Big Sky (federal parcel — proposed Antiquities Act refuge, Montana)
Detailed Involvements
Events with rich location context
Big Sky (Montana) is invoked as the threatened landscape and political prize: the specific land at risk if the rider stands. It functions narratively as both ecological totem and three electoral votes, converting policy abstraction into tangible moral stakes.
Conjured as wind-swept and vulnerable; mentioned with a mix of affection and political calculation.
Symbolic stake and electoral resource motivating staff arguments.
Represents the collision of environmental stewardship and partisan power-brokering.
Not a physical location in the room; invoked as distant but politically proximate.
Big Sky is the specific federal parcel under threat; it is invoked as the physical site whose protection would be surrendered if the rider stands, converting the debate into an ecological and moral test.
Evoked as exposed, beautiful, and vulnerable — a landscape invoked to raise the emotional stakes.
Object of protection and the concrete environmental cost used to argue for or against compromise.
Acts as a totem for conservation versus political expedience.
Big Sky is invoked as the threatened landscape whose legal protection would be circumscribed by the rider; it functions narratively as the moral touchstone that animates Josh’s refusal and embodies the environmental stakes beyond mere politics.
Evoked as wind‑scoured, sacred high country — a quiet, threatened moral icon rather than a present setting.
Value at stake and rhetorical device to contrast tangible conservation with symbolic political costs.
Represents environmental integrity and the administration’s higher‑order principles the staff must weigh against political wins.
Big Sky exists in the scene as the moral stake named by Mandy and dismissed by Josh. It functions not physically but as an ethical totem—a landscape whose protection becomes the shorthand for principle versus political calculation.
Evoked as wind‑scoured, pristine, and morally charged despite physical absence.
Point of contention and moral symbol; the endangered thing that transforms a legislative rider into an ethical test.
Symbolizes environmental principle and the public face of the administration's commitments.
Big Sky is invoked by Sam and Josh as the specific parcel whose legal fate is now actionable under the Antiquities Act. Although not physically present, it functions narratively as the moral and ecological totem that justifies executive intervention and transforms abstract law into an immediate human and political stake.
Imagined as wind‑scoured, open high country — austere and vulnerable, evoking urgency and moral clarity in contrast to the cramped office.
Policy objective — the named target that grounds the legal workaround and compels action.
Symbolizes the administration's environmental commitments and the moral cost of political compromise.
Federally held land with public interest and political stakeholders; designation would change permissible uses and access in practice.
Big Sky is invoked verbally as the object of the Antiquities Act designation — a distant physical place that becomes the moral and political fulcrum of the scene, converting an argument about tone into a debate with environmental consequence.
Absent physically but heavy in moral resonance — the name summons wide-open stakes against the cramped office tension.
Referenced location / stakes centerpiece motivating immediate policy action.
Symbolizes conservation value and the administration's higher public responsibility — the world outside that tests private squabbles.
Public federal land subject to designation; not directly accessible in this scene but politically contested.
Events at This Location
Everything that happens here
A sudden crisis: Leo informs President Bartlet that Representatives Eaton and Broderick have tucked a punitive land‑use rider into the banking conference report to punish him for beating them in …
Bartlet, Leo and the senior staff rush into the Oval after learning Representatives Eaton and Broderick have slipped a punitive land‑use rider onto a landmark banking reform conference report to …
Mandy confronts Josh in his office, pressing the concrete policy gains of the landmark Banking Bill while Josh refuses to accept a vindictive land‑use rider that would gut Big Sky. …
Late-night in Josh's office, Mandy sells the merits of a landmark Banking Bill but then pivots into a direct personal accusation: Josh is letting his dislike of Broderick and Eaton—and …
Josh bursts into Sam's office with a sudden legal workaround: invoke the Antiquities Act to allow the President to designate Big Sky as protected federal land. The idea immediately reframes …
Late at night in Sam's office a petty domestic argument becomes a revealing power skirmish. Sam, desperate to 'nail' a birthday message, types while Toby hovers, nitpicks tone and offers …