Sartre once said, “Hell is other people,” a sentiment that might serve as the motto of ultrawealthy landowners in the West who in recent years have purchased vast tracts of land, brimming with natural wonders, for their private use. Ben Ryder Howe’s latest dispatch for New York focuses on a land deal in Montana that would see stretches of the Crazy Mountains — savage, pristine slopes thought perfect for hiking and hunting and skiing — fall into the hands of a group of ranchers who have been assisted in their efforts by an exclusive ski resort for billionaires and millionaires called the Yellowstone Club. It is a tale of greed of truly epic proportions, encompassing snow-dusted ridges and alpine lakes that have been hardly touched by man — all overseen by political leaders who tell the public they want to protect the land that is their patrimony even as they help give it away.
—Ryu Spaeth, features editor, New York |
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