Amy Gamerman - The Crazies

33:46Where in the world did these people choose to place this remarkable child? They placed him here in the crazy mountains. And if this kid was Adam, then this place must have been Eden. and when I realized that and when I stood on the site where this child had been found and I've looked up and realized that the sun as it rose every morning would have hit his burial spot that would have been the first thing the sun's rays touched it just sent a shiver through me and I thought well gosh no wonder they all care so much about this place there's something very special about it this is there is something exceptional about these crazy mountains and the emotions that it evokes in people.

34:33When it's your point, it's not like you have everybody saying, Hey, by the way, Montana might be the center of the Americas at one point in the history of the world. And you just don't hear that. So I want to go to more of the characters because you kind of, you slowly parse these out in the book. And I think it's just, it's wonderful storytelling. The Cargill legacy is wrapped up in the story. Can you teach us kind of briefly about the Macmillans, how they ended up there? And these are very private folks, as the Cargill family has been. Yeah, so Cargill is one of the world's largest privately held companies.

35:10It's an agribusiness company. And you may not realize you're using their products, but you are, because they're part of the food web that sustains a lot of the processed, all the processed food industries. They are the company that produces the cocoa that goes in your chocolate milk and the eggs that go in your McMuffin. I mean, they are creators, producers, transporters of all of these commodities that go into much of what we eat. And the family at the heart of this company is the Macmillan family. And Whitney Macmillan, who was the last family member to run Cargill, loved ranch land. For men of a certain generation, I found that the idea of the West has a tremendous romance.

36:17It has a tremendous—it captivates them. And Whitney McMillan had grown up very sheltered, very protected in Minnesota. He was a small child when the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped. This was a sensational crime of its day. um charles lindberg and ann morrow lindberg who were famous aviators you know real true global celebrities um had a little child a toddler who was kidnapped from his bedroom and um a ransom note was found and and the child later was found dead and i think whitney mcmillan was the same age as the lindberg baby he was like a contemporary of the lindberg baby and sure for wealthy families across America, that kidnapping just sent an epic shockwave, you know, rocked them to the core.

37:13So he was very, very protected growing up. The children, they didn't really, they didn't go to summer camp. They were pretty much raised on the family compound on Lake Minnetonka. And I imagine that for him, the open spaces of the West and the freedom of the West, you know, must have had just this tremendous allure for him growing up because his childhood was so sheltered and so protected. And he owned this beautiful piece, or the family still owns, a ranch in the Crazy Mountains that is very, very high up. It takes 40 minutes to drive there on a dirt road from the closest little major road and very remote.

38:04It's a serious cattle operation. He raised cows there and for many years sold them himself. When it was time to sell the cows, he took pride in doing that himself. And it was like a retreat for the family. It was a special place. All of the grandkids learned how to drive on an old truck that was on a ranch. and you talked about also like for the mcmillans privacy was really important post the lindbergs and so this is a very private rural place to hang out it's not like oh yeah people are going to pop in and say hello i mean they're they're on their own um uh the other character that's you know just he is i mean his name is marty wild but i think he's kind of like the wily coyote of your story right where he's he's just kind of like everywhere and somewhere and and he's talking to everybody and yeah.

38:56Yes, yes. I'll tell you about Marty. So Marty was, Marty Wild, like what a great name. I couldn't have invented that name. Marty Wild was like the modern incarnation of the gold prospectors that flooded into Montana in the 1850s and 60s. He was like paranoid and and very and and shrewd and wily and ingenious and instead of searching for gold in a stream with a pan he was searching for his gold in the air um because there were these he realized he he was a brilliant engineer he um he was tremendously this was a very complicated guy But very brilliant. And he had realized while he was living on an Indian reservation, a Blackbeand reservation in northern Montana, he learned that there were these federal subsidies that were available for wind development.

40:00Because at that time, the government was actually trying to promote developing alternative forms of energy with a particular interest in renewables. And he got into this because, you know, he could see a way where he could, if he could get a pro, you know, like find really good wind and create a package, he could sell it to a big developer. He could, you know, like flip it and make money that way. Yep. And he had actually driven up to Wild Eagle Mountain Ranch and introduced himself and said, hey, you got good wind up here. And I think they sent him packing. I don't think he got past the ranch manager's gate before he was turned around.

40:46We hope you're enjoying the podcast. You know, we work hard putting together this show, but we work even harder for our investors at Smead Capital Management. at Smead. We believe in discipline investing, which is why the Smead funds have a proven track record of long-term outperformance. If you're an investor who plays the long game and want to invest in wonderful companies to build wealth, we invite you to visit SmeadCap.com. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principle. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses.

41:23Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead Funds distributed by Smead Funds Distributors, LLC, not affiliated. So he first seeks to build a company called Coyote Wind. And you walk through this as like their first run at, you know, really doing this wind farm that becomes so controversial. Rick and Marty. Yeah, they start out with this. And this is smaller scale. I think if I remember correctly, at the time they were trying to package this up and sell it off to a Spanish, you know, power company at that time. And you kind of gave the story of the Spaniards and, you know, their involvement in gold, et cetera.

41:59So it has some historical tone so that, you know, when he's going to do that, I think you talk about he's just going up and putting these big antennas up to try to figure out what the wind power is. And even that was pretty janky. I mean, like his readings weren't very good. There was just a lot of problems that went with Marty. I have to back up a little bit here. So Rick at some point heard a radio program. You know, I mentioned that Rick, the landowner, the rancher, the old crusty guy, fifth generation rancher who is walking around in suspenders that are held together with duct tape, right?

42:33He is a broke ass guy looking for a way to hang on to his land. And at some point he heard a radio program about wind and wind development and that Montana had this great wind. and he started asking around and someone said, oh, well, you should talk to Marty Wild. So Marty Wild came out to his ranch and these two men, they hit it off. Like these were guys of a certain age, single, loved the ladies. Had dalliances, yeah. That's one way to put it. These are like Montana players, if that makes sense. Oh my God, they were so, it was so game recognizing game when these two men met each other they hit it off immediately and um so marty had these things called met towers um it's a short for meteorological tower and it's basically like a tall pole that you put up and it has all kinds of instruments and gauges on it that measure different things basically measuring the wind and the quality of the wind and you know the wind was i think Like when Marty really loved wind, he'd say it was screaming.

43:45They had screaming wind there. He went out on a day, I think, when the wind was just howling. And they came up with this name for their project of coyote wind. And, you know, there was a very long, there's a very long history of them trying and failing to get one project after another off the ground there. and has nothing to do with the quality of the wind, which is just like million-dollar wind, but they keep running into different roadblocks each time. Yeah. You also talk about the legal conflict. And this came up numerous times and for different reasons, I would say. But I think you gave an example where Marty – so the Department of Natural Resources and Conversation or the DNRC in Montana goes out to say, okay, let's look at places in the state that would be good for wind projects.

44:37Okay. And so I think in the book you refer to section 36, which section 36 was a place highlighted by them. But then when you look below the surface, say, well, who consulted to them to come up section 36, which is this place in the crazies? Well, who it is other than Marty Wild is the consultant. And now that's never disclosed. That's never talked about. But again, it's Montana. Like those conflicts are kind of present in some cases already. And people might know that. Right. Well, there are these, Montana and other Western states may have versions of this too. But there are these sections of state-owned land that are called school sections.

45:17So basically, any revenue that's raised off that land goes to the state's colleges and sometimes their high schools. So it's to benefit the education system of the state. And there was a school section that Rick had leased for decades and he grazed cows on it. He leased it from the state and paid them a leasing fee on it. but at some point the department realized, you know, we could lease a section of land twice because, you know, with wind development, we can keep that land in rural use. We can graze cows on it and we can have wind turbines on it. So we can actually, you know, it's a way to help rural people who are looking for a little extra source of income.

46:09We can keep that. We can make sure that land doesn't, you know, it stays, it's still, it's still building an agricultural function. So they had hired a consultant to go find out what sections, what school trust sections of land had the best wind. And they hired none other than Marty Wild. And Marty saw that this section that Rick had been leasing was like the dream section. And then very quickly filed his own application to develop wind on it. So it was a little bit, I don't know if we could call it double dealing or self dealing, but it was, it was something a little not kosher about it, but that's how Marty rolled.

46:55Well, to your point, this is very common in the West. So for example, in the state of Arizona, our gold or our oil, if I'm using the Dubai or the, you know, the kind of the Middle East view of it, our oil is land. And so the state of Arizona, the state owns a lot of land. And so what they do is they sell that off in pieces, typically to say single family home developers in tranches. And all those lease payments or purchases are accumulated into what they call the state land trust. And that state land trust here in Arizona has to invest, but all the proceeds of it, to your point, go to education.

47:27So that's a very common thing of the West, very much in all these states. We were the last contingent state. So it's no shock that we're very similar to Montana in that respect. Alfred Anderson is the next door neighbor to Jarrett. He is, you know, my impression of him is I see a white haired guy, wrinkled face, really calloused hands, and he is just the ultimate old man in the mountains ranching. Yes, Alfred is in his mid-90s, still going strong. Alfred's parents were Norwegian immigrants, and they settled in the crazies. And his parents had actually worked as laborers on other ranches while saving the money to get their own piece of land, which was this little square, like two squares of land that they were able to get.

48:22And that's where Alfred spent his days. He had been a lifelong rancher and got up every day into his 80s and early 90s to go out and feed his herd and do all of the chores that he was doing 20 years before, 40 years before. just a committed lifelong rancher and rick and marty approached him about putting some wind turbines on his land too because um for a wind project to be really economically viable you need to have more turbines and they wanted to make this a you know they wanted to give this they wants to make it attracted to investors. And Alfred initially wasn't so sure about it. But he came around, he came around and decided that this could be a good thing.

49:17And that, you know, you know, maybe he could use that money to build a tool shop, like he'd never had a tool shop on the ranch or he could or a$10 ,000 bull or$10 ,000 full, which is a reference to the book, just so everybody knows it's a you should catch that part of the book, because it becomes critical in the court case. But again, this old man has this dream about this prime bull. Yes, yes. Well, the thing is, you know, when you spend any time with ranchers, you realize, first of all, that, you know, raising cattle, it's a science. There's so much goes into it, right? And so one element of it is genetics.

49:55And to get, you know, to get calves that are going to have more meat on them and be more valuable. You need a sire. You need a bull with really great genetics too. And bulls, it's like sports cars. There are bulls that are worth, there are$2 ,000 bulls and then there are$10 ,000 bulls. And Alfred had it in his head how amazing it would be. This man didn't dream of personal riches. He didn't dream of putting a hot tub in or getting a nice car. He dreamed of getting a$10 ,000 bull to sire his calves and improve their slaughter value is the actual term. So David Chesnoff is obviously in this story.

50:45He's the noted Las Vegas lawyer. Suge Knight, Andre Agassi are customers of his from a legal perspective. I was trying to think who else I had. But oh, Phil Ivey. Yeah, Phil Ivey and his famous divorce with his wife, etc. But his house was known as the Cabela's on the Yellowstone. Well, he didn't call it that. He didn't, but everyone else in town did. So so David, David Chesnock, who is like the ultimate Sin City litigator, like the most connected man in Vegas, the guy you call if, you know, a little pack of cocaine falls out of your out of your purse at a traffic stop or, you know, or you hit someone with your car when you're drunk and you're a very wealthy, high profile person.

51:34Like he's the guy you call. He's your go to. He will he will pick up the phone at three in the morning and he will he'll be there for you. Sure. And he needed his own place, like his happy place. And he loved Montana too. And he and his wife bought five parcels of land right on the Yellowstone River. The story goes that his wife, Diana, David and Diana toured these five parcels. and Diana, they were debating about which parcel they liked best and Diana said, let's get all five. And hence the name of the ranch, Diana's Great Idea. And the Chesnos built a magnificent wood and stone lodge right on the banks of the Yellowstone that you could see from the highway that goes along the Yellowstone.

52:28And the locals called it Cabela's on the Yellowstone because of its resemblance to the large sporting and hunting goods store. Yeah, which if you grew up in the Northwest, when you cross over between Washington and Idaho on your way to Montana, you will cross a Cabela's as you enter the state of Idaho right off the freeway of I-90, might I add. So that - I-90, exactly. That fits perfectly. So Monica, I don't want to pronounce her name correctly. Monica, is it Tranel? Monica Trunell. I mean, this is crazy. It's like just to hear this, you know, the other Northwest Connection. She went to Gonzaga.

53:04I went to school with a lot of kids that went to Gonzaga. She's just this incredible Montana story where it's like she's had highs. She's had lows. And she's just fighting away all the time. So Monica Trunell. So I mentioned at the very beginning of our conversation that Rick and his neighbor, Alfred, were sued by their very wealthy billionaire and millionaire neighbors. And Monica Turnell was the lawyer who took them on as clients. She was initially hired by the wind development company that was going to lease the land for its wind farm. And she took on their case. Rick and Alfred became so much more to her than ordinary clients.

53:51Like their cause was was tremendous. It became really personal to her. It was almost like a crusade for her because she was a ranch kid herself. She had grown up on a ranch in eastern Montana. And she she said, you know, what's happening to these ranchers like this is not the Montana I grew up in. You know, I grew up with ranchers like Alfred Anderson and Rick Jarrett. And, you know, they work hard their whole lives. They don't complain. They are what, you know, they are the bedrock of this state. And they're just trying to make a living on their land. And they're going to lose their ranches if they can't lease it for wind development and get this extra income.

54:36And Monica's story was incredible. Again, something I would not have had the imagination to make up. Monica had grown up on this ranch in landlocked eastern Montana. The only body of water was the irrigation ditch, I think, which the kids would swim in when there was a heavy rain. When she was at college, she got into rowing, into crew, and she was really good at it. and while she was at law school she um she began rowing um on the skykill river in in pennsylvania she was at repper's law school and she just got good enough that soon she was being scouted and she ended up going to not one but two olympics and competing for the united states on the women's rowing team.

55:27And her story is a very, very compelling one for me because a kind of heartbreaking thing happens to her at the very height of her powers. And this question of how she's going to continue and what she's going to do to create meaning for her life really feeds into the relationship that she later develops with Rick and Alfred. Yeah. And to your point, I mean, she goes from being on the top of the world when it comes to crew and then has kind of personal tragedy happen in her own, you know, call it personal life with her, you know, with her divorce. And and she's got all these kids. And I mean, just just the ambition.

56:08I mean, like that, I would say, I mean, not not to minimize divorce and all of the trauma of that. But when I'm talking about her, the personal setback that really most shaped her and, you know, she's she's been married and she has, you know, that there was the difficulty of the marriage breaking. But what happened was when she went to the she and she competed in the Atlanta Olympics, I believe that was 1996. And the women's rowing team was the best in the world. They had won the world championships and they were favored to take gold in Atlanta. And these women were on the cover of Time magazine.

56:50like they were there when monica cracked a rib in practice it was news in the new york times sports pages so they were absolutely in the spotlight favored to win and the day of the race arrives and they came in fourth and to me coming in fourth in the olympics seems pretty damn good. But for Monica, this was an absolute crushing defeat. And in some ways, this defeat would assume more meaning for her, more of a personal catalyst in some ways, than all of the many successes she had enjoyed. There was something about that defeat, that failure, that really carved itself into her soul. Well, to your point about the crusade, it's almost as if you got the sense that out of your storytelling of that event, that she didn't want others to experience loss or a feeling like that.

57:51And hence why Rick and Alfred, she was so willing to go to the mat for them because she didn't want them to experience that. That's such an interesting insight into it. I mean, I have to say it didn't it never struck me that way, but I I think I can see I can see what you're saying. There's a lot of loss is a really powerful theme throughout this book. Yeah. You know, it's it's I always said it feels like I'm writing a ghost story in a weird way because there's so much loss and absence and dispossession. And many of the characters in this book are haunted by something. And for Monica, she goes on to create a life of tremendous meaning and accomplishment.

58:45But yeah, I think you have a point. I think there might have been something about fighting for Rick and Alfred that touched those deepest feelings about loss. loss. Brought to you by Smead Capital Management. Smead Capital Management understands how frustrating and illogical the stock market can be. If you're searching for funds with a proven track record, give the Smead funds a look. Or better yet, reach out at SmeadCap.com. And don't forget to mention you're a fan of the podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principle. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses.

59:30Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by Smead Funds Distributors, LLC, not affiliated. You know, you talk about the court case itself when ultimately, you know, what you refer to as the oligarchs, which would be Chesnoff and - Well, that's not my term. That is actually, that's Monica. I agree. Monica began referring to them that way. She calls them the oligarchs um i'll just say the really rich people that own land for lack of a term um you know they effectively file a a suit that as monica you probably knew that they were trying to delay this because pattern energy the company that you talk about that's going to ultimately be the owner of the windmill uh uh you know of the windmill project is you know they have a deadline to meet with Northwest Energy, which is the utility, which is governed by the Public Services Commission, you know, there in Montana, for rates and etc.

1:00:26And so as she's going through this, you know, she's having to deal with, well, how are we going to attack this? She's counsel to the landowners. Pattern has their own separate counsel, high powered firm. But in the middle of this, Marty Wilde dies. And again, to this idea of loss, it's like you're, as you're recanting the story to your readers, it's like, you get this sense that like losing Marty is kind of like the heart of this was lost. Cause what would Marty say in that courtroom and what would Marty be doing? And he would just call it like it is. And no one was willing to just kind of call it like it is.

1:01:03Is that a fair way of thinking about the loss of Marty for, for her as the council? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to give away too much, but there are some very dramatic twists and turns here and some very tragic. And a very unexpected, terrible thing happens midway through, right when this battle is heating up, as you say, and Marty dies. and it becomes this kind of, he's like, it's like the specter of his absence is hanging over these proceedings. It's at one point, Monica says, it's like there was a black hole in the middle because like if Marty were here, like what would he be saying? What would he be doing?

1:01:46And she, in a sense, has to, she and Marty were very close. She had been Marty's lawyer. She had worked with Marty on his projects and helped him, you know, Marty was being basically rooked out of his commission for a wind project he had developed. And Monica went in there and banged on the table when she was like eight months pregnant and got him his money. And so they were very, very close. And he had taught her all about the wind industry, like everything she knew about wind, she'd learned from Marty. Correct. And she also tried to use that later. I think you mentioned she ran for the Public Services Commission.

1:02:23She lost. but again she learned all that from marty yeah marty was really a mentor and um the two of them were very close and um yeah so there yeah that was a really important relationship and it's you know as you're reading like i hope that the i hope you kind of i hope the reader gets kind of sucked into the drama of it all because there are so many twists and turns and the court case itself assumes so many little dramatic reversals. And I also like each chapter you you have a small snippet from the court case. And I would say about this is my own read. So you don't have to agree with this. But about a third of the way and you get locked to your point, you just get locked.

1:03:07And you're like, wow, I gotta just keep going. And this is such a because you're totally intrigued. So one last thing I'd love to ask, because again, I really like experiential reading. So I read and then it's like, okay, I got to check this place out. So like I have visited like beehive kilns in the middle of Death Valley because of a story, right? And so here's my kind of like fun question. And just for our listeners to know, there's a lot we didn't talk about. I have a myriad of stuff. We didn't talk about Ephrata, Washington. We didn't talk about PURPA. We didn't talk about anything tied to really the subsidies that were involved.

1:03:45I mean, there's a myriad of stuff. It's all there. It's all there for another day. But for, let's say, a listener or myself, if I was going to say, hey, I'm going to fly in to, say, Bozeman or Billings, and I'm going to drive out to Big Timber, where would I stay? Where would I go eat? Where could I go hiking? Where could I kind of experience the story for all the beauty that all these people showed up for? I love that. I highly recommend, even if you haven't read my book, that you visit Big Timber, Montana. It is a true Western town. And it's a small town that in some ways has maintained its character.

1:04:33Even now, as the money, the big money seeps into town and people like Russell Gordy are buying up restaurants there and things, it's changing as we speak. So go soon. But I would say go to Big Timber. You can fly into Billings or Bozeman. It's about the same distance. You will be treated to an incredible view of the crazies if you drive from Bozeman. You will have the crazies keeping you company for a good part of your ride off to your west. And then stay at the Grand Hotel, which was built over 100 years ago. and in the morning, go and get yourself an apple turnover at the Big Timber Bakery, which is an incredible bakery.

1:05:22It's run by a Mennonite. There's a Mennonite community, Hutterite, Hutterite, one sect of Mennonites and they have a community outside of town and they own this bakery and the baked goods are insane. So go and have an apple turnover. and then I would say there is one road that leads up into the crazy mountains and it is going to jar your coccyx like you're going to feel every bump on this dirt road up into the crazies but there are public trails from this one access point if you go up that way and you can take a little hike into the mountains as long as check your weather because it's not a place you want to be if the weather suddenly changes on you.

1:06:13And there will be snow into July up there. But it's an incredible experience to be in those mountains. And also there's so much to see. There's a museum there. And just to wander around, there's a, I don't know if it's open to the public, but at one point Big Timber was the wool capital of the world. There was more wool exported from Big Timber, Montana than anywhere else. And the Wool House, which is this brick building by the train yard, still stands and it still has wool in it. There is still sheep farming in Big Timber and the wool gets stored there. And you can see generations of graffiti on the walls that sheep herders would paint their names in sheep paint on the walls of this wool house.

1:07:06And if you can get somebody to let you in there, I highly recommend it. It's just so much history inside one building. Yeah. Well, the other thing that reminds me of the West is obviously Lewis and Clark came through this exact area. They did. My parents grew up in a small town called Washougal where Lewis and Clark also came through. You talk about wool. There's a Pendleton Mill in my parents' hometown. So I just say that because a lot of this follows very things that I've seen in my childhood or experiences, et cetera. Also, Monica's car with all the kids stuff in it. It's like, I've been in that car.

1:07:38I have four kids. It was called a minivan. I totally get her. So I want to ask this as kind of a final takeaway. Where can people follow your work going forward? Do you have another book that you've sprouted off of all this work? Or are you on social media? where can people continue to follow you? Well, I am, I will say this book took such a huge part of my life. It was five years in the reporting and writing of the book. And I have begun work on a new project, but it's a little too soon to say. It's not Montana, but it is Western. And yeah, I would just say, stay tuned. You know, you can, I'm on Instagram.

1:08:17I'm not, I'm not, join, join my 38 followers on Instagram and I will keep you posted on my next moves. But this has really been a pleasure and it's always such a delight to talk to somebody who's read the book so carefully and enjoyed it. And thank you for all your good questions and for giving me something to think about too. Yeah, and I've also thought, the reason why I asked one of those last questions was because I was like, gosh, maybe I'll have to call up Amy. I'll bring up like a group of 10 couples and we'll spend a weekend in Big Timber and we'll just kind of like enjoy it with Amy and just have her tell the story and have fun with it.

1:08:57So I might call you another time while you're working on this other project, but knowing that you're talking about the West, I'm kind of a sucker for a good Western nonfiction book. And so I will definitely be looking for that. Amy, your story should remind our readers that the role the land plays in our local and national systems of politics are very important. Montana has a lot of power per voter and the old adage that money talks and all politics are local, as we know. It also teaches us that the West continues to shape the growth and the dreams of America. Absolutely. If you enjoy this podcast, go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to a book with legs.

1:09:35Give us a review, tell others about the books and great authors like Amy Gamerman that we have the opportunity to understand and study the world with and through. For our tribe, if you have a great book that you'd like to recommend, email podcast at smeedcap.com. That's podcast at smeedcap.com. You can also send your suggestions to us on X. Our handle is at smeedcap. Thank you for joining us for a Book With Legs podcast. We look forward to the next episode. Thank you for listening to A Book With Legs, a podcast brought to you by Smeed Capital Management. The material provided in this podcast is for informational use only and should not be construed as investment advice.

1:10:14You can learn more about Smeet Capital Management and its products at SmeetCap.com or by calling your financial advisor.