Anthony Heads Underground in Montana | Full Episode | S07 E01 | Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

some people must live in great spaces where the sky goes on forever where everyone must Bend to the land where to hunt to fish to sleep under that Big Sky aren't activities but a way of life it was between here and those mountains that Gian and Crow battle took place but I like it it's very peaceful huh what was it like 100 years ago 200 years ago oh not much different this was never forested this is the dry side of the river cuz the primary winds come from the West rain tends to blow over here that brings the snow to the mountains legendary writer and poet Jim Harrison is one of those people and this is his home I took a walk through this beautiful world felt the Cool Rain on My [Applause] Shoulder found something good in this beautiful world I felt the roller [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] sh am I as old as I am maybe not time is a mystery that could tip us upside down yesterday I was seven in the woods it bandage covering my Blind Eye 68 years later I could still inhabit that boy's body without thinking of the time in between it is the burden of life to be in the ages without SE the end of time next time you turn off a news cycle filled with shouting bobbleheads convinced that America is devolving into a moronic Inferno questioning the greatness of your nation maybe you should come here here are your purple mountains Majesty this is the landscape the generation of dreamers desps adventurers explorers crackpots and heroes fought and died for it's one of the most beautiful places on Earth there is no place like it Montana many have come to claim their peace over the years but before the Prospectors and explorers there were the Plains Indians the absaraka have been Master Horsemen since they adopted Spanish introduced Mustangs in the 18th century General Blackjack Persian he called the Native Americans the centaurs of the Plains better known as the crow they were once part of the larger hadasa tribe centuries ago they split off on their own and wandered or were pushed by conflict with the black feet Cheyenne and Dakota until settling here in the Yellowstone River Valley that horse became everything to our people Kennard realberg grew up ranching and raising horses here at medicine tail koui which happened to be the exact spot where General George kuster had the worst day of his life Kenard raises horses for Rodeo go for riding and for this Indian relay racing the athletic ability on them kids are just amazing the competition is intense they travel all over to compete at this collarbone smashing skull cracking bone snapping dangerous sport former allies and former blood enemies alike requires a lot of Courage I'll bet and a high threshold for pain it's representative of warrior mentality one Rider three horses they're all in when they're lined up gun goes off it's like a spontaneous combus top speed is around 40 mph and after each lap the rider Dismounts at full freaking gallop and leaps hopefully onto the next horse yes it's as dangerous and difficult as it looks the prizes at big events run into the thousands of dollars but really it's about bragging rights and pride being in Motion in rhythm in time and in one with that horse we develop strength of character and once they conquer that fear that feeling of accomplishment is so great when they walk back from that race they have this sense of pride and selfworth of Sky High now they've identified with their [Music] ancestors Ken's wife Dian has prepared a lunch of Buffalo steaks potato salad fried bread and Indian pudding made of Juneberry stewed with flour and sugar when I looked at my ancestors they didn't have diabetes they didn't have much cancer they were very strong strong durable people and I said well I'm going to start eating nothing but Buffalo over the course of your life how much has this area changed quite a bit we went and picked up a fourwheeler last Sunday be the first four-wheeler on the place given those changes what are the crow people going to be doing in 20 years 30 years the horse going to play an important part in the culture still I think so yeah because what's a place going to be like without horses I wouldn't want want to be [Music] there who owns this land can anyone really own it who gets to use it these are Big questions that cut across traditional ideological lines out here where they have real meaning not theoretical meaning all this belongs to one man this guy Bill GT hey we're about a half mile from the Confluence of Rock Creek and the Smith River G Ranch is 100,000 acres of grazing land mountains Cliffs and valleys there's also some of the best trout fishing on the planet Bill the water level on the creek looks good this is Bill's friend the author and journalist David McCumber they disagree on land use a major issue remember when you could do that still be friends Lee kin is a professional Outfitter who Bill leases some areas of his property to for fishing we list to out a fish I know amazing all right go ahead stop that tip high that thing straight up in the air good perfect Bill's a fifth generation Montana whose principal business is raising cattle he's no weekend Cowboy this is work and he pays a lot of attention to his land and a big issue for him for just about everybody around here is the 1985 stream access law anybody that could access the stream via a public means could in fact use the stream even if it was on private ground as long as they stayed within the ordinary high water mark of the stream widely heralded by Sportsmen and outdoor enthusiasts the law did not go down well with land owners like Bill oh got him something took a bite he still got a fish right in there too oh I see him perfect set set who the fish of the day nice brownie all right woo beautiful thing that's pretty but I will not eat you today my friend not today for lunch a modest protein Centric repast of steak a wagu Angus hybrid bred and raised right here on Bill's Ranch there's the marbling and a wagu steak that's what makes him good oh that's nice and it's pretty damn tasty I can tell you so you hold an opposing view is that correct on access the idea behind the stream access law that if you stay in the water it's public I agree with that concept but where do you draw the line for private property right state were to pass a law that your restroom was public because the public needed it in your house right but just because this isn't my backyard doesn't mean it's any less mine than your toilet is yours we still pay taxes on every foot of it I'm an old school Lefty but I got to say I kind of completely understand the property owner's point of view here there' be no ambiguity in my feeling if if I'd inherited this land it had been in my family for generations and I looked around at it and wanted to keep it like it is if I were to go to a bar in town and I would ask how do you feel about this issue where would it break What would most people you're a fisherman or a landowner clearly divided right down the middle but you know a lot of people are going to say when I was a kid I used to be able to go hun and fish and and I can't now it stuff's getting closed up I have some sympathy for that anybody that's not complying with stream access merely has to step into the stream when he hears you coming right the spirit of it is it makes sense the spirit of it Stever we own it and they took it and that's not stealing it without comp I think it's still here this is about being a good neighbor right I mean so if people ask nicely more often than not you going to say yes we do used to be before stream access we seldom required somebody to have permission if they just behaved themselves after stream access is when the Outfitters came into the world not because we wanted to make money but we wanted somebody there patrolling and policing it the Outfitters take care of it a small stream like this can only take so much pressure it really can and so we try to manage it fish it respons ibly and if somebody wants to walk all the way from the Smith 5 miles up to here and do it legally I say all the more power to them that's what I'm saying [Music] [Music] at First Look you'd think this is the worst place on earth a ravaged toxic God forsaken Hill threatened from above riddled with Darkness below but you'd be wrong but Montana it is in fact heartbreakingly poignantly beautiful the gas frame seem eyes sores for only a second before it becomes clear why they points of fierce Pride for locals for whom they signify and memorate everything for montans many people consider it sort of a black eye I happen to think it's sort of the essence of of Montana Aaron pet was born in but he's a professor of literature and a chronicler of the city's colorful literary history there is something beautiful about this city right yeah the enduring Decay like in Detroit or a buffalo or Cleveland you can see the aspirations of the builders or the people who they were building for as I've gotten older I kind of think about it the way Europeans romanticize those ruins in Greece and Rome be is America's Acropolis in its Heyday but produced tens of billions of dollars worth of copper That Built Well America that helped power the country defended against Germany and Japan without this hill no copper wire no electricity at the turn of the century Marcus DA's Amalgamated company consumed its competitors and became Anaconda Copper by the 20s the company as it was referred to was one of the largest corporations in America generating staggering wealth by today's or anyday standards people came from all over the world to make their fortunes here or simply for steady work a better life Cornish Welsh a lot of Eastern Europeans croatians serbs very ethnically diverse by Montana standards or by any standard I would say by any standards that's kind of a micro version of New York City mederville was an Italian neighborhood and developed a tradition of supper clubs Lydia's was opened in 1946 by Lydia meletti in the Four Mile the valley below but so what is a supper club I've heard about this tradition but I don't really understand what distinguishes a supper club from a restaurant at least in Montana the supper clubs are A variation on meter style involves this ATI Pasto beginning sliced beets sweet potato salad salami and cheese side white salad pickled peppers and bread sticks then when you actually get your entree you get oddly enough ravioli or spaghetti or here both but also french fries OD that may be unique to Montana for entree seared scallops and white wine sauce for Aaron me noticing we're pretty much landlocked around here I go for the extra thick tenderloin of beef thank you very much this is wacky it makes no sense it is somewhat bizarre to have scallops and french fries yeah mederville no longer around no it's not swallowed up by the pit in the early 60s for the first 70 years it was hard rock mining blasting and digging tunnels deep into the ground by the 1950s mining was moving increasingly to above ground open pit which meant fewer jobs and a bigger more visible footprint by 1955 the Berkeley pit had become the largest open pit copper mine in the world as it expanded it devoured mederville and surrounding neighborhoods there was money down there to be dug out of the ground and that's what View had always been about from the beginning in 1983 the pumps that held back the groundwater from thousands of miles of tunnels beneath the city were turned off the pit filled with 30 billion gallons of water and as mine tailings and mineral refu contaminated the water it became a giant insanely toxic lake of sulfuric acid a monument to Greed and heedless exploitation of the earth and something eerily you're tragically beautiful if you're still living here you've got to have some kind of weird perverse pride in the pit abely correct me if I'm wrong no you nailed it obviously the pit is an enduring emblem of that rapacious capitalist greed but you also have people here who are proud proud of where they live the history of but in many ways is you know this town that should have died but never did part of that is luck geographically but also the character of the people here you know they endured as you might have gathered by now this is a workingclass town and unusual in that it's a union town a proudly Union Town in an otherwise very red state is the most interesting important town in America that nobody knows about Bryant McGregor is the owner of the Silver Dollar Saloon in what was once but's Chinatown so we call ourselves but America Amanda Curtis a former state congresswoman was born of the labor movement she's a unionist an advocate for workers and this solidly unioned city she calls home when you got off the boat in Ellis Island it said but pin to your shirt and it wasn't but Montana right it was but America we were founded by European immigrants who came from socialist countries with all of these crazy socialist ideas would you say Montana in a stereotypical way is relatively socially conservative oh absolutely but but is a labor Town nobody knows anything about Union history you know they don't teach it when the country was at its peak unions were at their Peak when wages were at their Peak the unions were at their Peak that was then this is now this is the era of I got mine Jack that's what makes be difference not I've got mine it isn't it's it's truly not Union is together we've grown this community out of taking care of each other you have to remember what it was like here for workers before unions if you can imagine men worked underground for as little as $3 a day 10 to 12h hour shifts 6 days a week thousands died over the years in industrial accidents or from silicosis lungs ravaged by the Airborne silica dust you don't have any rights in your workplace unless you bond together and have a collective voice in a one company Town despite hiring assassins and strike Breakers butes thousands of workers successfully managed to unionize labor costs increased while copper prices slumped and a responded by moving their production increasingly South Way South to Chile Where such impediments as labor laws and fair wages were more malleable we serve as the example about what happens if you allow unfettered capitalism but isn't there something beautiful about UNP bettered capitalism because look this this structure here we powered we powered the entire world as long as they're making that money in the godamn United States of America first right I feel I'm a patriot you're taking jobs away from America to export them overseas you're not you're not and we've been talking about this for decades in this country right or keep our jobs here yeah [Music] time sinks slowly to the deepest part of the ocean the Mariana Trench she's tired of light and there it's pure black they say that be is a mile high and a mile deep and to get an idea of what they mean you've got to go down down deep into the hill an intricate warrant of tunnels riddled through the Rock and soil that lay beneath the city was flooded Forever by water and darkness the orphan boy mine is one of the few remaining Hard Rock mines in the city today it serves as a training facility for the Montana Tech School of Mines and Engineering there's five generations of mining here in order to survive and provide the resources for America these people were super skillful Jim Keane is a state senator and labor Advocate who grew up working the minds of but how many miles miles of tunnel under but to 10 10,000 miles of tunnel 10,000 miles andig like this like this only smaller usually Larry Hoffman is a longtime mining engineer and instructor Matt cringer is the new guy a hard rock Miner by day he likes to relax by spending his free time down here playing I come mining for fun on my day is off okay it's one of those things that just gets in your blood you got a lot of pride in it these guys like it underground and even more they seem to like drilling holes deep into the rock [Music] face you want a drill sure pull that out now you get to feel some where the weight at on it oh yeah cool you do that several hundred times a day no it's good sweet the community recognized the minor was at the top of the food chain when I grew up he was considered just like a doctor or a lawyer because everybody knew he was the one making everything work the other thing about mining is it's so intensive I mean you need Engineers you need guys running ventilation mechanic or a carpenter or a pipe fitter it's just such a diverse asset to have all these different types of people that's what was so good about it mining was always dangerous but these men are proud of what they do and of the generations who came before them who built neighborhoods and schools and help power the nation they Lov their work they raised their families they worked all the time he was a destination with hopes and dreams of hard work leading to a better life you know the company is a son of a [ __ ] let's face it but they were our son of a [ __ ] so so you know that's just the way it was the community worked to support the [Music] people here's the fun part cool how many holes do you usually drill to make a round between 20 and 30 what is a round this pattern has to be drilled out and every time you advance the face that is a round you drill it you load it you blast it you muck it you bolt it you drill it again and that's a cycle we're in the loading process right here they call collar priming or top priming this hole quit still away back in the day it was Dynamite but in the 60s they started switching over to this stuff ano ammonium nitrate and fuel oil okay so got everything charged up loaded now we get to timing this is kind of where I got hooked on mining soon as I set that first round off it was how do we do another one fascinating this is where it all starts all right right here everybody got everything out 4 seconds of silence all right everybody's good everybody's ready yep all right fire in the [Music] hole 1 two three that's welcome to Min that's deeply [Music] satisfying oh yeah very cool can we see the smoke what does that vent it out yeah the smoke will start moving towards us you got to get in this smoke oh yeah smells like Victory this is the smell of mining we'll see if it all works as plann that shock wave is awesome isn't it yeah this is like being an ass not right now I'm going to go in there you're going to be the first person in the world to see what you see it did you break it yeah nice huh happy with your work I'm very happy with it everything came out just the way it could well that's another 6 foot advance and that is around beautiful thing yes it is I fell in love with the dark and the blowing things up and the people the people's a big thing you meet some of the most interesting [Music] people about onethird of Montana is public land it was set aside for the people of the United States of America generally speaking it is intended for multi-purpose use timber Harvest grazing land hiking fishing hunting and Mining these open lands are important to Hunters and Anglers like Dan Bailey he's the Montana representative for pheasants forever an organization working to conserve pheasants and other Wildlife through careful management so this is a piece of property that's owned by pheasants forever it's open to public access this is through Montana's block management system we sign in they collect all the tags they know who's on the property today me and my friend Joe Rogan are going after some delicious pheasant for dinner yeeha ladies and gentlemen Joe is of course the voice of the UFC and the host of the wildly popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience in recent years Joe has become an advocate for the dotion that you should whenever possible know where your food comes from the connection that you have with your food when you kill it yourself you it's just it's a totally different experience I believe that if you choose to eat meat that you there should be a little bit of guilt and shame in involved something did die so there should be a sense of loss and understanding right here this is it I mean you know where your food comes from that's the smallest circles you can [Music] get hey Tony the three things we can hunt here are Hungarian Partridge which is a small bird in the big Cy sharptail grass and then roer pheasants so no no hin pheasants I'll call out what it is yeah I'm going to wait for you cuz I sure as help wouldn't be able to identify so we'll get one person on one side of the jaw one person on the other on the dogs through the middle which way they're going to break do you think anyway could be any any which way we're hoping over us h h h h what happens if you accidentally shoot a hand you get in trouble for yourself you've heard about the Walk of Shame so really you have a split second to determine whether it's a shootable thing okay well we're count on you that's a got a shot at that too that was an easy shot [ __ ] some days yeah one of those days huh public lands in Montana we're fortunately we have a lot of them but you know they get a lot of pressure and so when you get one of these birds it's pretty special public land hunting is always always a lot of work in general anybody and everybody can come out here and and Chase your bird so I think there's a bunch of birds right there see them going through the trees there I saw a bunch of pheasants just got up let's get serious about this all right we'll take these dogs to the river rooster oh nice shot de got to get up on that bank who got it Anthony got it nice I missed that one over here good boy come bring it here come on good boy come on Jer Nice Shot he you bring it here come on drop here you go Montana rooster good eatting bird all right man start pucking with one in the bag we meet up with the rest of our party to cook and drink and eat Lon is a fifth generation Montana and an active conservationist Hal Herring is a journalist for field in cream the Pheasant is cooked two ways marinated in soy and fish sauce saracha and lime browned in butter and buffaloed like chicken wings or dredged in flour and cajun spice sauteed with garlic and Brandy then brazed a bit with stock and wild mushrooms collared greens and bacon as aide serve as a nice cleanse man these greens are good and a bird is delicious oh yeah man amazing day eating it today it was beautiful today why should people in New York or San Francisco who've never hunted in what way does your access to hunting ground impact on this nation in a positive way why should they care well it's not hunting ground it's public ground owned by the people of the United States of America and I I just see our country is very nuanced and private property is bedrock but public lands have worked but you're talking big government stepping in and say we're taking all this land and we're going to protect it from exploitation by capitalist public Land Management is not perfect for anybody but it's a path forward it's not happening anywhere else in the world and the reason that it came here is because we are such a great country but as we move into the future it's going to take everybody understanding how unique it is to America to say that hunting and conservation are intertwined is an absolute fact it is an absolute fact but it is a really painful admission that we are the masters of this environment whether we like it or not as thinking beings we're the only ones in the food chain that understand the consequences of the imbalance and therefore we do have a right to take care of this thing and manage it when it comes to animals that can alter their environment we're unique you know I'm not a hunter obviously we hunt it all day today if you take a [ __ ] you're a [ __ ] I don't my daddy didn't take me for the long this what it is you shot that Pheasant we're eating that Pheasant there's no closer connection to food almost than that [Music] I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding by people that don't hunt or people that call themselves animal activists that we don't love the animals as much as they do and that's just not true we do what we do because we love nature we love Wildlife we want people to enjoy it you know three of us we have decided to spend what we do for a living to protect wildlife and to protect access and to protect hunting Heritage their fellow living beings that live in a very hard scravel life they're howling right now because they killed something whatever it is they're letting all the other coyotes know and they're going to eat it right now and that is what they do you know if you ever been out on an open body of water where you're just surrounded by the ocean or or the desert or here actually for that matter right you do begin to understand your place in the universe meaning at the end of the day I'm not that different from that fee I shot today we're all in it together the elk and me and the Wolves what we do to the world we do to our ourselves we're all in it together as the evening progresses the bourbon flows and the fire burns down to coals a late night Vape with Joe and the Earth seems to shift on its axis later stumbling out of my tent I find myself somehow no longer vertical looking up up at a magnificent bewilderment of stars [Music] Livingston Montana may be one of the prettiest and oddest towns in America it's also one of of my favorites originally a railroad town a place where Cattlemen could drink and fander then later a gateway to Yellowstone National Park in the 1960s the surrounding Paradise Valley was a popular setting for Hollywood films and local ranchers began to see a strange mix of creative types showing up first to work on Films but later to stay and play Cowboy for real writers Like Richard bran Tom mcwain and Jim Harrison actors like Peter Fonda Warren Oats the notorious director Sam penpa made Livingston their home [Music] the mint bar opened in the 1920s and holds the oldest liquor license in Montana railroad workers used to drink here everybody drank here look at that picture of the bar right there yeah that picture is this building during prohibition it was a grocery store my friend Dan Len is a jack of all trades Native Sun a hunter fisherman and a key figure in the life of the town I mean this is a rough and tumble railroad Cattleman town right yeah why did they put a railroad stop here it was xfar from Minneapolis M and xfar to Seattle it was kind of Middle Ground 700 mil that way 700 miles that way right who would exemplify the qualities that a preponderance of Montas would aspire to the American Indian the Plains Indian that lived here before white man cuz it was a tough a tough place to live you know when's the last time you walked outside and you looked at those mountains and you said I possibly live in the most awesome place on earth when when was the last time I I do I never take this place for granted okay it's one of the most beautiful places that I've been and I like to enjoy the outdoors take my son hunting right you know you know that moment when an animal dies they look at you and there's a look in their face I always interpret it as I'm very disappointed in you yeah well as an older Hunter I'm feeling more and more remorse for the animals that I kill and that's that's what I use every part of the animal that I can I have respect for that creature I always felt like look whatever this thing I shot I will treat it the way I would like to be treated I mean you're going to shoot me please don't just leave me there yeah don't just rip my breasts out and throw my ass away yeah that's a country music song right there don't rip my breast on [Music] [Music] time she prepered us drifting through our lives like clouds riding her like the gentless of horses you know if you're see northern lights and the thunderstorm in the east and woles Hing all the on it's sort of nice do you know they're 90 billion galaxies I get a little tentative when I hear that Jim Harrison is a Colossus a legend and the last of his kind people forget children grow up making up stories and that's all I'm doing as an adult you know he is one of America's greatest poets the author of 39 novels and books many set in Montana including the Legends of the Fall he's a screenwriter and Gourmet in his food Memoir the raw and the cooked he Chronicles many many epic meals he has lived a life that can only be imagined Dan is his friend and Confidant and the two have for years hunted and fish together here's the here's to the game his health prevents him from hunting but not from enjoying a meal of spatchock Hungarian Partridge made a liver loaf with elk meat elk liver and pork fat awesome some spices going to have some beets quail in aspect Quail onal onal elk carao and a morel and Chantell risoto using a stock made from 10 lbs of roasted game bird bones and smoked trout smoked trout yeah we got these on the Big Horn you know this is my problem with Montana all this Primitive Country Ass cook cooking that you local yals do oh and a resulta with wild mushrooms it's awesome every time I come here I say are there others like you yeah a few that red soda is garous excellent Jimmy you want to grab a hun right here okay and a couple of morels is writing any way to make a livid no not I I try to explain this to people you have to be either a monster of self-regard uh delusional or just so lucky that I mean the forces of the universe are aligned against you yeah the only thing you can do is if you're just completely tenacious and right in disregard for every outside circumstance that there is most people look in the mirror say you know I'm getting old or something like that but Shakespeare though the poet said devouring Time Blood thou thy Lion's Paws that's a little better huh nice view canot complain about this yeah so what are you doing around half a year here and half a year in Arizona Arizona real interesting culture the ever presentent border of Patrol which I tease a lot I'll be hunting in their border patrol plane flies over and I run under a tree like I'm hiding then their vehicle start swarming in they say Harrison you [ __ ] I says I'm trying to keep you on your [Music] toes what was it about this place that that hooked you well I'm claustrophobic acutely so so Montana's about the best place you could live you never feel hemmed in any direction you could go miles and [Music] miles it been very hot for 3 weeks so I worked well into a cool night when at 3:00 a.m. a big thunderstorm hit the lightning was relentless 200 years ago when the cheyen from the East attacked the absaroka in this Valley a group of the Shan were M the Wolves of Heaven Warriors who painted themselves solid yellow I want to be a yellow wolf of Heaven they disappeared into the lightning [Music]