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Environmental Challenges and Solutions 2
Series Editor: Robert J. Cabin

Stephen F. McCool
Keith Bosak Editors

Reframing
Sustainable
Tourism
Environmental Challenges and Solutions

Volume 2

Series editor
Robert J. Cabin, Brevard College, Brevard, NC, USA
Aims and Scope
The Environmental Challenges and Solutions series aims to improve our
understanding of the Earth’s most important environmental challenges, and how
we might more effectively solve or at least mitigate these challenges. Books in this
series focus on environmental challenges and solutions in particular geographic
regions ranging from small to large spatial scales. These books provide multi-
disciplinary (technical, socioeconomic, political, etc.) analyses of their environ-
mental challenges and the effectiveness of past and present efforts to address them.
They conclude by offering holistic recommendations for more effectively solving
these challenges now and into the future. All books are written in a concise and
readable style, making them suitable for both specialists and non-specialists starting
at first year graduate level.

Proposals for the book series can be sent to the Series Editor, Robert J. Cabin, at
[email protected].

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11763

Stephen F. McCool • Keith Bosak
Editors

Reframing Sustainable
Tourism

123
Editors
Stephen F. McCool Keith Bosak
University of Montana University of Montana
Missoula, MT, USA Missoula, MT, USA

ISSN 2214-2827 ISSN 2214-2835 (electronic)

Environmental Challenges and Solutions
ISBN 978-94-017-7208-2 ISBN 978-94-017-7209-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-7209-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015947818

Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made.

Printed on acid-free paper

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. Dordrecht is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.
springer.com)
Foreword

Tourism is a complicated, global, and growing phenomenon. The basic premise is

that travel provides benefits, some to the traveler (who seeks personal benefits at a
destination) and some to a destination host (who seeks personal benefits provided
by the traveler). One of the substantial unifying concepts in the last three decades
has been that of sustainable tourism. This book seeks to move beyond socially
acceptable, ecologically responsible, and economically viable tourism ideas by
asking fundamental questions. Case studies are used effectively to outline issues
from many areas such as Brazil, Canada, India, Jamaica, Nepal, the USA, Vietnam,
and several countries from Southern Africa.
One issue discussed is that of scale, such as geographic scales, but also
timescales. This book makes a point that many sociopolitical systems do not always
operate on linear relationships, but can be affected by sudden and unpredictable
influences. Technological changes can have massive impacts on relationships and
sharing of information, which quickly changes key aspects of the delivery of tourism
benefits.
This book concentrates at the community scale, largely in the sense of the local
community that serves as the host for the visitors. The book concentrates on the
supply part of tourism, leaving tourism demand for another day.
An important issue is the definition of community. In this book, it tends to be
geographical in concept, rather than professional or religious. But the scope of what
is in or out of a community boundary is left open-ended, as maybe it must be if the
concept is to be used widely.
The book makes it clear that tourism is just one of many human activities
that affects host communities. Industrial, agricultural, and urban developments also
occur in the same area and cause major changes. It is often difficult to disentangle
what activity caused what impact. Also, positive impacts to one person or group
may be linked to negative impacts to another person or group. Impacts seen as being
positive by one person may be seen as being negative by another person.
There are examples given about the impacts caused by a lack of tourism, such
as the cessation of tourism. These help to identify those complicated and often

v
vi Foreword

unmeasured impacts that occur when a constant flow of visitors move through a
community and are largely taken for granted. One of the most striking examples
of this, known to his observer, was the closure of most rural tourism in England
and Scotland in 2001 when the hoof and mouth disease hit domestic livestock.
This was an unintentional experiment that revealed the massive positive impact
of rural tourism and the general lack of understanding of its importance, once it
was gone. It was revealed that tourism in rural Scotland was worth 5 % of gross
domestic product, while agriculture was worth much less at 1.4 %. So government
actions of stopping rural tourism in order to help agriculture damaged the much
more economically valuable activity (Stewart 2002). One result on UK government
policy was changes in agricultural subsidies, moving benefits from agricultural food
production to landscape quality enhancement.
I once talked to a man picketing at the opening of the new visitor center
in Algonquin National Park in 1993. He was a part-time park staff member
complaining about the reduction of jobs in the park due to government funding
reductions. He stated that there are only two types of jobs in his area, tourism in the
summer and logging in the winter. This statement puts into focus the complexity of
human activities in this area. One activity, logging, is portrayed as sustainable by the
foresters but portrayed as unsustainable by park visitors. The other activity, tourism,
is seen as being sustainable by park visitors, but damaging by the loggers due to
the continual pressure by park visitors to stop logging in the park. So understanding
the financial sustainability of this man was complex and fraught with definitional
issues. Sustainable in what way, of what resource, and to whom are basic questions.
A major issue is who benefits and who pays. This of course is an issue with
all economic activities, whether it is the development of a mine, a logging activity,
or tourism. Much tourism analysis, but not in this book, ignores that tourism is
just one of many other competing economic activities in an area. In fact, tourism
may be the most sustainable activity over the long term, in that the benefits can
continue indefinitely if properly managed. This cannot be said for mining and some
manufacturing industries; these come and go.
Some aspects of sustainability can be bipolar, providing both benefits and
disbenefits at the same time. For example, some aspects of culture are changed due
to visitors’ ideas, but visitor demands for observation of local culture provide incen-
tives for preservation of some aspects of that culture. Such inherent dichotomies are
rife in the application of sustainable tourism concepts.
Sustainable tourism, a laudable goal, is essentially socialistic; it espouses
community management and control, where individual selfish desires are balanced
against community desires and benefits. Many of the papers in this book look toward
methods for such control, whereby plans are made and implemented. This only
occurs where there is the power and institutional structure to implement those plans.
One of the methods for control is the use of standards and certification of various
elements of the tourism supply chain, such as for transportation operations, tours
operators, accommodation providers, and food suppliers. These activities attempt to
ensure that worthwhile overarching standards are implemented. There is evidence
Foreword vii

that travelers expect base levels of standards, so that they are safe from the dangers
of transportation, accommodation, and food hazards while on vacation. They may
not be supportive of financial sustainability of local communities if the consumer
sees low prices as a primary goal.
I wonder if sustainability is not an end, but only a process. One can never fully
achieve the elusive goal. It is always like the mysterious blonde woman in the white
thunderbird in the 1973 movie American Graffiti. She is always a dream, out there
for sure, but one can never get as close as wanted.

Paul F.J. Eagles

Reference

Stewart, W. 2002. Inquiry into foot and mouth disease in Scotland. Edinburgh: Royal Society
of Edinburgh. http://www.scribd.com/doc/61435188/Foot-and-Mouth-Disease-in-Scotland.
Accessed 27 Jan 2015.
Preface

If we have learned anything about the search for sustainable tourism, it is the
importance of asking the right questions. In this text, we agree with American
songwriter and singer Bob Dylan that “The Times, They are a-Changin” written in
response to the political and social contentiousness of the 1960s and yet remarkably
applicable to the early twenty-first century. We believe the times are still “a-
Changin,” and therefore we ask here if the conventional paradigm of sustainable
tourism, that which occurs at the intersection of what is socially acceptable,
ecologically responsible, and economically viable, is really an appropriate and
effective way of conceptualizing tourism development in the twenty-first century?
We acknowledge this paradigm, during the first quarter century of discussion about
the objects of economic development, which focused a great deal of scientific,
philosophic, and development activity on reducing the negative impacts of tourism.
But from those experiments, we have learned much, so much that we wonder if a
more contemporary approach to tourism would be more effective as well as more in
line with our knowledge of tourism as a component of a social-ecological system as
well as the incredible complexity of the global development system. Complexity and
uncertainty greet us at every social-organizational, temporal, and spatial scale. What
is economically viable at one scale is not at another. What is socially acceptable to
one group is not for another. And what might be viewed as ecologically responsible
may be seen as negligent by others.
Given the pace, scale, and type of change we see today, can our efforts benefit
from alternative conceptualizations of sustainable tourism? We believe so. This
book is about thinking a bit differently about the aims and tools for sustainable
tourism. It is written principally for a North American audience because we see a
lack of attention to sustainable tourism in that geography. That said, the text uses
a number of examples from other continents to illustrate new perspectives, some
critical, others more helpful.
The book is organized into four sections. The first provides some foundational
material about sustainable tourism, how the concept developed historically and how
our thinking about it has evolved. In the second section, several authors provide

ix
x Preface

some frameworks about different arenas of sustainable tourism that can help us think
differently and be more effective in achieving the goals of sustainable tourism. The
third section contains several case studies reflecting ways of thinking differently
and the implications of doing so. In the final section, we suggest a way forward
that we believe will more effectively help tourism development build communities,
advance opportunities for higher-quality visitor experiences, and protect our natural
and cultural heritage.
We want to thank each of the contributors to this volume, because each not
only spent time writing up their stories but also have furthered different notions
of sustainable tourism. We also want to thank our editors and publishers at Springer
who helped bring this idea to a fruition.

Missoula, MT, USA Stephen F. McCool

Keith Bosak
Contents

Part I Foundations
1 Sustainable Tourism in an Emerging World of Complexity
and Turbulence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Stephen F. McCool
2 The Changing Meanings of Sustainable Tourism . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Stephen F. McCool
3 Tourism, Development, and Sustainability . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Keith Bosak

Part II Frameworks
4 Frameworks for Tourism as a Development Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Art Pedersen
5 Strategic Community Participation in Sustainable Tourism . . . . . . . . . . 65
Susan Snyman
6 Framework for Understanding Sustainability in the
Context of Tourism Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Kelly Bricker and Rosemary Black
7 Tourism in Protected Areas: Frameworks for Working
Through the Challenges in an Era of Change, Complexity
and Uncertainty .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Stephen F. McCool

Part III Case Studies

8 When ‘dem Come: The Political Ecology of Sustainable
Tourism in Cockpit Country, Jamaica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Jason A. Douglas

xi
xii Contents

9 Understanding the Himalayan Townscape of Shimla

Through Resident and Tourist Perception .. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Rajinder S. Jutla
10 Community-Based Tourism and Development in the
Periphery/Semi-periphery Interface: A Case Study
from Viet Nam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Tuan-Anh Le, David Weaver, and Laura Lawton
11 The Concept of Environmental Supply in National Parks . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Barbara Jean McNicol
12 Sustainable Tourism in Brazil: Faxinal and Superagui
Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Jasmine Cardozo Moreira, Robert C. Burns,
and Valéria de Meira Albach
13 Tourism and Social Capital: Case Studies from Rural Nepal . . . . . . . . . 217
Martina Shakya

Part IV Conclusion
14 The Way Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Keith Bosak and Stephen F. McCool
Contributors

Valéria de Meira Albach Departamento de Turismo, Ponta Grossa State

University, Ponta Grossa, PR, Brazil
Rosemary Black School of Environmental Sciences, Charles Sturt University,
Albury, NSW, Australia
Keith Bosak University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA
Kelly Bricker Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, University of Utah,
Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Robert C. Burns School of Forestry and Natural Resources, West Virginia
University, Morgantown, WV, USA
Jason A. Douglas Department of Environmental Studies, San Jose State
University, San Jose, CA, USA
Rajinder S. Jutla Missouri State University, Springfield, MO, USA
Laura Lawton Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia
Tuan-Anh Le Ha Noi University, Hanoi, Vietnam
Stephen F. McCool University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA
Barbara Jean McNicol Mount Royal University, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Jasmine Cardozo Moreira Departamento de Turismo, Ponta Grossa State
University, PR, Brazil
Art Pedersen Independent Consultant, Helsinki, Finland
Martina Shakya Institute of Development Research and Development Policy,
Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
Susan Snyman Environmental Policy Research Unit, University of Cape Town and
Wilderness Safaris, South Africa
David Weaver Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia
xiii
About the Authors

Valéria de Meira Albach Ms Albach is assistant professor of the Tourism

Department at Ponta Grossa State University, in Paraná, Brazil. She has a master’s
degree in geography and specialization in environmental geography and holds a
PhD from the Federal University of Paraná. She works as a tourism consultant for
protected areas, including the Superagui National Park, also in Paraná, Brazil.

Rosemary Black Dr Black gained her PhD from Monash University where she
undertook research on ecotourism. She currently serves as associate professor in the
School of Environmental Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Australia. Rosemary’s
teaching focuses on tour guiding, environmental interpretation, adventure tourism,
and outdoor recreation. She conducts research in tour guiding, interpretation,
ecotourism, and social dimensions of natural resource management. Most is applied
research that she undertakes in partnership with industry associations, protected area
managers, and communities. Prior to being an academic Rosemary worked in the
fields of adventure tourism, protected area management, and recreation planning.
She serves on the boards of Guiding Organisations Australia and Interpretation
Australia.

Keith Bosak Dr Bosak earned his PhD in geography in 2006 from the University of
Georgia where he studied the local effects of global conservation policy in the Nanda
Devi Biosphere Reserve. As a geographer, he currently serves as associate professor
at the Department of Society and Conservation at the University of Montana. Dr
Bosak’s research interests are broadly centered on the intersection of conservation
and development, and as such, he often studies nature-based tourism and sustainable
tourism in the context of development and protected areas. He has conducted
research on ecotourism and environmental justice in India, scientific tourism in
Chile, and geotourism in Montana. Aside from tourism, Dr Bosak has conducted
research on climate change impacts and adaptations among tribal populations in
the Himalaya, private protected areas in Chile, and conservation and development
initiatives in Montana. Since 2005, Dr Bosak has been instructing field courses on

xv
xvi About the Authors

tourism and sustainability in the Garhwal Himalaya. Dr Bosak and his wife Laura
founded the Nature-Link Institute, a 501(c)3 that seeks to reconnect people with
their environment through research, education, and advocacy.

Kelly S. Bricker Dr Bricker serves as professor and interim chair of the Depart-
ment of Parks, Recreation and Tourism, University of Utah, USA. She completed
her PhD research with the Pennsylvania State University, specializing in nature-
based tourism. She has research/teaching interests in ecotourism, sense of place,
resource management, and environmental and social impacts of tourism. She has
conducted research on certification, tourism and quality of life, heritage tourism,
social impacts of tourism, and impacts on natural resource tourism environments.
Since 1982, Kelly has worked in ecotourism and adventure programs such as
the Florida High Adventure Sea Base, Sobek Expeditions, World Heritage Travel
Group, and Rivers Fiji. She serves on the boards of The International Ecotourism
Society and Global Sustainable Tourism Council.

Robert Burns Dr Burns is associate professor at West Virginia University with

nearly two decades of research experience in public land social science and in
working with public land managers. Dr Burns has conducted research focused on all
aspects of monitoring visitor use in federal and state land and water-based settings.
He is responsible for an international research program in Brazil, focusing on visitor
monitoring in parks and protected areas. His expertise is in quantifying motivations,
benefits, use patterns, behaviors, and other social carrying capacity indicators in
outdoor settings.

Jason A. Douglas Dr Douglas is an environmental psychologist who conducts

research with underserved communities to develop an understanding of environ-
mental issues at the local, state, federal, and international levels. He strives to use
research to educate and empower individuals exposed to social, economic, and
environmental disparities. Dr Douglas has over 8 years of experience in community-
based participatory research and evaluation. He has worked on a wide range of
projects concerning the political ecology of participatory conservation in Jamaica,
environmental justice and education in underserved urban communities, public
policy and advocacy efforts to address root causes of childhood obesity, and hospital
system improvements related to homeless populations.

Rajinder S. Jutla Dr Rajinder S. Jutla is a professor and director of the Planning

Program in the Department of Geography, Geology, and Planning at Missouri
State University, Springfield, Missouri, USA. His undergraduate and graduate
studies are in the areas of architecture, landscape architecture, and planning. His
research interests include history and theory of urban design, historic preservation,
environmental perception, urban tourism, and cultural geography. He has presented
papers at a number of national and international conferences and has published
journal articles and book chapters in these areas.
About the Authors xvii

Laura Lawton Laura Lawton is an associate professor within the Department

of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management at Griffith University, Australia. She
has published numerous government reports, academic journal articles, and book
chapters in several areas, including protected areas, ecotourism, resident perceptions
of tourism, and cruise ship tourism. She is a coauthor of the tourism text Tourism
Management, published by Wiley, and sits on the editorial boards of four academic
journals. Laura serves as deputy chair of The International Centre of Excellence
in Tourism and Hospitality Management Education (THE-ICE), an independent
international accreditation body that specializes in tourism, hospitality, and events
education.

Tuan-Anh Le Dr Tuan-Anh Le holds a PhD from Griffith University, Australia.

Currently, he works as a lecturer at the Faculty of Management and Tourism, Ha
Noi University, Viet Nam. His area of research interests covers community-based
tourism and sustainable development. Over the past 15 years, Mr. Le has been
active in the provision of training and consulting services for tourism projects in
Viet Nam funded by international organizations, for instance, the EuropeAid, Asian
Development Bank (ADB), UNESCO, the Netherlands Development Organization
(SNV).

Stephen F. McCool Steve is professor emeritus at the Department of Society and

Natural Resources at the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana, USA. He
has been active in research and development activities in the area of tourism and
visitor management in protected areas for over 45 years, contributing frequently
to a variety of journals and conferences. In addition, he has worked to change
how managers approach public engagement and protected area planning processes,
frequently arguing that we need to dive deeper and think differently in a world of
change, complexity, and uncertainty.

Barbara Jean McNicol Dr Barbara McNicol is an associate professor of geogra-

phy, past 6-year chair of the Department of Earth Sciences, and assistant director of
the Institute for Environmental Sustainability (IES) at Mount Royal University in
Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She is also an adjunct associate professor of geography
at the University of Calgary where she has taught in both of the international
relations and geography degree programs. Barbara is a social environmental geog-
rapher conducting behavioral research at the interface between sustainable tourism
planning and management and environmental and natural resource management
while emphasizing parks, recreation, and community land use. Barbara has worked
with the local government, such as the Town of Canmore, Economic Planning and
Development Office, in Alberta, and with Parks Canada Agency in the national
parks of Pacific Rim, Banff, and Jasper as well as independently as a tourism and
environmental research consultant.
xviii About the Authors

Jasmine Cardozo Moreira Jasmine Cardozo Moreira is associate professor and

chair of the Tourism Department at Ponta Grossa State University, in Brazil.
Her expertise is in community development, focusing on human dimensions of
tourism planning in Brazil National Parks and geoparks worldwide. She received
a bachelor’s in tourism, PhD in geography, and a postdoctoral study in Spain. She is
an active member of the federal academic accreditation team that evaluates tourism
programs throughout Brazil. Also a member of the International Academy for the
Development of Tourism Research in Brazil, she provides academic consulting to
the US Forest Service International Programs, the Brazil Park Service (ICMBio),
and the Erasmus Program.

Arthur Pedersen Art Pedersen is a consultant on protected areas and tourism

development located in Helsinki, Finland. His professional experience includes
work on tourism, protected areas, and economic development issues. He has
been a program specialist with UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre (WHC) in
Paris. Other professional experience includes work in Latin America, Europe,
Asia and Africa, and the Middle East with regional tourism strategies, national
park management plans, tourism assessment and feasibility studies, creation of
regional tourism organizations, and the development of practical tourism marketing-
promotional strategies. Many of these activities involved the push and pull of
economic development and environmental and cultural impacts. He has worked
on issues of visitor limits in fragile areas and in linking tourism benefits to local
communities with the goal to aid protection and conservation efforts.

Martina Shakya Dr Martina Shakya is senior research fellow at the Institute

of Development Research and Development Policy at Ruhr University Bochum
(RUB), Germany. She holds a master’s degree in geography, anthropology, and
political science from Münster University (1996), received postgraduate training
in international development at the German Development Institute (GDI, 1998),
and a doctorate in human geography (2009) from RUB. She has extensive practical
work and research experience in various parts of the developing world and worked
with government and nongovernment organizations in Nepal and South Africa as an
advisor for sustainable tourism development.

Susan Snyman Susan Snyman holds a PhD (economics) from the University
of Cape Town (UCT). Having completed PhD coursework at the University of
Goteborg in Sweden, the focus of her PhD research was on the socioeconomic
impact of high-end ecotourism in remote, rural communities adjacent to protected
areas, based on over 1800 community interviews in six southern African countries.
Sue has 15 years of experience in the ecotourism industry in southern Africa and
is now the Group Community Development and Culture manager for Wilderness
Safaris, as well as the regional director of Children in the Wilderness. Other
About the Authors xix

positions include vice-chair of the IUCN WCPA Tourism and Protected Areas
Specialist Groups and a research fellow at the Environmental Policy Research Unit
at UCT.

David Weaver David Weaver is professor of tourism research at Griffith Univer-

sity, Australia, and has published more than 120 journal articles, book chapters,
and books. He maintains an active research agenda in sustainable destination
management, ecotourism, and resident perceptions of tourism. Professor Weaver
has contributed extensively to leading journals, and his widely adopted textbooks
include Ecotourism (Wiley Australia), Encyclopedia of Ecotourism (CABI), and
Sustainable Tourism: Theory and Practice (Taylor & Francis). He is a fellow of the
International Academy for the Study of Tourism and has delivered numerous invited
keynote addresses around the world on innovative tourism topics.
 Part I
Foundations
Chapter 1
Sustainable Tourism in an Emerging World
of Complexity and Turbulence

Stephen F. McCool

Abstract The world is changing and so too are our notions of sustainability,
sustainable development and sustainable tourism. After pointing out how a small
Montana community has changed over the last 125 years or so, I raise fundamental
questions about what it means to be sustainable, and how limited conventional
definitions of sustainable tourism are in the complex, fast changing world of the
twenty-first century. And, as I note, these questions also face small rural commu-
nities in developing regions of the world. Rising complexity leads to accelerating
uncertainty requiring us to rethink the mental models we use to survive in the world,
and that is what this book is about—reframing conventional notions of sustainable
tourism to something more useful and appropriate.

Keywords Systems thinking • Whitefish • Resilience • Complexity • Mental

models

1.1 Whitefish, Montana: A Story of Sustainability?

In the late nineteenth century in northwestern Montana, a new town arose in what
was then what we would call now wilderness. The town was situated in a broad and
forested valley, containing lakes and numerous streams and rivers. To the east rose
the Rocky Mountains and the Continental Divide. To the west, travelers would find
more forests and streams, but deep gorges and spectacular mountains intervened
before they gained the gentler and more open setting of the Columbia Basin.
The town was founded initially on fur trading and then on its access to timber
resources. Sawmills popped up there to process the timber needed to build farms
and homes and industry in western Montana. Shortly after, the Great Northern
Railway was built, and because of its strategic location, expanse of flat land and
other features, the town became a division point for the railroad, creating jobs and

S.F. McCool ()

University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 3

S.F. McCool, K. Bosak (eds.), Reframing Sustainable Tourism,
Environmental Challenges and Solutions 2, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-7209-9_1
4 S.F. McCool

employment for the new community. For many decades, because of the seemingly
inexhaustible supply of timber and demand for goods to be transported, the railroad
and lumber provided the economic foundation for this community. For several years,
it was known, appropriately, as Stumptown, and then, in the early twentieth century,
its name was changed to Whitefish. While railroad, logging and mill work could
be dangerous occupations, they paid good wages and the industry attracted many
workers and their families to the Whitefish area and it prospered. Although the
population of the town waxed and waned over the years in response to the regional
and national economic situation, the diverse economic base enabled it to “roll” with
these changes. In the face of change, Whitefish persisted and avoided the decline
that characterized many of its sister communities in the Rocky Mountains.
In the late 1940s, the town’s economic base began to diversify. Several visionary
individuals started a ski resort just north of town. For several decades, the ski
area grew, but slowly, periodically adding ski runs, lodges, accommodations and
associated amenities. And in the 1960s, a large scale aluminum processing plant
was built just to the east of town in the nearby community of Columbia Heights.
Large amounts of power, generated by the Hungry Horse dam which flooded the
south fork of the Flathead River valley about 20 miles to the east, provided low cost
energy. The plant furthered the manufacturing dependency of the community.
In the 1970s, as timber harvest volumes increased on the national forests
surrounding Whitefish, criticisms and legal challenges to the Forest Service manage-
ment regime increased. Expressions of public concern grew in scope and intensity;
recreation and wilderness, esthetic quality, habitat for endangered species such as
the grizzly bear and a host of other values were increasingly identified as key outputs
of national forests, outputs that were often threatened by high levels of timber
harvesting. The allowable cut on the surrounding Flathead National Forest dropped
dramatically in the mid 1980s, and with this came a decline in the predictability
of timber supplies, which had served as an underlying assumption of the Whitefish
and Flathead Valley economy. Mills increasingly competed with each other, and for
several years, whole logs were shipped to Japan for processing, and then returned
to the U.S. as plywood. In a sense, this was a fortunate, for in the mid 1980s, the
timber industry began to decline. Harvestable volumes on the surrounding Flathead
National Forest were initially limited, and then experienced declines to less than
10 % of its historical average.
In the 1980s, however, as the Canadian dollar dropped in value and as timber
processing became increasingly tenuous, the ski area grew dramatically, and as
other destination areas in the US, it expanded to include condos, trophy homes
and more opportunities for employment. To many, the ski resort represented a
dramatic change, not only in source of employment and income, but quality of
life, culture and tradition. The loss of resource-based jobs and the corresponding
increase in service jobs, primarily in the tourism sector was a radical transformation
for the community. The ski-area presaged golf courses, resorts, gated communities,
celebrities and tall, skinny lattes. RVs had replaced logging trucks, cowboy hats over
corked boots, and skis rather than chain saws.
Over a century after the forests were cleared for the townsite, Whitefish still
exists. But its history and evolution is the story of hundreds of small towns and
1 Sustainable Tourism in an Emerging World of Complexity and Turbulence 5

villages in the Pacific Northwest, if not in detail, then in general outline: devel-
opment of resource commodity based industries—agriculture, range, timber and
mining—a long period of dependency on those industries, followed by a decline—
sometimes gradual, sometimes precipitous. Many communities, like Whitefish,
survived this period through fundamental restructuring of their economic base,
primarily by developing a vibrant tourism industry. Many other communities did
not survive, and exist only in the memories of their former residents and in photos
located in state historical society archives. And still many others remain in a languid,
stagnant condition, generally characterized by low incomes, high average age of
residents, lack of opportunity for children and significant outmigration.
While the architectural theme of contemporary downtown Whitefish reflects its
early history and timber influence, there is a question of whether Whitefish can
be depicted as a sustainable community. Given the 100 plus years of its existence,
how could one really question whether the community has been sustained? But
what does it mean, conceptually and practically, to be a sustainable community?
Given the importance of recreation in the recent history of Whitefish, can that
development be termed “sustainable tourism”? If so, what has tourism sustained?
Have residents seen incomes grow, the environment preserved, the community
become more vibrant, opportunities enhanced? Are nearby natural sites, such as
Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness, even the Flathead National
Forest, more capably and sustainably managed? Is Whitefish a safer place to live,
work, and raise one’s children? What role has tourism played in these changes?
Could we make tourism more effective in dealing with crime, unemployment and
access to education and health care? If so, how? Is there even a connection? And
what about the future—what role would tourism play in the face of climate changes
that might impact snow skiing opportunities, cause the glaciers in Glacier National
Park to disappear, or impact the region’s outstanding cold water fisheries—all being
the foundation for Whitefish’s twenty-first century tourism industry.
The story of Whitefish, is then very revealing in that it illustrates the changes in
relationships between society and the environment. As our awareness, sensitivity,
and knowledge of society-environment links grow, we confront fundamental ques-
tions about what futures face us and our children. Does the history of Whitefish
reveal a community that has sustained itself over the last century? Are choices
broader or more constrained than in the past? What would it mean to answer in
the affirmative or the negative? Given the dramatic nature of social and economic
change that will inevitably come, will Whitefish be sustainable in the future?
In thinking about such meta questions, we confront numerous corollary ques-
tions; e.g., what is and/or should be the relationship of Whitefish to external
economic forces? How might Whitefish best buffer itself from the inevitable, but
unknown events of the future to ensure its sustainability? How adequately have
issues such as inequities in income distribution, access to public decision-making, or
environmental impacts been resolved; how should they be addressed in the future?
How have decisions taken—locally or nationally, intentional or unintentional—
affected quality of life and for whom? Who has had access to, and influence upon,
these decisions? These are difficult, but unavoidable questions; if we fail to address
them explicitly, we risk negative outcomes.
6 S.F. McCool

The purpose in illustrating Whitefish has been to indicate both the complexity
and ambiguity of the concept of sustainability, and as we shall see later, sustainable
development. While we can view sustainable tourism as a kind of marketing and
promotional device, playing on genuine concerns for environmental and social
impacts, can the concept be reframed in ways useful for twenty-first century
challenges and opportunities?
These questions are as important for the people of Maguary village situated
alongside the Tapajos River in the lower Amazon basin of Brazil as they are for
residents of Whitefish. The ribeirinhos (river people) of Maguary are surrounded
by the Tapajos National Forest and bounded by the river. They are isolated and
buffered by these outstanding natural resources, for just outside the National Forest,
conversion of Amazonian rain forest to soybean fields is nearly complete, generating
a whole new combination of industry and business. And while this new economic
development may provide jobs and revenue for the small village, they may also
threaten its quality of life. As one villager told me “the national forest protects our
daughters and village” from the negative consequences of development. And yet,
the ribeirinhos see sensitive, small scale tourism as a livelihood to keep their village
the way they want it. For them, sustainable tourism is more than livelihood though,
it helps buffer their way of life from modern development.

1.2 A Growing Sense of Unease

Whitefish and Maguary are as far apart socially, politically, environmentally and
economically as two communities can be, and yet they bear the same concerns
and are confronted with a similar sense of unease about their futures. In recent
years, there has been an increasing suspicion that the actions of society—laws,
technology, politics, human behavior, conflict, consumption, development—lead
to unprecedented levels of turbulence, chaos and disorder. Not only do everyday
people carry anxieties that in the headlong rush to adopt new technology, develop an
industrial base or capture the money wealthy tourists are all too willing to part with,
that important values, qualities and resources are being irretrievably lost, but there
seems to be accelerating apprehensions we may be irretrievably impacting resources
and values. Are we eroding the very capital upon which society is founded—
ecological processes, structures and components—that if our behavior is continued
will deprive future generations of any positive legacy?
In the face of such difficult and troubling questions, many have turned to the
concept of sustainability as the light to show a pathway to the future. At the core
of this concept is the belief that the actions of present-day societies adversely and
unacceptably alter the fundamental life support systems upon which cultures depend
and the moral norm that the present generation should not adversely affect the
choices and options of future generations. Believing both in the unacceptably of
human-induced impacts and the morality of leaving choices to our children and
grandchildren fuel the drive toward sustainability and as a result, the sustainable
tourism.
1 Sustainable Tourism in an Emerging World of Complexity and Turbulence 7

1.3 Why Study Sustainability and Sustainable Tourism?

There is great concern that the legacy our societies are leaving future generations is
not one they would enjoy, or even the one we have received from our predecessors,
that choices are more limited, that problems and challenges constrain what they will
be able to do, and that opportunities for improving one’s lot are more constrained
than ever. To sustain something means that we provide the future with at least
a range of choice equal to or more than what we have experienced. Increasing
biophysical impacts of human activity such as climate change and loss of biological
diversity may lead to fewer options and less opportunity. Thinking in terms of
sustainability many people propose will help stem these losses and leave a legacy of
choice and environmental quality to the future.
However, sustainability, sustainable development and sustainable tourism are
concepts that while perhaps easily understood, at least in the underlying motivation,
are much more challenging to apply. What is sustainable to whom for what reason
may vary from group to group, person to person, society to society. It is not a matter
of simply practicing conservation as Butler (2013) argued. What is conservation
and what is sustainability are socially complex questions that defy simple minded
answers inappropriate for the turbulence of the twenty-first century.
Underlying notions of sustainability are important human values such as equity,
trust, ownership, ethics, empathy and so on. Sustainability is as much about our
values as it is about the technology and expertise needed to apply those values.
To practice sustainability that is real and not an illusion means we need a better
understanding of what it is we seek and more critical examination of what it is
we mean. And, given that concepts vary over time and space, change in relation to
new information, and evolve as we gain wisdom, there is always the question of
appropriateness of current paradigms.
So, we need to ask ourselves questions about sustainability, sustainable develop-
ment and sustainable tourism. We need to know what these concepts mean, what
challenges exist in their application, and how they might be changed in response to
changing conditions and social preferences. That is what this book is about.

1.4 Emerging Challenges in a World of Complexity, Change

and Uncertainty

The world of the twenty-first century is significantly different from the world in
which the concept of sustainable tourism originally emerged. First, it is much more
globalized, with connections and interactions occurring over time and space at a
pace that is difficult to understand and appreciate. Rapidly changing technology has
shifted how people interact, how frequently and how much in depth. For example,
Twitter has become a 140 character blitz of social change—even of rebellion—
but vulnerable to hacking, misinformation and rumor. The world wide web puts
8 S.F. McCool

information at people’s finger tips, meaning that a small dude ranch in the Rocky
Mountains of Montana competes with a game lodge in South Africa for clients.
Second, rising interest in indigenosity leads to smaller units of governance—while
protecting cultural heritage—but increasing transaction costs. Terrorism was of
limited significance in the 1980s, but now has risen to a major violent force affecting
safety and security across the globe. Our knowledge about how things work has
grown dramatically with the rise of systems thinking popularized by authors such as
Peter Senge, John Sterman, and Donella Meadows. This provides us with alternative
frameworks to consider how we can enhance the human condition.
We recognize, more so than in the early 1990s that the implicit assumptions we
hold about the world influence our behavior. The rise of systems thinking1 (see
Senge 1990 for example) together with the recognition that the mental models we
carry around influence our behavior (and even the evidence we may see in scientific
exploration) and the increasingly acrimonious debate about tourism development
suggest that a critical examination of sustainable tourism concept is in order. Mental
models are our simplified representations of reality that help us work through
the complexities of not only everyday living but also the grueling problems of
development, poverty alleviation and environmental protection. Mental models are
frequently influenced by our successes of the past, and so strongly held they serve
as barriers to seeing evidence that challenges those representations.
Conventional sustainable tourism mental models of the late twentieth century
were constructed out of modernist and postmodernist assumptions that the world
is predictable, linear, ultimately understandable and basically stable (see Kohl and
McCool 2016 for a comprehensive discussion of these assumptions and their impact
on planning for tourism in protected areas). This view of the world resulted in
complex problems being reduced to “digestable” parts, with “solutions” to each
component developed. After solutions for each problem component were solved,
then components were put back together for a more “comprehensive” solution.
These solutions often become the panaceas Ostrom (2007) critiqued in her insightful
essay “Sustainable Social-Ecological Systems: An Impossibility?”
This reductionism produced policies and development activity that focus on
interventions in communities in one particular sector—tourism in this case—
with little understanding of the broader scale consequences, both positive and
negative, resulting. For example, tourism interventions have been criticized as
insensitive to indigenous community cultural norms and values, in other cases as
producing low quality jobs, and in still others leading to unacceptable environmental
impacts. Communities—even small ones—are incredibly diverse, in terms of norms,
affluence, political power, access to education and health care, type of job and so on.
Focusing on tourism as an intervention without a broad understanding of the entire
system will likely lead to some stresses and strains that one could argue negate the
benefit of enhanced income for some. In this sense, the solution, sustainable tourism,

1
Loosely defined here as the study of how parts of the whole influence each other.
1 Sustainable Tourism in an Emerging World of Complexity and Turbulence 9

becomes the problem. We must be careful, in a more general sense that the solutions
we implement today do not become the problems we must solve in the future.
Further, it is unclear how one would measure and assess whether a sustainable
tourism initiative was successful and why: interventions often display confusion
between inputs and outcomes, and the spatial, temporal and social-organizational
scales are often unstated at which interventions are aimed often go unstated as
well as not being subject to monitoring. Implementing an intervention might look
good for a government program or to an NGO’s donors, but how do we know
it worked? For whom did it work? Who benefited? Who did not? Why? Further,
a focus on sustainable tourism as small scale businesses or community tourism
initiatives ignores both the idea of reducing the negative consequences of all tourism
in general and how tourism development integrates into the larger economy of a
village or region. In one sense, the goal of sustainable tourism has been to ensure
economic stability, particularly at the community level—a goal difficult to achieve
in a world of globalized financial institutions and processes.
Overly simplistic models and panaceas—such as finding the intersection of
ecological sensitivity, economic feasibility and cultural acceptability—are decep-
tive. It is unlikely that economic, environmental and social acceptability concerns
will be valued equally in sustainability discussions by different groups. How do
constituencies differ in their preferences? Why? What about constituencies not
yet alive—those generations the Brundtland Commission speaks to? Economic
feasibility is so dependent on short-term market and financial conditions as to be
counter to the long-term notion of sustainability as intergenerational equity. Social
acceptability varies significantly across cultures and even within small communities,
so we are confronted with the question of: acceptable for whom? There are no clear,
technically based guidelines for answering this question. Dryzek (1987) argues in
this context that social choices must be first ecologically rational, for if we lose
the environmental basis for human life, there is no future for other considerations.
One could argue that the illusion of achieving sustainability (through excessively
reductionist approaches) may be its most fundamental obstacle.
We have now begun to realize that a new set of assumptions about the world
would advance our opportunities to learn and produce insights more beneficial
to tourism decision-making. First, we understand that the world is dynamically
complex, that is, the world changes in a non-linear rather than incremental manner,
that small changes in one variable may lead to large changes in another. Second,
for all practical purposes, the world is impossible to completely understand, that
is, there will never be enough data or science to completely explain the causes and
consequences of events, patterns and structures. Third, the world is ever-changing,
by this we mean that we can always expect surprises, that because knowledge is
tentative and incomplete, unpredicted consequences will likely arise in places and at
times we are least likely to expect. Finally, the world is connected as a giant complex
adaptive social-ecological system, that numerous drivers and forces acting at the
global level influence the effectiveness, usefulness and appropriateness of economic
development actions at the local level. Such drivers include changing models of
governance, population dynamics (e.g., growth, aging, migration), technological
10 S.F. McCool

advancement, economic restructuring, climate change, and so on (see Kohl and

McCool for more in-depth discussion on these assumptions).
Such systems are comprised of various actors, actions, resources, relationships
and influences (Andereis and others 2004)2; they are subject to a variety of internally
and exogenously induced perturbations; and they contain properties characterizing
the whole in addition to their constituent parts. Relationships between causes and
consequences are often mediated by a number of linkages, which means that
cause-effect relationships are loosely rather than tightly coupled. Temporal delays
between actions and effects may be long: actions taken by an entity may lead
to effects thousands of kilometers distant. Interactions among different scales are
typical. Problems apparently “solved” in one location may be simply, and sometimes
carelessly, displaced to some other place, sometimes with less capacity to address
those problems.
A systems lens holds a number of consequences, most notably an improved
understanding of the notion of uncertainty; that the future is no longer a linear
progression of the past; that use of systems thinking, particularly conceptualizing
tourism as one component of a social ecological system, helps managers, prac-
titioners and academics think more holistically about tourism; and that interests,
while they vie and compete for attention and resources, may be better off building
linkages, partnerships and relational capital (Nkhata et al. 2008) to secure progress
in the face of contention, complexity, uncertainty and change.
Complex social-ecological systems are also characterized as containing emergent
properties—attributes of the whole which cannot be predicted from understanding
the parts. Just as an understanding of the biology of brain cells does not predict
personality of a person, developing new and small tourism businesses may not
predict the sustainability of the system as a whole or its ability to adapt to the
inherent turbulence of twenty-first century earth. In this sense, assumptions about
the homogeneity of small villages implicit in many development initiatives are often
exposed by rancor, jealousies and conflict introduced by the perceived inequities in
resulting incomes and opportunities.
These and many other changes mean that the world is turbulent and uncertain,
with both challenges and opportunities abundant, but often difficult to understand.
At the time the concept of sustainable tourism evolved, such turbulence and
uncertainty was generally not recognized, and so sustainable tourism was conceived
of something that was relatively simple to implement: just find the convergence
of the socially acceptable, ecologically viable and economically feasible and ta da,
sustainable tourism! We now know that such a conceptualization is overly simplistic,
provides an illusion that finding this intersection can be done easily and hides
important questions that are mainly value laden. The twenty-first century requires
new ways of thinking to make progress, drive sustainable tourism toward more

2
A social-ecological system is defined by Andereis et al. as “an ecological system intricately linked
with and affected by one or more social systems.”
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Gallagher, hyvänsävyinen päällikkö, saanut asettumaan eikä edes
Jimmy Dillihunt, kekseliäs keittäjä, kaunopuheisilla kuvauksillaan
uhkeasta kakusta, jonka hän lupasi heille valmistaa huomiseksi, niin
että se olisi rusinoista paksu ja höyryisi kuumasta maustetusta
liemestä.

Pojat halusivat näet tuoretta lihaa. He olivat kuin sairaita, kun oli
pitänyt yhtä mittaa syödä vain suolaista sianlihaa, suolattua
raavaanlihaa ja taas suolaista sianlihaa. He olivat odottaneet jouluksi
hanhenpaistia, vieläpä oikein runsaasti. Jollei hanhenpaistia, niin
ainakin tuoretta raavaanlihaa, punaista ja mehukasta, ja ruskeata
kastiketta niin runsaasti, että heidän perunansa saisivat siinä uida.

Ja nyt heille aiottiinkin antaa sianlihaa!

Siitä ei nähtävästi ollut pelastusta. Pikku Pat Nolan puki sanoiksi

koko joukkueen tunteet ärähtäessään:

"En minä uskonnollisten epäilysten takia vihaa sikaa, vaan syynä

on se, että olen syönyt sitä, kunnes mahani vonkuu!"

Tähän kiusaan ei ollut syynä päällikkö eikä Jimmy Dillihuntkaan.

Aivan odottamaton lumentulo, myrsky myrskyn jälkeen, lumipyry
toisensa perästä, oli ajanut pitkän metsätien niin tukkoon, että
kaukaisista siirtoloista ei voinut saada uusia ruokavaroja. Milloin
uutta muonaa ‒ tuoretta lihaa ja vihanneksia, jotka varjelevat
puunhakkuuleirin joukkojen terveyttä ja mielialaa ‒ olisi
odotettavissa, sitä ei kukaan osannut sanoa.

Pahaksi onneksi oli ne suuret järvitaimenet, joita ennen oli ollut

parvittain Kahden järven lammessa, viime kalastuskautena
hävittänyt muuan dynamiitilla saalistanut salajoukkue. Ja kaiken
päälliseksi tuntuivat hirvi ja poro olevan kiinni askareissa, jotka
pidättivät ne jossakin muualla. Viimeksi kuluneina neljänä tai viitenä
päivänä oli miehistä kaksi alituiseen ollut jännittävässä hirvien ja
porojen etsinnässä tai haeskelemassa jonkun talviuntaan nukkuvan
karhun kätkettyä pesää. Mutta he eivät olleet saaliikseen saaneet
edes ainokaista laihaa kaniinia.

Tänä iltapäivänä miehet olivat kaikki päättäneet työn varhain,

paremmin viettääkseen jouluaattoa ja saattaakseen mukavammin
antautua oikeutetun nurkumisensa valtaan. Kokoontuneina
hehkuvan kamiinan ympärille tai loikoillen mukavasti lavitsoillaan he
saattoivat käyttää parhaan taitonsa päällikön, Tim Gallagherin,
haukkumiseen tai ahkeran ja kiusaantuneen Jimmy Dillihuntin
härnäämiseen.

Tämä viimeksimainittu ajankulu tuotti jonkinlaista helpotusta

heidän tunteilleen. Oli todellakin hauskaa nähdä, kuinka Jimmy
kiihtyi leipoessaan, kunnes nosti jauhoiset kasvonsa ja syyti karkeita
haukkumasanoja heidän esi-isistään tai molemmat taikinaiset kädet
nyrkkiin puristettuina päänsä yläpuolella hyppi ylös ja alas ja haastoi
jokaista piinaajaansa veriseen taisteluun. Koska Jimmy oli sekä
ensiluokkainen painija että enemmänkin kuin ensiluokkainen keittäjä,
torjuttiin nämä tappelut aina yhdennentoista hetken
anteeksipyynnöillä, sillä tällainen keittäjä ei saanut joutua mihinkään
vahingoittumisen vaaraan.

Päällikkö puolestaan ei koskaan suuttunut kahdesta perin hyvästä

syystä. Ensinnäkin hän oli hyväluontoinen ja mielellään antoi poikien
hiukan huvitella omallakin kustannuksellaan; toiseksi ei kukaan
tahtonut, että hän suuttuisi. Laajalle levinnyt ja syvälle juurtunut
vakaumus oli, että jos Tim Gallagher todella menettäisi
mielenmalttinsa, tulisi se jollekulle olemaan aika epämiellyttävää,
eikä se "joku" olisi Tim.

Sentähden, milloin poikien haukkumiset alkoivat kiusoittaa

päällikköä (eikä se tapahtunut usein), kävivät hänen leveät,
tuulenpieksemät, rosoiset kasvonsa vakaviksi, ja heti pitkän Eph
Babcockinkin, Androscogginin tukkilaisen, terävä pila viisaasti kadotti
kaiken kärkensä. Vaikka Tim Gallagherin arvo näytti hoippuvan
kuinkakin täpärällä, riitti sen palauttamiseksi, että hän vain kävi
totisen näköiseksi.

Tänä jouluaaton iltapäivänä, vaikka miehet olivatkin palanneet

asuntoonsa siellä purkaakseen tyytymättömyyttään, huomasivat he
pian, että nuriseminen ja Jimmyn kiusoittelukin olivat kadottaneet
makunsa. Pitkä Eph ja Evan Morgan, päivän metsämiehet, olivat
tulleet takaisin tyhjin käsin. Jokainen vaipui alakuloisuuden valtaan.
He alkoivat puhella, mitä haluaisivat, jos Tim Gallagher ei olisi heitä
saattanut tähän pulaan ja jos heillä olisi keittäjä, joka osaisi erottaa
päänsä taikinapallosta.

"Hiiteen kakkuinesi, Jimmy!" sanoi Eph. "Anna meille vaikka

hieman sammakonpaistia!"

"Vasten kuonoasi saat!" vastasi Jimmy lyhyesti.

"Minä muistelen", murahti Pat Nolan kaihomielisellä äänellä,

"keitettyä kalkkunaa, joka oli sipuleilla ja ostereilla täytetty;
semmoista me kerran söimme Flahertyn luona Frederictonissa.
Luullakseni en koskaan enää saa sellaista maistaa."

Tämän kuvauksen kuultuaan jokainen huokasi Tantaluksen

tuskissa. Yksin päällikkökin ärähti:
 "No, lopeta jo, Pat!"

"Pojat", mutisi Evan Morgan silmissään hurmaantunut katse,

varmaankin sellainen, millä hänen walesilaiset esi-isänsä kuuntelivat
harppua Harlechin tornien juurella, "pojat, oletteko koskaan, kukaan
teistä, syöneet hyvää, mehukasta karhunpaistia ‒ karhua, joka on
mustikoilla lihotettu?"

"Eikös vain olekin?" ärähti Sam Oulton lavitsaltaan äänellä, jonka

muistojen kidutus teki häijynilkiseksi.

"No, ole niin hyvä, Sammy!" puhua venytteli pitkä

androscogginilainen. "Ripusta pieni sukkasi esille tänä iltana. Jos se
ei ole liian likainen, ehkä joulupukki ohikulkiessaan pudottaa siihen
sinulle palasen karhua."

Kookas päällikkö, joka kylmäkiskoisena loikoili penkillä kamiinan

luona, nousi äkkiä suoraksi istumaan. Gallagherilla oli tarkka korva,
eikä hän ollut kuunnellut miestensä tyhjää suunsoittoa.

"Kuulkaas tuota, pojat!" sanoi hän. "Joku on tulossa!"

Raskaat askeleet, mutta kompastelevat ja epävarmat, natisivat

lumessa juuri oven ulkopuolella.

Ennenkuulumatonta oli, että ainoakaan vieras, yksinäinen

jalankulkija, löytäisi tähän vuodenaikaan näin syrjäiseen ja
eristettyyn leiriin kuin tämä Gallagherin leiri oli. Puunhakkaajat ovat
enimmäkseen taikauskoisia. He ajattelivat heti peikkoja ja haltioita.
Ihoa värisytti heidän karkeilla poskillaankin, ja kuolonhiljaisuus
valtasi majan.
 Mutta Eph Babcock oli ennen kaikkea utelias. Vaikka hän ei ollut
taikauskosta vapaa, oli hän kuitenkin valmis vaihteen vuoksi
toivottamaan tervetulleeksi itse Beelsebubin. Hän harppasi ovelle.
Pat Nolanin oli jo kielellä huudahtaa: "varo itseäsi!" mutta pidätti
itsensä.

Eph lennätti oven selkoselälleen.

Seuraavana hetkenä hän hyppäsi taaksepäin päästäen

pelästyneen kirouksen ja juoksi pyssyänsä hakemaan, mikä seisoi
hänen lavitsaansa vasten aivan päällikön istuinpaikan takana.

Suoraan keskelle huonetta, räpytellen silmiään lampunvalossa

mutta säikkymättä tuota ihmiskasvojen paljoutta, tulla kompuroi
tavattoman iso musta karhu.

Päästyään pitkän pöydän päähän tuo hämmästystä herättävä

vieras kohosi takajaloilleen ja seisoi siinä yhtä mahtavana kuin itse
Tim Gallagher, suunnattoman isot karvaiset käpälät siivosti
painettuina valtavaa rintaa vasten. Se katseli rukoilevasti
ympärilleen, sitten alkoi nuuskia äänekkäästi kuin höyrykone, kun se
veti sieraimiinsa monenlaisia salaperäisiä, mutta aika miellyttäviä
tuoksuja höyryävästä ilmasta.

Jimmy Dillihunt oli siepannut paistiveitsensä ja hypännyt notkeasti

uunin taa. Hän tunsi, että keittäjät ovat kallisarvoisia. Miehistä muut
‒ ei pelästyneinä tietenkään, vaan hämillään, kun heidän
keskuuteensa ilmestyi äkkiä aivan vieras ‒ olivat enemmän tai
vähemmän täydellisesti poistaneet itsensä toistaiseksi, kainosti
luiskahtaen makuupaikkoihinsa. Kaikki paitsi Evan Morgan. Hänen
lavitsansa ei ollut likellä, joten hän seisoi hyvin suorana ja
kunnioittavana ja syrjään vetäytyneenä lähimmässä nurkassa ‒
siinä, joka oli lähinnä häntä eikä karhua. Kirveet olivat kaikki ulkona.
Ja ainoa pyssy, paitsi Eph Babcockin omistamaa, seisoi oven
vieressä, juuri karhun takana. Evan Morgan silmäili sitä ikävöiden,
mutta se näytti hänen mielestään olevan hyvin kaukana. Vain
päällikkö näytti olevan aivan hämmentymätön. Hän istui paikoillaan
ja katseli levollisesti vierasta.

Noin kymmenkunnan sekuntia karhu seisoi siinä liikkumatta

näyttäen jännittyneille katseille isommalta kuin norsu. Hiljaisuus oli
niin täydellinen, että hiiren rapina katossa kuului pelottavan
äänekkäältä. Hetken aikaa karhu näytti olevan kummastunut. Sitten
sen silmiin osui iso läkkivati ihan sen kohdalla pöydällä. Vati oli kaksi
miuuuttia varemmin ollut täynnä höyryäviä, siirapissa lionneita,
paistetuita papuja, jotka Jimmy Dillihunt juuri oli tyhjentänyt toiseen
säiliöön. Sen tahmeassa sisäpinnassa oli säilynyt houkutteleva
tuoksu yhdessä monen pavun kanssa.

Innokkaasti, vaikka sentään jonkun verran arkaillen, karhu ojensi

mahtavan käpälän, veti vadin puoleensa ja alkoi nälkäisesti nuolla
sen sisustaa saaden aikaan kovin sopimatonta ääntä. Eph Babcock
oli sillä välin saanut käsiinsä pyssynsä, kääntyi ympäri ja kohotti sen
olkaansa vasten. Mutta ennenkuin hän sai painettua liipaisinta, laski
raskas käsi hänen käsivarrelleen.

"Seis! Odota!" komensi päällikkö hiljaisella, mutta hyvin jyrkällä

äänellä. Hän käsitti, että huoneen suljettu tila oli huono paikka, missä
sopisi suorittaa temmellys elämästä ja kuolemasta.

Babcock pysähtyi ja odotti, vaikka hänen mielestään päällikön oli

hullua niin sanoa. Hän laski pyssynsä, vilkaisi piippuun ja virnisti
kömpelösti.
 "Ei se ole ladattukaan!" mutisi hän kuin anteeksi pyytäen, vaikkei
sanonut, karhultako vai päälliköltä hän pyysi anteeksi.

"Ei nyt ole aika menettää semmoista hyvää, rasvaista, mehukasta

karhunpaistia, josta Evan puhui, Tim!" vastusteli Sam Oultonin
karkea ääni lymypaikastaan.

Mutta makuusijoilta kohosi varovasti tukahutettu huokaus, kun

kaikki käsittivät Eph Babcockin pulmallisen aseman. Hänellä ei ollut
patruunia. Ja jokainen saattoi nähdä, missä patruunat olivat.
Molemmat vyöt riippuivat hyvin täytettyinä naulassa oven luona.

Oultonin vastalauseeseen ei päällikkö virkkanut mitään. Hän oli

nähtävästi liiaksi kiintynyt karhuun huomatakseen Samia. Useimmat
miehet olivat ihan haljeta ehdotuksista, kuinka joku toinen voisi ottaa
nuo patruunat ojentaakseen ne sitten Eph Babcockille. Mutta ei
ainoatakaan näistä epäilemättä erinomaisista suunnitelmista pantu
täytäntöön, sillä juuri tällä hetkellä vieraan käytös muuttui niin
eriskummaiseksi, että jokikinen unohti, mitä oli aikonut sanoa.

Nuoltuaan astian tyhjäksi karhu katsahti ympärilleen ja ulisi.

Selvää oli, että se piti pavuista ja tahtoi lisää. Sillä näytti olevan hyvin
vaatimaton, kodikas maku, ja monelta katselijalta pääsi pitkä
helpotuksen huokaus.

Karhu vaihteli rauhattomasti toiselta isolta jalalta toiselle ja sitten,

tarttuen molemmilla etukäpälillään vatiin, kääntyi ja marssi sitä
kantaen suoraan Jimmy Dillihuntin luo. Se oli liikuttava rukous, mutta
Jimmy puolestaan ei ensinkään näyttänyt sitä ymmärtävän.
Heiluttaen paistiveistään hurjana vastalauseena sen johdosta, että
hänet näin valittiin tovereittensa joukosta, hän syöksyi uunin takaa ja
pääsi vimmatulla loikkauksella nurkkaan Evan Morganin seuraan.
Evan, joka jo alkoi malttaa mieltänsä, murahti vailla kaikkea
myötätuntoa: "Minne sinulla on semmoinen hätä, Jimmy?" Mutta
Jimmy ei suvainnut vastata.

Kun karhu näin pettyi nähdessään sen, jolta se nähtävästi oli

odottanut niin paljon, äkkiä poistuvan, pudotti se perin tyhjän vatinsa
hellalle. Kova rämähdys säikäytti sitä, ja se astui notkeasti syrjään
hyppäyksellä, aivan kuin tyttö, joka on ollut astumaisillaan lätäkköön.
Silloin se huomasi suuren purkin papuja hellan etupuolella, minne
Jimmy oli ne pannut lämpiämään. Ne vasta hyvältä haisivat!
Tyytyväisesti ulvahtaen se hotkaisi niitä suunsa täyteen.

Mutta pavut, mallikelpoisia vihanneksia kun ovat, olivat

suorittaneet tehtävänsä hyvin. Ne olivat kuumenneet. Karhu
hämmästyi ja tuskaantui tuntiessaan, kuinka kuumia ne olivat.
Sulkien tiukasti silmänsä ja liikutellen hyvin nopeasti leukojaan se
koetti jatkaa syömistään. Mutta siitä tuli karhulle liian kova urakka.
Pahasti karjahtaen se sylki ne lattialle ja sitten, surkeasti hieroen
kuonoaan ensin toisella isolla käpälällä ja sitten toisella, loi
säälittävän katseen ympärilleen. Tämä katse osui Pat Nolanin
silmiin. Lämminsydämisen pikku irlantilaisen mielestä se oli täynnä
nuhdetta.

"Ihan varmasti se ei ole minun syyni, poikaseni!" murahti Pat

hellän osanoton äänellä. "Sehän oli Jimmyn häijyä koirankuria.
Hänen olisi pitänyt varoittaa sinua ajoissa."

Patin äänessä lienee ollut jotakin, mikä antoi karhun aavistaa, että
täältä käsin se löytäisi myötätuntoa, jota tähän asti oli puuttunut
vastaanotosta. Epäröiden, vaikkakaan ei toivoa vailla, se hitaasti
kompuroi yli huoneen Nolanin makuusijaa kohti.
 "Enkös jo sanonut, etten minä sitä tehnyt!" huusi Nolan kiihkeästi.
"Voi, Mooseksen äiti, eikö teistä pojista kukaan osaa tehdä mitään,
millä kääntäisi sen huomion muualle?"

"Heilautappa tänne tuo pyssy, Eph!" tokaisi Sam Oulton, joka oli
vimmatusti etsiskellyt makuulavansa takaa. "Minä löysin patruunia."

Päällikkö oli puuttumaisillaan asiaan ja samoin Evan Morgan, joka

tiesi karhuista enemmän kuin muut puunhakkaajat, mutta Eph
Babcock oli jo luovuttanut pyssyn, joka kulki nopeasti epätoivoisesta
kädestä toiseen Oultonin lavitsaa kohti. Mutta karhu oli huomannut
sen ja hyökkäsi vinhasti eteenpäin, samalla kun kauhistuneita
kirosanoja sateli ympärillä. Juuri kun pyssy saavutti Oultonin
makuusijan ja Oulton ojensi kätensä sen siepatakseen, saapui
karhukin paikalle. Se oli Oultonia nopeampi. Pistäen esille
suunnattoman mustan käpälän, se tempasi pyssyn. Oulton hävisi
vuoteeseensa kuin kilpikonnan pää kuoren alle. Karhu nosti
voitonriemuisena pyssyn olalleen ja alkoi vakavasti nostella jalkojaan
marssin tahdissa.

"Hyvä, ettet kerinnyt sitä vielä lataamaan, Sammy!" vinkui Pätkä-

Johnsonin kimakka ääni lähinnä ovea olevalta lavitsalta. "Eversti olisi
kyllä tehnyt puhdasta jälkeä koko sakista."

Päällikkö ja Evan Morgan ‒ ja myös pikku Pat Nolan, joka oli

alkanut käsittää, että tässä karhussa oli jotakin tavatonta ‒
rohkenivat nauraa, mutta toiset katselivat ällistyksen yhä paisuessa
kauhean vieraansa omituista esiintymistä. Heidän mielestään se oli
vain merkkinä sen yliluonnollisesta ja siis tietysti pahansuovasta
älystä. He eivät olisi hämmästyneet, vaikka olisivat nähneet sen
astelevan ovelle, ottavan alas patruunavyön ja lataavan aseen, jota
se osasi niin taitavasti pidellä olallaan. Mutta kun se yhä polki tahtia
selkä oveen päin, jonkun matkan päässä siitä, alkoivat he tointua.
Erikoisesti Sam Oulton jälleen kohosi tämän tilaisuuden tasalle.
Välittämättä päällikön ja Evan Morganin virnistyksestä hän pisti taas
esille päänsä ja huusi:

"No, Jimmy! Nyt on sinun vuorosi. Loikkaa, mies, ja vie ulos

lumeen tuo papuvati. Kyllä se menee perässä. Sitten me voimme
sen tappaa pilaamalta huonetta."

Mutta Jimmy ei ollut ylen halukas kiirehtimään hätään, vaikka tosin

pavut tuntuivat kuuluvan hänen osastoonsa.

"Vie sinä, Pätkä, vati ulos", ehdotti hän päällikön takaa. "Sinä olet
lähinnä."

"Hiljaa siellä, Sammy", keskeytti Pat Nolan. "Mitä varten sinä

rupeisit tappamaan tuommoista ystävällistä otusta? Näethän, kuinka
se koettaa meitä huvittaa."

"Huvi h‒‒iin! Siinä on meille tuoretta lihaa kuukaudeksi!" ärähti

Sam.

Oultonin verenhimoiset sanat herättivät murahtelevia vastaväitteitä

monelta makuulavalta päin. Niin äkkiä muuttuu mieliala leireissä.
Evan Morganilta kuului kaksikärkinen vastaus:

"Etkö ikänä osaa muuta ajatella kuin tuota ‒ ‒ mahaasi?" kivahti

hän.

Sam Oulton alkoi ärtyä.

"Te, pojat, tarvitsette vielä maitopulloja!" ivasi hän. "Jos tästä

leiristä tulee kirottu lastentarha, täytyy kai minun yksin tappaa tuo
elukka!"

Silloin päällikkö, joka oli nyt täysin arvioinut tilannetta, piti paraana
sekaantua asiaan. Karhu polki yhä paikallaan pyssy olalla. Mutta se
näytti odottavan jotakin.

"Mars!" sanoi päällikkö kovalla äänellä.

Heti karhu astui eteenpäin kömpelöin, mutta vakavin askelin

suoraan
poikki huoneen sitä ryhmää kohti, missä olivat päällikkö, Eph
Babcock,
Evan Morgan ja Jimmy Dillihunt. Päällikkö odotti sitä tyynenä,
samoin
Evan. Mutta Eph ja Jimmy alkoivat siirtyä hermostuneesti pöydän
ympäri.

"Seis!" komensi päällikkö, ennenkuin karhu pääsi liian lähelle.

Karhu pysähtyi, ja jokainen veti pitkän henkäyksen.

"Kas nyt, Sammy", alkoi päällikkö juhlallisella äänellä, "heitä sinä

puheet tappamisesta. Eikö sinulla ole silmiä päässäsi? Kesy karhu
se on, ja aika tyytyväinen se onkin päästessään taas ystävien luo,
kun on saanut harhailla yksin tuolla talvisessa metsässä. Katsokaas
nyt! Oikein taitava sotilas se on. Huomi-o!"

Komentosanan lopputavun kajahtaessa karhu ponnahti asentoon.

Mutta se yritti liian hätäisesti. Pyssy luiskahti sen karvaisesta
käpälästä ja putosi kolisten lattiaan. Karhu painoi pelokkaana alas
päänsä ja sulki silmät tiukasti ikäänkuin iskua odottaen.
 Ilmeisesti Tim Gallagher oli oikeassa. Se oli opetettu karhu, ja nyt
se oli tullut rukoilemaan heiltä vierasvaraisuutta. Iloissaan kuin lapset
alkoivat miehet kompuroida lavitsoiltaan tehden monenmoisia
huomautuksia.

"Aikamoinen eversti se onkin! Älä sitä läimäytä, vaikka se

pudottikin pyssynsä, Tim!" huudahti Pätkä-Johnson lähennellessään
heitä pöydän toiselta puolen.

"Ehkä Sammy tahtoisi painia sen kanssa!" ehdotti Eph Babcock.

"Siitä tulisi hauska joulunäytelmä."

Oulton ryömi takaisin vuoteensa syvyyksiin ja haukkasi

ylimääräisen palan purutupakkaa siten hillitäkseen kieltänsä. Hän
huomasi olevansa kovin masentavassa vähemmistössä.

Sillä välin Jimmy Dillihunt, äkkiä katuen epäluuloisuuttaan, oli

pujahtanut komeroonsa. Sitten hän astui rohkeasti esiin pitäen
kädessään suurta, rasvaista viipaletta savustettua sianlihaa. Karhu
haisti sen ja avasi silmänsä: se alkoi käsittää, että sitä ei aiottukaan
lyödä pyssyn pudottamisesta. Se katsoi makupalaa ja sitten Jimmyn
tummia kasvoja ja ojensi esille toivehikkaan, mutta epäröivän
käpälän. Mutta kun Jimmy ei antanut minkäänlaista vastausta tähän
rukoukseen, näytti karhu päättelevän, että sen täytyisi tehdä jotakin
ansaitakseen tuon palkinnon ‒ jotakin vaikeata ja erikoista. Ulisten
se painui maahan, sovitti kuononsa jalkainsa väliin, kohotti hitaasti ja
murahdellen suunnattoman takapuolensa ja seisoi vakavasti
päällään. Useita sekunteja se pysytteli tässä asennossa, sitte
laskeutui hitaasti ja murahdellen takaisin, nousi taas pystyyn ja
kääntyi mairitellen Jimmyn puoleen.

Koko leiri kajahteli riemuhuudoista.

 "Anna se sille, Jimmy!"

"Et olisi paremmin osannut itsekään!"

"Ansainnut se on sen, totisesti!"

"Pidä varasi, Jimmy, tai se luulee, että sinä vain puijaat; ja sivaltaa
sinua!"

"Kiltti eversti-vanhus!" Tällaisia suosionhuutoja kaikui joka suusta,

paitsi Sam Oultonilta.

Jimmy ojensi sianlihapalan, ja karhu otti sen sirosti tummalla

käpälällään.

"Kevyt kuin naisen pikku käsi!" huudahti Pat Nolan ihastuksissaan.

Tästä alkaen ilta muodostui jonkinlaiseksi vastaanottojuhlaksi.

Gallagherin leiri pani näet toimeen tuliaispidot everstille; tämä Pätkä-
Johnsonin antama nimitys oli osunut kohdalleen ja otettu käytäntöön.
Eversti oli laajasti ja monipuolisesti oppinut karhu, ja sillä oli sitäpaitsi
yksinkertainen usko ihmiseen. Sen lapsellinen luottamus jokaisen
hyvään tahtoon liikutti laajasydämisiä ja herkkätunteisia
puunhakkaajia, kunnes he olivat sille yhtä helliä kuin lapsilauma
pikku vauvalle. Eph Babcock sai hävetä, että arvostelukyvyttömän
hämmästyksensä ensi hetkenä oli tavoitellut pyssyään.

"Eph", sanoi Pat Nolan, "jos sinä olisit vahingoittanut karvaakaan

sen kekseliäästä ja luottavaisesta päästä, niin minulle olisi jäänyt
tuskallinen velvollisuus ratkoa kupusi omalla hienolla kädelläni."

"Ja minä tunnustan, että olisin sen ansainnutkin, Paddy", vastasi

androscogginilainen sävyisästi.
 Jokainen oli riemastunut, paitsi Oulton. Hän pysyi
loukkaantuneena ja ylenkatseellisena vaiti koko illan ja tuskin alentui
vilkaisemaankaan karhun huvittavimpia temppuja. Mutta koko leiri
tiesi, että hänen mielensä sittenkin oli karhuun kiintynyt.

Se oli suurenmoinen ilta Gallagherin leirissä. Eversti oli

ensimäinen, joka väsyi ilakoimiseen. Sen myönsi jokainen
luonnolliseksi asiaksi, sillä olihan karhu yksin suorittanut koko
ohjelman. Nyt se, hyvin ravittuna ja onnellisena, halusi päästä
nukkumaan, minkä se ilmaisi nuuskimalla joka nurkkaa etsiessään
makuupaikkaa.

Karhun tuuheassa kaulakarvassa oli kulunut kohta, joka näytti,

missä oli ennen ollut kaulahihna. Päällikkö teki sille uuden kaulavyön
paksusta ohjaspätkästä ja vei sen kesynä ja lauhkeana pitkään
vajaan, jota leiriläiset käyttivät pajana. Ladosta tuotiin suuri sylys
olkia ja innokkaasti pöyhittyään sitä ympärilleen eversti laskeutui
levolle ihan kuin tuhlaajapoika, joka on päässyt kotiin ja siitä iloitsee.

Seuraavana päivänä päällikkö antoi sen viisaan käskyn, että

everstiä ei saisi laskea huoneeseen ennen päivällisaikaa. Tämän
määräyksen syvämielinen tarkoitus oli säästää juhlaa varten
jonkinlaista mielenkiinnon tuoreutta, jotta miehet paremmin
pysyisivät huvitettuina ja olisivat vähemmän taipuvaisia nurisemaan
tuoreen lihan puutetta. Koko aamun miehet, kuten tavallista
sunnuntaisin ja vapaapäivinä, askartelivat veltosti kotosalla, pesten,
paikaten, poltellen piippua, veistellen huoneessa tai kujeillen ulkona
lumessa.

Kun eversti päästettiin ulos heti aamiaisen jälkeen, ei mitään

tällaisia kujeita ollut tekeillä; muutoin se epäilemättä olisi jäänyt kotiin
leikkimään uusien ystäviensä kanssa. Huomatessaan siis, että siltä
kiellettiin pääsy huoneeseen, tutki se huolellisesti ympäristön,
säikäytti hevosia nuuskimalla äänekkäästi tallin ovella ja kompuroi
sitten metsään.

"Kyllä se tulee tänne taas ennen pitkää", sanoi Gallagher. "Eversti

ymmärtää etunsa, kun sitä on potkaissut tämmöinen onni!"

Ja Gallagher oli oikeassa. Hän ymmärsi miehiä ja everstejä.

Puoliyhdentoista tienoissa aamulla, kun Eph Babcock ja Pätkä-
Johnson painiskelivat juuri oven ulkopuolella, huomasivat he karhun
ilmestyvän metsästä, raivatun alan ulommalta puolelta. Sehän ei
ollut merkillistä, mutta sen liikkeissä oli jotakin niin omituista, että
molemmat läähättävät taistelijat hellittivät otteensa kuin yhteisestä
päätöksestä ja seisoivat suu auki. Heidän huudahduksensa
houkuttelivat ulos koko leirin näkemään, mitä oli tekeillä.

"Silläpä vasta näyttää olevan lystiä yksikseen", mutisi Evan

Morgan kynnykseltä.

"Ei se juuri yksinkään ole", korjasi päällikkö.

"Ei, se on kumma, jollei se ole iso siili, mikä sillä on siellä",

venytteli Babcock.

"Ja se ajaa karhua takaa!" huusi Pat Nolan ällistyneenä.

Mikä olikin tavallaan totta.

Eversti hyppi ja puikkelehti hullunkurisesti puolelta toiselle, kuin

jättiläismäinen, mutta kovin nuorekas koiranpentu julmistuneen siilin
edellä, joka kulki hitaasti eteenpäin joka piikki pystyssä, kunnes
näytti niin isolta kuin nelikon vetävä kori. Eversti perääntyi taloa
kohti, ikäänkuin olisi tahtonut jakaa ystäviensä kanssa uuden
leikkikalunsa, tämän omituisen, äkämystyneen pikku pedon, jonka se
oli löytänyt metsästä.

"Se saa itsensä täyteen piikkejä", sanoi Pätkä-Johnson, "ja siinä

sinulla on vasta homma, että saat ne irti, Tim. Hyvä on, että se on
sinun karhusi eikä minun."

Tom Oulton näytti siltä, kuin tässä avautunut näköala ei olisi

hänelle epämieluisa.

"Älä sure, Pätkä", vastasi päällikkö. "Tuo karhu ei ole mikään

tyhmyri.
Se tietää siileistä yhtä ja toista."

Tosiaankin eversti piti hyvin huolta, ettei mennyt liian lähelle siilin
vaarallisia piikkejä. Se ojensi ensin yhden käpälän leikillisesti ja
kiusoittaen, sitten toisen, ja tavoitti vihaista pikku elävää. Mutta se
ymmärsi olla siihen koskematta.

Mitä siiliin tulee, katseli se ilmeisesti vihan vimmassa

kiusaajaansa. Siili on sekä kovin peloton että tyhmä, ja kun se
päättää mielessään mennä johonkin erikoiseen suuntaan, voi
ainoastaan kuolema tai jokin syötävä kääntää sen toisaalle.

Tällä kertaa siili oli päättänyt marssia everstin suuntaan, toivoen

epäilemättä, vastoin kaikkea todennäköisyyttä, saavuttavansa sen ja
pistävänsä sen turkin piikkejä täyteen. Koska eversti peräytyi taloa
kohti, joutui siilikin tänne päin vaaroista välittämättä. Palanen hyvin
suolattua kalannahkaa saisi vanhan siilin, joka on elämässään
kärsinyt enemmän tai vähemmän vastuksia, hyökkäämään vaikka
kokonaista varustettua sotajoukkoa vastaan.
 Vaara vältettiin kuitenkin tällä kertaa Jimmy Dillihuntin pikaisen
väliintulon avulla. Everstin peräytyminen oli tuonut siilin jo noin
viidenkymmenen jalan päähän talosta, kun äkkiä Jimmy Dillihunt,
kimeästi huutaen juoksi rintamalle hiilihanko aseenaan. Lykäten
hämmästyneen everstin syrjään, hän iski siiliä tarkasti tylpän kuonon
päähän. Tuo pysty piikkimetsä kaatui maahan. Sätkäyttäen lyhyitä
tanakoita jalkojaan siili kierähti ympäri kuolleena kuin kivi.

Eversti istahti kintereilleen ja silmäili Jimmyä ihaillen. Katsojista

muut karjuivat hyväksymisensä valituin sanoin, joita on "kuitenkin
enemmän tai vähemmän mahdoton julkaista. Jimmy otti maasta siilin
hervottoman ruumiin, tarttuen varovasti sen aseettomiin etukäpäliin
ja kantoi sen sisään.

"Siilistä tulee hyvää syötävää, kun se on oikein valmistettu!" sanoi

hän voitonriemuisesti irvistäen, hävitessään omaan pyhäkköönsä.

Se oli tosin vain yksi siili, mutta erittäin iso ja lihava, ja Jimmy
Dillihunt tiesi, kuinka se oli saatava riittämään pitkälle. Hän laittoi
siitä soppaa, jossa oli runsaasti palleroita ja myös runsaasti, se on
myönnettävä, hienoksi leikattua suolaista sianlihaa. Koska pienikin
määrä siilinlihaa riittää antamaan paljon makua, maistui kaikki
sianliha sopassa siilinlihalta, eikä kellään ollut syytä valittaa.
Päivällinen oli ehdottomasti onnistunut.

Eversti kulki edestakaisin aterioivien takana ja lähenteli jokaista

vuoron perään, mairitellen ja anoen herkkupaloja, joita kukin
halukkaasti sille tarjosi. Vihdoin se tuli Sam Oultonin luo, jota se
tähän asti kehoituksen puutteessa oli välttänyt. Tuli äänettömyys,
kun kukin ihmetteli, mitä Tommy, tuo leppymätön tekisi.
 Oulton katsahti everstin valtavaan, luottavaiseen päähän, jonka se
oli tunkenut hänen kyynärpäänsä viereen. Hän epäröi, irvisti
hyväntahtoisesti, mutta kömpelösti; sitten pyyhkäisi hihallaan
kiiltävää suutaan, kohotti isoa kahvituoppiaan ja nousi päättävästi
seisaalle.

"Herra Karhu ‒ tarkoitan, Eversti", sanoi hän, "toivotan teille oikein

hauskaa joulua ja monta samanlaista! Te olette ainoa tosi herra
tässä leirissä, sillä te olette ainoa koko joukosta, joka ystävällisesti
muisti tovereitaan antamalla niille joululahjan."

Ja hän antoi Everstille rintaluun!

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