If it flows south into the Gulf of Mexico, that counts as the Atlantic of course.

  Right. I get that. I may have given up geography at school very early and still be unsure of what a rift valley or a terminal moraine is, but I can get the fact that any water that falls from the sky or tumbles from the melting snow of the mountains must end up somewhere. Given that America is not, despite appearances, a flat bowl in the middle, the water follows gravity and makes it to the sea. The sea is at a lower level than the land and therefore all water must inevitably end up there.

  The Great Divide, the name given to the continental divide in the United States, is surprisingly far west. Part of it runs down between Idaho and Montana before it makes its way a little further eastwards and down through Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.

  I stand on the divide itself and demonstrate to camera, with the aid of a bottle of mineral water, the significance of this line. I pour water on the Idaho side and it will make its way to the Pacific…I pour it a tad to the east, on the Montana side, and it will flow to the Mississippi and out into the Gulf.

  Do I find time to tell the BBC audience that Idaho is best known for being the potato capital of America–hence its secondary nickname, The Spud State? One in every three potatoes bought in America is grown here. Do I explain that it was to this state that Ernest Hemingway came to live for a few years, before ending his life with a shotgun blast to the head in 1961? Do I mention that the very name of the state, Idaho, was apparently made up by an eccentric called Willings in the 1860s, claiming without foundation that it was based on a Shoshone Indian phrase meaning ‘gem of the mountains’–the so called Idahoax?

  I am ashamed to say I do none of these things. Of all the states I have visited, Idaho gets the shortest shrift. A glass of water and no more. I feel terrible about this and have promised that I will make up for it with a private visit just as soon as I am able.

  Heigh ho. Farewell, Idaho.

  Hello and goodbye, Idaho.

  * * *

  IDAHO

  KEY FACTS

  Abbreviation:

  ID

  Nickname:

  The Gem State, The Spud State

  Capital:

  Boise

  Flower:

  Syringa

  Tree:

  Western White Pine

  Bird:

  Mountain bluebird

  Slogan:

  ‘Great potatoes. Tasty destinations.’

  Motto:

  Esto perpetua (‘Let it be forever’)

  Well-known residents and natives: Chief Joseph, Ezra Pound, Edgar Rice ‘Tarzan’ Burroughs, Ernest Hemingway, Lana Turner.

  * * *

  WYOMING

  ‘It was the French who discovered the Grand Tetons…they gave them the name that the French just would: The Three Tits. Les Trois Tétons.’

  Why oh why, oh ming? Land of Laramie and Cheyenne, true cowboy country at last. I remember as a boy watching westerns and being confused by the fact that, while they were usually shot in deserts dotted with scrub and cactuses and bleached cattle skulls, the cowboys were often shown riding through ice and snow too. It seemed contradictory to me that a country could be both burning hot and freezing cold. Like picturing snow in the Sahara or palm trees in Antarctica. But that is the true west for you. A land of extremes.

  Wyoming has it all: the Rocky Mountains, the Range and those High Plains where Clint Eastwood so famously drifted. It is the least populous state in America, containing less than half a million citizens, each having, on average, more than five square miles to play in all by themselves. Wyoming shares with its neighbour Colorado the distinction of being one of only two states which are entirely rectangular. Looking at them in an atlas you can picture bearded nineteenth-century politicians and surveyors in Washington leaning over a map of the United States with a ruler and a set square in their hands.

  But for all its wilderness and maverick spirit, Wyoming is becoming an increasingly popular destination for the well-heeled. Jackson Hole in the Grand Teton National Park is one of the swankiest skiing resorts in the world, up there with Gstaad and Aspen.

  Health-conscious elks enjoying a diet of alfalfa.

  I am embarrassed to say that I had never heard of the Grand Tetons before. Part of the Rockies, they abut Yellowstone and are as majestic and beautiful a mountain range as any I have seen. Were they in Europe they would vie with some of the Alps for supremacy. But like so much that is tucked away in the vastness of America, they are there to be discovered. It was the French in fact who discovered them for Europe and it was the French who gave them the name that…well they gave them the name that the French just would: The Three Tits. Les Trois Tétons. This is not to be confused with the ‘Teton’ that is another word for the Sioux nation of American Indians. That Teton derives from the Lakotan language and means…well, nobody knows quite what it means, but you can be fairly certain that it doesn’t mean tit.

  Elks

  I head round the Grand Tetons, my destination an elk park. The elk, a massive ungulate not dissimilar to our own European red deer, is in trouble here. Misnamed by European settlers who thought it looked like a moose, it is listed as having a conservation status ‘of least concern’. That may be true worldwide, but in North America there has been a growing problem with their population for some time. For that reason the National Elk Refuge in Wyoming was founded in 1912 to protect the habitat and encourage healthy stocks. I drive out across miles of spongy terrain with the wardens. We are following a feeding vehicle that spits out
from its rear a long trail of green alfalfa pellets. The elk come shyly down to nibble them. Their habitat is shrinking and recently one of their natural predators was reintroduced into the Wyoming wilderness. I now wind my way back around the Tetons towards the town of Dubois to find out more about this controversial reintroduction.

  * * *

  WYOMING

  KEY FACTS

  Abbreviation:

  WY

  Nickname:

  Equality State, Cowboy State

  Capital:

  Cheyenne

  Flower:

  Wyoming Indian Paintbrush

  Tree:

  Plains Cottonwood

  Bird:

  Western Meadowlark

  Fish:

  Cutthroat trout

  Motto:

  Equal rights

  Well-known residents and natives: Dick Cheney, William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, Jackson Pollock, E. Annie Proulx, Harrison Ford.

  * * *

  With John and Debbie, keeping an eye out for the Predator.

  The Predator

  John and Debbie Robinet are ranchers. Not on the scale of Ted Turner perhaps, but the 70,000 acres that they manage and graze cattle over is impressive enough. It takes an age to drive from the roadside to the ranch house itself, a delicate and perilous business in the snow. I am keen for the taxi not to break down or get stuck in a drift. There is no mobile-phone signal here, it would take hours to walk to the ranch house and maybe…just maybe those predators are about.

  I arrive at the ranch house without being rent from limb to limb. John and Debbie welcome us into the suffocating warmth of the interior and tell us their story. Six of their pet dogs have been lost to the Predator. A foal too, and plenty of cattle. The issue divides them, for John approves of the Predator’s reintroduction, despite the harm it does to his own animals. Debbie is all for getting out her gun and ‘letting the darned critters have it’.