"If we have real numbers at scale, if we are generating real numbers in terms of returns on investment that are competitive," he says, his voice rising like a venture capitalist selling a dream deal, "we have this great store of capital out here in the form of land that's not going to evaporate, and we're producing healthy food, and our biological monitoring transects are showing that our species diversity is increasing, and we're covering our soil -- our assumption is that a lot of people are going to want to invest in that."

But that is the future. Right now, dinner is coming out of the trailer and being dished onto blue tin plates. Howell and his partners settle in around the blazing pile of fence posts and begin devouring their beef and noodles like any other group of cattlemen at the end of a long day. As they eat, the conversation turns less global, more local, to area ranchers and the cattle industry of the western Plains.

Listening to them, I'm struck by an odd contrast: It seems that for them addressing climate change is relatively cut and dry -- a challenge, for sure, but one with a strategy to match. More vexing is the question of how to engage and inspire the surrounding community in their efforts. It is essential, for in their minds one cannot fix a landscape that has collapsed without also fixing the community that has collapsed alongside it. But how to do that? That is perhaps the greatest challenge they face.

* * *

The nearest town to Horse Creek is Newell, South Dakota, ten miles southeast. According to a weathered sign greeting visitors, it is the "Nation's Sheep Capital," but judging from appearances, even the town's purported fame has not saved it from the decline that is epidemic in rural communities of the western Plains.

Downtown is a quiet stretch of respectable old buildings, roughly half of which are unoccupied. No more doctor's office or pharmacy, no more lumberyard or variety store. It is not without commerce: There is still a grocery, as well as a ranch supply store and a meat locker. As in many small communities in South Dakota, there is a municipal bar and packaged liquor store, run by the town for desperately needed income. There is even a gift shop/vitamin outlet/jewelry store/ice cream counter as well as a hotel/fitness center/café around the corner, though it must be noted that when you ring the bell at the former you will be helped, after a brief wait, by the same woman who would help you at the latter. (Rarely does this cause a problem -- business is slow at the café, and the fitness center goes largely unused.)

At its peak in the mid-20th century, Newell had roughly 1,000 residents. These days a sign at town limits announces 675, although that is wistfully outdated; the most recent census numbers show the population to be 603. The causes for contraction are a familiar mish-mash of seemingly intractable problems. Farms got bigger. Agriculture needed fewer people. People started shopping at chain stores in nearby Sturgis. The 1980s farm crisis bankrupted a number of area farms. The drought of the last decade wiped out some more. And on top of all that, Newell has become a town of grandparents. With more than 30 percent of town over sixty years old, death will soon thin the numbers even more.