Film festivals and the outdoors meet at the summit

Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour comes to Eau Claire every December. The world tour comes out of the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival, an international film competition about mountain culture, sports, environment and adventure & exploration. The festival takes place every fall in Banff, Alberta since 1976 with over 400 entries submitted each year.

The judges from the festival select the best 35 - 40 films that feature climbing, skiing, kayaking, biking, adventure, culture, and the environment. Those films go on the world tour. Two of the last three years a film filmed in Wisconsin made the tour – a 1,200-mile Ice Age Trail thru-hike and the Birkebeiner.

What does this have to do with hunting you say? I’m getting there.

The Chippewa Valley Ruffed Grouse Society Chapter sponsors the tour coming to Eau Claire, a small feat in and of itself. Most places the tour plays are major metro areas like Minneapolis and Chicago. The tour runs for two nights with different films each night. The films inspire and impress.

Over a thousand people of all ages attended. Bringing together Alpine skiers, cross country skiers, fishers, hikers, hunters, mountain bikers, paddlers, rock climbers, sky divers, and snowboarders. Coming together and finding common ground around the wild places where we love to pursue our passions.

My best guess, the overwhelming majority of those that attended don’t hunt. They came to see films like two guys climbing to the summit of the world’s tallest cliff over several days – than descending in about a minute with a base jump off the cliff.

There were two films about fishing. One more about human perseverance that centered around one lady’s passion for fishing and how that led to the love of her life, losing him to cancer many years later in the later stage of their lives. Through fishing she persevered and found joy and happiness again and fulfilled the dream they shared of fishing in Patagonia.

Another film featured a rock climber with cystic fibrosis that continues to open new climbing routes and bolt them for others to follow on climbs once thought impossible. One route took several years to conquer. By all rights he should have succumbed to his disease by now. Human spirit and perseverance.

And then after intermission, everyone heard a hunter talk about how inspired he felt from watching those films during the door prize drawings. Common ground.

Everyone listened to a little bit of our story as hunters. About our love for wild places and wild things. How we put money back in the ground. How we work to protect wild places. How we value the same things as the other. Common ground. Aldo Leopold once wrote that “there are two things that interest me, the relationship of people to land, and people to each other.” The film festival world tour brought both of those together. It allowed those that attended to examine others relationship to the land, contemplate their own relationship to the land, and learn some things about each other. Finding some common ground. Common ground with those that don’t hunt will become more and more important for the younger generation of hunters. Doing that a thousand people a year is a slow way to do it. But the film festival provides a fun way to do it.

Others seek to find common ground through food. Breaking bread together has always been a way for humans to bond. Bonding through wild game as food is finding common ground.

Why is common ground so important? Have you heard what is happening in Washington state? What about the ballot initiative in Colorado to ban hunting mountain lions, bobcats or Canadian lynx? What about the ballot initiative coming in Oregon to criminalize not only hunting but ranching? Why would they group farming with hunting? What other states have the same issues popping up?

The enemies of our way of life found a few things that they succeeded with. They are spreading the methods to other locations. Much of that revolves around a divide and conquer strategy with all their usually tactics.

It occurs in Western states where the urban population outnumbers the rural population. Wisconsin’s rural population still outnumbers the major metro areas by around a half million. Will that change by the next census? Will Wisconsin’s value of hunting change if it does?

The film festival celebrated outdoor pursuits. Found common ground through sharing of our differing stories. And we all really enjoyed the films.

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