Over the past three centuries, exploitation of resources in the American West has resulted in devastating environmental losses. The fur trade decimated beaver populations, and streams and wetland ecosystems deteriorated. Water running from the abandoned Pacific Mine nearly a century after most mining ceased still carried lead at an amount ten times the federal standard. Where grazing depleted native bunchgrasses, fire-prone cheatgrass took its place. Salmon migration from Idaho streams, once fourteen days, now requires fifty. Author Niels S. Nokkentved takes a fresh look at environmental challenges affecting the Northwest. His essays examine cultural conflicts over resource extraction, threats to watersheds, wolf recovery in the northern Rocky Mountains, lingering effects of livestock grazing, and the vanishing sage grouse. He discusses the importance of forest fires, value of beavers, failed promises of salmon hatcheries, reasons behind the Pacific Northwest timber industry decline, and how unlikely allies learned to set aside differences and resolve long-standing disputes. Nokkentved shares his connection to each concern as well as his own evidence-based perspective. His ultimate goal is to encourage people to think like a mountain-consider long-term consequences.