Mention Montana, and most people conjure an image of rolling mountain ranges and wide open rural spaces. This is the land of Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, a haven for outdoor activity that is blessed with truly remarkable scenery and the nation's third lowest population density.

While some of the state's citizens take frequent hikes, walk whenever possible, and participate in various sporting activities, many don't. Some people lack the transportation necessary to get to parks. Others lack proper sporting equipment. But thanks to a program called Get Fit Great Falls, people who live in that city now find that being active outside comes much more easily.

Peggy Beltrone, Commissioner of the Cascade County Commission and the Chair of Get Fit Great Falls, was moved to start the organization in 2004 when she attended a conference in conjunction with a U.S. Forest Service meeting. Discussions turned to "physical inactivity and how that affected the use of public land and conversely how public land could actually help people get more active," she says. After speaking with the forest supervisor at Lewis and Clark National Forest, the two struck up conversations with community members and the local health and recreation departments. Those departments and other partners like the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, 4-H and Great Falls Public School system have made Get Fit Great Falls a truly collaborative effort.

"We were very lucky to have a lot of the right people in place when we started this," she says, "and that's so very important to have in the community - to have the spark plugs lining up correctly to get something going."

Get Fit Great Falls, Beltrone says, encourages physical activity "by putting on hikes and providing transportation for people to get to trails, having them led by volunteers we have got this tremendous turnout." Other outings include a snowshoeing event "and providing transportation for people to get to the national forest area where we'll provide snowshoes and have hike leaders," Beltrone says. "Last year, we had eighty people turnout for that and this year we'll probably double that amount." In the spring and summer, the group organizes hikes that encourage whole families to participate.

Beltrone feels that taking a bottom-up approach - rather than mandates that come from the top down - has been crucial. The federal government, she says, has tried to encourage physical activity through its various agencies. But "a forest supervisor has to worry about forest fires." Their grassroots-level initiative, however, has succeeded in harnessing individuals' efforts. In fact, they have had such success that the U.S. Forest Service held up Get Fit Great Falls as a model program in recent congressional testimony.

Beltrone notes that Get Fit Great Falls may expand their efforts through the Safe Routes to School program. And, she'd like to focus on the differences in approaching childhood obesity in a rural setting as opposed to an urban one. In collaboration with the National Association of Counties (NACo), Beltrone is working on a paper addressing the issue. "The rural population is very large, at 55 million," she says, "but it's so spread out that it often doesn't get the attention that it needs on the research level."

Beltrone adds that, through it all, she has encouraged Get Fit Great Falls participants to be lighthearted and have fun. "We did some things very quickly and had good success and had fun as partners putting these community events on," she says. "And I think that's important. It's a real killer when all you do is sit around talking about how difficult and pressing an issue is and how it's larger than you think you can handle."