Season 5
Episode 1
Climate Interpretation with Diane Sine
Transcript
Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.
Peri Sasnett: You're listening to Headwaters, a show about how Glacier National Park is connected to everything else. My name is Peri, and this episode is an interview that my co-host Daniel did with longtime park ranger and educator Diane Sine about telling stories about our glaciers to park visitors.
Peri: This is one in a series of conversations we've been having with a wide variety of climate change experts. They don't have to be listened to in any order. Each one stands on its own and they all focus on a particular aspect of the way the world is being altered by the burning of fossil fuels. Over the past century and a half, human activity has released enough greenhouse gases to warm the Earth's climate more than one degree Celsius, with only more warming on the way. Throughout 2023, Daniel sat down with experts to talk about how that warming is altering Glacier National Park, our lives, and our futures.
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Peri: This is one of my favorite interviews in a long time. Diane is an amazing person, a local legend, really. And I found her stories surprising and resonant. She's been visiting the park's glaciers for decades and has seen so much change firsthand. I think you'll really enjoy this conversation.
Daniel Lombardi: So, Diane Sine, welcome to the podcast, welcome back to the podcast.
Diane Sine: Thank you, Daniel.
Daniel: Will you remind people who you are, where you work, how long you've been doing it?
Diane: My name is Diane Signe and I work at Many Glacier. I'm the lead interpreter over there and I have been in the park for quite a while. I've been in interpretation pretty much all my adult life during the summers here and even before that, when I was a college student, I worked at the Many Glacier Hotel. So I've been hanging around Many Glacier since 1980.
Daniel: Wow. So maybe let's start with what is many glacier for someone who's, like, never been to Glacier. And then I am curious to hear about your first time visiting many Glacier.
Diane: So Many Glacier as a region of the park with a rather confusing name. Yes, we get the fact that it's improper English, "Many" is plural, "Glacier" is singular. So there's one of the first problems right there, but it's simply a region of the park. The Many Glacier Hotel is there. And the name came about in the early years of the park, simply referring to the fact that there were multiple glaciers at the head of the valleys, pretty much a glacier at the head of each one of the valleys.
Daniel: Yeah. Which is like four or five glaciers or something. It's not like many, many glaciers, right? A few, right? It's Many Glacier.
Diane: And it sort of sounds like "mini" glacier, as in "tiny glacier." So we get confusion about people thinking that it's "mini glacier." Sure. Hey, maybe that's an appropriate name in some ways.
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Daniel: What is a glacier? What makes Grinnell Glacier actually a glacier?
Diane: Remember, I'm not a geologist. I'm an elementary teacher. So a glacier, whether we're talking about those massive ice age glaciers that were thousands of feet thick, that carved out these valleys in Glacier National Park, or whether we're talking about the comparatively small glaciers that were here. Well, are here today. And we're part of the Little Ice Age. Places such as Grinnell Glacier.
Diane: To have a glacier, you simply have to have a place where more snow falls every winter then can completely melt during the summers. So over the years, that snow builds up, it accumulates. It actually recrystallizes fairly quickly and it forms a dense ice. And once you have this thick, dense ice, you eventually get—and there are lots of variables—but say when it gets to 70 to 100 feet thick, there is so much mass or so much weight pressure that it actually starts to flow. And so the bottom of the glacier starts to flow and there's actually movement. So a glacier is a mass of a moving ice. And that confuses people sometimes. Sometimes they think, well, is it rolling down the valley? And in the case of all these glaciers in Glacier National Park, they're actually becoming smaller all the time. But there's movement within the mass of ice. There's more accumulation of ice at the upper elevation of the glacier, and then the ice flows through. So whether a glacier is growing or receding is simply a matter of economics. Is there is there more snow and ice being added to that mass every year or is there more melting happening? And the reality here is there's more melting happening.
Daniel: Right. Is there is your summer more intense? Or your winter more intense? And that that balance has shifted.
Diane: So one of the fascinating things you mentioned, the moraine, and of course, that's the end of the maintain trail today. And it's a very impressive mass of accumulation of unsorted material. We call it glacial, glacial till. So there are large rocks and boulders in there. And there also is a lot of just very small, almost sand and gravel. But it's it's fascinating to my brain to try to imagine how long the edge of Grinnell Glacier sat at one place for that amount of moraine material to pile up on top of itself in that one location. And the glacier still moves that moraine material. There's still there's still rocks and boulders and gravel and sand within the layers of the ice and being scraped from beneath and become part of the mass of moving ice. But throughout my lifetime, the glacier has been receding so quickly that the modern, quote, marine material is just sort of smeared across the limestone ledges up there. There's no accumulation compared to what created that moraine. That was the edge of the ice when George Bird Grinnell was up there.
Daniel: So it's a mass of ice that moves.
Diane: That's right. The ice within the glacier moves.
Daniel: How did Grinnell Glacier get its name?
Diane: Grinnell Glacier is named for a guy named George Bird Grinnell and George Bird Grinnell was a well-to-do Easterner. He was very interested in the West. He was interested in conservation issues, really. He came from the background of sort of a gentleman hunter. So at that point, George Bird Grinnell was editor of Forest and Stream Magazine, which was kind of the the big outdoorsman journal of that time. And so in that role, he got to know James Willard Schultz. He read Schultz's writings about this area and became interested in exploring it. So Grinnell first came into this area in 1885, and on that trip he got up up into the Swift Current Valley and could could see Grinnell Glacier from a distance and was interested in it. But then he came back in 1887 with a group of other guys, and they actually hiked up to Grinnell Glacier. And it was on that trip that the friends that he was with basically named the big old chunk of ice that they got to for him for Grinnell.
Daniel: So Grinnell didn't name the glacier after himself. His buddies named it for him.
Diane: Right. It appears that his his buddies named it for him, although it also appears from his writings that he probably was very agreeable to having something named after him, would be my guess.
Daniel: And he did then name a ton of mountains and lakes and everything all around the park. He he was throwing out names pretty easily.
Diane: George Bird Grinnell did name all sorts of features in the park. I think it's it's, it's interesting because if you think about it, any noticeable feature, any real obvious kind of feature would have had multiple names already. It's not like there hadn't been people on this landscape for as long as time goes back. So, you know, the Blackfeet, the Kootenai, everybody would have had names for all of these obvious features, but those names hadn't been written down. Some of the names that George Bird Grinnell applied to features in what is today Glacier National Park, very much reflect the kind of trip that he was on in the 1880s. If you go into the Saint Mary Valley, we have names that he gave such as Gunsight Pass, Fusillade Mountain, Single Shot Mountain. And all of those names came from the fact that George Bird Grinnell was on a hunting trip and was thinking a lot about hunting.
Daniel: Yeah.
Diane: So Single Shot Mountain is actually where he did it. In fact, shoot a bighorn sheep with a single shot.
Daniel: Okay. All right, George. So his friends name this glacier for him. He went back many, many times, from my understanding, to Grinnell Glacier and and saw it over the course of his whole adult life, was making trips up to the ice. And I'm curious if you know anything about kind of his how he saw the glacier and how that might have changed over time, because I think early on he made predictions that, you know, this glacier is going to disappear soon.
Diane: Right. In a way, we're really fortunate that George Bird Grinnell, was a writer, and so he very much left evidence of how he thought and his impressions. And even that very first trip up to Grinnell Glacier is well documented because he wrote the whole story in various installments so that he could publish them in Forest and Stream Magazine. So we know that after those first trips where where this area really inspired him, as it does so many of us. And he he first suggested in an article that he published that perhaps this was an area that should be protected with national park status. And that didn't happen right away. There were a lot of people who weren't excited about that idea. But finally the park was established in 1910 and he continued to come back periodically and visit it. So he went from coming into the Swift Current Valley, hiking up to Grinnell Glacier, where there was no trail. They were just finding their own route. Certainly people had been there before, but there wasn't a record of people having been there before. And then he came back in later years after the Many Glacier Hotel was built, a road all the way into the valley, and then a developed park service trail from the hotel up to Grinnell Glacier. And he saw those changes both in visitation and the changes in the glacier, the ice itself.
Daniel: Yeah, we think about like today, we think about living in a an era of such fast and profound change. You know, now. But from his perspective, he was in an era of profound change, too. He went from really an undeveloped wild area to some extent, and then saw that become a tourist hub and a national park and also saw the climate and the environment really changed the glaciers throughout that time, too. And that would have been, what, from the 1880s to the 1930s. Right.
Diane: He very much wrote about the changes in the area due to the, quote, development and visitation. And of course, that was actually something that was partly due to his efforts. It was significantly influenced by his efforts. But basically, he he felt like he had promoted the idea of establishment of a national park for for a greater good. And yet he felt like what had happened as a result of that had basically ruined or certainly compromised the experience that he had personally first had when he had come into this remote wilderness area.
Daniel: Yeah.
Diane: So it's also interesting because he also wrote about the changes in the ice itself. So glaciers such as the Grinnell Glacier were probably at their largest size in the mid 1800s. So when George Grinnell was up there in the 1880s, you know, that wasn't that long after the maximum size of, quote, modern Grinnell Glacier. And already by his later trips up into the into the valley, I know in the twenties he was documenting that it had changed dramatically and it was a much smaller glacier than he had originally seen. And of course, that was long before any of us were talking about climate change or really understanding what was going on. But he certainly knew what he was observing and understood that there were changes.
Daniel: He saw those changes happening. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. So we here in the park, we have a chance to see, you know, in recent decades, climate change and glacier melt that is really almost entirely caused by human climate change. But in George Bird Grinnell's era, that was climate change that was mostly naturally the ending of the Little Ice Age.
Diane: And then we have a lot of records from the park naturalists that were were going up there in the 1920s and 1930s. Morton J. Elrod was the first person employed as a Ranger naturalist, leading hikes up to Grinnell Glacier. And he he was a biology professor from the University of Montana. And so in the mid 1920s, he started to document he had noticed that, you know, every year he was having to actually walk farther to get to the edge of the ice when he went to Grinnell Glacier. So Morton J. Elrod started to document, you know, how many steps it was, how many paces, to get from a certain big rock on the moraine that we now refer to as "Elrod's Rock." And so he set the stage for actual scientific research documenting the changes up there. And so we know that there were pretty dramatic changes, quite dramatic changes in the twenties and thirties. And then it appears that that recession of the glaciers slowed down significantly and then took off again actually after I started working here in the in the 1980s.
Daniel: So one of the things that Grinnell was big on was creating a national park here. He was involved in this area for decades before it was a national park. Then in 1910, Congress makes Glacier National Park a reality. One of the things I know you are particularly fascinated in is how does that name get picked? Glacier National Park. Why is it called that?
Diane: Yeah, I am fascinated by by the whole issue of the name of the park. Because while we have really good documentation for a lot of things, we do not have a document that said, "We are going to establish Glacier National Park and give it that name because," fill in the blank.
Diane: So you come to a place called Glacier National Park, and one of the first questions at a visitor center is, you know, "Where is the glacier?" "Where can I drive to a glacier?" "Where can I touch a glacier?"
Diane: And often people are expecting massive ice fields like you have in Patagonia or up in Alaska. They're they're visualizing something different from what we have today. And so I noticed that in my earlier years as a ranger, I would overhear a lot of other people sort of trying to make it okay with visitors saying, "Oh, well, you know, you're not going to be able to drive to a glacier. But really, the park was named for this glaciated landscape from the Ice Age glaciers. So you're experiencing everything Glacier has by, you know, driving up the St. Mary Valley or the Lake McDonald Valley."
Daniel: So it's kind of confusing because the park does have active existing small mountain glaciers. And 10,000 years and more ago, the park was carved by massive Pleistocene Ice Age glaciers. So both are true. But which one was the park actually named for? That's a little bit murky.
Diane: That that's the question. And that's the question I tried to answer in looking back through the historical documents, it's very evident that before the park was established, before they came up with the name, one of the things that people were really excited about was that this was a place south of Alaska in the United States where you could take the railroad up to the mountains and then you could actually get to glaciers. You know, folks, folks were working really hard to hike up to places like Grinnell Glacier or Sperry Glacier. It was really the West Side glaciers like Sperry Glacier that I think led to that name, because in those early years people would come on the Great Northern Railway and they would make their way up to Lake McDonald, take a boat up the lake. There was no no road at that point. And then they would hike up to Sperry Glacier, and this was a place you could actually hike to a glacier. We have plenty of original documents that make it clear that people were really excited about the fact that there were honest to goodness glaciers here. And we have every reason to believe that. That's why they named it Glacier National Park.
Daniel: It was kind of a or it was actually a a tourist package, basically come stay in our hotel and we will take you to a glacier in Glacier National Park. So you look through early park documents, you look through advertisements that the Great Northern Railway had to try and get people to come visit this place. We look at newspaper articles from when the park was established in 1910, and for the most part everyone's talking about the active, small, glaciers in the mountains here. So it seems that that's probably what they named it for.
Diane: Even even the very first superintendents annual reports that we have in the archives, when they just give an overview of this new national park and what it has to offer to the American people. They emphasize that it has glaciers. And none of those writings ever say. They talk about it being a beautiful place with nice scenery. But they never say, "and it has a glaciated landscape, so it should be called Glacier National Park.".
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Daniel: How what was your first visit? How did you first come to many Glacier?
Diane: I grew up in Seattle and I grew up in a family that did a lot of camping and hiking and visited national parks with our tent. And so I had come to Glacier on family camping trips a couple of times in my childhood, and I actually distinctly remember the first time I was in the Many Glacier area. We spent a night at Granite Park Chalet. We hiked the Highline in from Logan Pass, and then the next day we hiked over Swiftcurrent Pass and actually hiked into the Many Glacier area coming down from the Continental Divide.
Daniel: Wow. Today, most people take the long, bumpy road in from Babb, but you came in on foot, which is seems really special.
Diane: Yeah. We can almost pretend like I'm an old pioneer or something, but it wasn't quite like that.
Daniel: Tell me how that that led into a career in Many Glacier.
Diane: Yeah, I was one of those nerdy national park fans as, as a child, I loved it when our family camping in national parks. I always was excited to go to the ranger talks in the evenings. So I also remember on on that same trip we came back into Many Glacier another day and we went on the Ranger-Guided boat trip and hiked to Grinnell Lake. And I distinctly remember that that hike was being led by a female ranger, and I believe that was the first time I had ever seen a female ranger, because they weren't that common at that point. And I don't know that it was it was an "aha moment" that set the track, but it was certainly an awareness that, oh, that would be a really cool job.
Daniel: You're in an inspiring place, having a good time and you see someone leading a path that maybe you could follow.
Diane: Absolutely. It looked like it looked like a good life and turns out it is a good life. You know, I want to clarify. I really don't feel like I've had a career in Glacier National Park or career as a ranger, because for me, Glacier has always been a passion more than a career. I had a career as an elementary teacher, and then I would spend my summers working as a ranger in Glacier because I was passionate about it. And even though I do it for a little bit longer and I no longer teach, I'm retired from teaching. For me, the park has always been a passion and a choice rather than something that I felt I was stuck in. I guess career doesn't have to be a negative word, but for me I think of it differently.
Daniel: Oh, I like that. Yeah. That the word "career" implies... Uh, it implies an amount of work that you don't necessarily feel. This is just a good way to spend the summer.
Diane: Exactly. And not to gloss over it. There's plenty of work involved. But but I've I've chosen to have Glacier be a positive in my life, more than a negative at any time.
Daniel: But for that, though, you were working for the hotel and you went on a hike up to Grinnell Glacier. I don't know. What do you remember about about seeing the glacier for the first time?
Diane: I very much remember that that first time I hiked up to Grinnell Glacier, I got to the end of the trail at the top of the moraine where where you look, you know, down at Upper Grinnell Lake and across at the glacier itself. And my impression and actually I have photographs of it to back it up was the glacier itself wasn't very far away.
Diane: From from the moraine the glacier was right there, in your face. As opposed to now where it's quite a distance across that basin to get to the ice itself. And now when people hike up there, people get to the moraine and they they look and they take it all in and then they always seem to be enticed to... They want to get closer to the glacier itself.
Daniel: The glacier was big enough. You didn't have to hike further once you got to the edge, that was good enough.
Diane: Exactly. And in those first years when I visited, I never did actually go out on to the glacier itself. For many years then after I started working as a ranger here and leading interpretive hikes up there, we would actually walk on the ice and go out onto the ice itself. But it seems like in those those early years when I was hiking up there as a college student in the summers, it was a more intimate experience just being able to see it from the moraine.
Daniel: You know, On that first trip you took to the glacier in '81, did you think, Oh, this is all going to be gone someday? Or did you see that change coming?
Diane: My memory of when I started working as a ranger and really paying attention to bigger ideas having to do with the Grinnell Glacier. We were fascinated by the stories from the twenties in the thirties when when Upper Grinnell Lake first appeared as the meltwater lake, as the glacier receded and pulled away from the moraine.
Diane: You know, it was fascinating to think that that lake hadn't been there in the George Bird Grinnell times. And of course, we have wonderful repeat photography showing the thickness of Grinnell Glacier and that Salamander (what we call Salamander Glacier today) up above, was simply the upper lobe of a Grinnell Glacier connected by by an icefall there.
Daniel: When George Bird Grinnell first visited it was just kind of the whole back of the valley is just one big mass of ice. And now we have names for the different pieces because they've separated and a lake has formed at the edge of the glacier. So it's really changed a lot.
Diane: I mean, we spend so much time in the park talking about geology in terms of things being millions and a billion years old, and then to to see these changes happening just, just in the short history of the park actually existing, is kind of mind blowing.
Daniel: Yeah. In your first years hiking up to Grinnell, I'm guessing that not a lot of people were talking about modern human-caused climate change.
Diane: I don't remember people really talking about climate change at all in those early years. I was very fortunate to be mentored by rangers like Bob Schuster, who had been around since the mid-sixties. And, you know, he was documenting that since he had started in 1967, he really hadn't noticed changes in Grinnell Glacier. And then suddenly in those later eighties, everything just seemed to take off with rocket speed. And it's it's been changing, it feels like hourly, ever since.
Daniel: Yeah. So in the at least anecdotally, in the sixties and seventies, it seemed like Grinnell was holding fairly steady. But then that really changed kind of at the start of your time going up there.
Diane: I clearly remember that in my early years, leading the hikes up to Grinnell Glacier, what the very special thing was that we would actually lead our visitor groups out onto the ice. We had an ice ax and we had been trained to to be safe and know what we were doing because glacier travel is not something to to take lightly. There are a lot of potential hazards, and we certainly do not encourage people to go out onto the ice today because not only do they probably not have the background to recognize the risks with the crevasses and hidden dangers, but it has also changed so much since we did lead that hike because the edge of the ice has become much more rotten and undercut.
Diane: But my memory is that a couple times during the summer a friend and I, after we had concluded our organized hikes, we'd we'd take a little excursion on our own down to the outlet of Grinnell Glacier. And this is where the water actually came rushing from underneath the ice. And it led down to into the stream that that went over the waterfall and drains that entire valley. And so when we would walk down there, we would be walking across the basin with this massive wall of ice on our right, and then we would get down to where the water came gushing out from underneath the wall of the edge of Grinnell Glacier. And my memory is that at that point where the outlet was, the ice was rising, at least at least 30 feet above me, if not more. I actually I have photographs of that. I'll have to show you.
Daniel: Okay. Where as now, you'd be... It'd be kind of tricky to find a spot where the ice is, what, ten feet high?
Diane: Yeah, today when you get... So today, to take that walk that I would take. In the late 1980s down to the outlet. You're simply walking across this open limestone wide valley in a way it's it's a hanging valley where where I had ice on my right. Today, there are all sorts of plants and wildflowers growing up. We actually have small trees that are growing up. It's it's like that very first step in plant succession. After that, those soils have first been exposed after they were covered by ice for for thousands of years. And it looks much more raw and rocky. I've heard people describe it as almost a moonscape, as if we had any experience on the moon. But with that raw, open, rocky-ness, I, I see people just wandering all over the place and yet they're not thinking about the fact that they're compact in that soil. They're actually stepping on and tiny plants and and we're really threatening that that future glorious subalpine meadow.
Daniel: Yeah. Do you remember when you first heard about climate change as a concept? Like, modern-day human-caused climate change?
Diane: The first thing I remember is when I was an SCA, Student Conservation Association, intern for the Park Service, working at the St Mary Visitor Center. And I remember that one of the books that was for sale there at St. Mary was what I remember as a as a children's book. It was not a scholarly tome by any means, but basically a children's book about climate change. And I can remember picking that up off the shelf and reading it during my spare time, which even there is a rather amazing change because there's never a spare moment in any of the visitor centers in Glacier today. But there were moments I could read a book and learn at the desk.
Daniel: Wow. Yeah. So you are you find this kid's book in the visitor center and it kind of explains the basics that, humans are changing the climate, and causing the glaciers to retreat. And that's one of your first at least one of the first times you can remember really seeing that put together.
Diane: I feel like that that was the beginning of providing me with a framework to then take in other information, be interested in learning more.
Daniel: All right, then let's talk about a pivotal moment in Grinnell Glacier history, and in maybe the history of climate change, happens when Vice President Al Gore visits the glacier.
Diane: That was a pretty big deal to have the vice president to have the vice president come to Grinnell Glacier on a day trip from Washington, D.C. was not your typical day in Glacier National Park.
Daniel: Okay.
Diane: And I first became aware of it because suddenly we had all of these men in khaki fishing vests and earpieces wandering around the Many Glacier Valley. And it it turned out they were the advance-team for the Secret Service.
Daniel: And they're trying to blend in.
Diane: They so did not blend in.
[Laughing]
Daniel: Okay. So then what ended up being your job, your role, for the Vice President's visit?
Diane: Yeah. So in 1997, I was in the middle of my teaching career in in Kalispell. And then it turned out the Vice President was coming and we needed to have all sorts of extra personnel. And so I was asked if I if I was available to help that day. And I wasn't available because I was a teacher. And that was the day I was supposed to be in the classroom. But I called my principal and I pleaded, I have this chance to be involved in this event with the Vice President. "Could I please use one of my personal days for the school year?"
Diane: So that's what I did. And it turned out that my job was to deal with the media that was going to go up the trail ahead of the vice president.
Daniel: Okay.
Diane: So the Secret Service had been telling us that Al Gore was in very good shape and he was a good hiker and that he was going to have no problem hiking up that trail. And the people who were handling all the logistics understood that the media wouldn't necessarily be in as good shape as the Vice President.
Diane: So the media pool was a combination of local Montana media and then all sorts of national folks. And I remember them telling me that they'd they'd boarded a plane in Washington, D.C. (They had boarded Air Force Two in Washington, D.C.) at something like 3:00 in the morning Eastern Time. And they they flew out to Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls. And then at that point, they got on three Chinook helicopters—
Daniel: Wow!
Diane: —that flew them to what we used to endearingly call "Babb International Airport," which is a pasture in Babb that used to have an air sock on it. And I remember that they had to go down and get the cows out of it.
Daniel: Shoot them out of the way.
Diane: So they'd brought in the special armored vehicles from from elsewhere and a motorcade that picked them up and drove the entourage up to Many Glacier Hotel. And at that point, the Park Service had built a big stage at the end of the hotel where there was a view of Salamander Glacier and the Grinnell Basin behind.
Diane: And he gave a speech about climate change. The whole purpose of this trip, as he was Vice President, he had a passion for trying to raise public awareness to the issues of climate change.
Diane: And so he gave his speech there—I missed the speech because as soon as the the the entourage arrived at the Glacier Hotel, the, quote pre-positioned press and I jumped on a boat and then eventually got up to the head of the valley. And we started hiking at their pace so that we could get up there ahead of the vice president.
Daniel: Okay. So Al Gore is giving his speech about global warming. And you didn't get to see that part because you were taking the reporters and the press up, up the trail to meet everyone else at the glacier.
Diane: Right. One one of the humorous things about that day was when we had had the Secret Service running around the entire week before. The Secret Service knows bad guys. They know security, but they were in a panic about bears.
Daniel: Oh, of course.
Diane: Just like many visitors to Glacier National Park that have no idea about bears. They were under the impression that there was a bear lurking behind every corner that was going to be an incredible threat to to the Vice President. And, of course, the the risk of anything happening in Bear country is incredibly low.
Daniel: Of course.
Diane: And but but it's understandable. So I can remember as we were hiking up the trail, I look up the hillside and periodically stationed up above the trail throughout the hike, I could look up and I would see a secret serviceman accompanied by a glacier National Park ranger to protect the Secret serviceman from bears.
Daniel: Of course.
Diane: The trail was completely open for hikers that day. There were there were regular hikers just hiking on the trail and running into the Vice President.
Daniel: So there was like—what was the the mood? Do you remember? And what did Al Gore think of it?
Diane: He actually hiked with Dan Fagre, who was our our local expert on what was happening with climate change and with the with Grinnell Glacier. And so he hiked with Dan Fagre and with Dave Castiel, who was our our senior ranger interpreter in the valley at that time.
Diane: So as part of that effort that Al Gore had as vice president tied in with that, you may remember he came up with a national speaking tour is the way I remember it, that that then turned into a book called, "An Inconvenient Truth." And from my perspective, it was really that era of him coming out with "An Inconvenient Truth" that really got the general public talking about climate change. And and certainly having the same kinds of varied viewpoints and opinions.
Diane: And it's unfortunate, in my opinion. Well, here I go with opinions, but it's it's unfortunate that that something that really is scientific has has become so polarizing. But I feel like that was the first that I became aware of that polarizing aspect of it as well.
Daniel: His visit really brings a lot of attention to the concepts of global warming and climate change. So that just starts to become a more talked about subject in America. But it also makes that connection between global warming and Glacier National Park, like, forever cemented together.
Diane: So it's no surprise that when we're in a place called Glacier National Park, it's an easy concept, rather iconic for national and even international media to pick up on Glacier National Park and its disappearing glaciers. And so that is something that from that Al Gore time on, it seems like the public is very aware of that, no matter where they're from.
Daniel: Yeah. Did you note did you see that play out in front of your eyes then? You know, in the summers after the vice president's visit, you're leading people on hikes up to Grinnell Glacier. And I'm guessing that people's questions and how people felt about seeing the glacier started to shift around then.
Diane: Yes. In my first year leading hikes to Grinnell Glacier, we weren't talking about and people weren't asking about current changes up there because there wasn't anything that noticeable in front of our eyes right then. But certainly since then, it's something that people are very aware of and their frequent frequently asking about.
Diane: And I've always felt like my goal as an interpreter in Glacier National Park isn't so much to educate them as to the minutia of the science, but simply to to show them what we're seeing on the landscape.
Diane: One of the incredible tools we have are those repeat photography examples that were there—there was actually a guy with a big old camera on that George Bird Grinnell trip to Grinnell Glacier in 1887. So we have a photographic record of what has been going on in that valley since 1887.
Daniel: Wow. And so that really helps you show and illustrate that change to people who are hiking up to Grinnell for the first time ever. You just show them a picture what it used to look like.
Daniel: Grinnell Glacier has gone through periods of very, you know, somewhat stable periods. It's gone through periods of rapid retreat, which we're seeing more and more of in recent years. And there's been kind of a, as that glacier retreats, a changing in how much water it's impounding and the we call the lake, "Upper Grinnell Lake." And that's changed size over time because of the way the ice is or isn't blocking that water from draining down the valley.
Diane: Right. And in my early years leading the hike up to Grinnell Glacier, the glacier itself impounded Upper Grinnell Lake. And then we knew that there was a channel that the water from Upper Grinnell Lake was following underneath the ice and then popping out in that dramatic rush and the outlet where where I'd walk along the the steep wall of ice and see the water coming out. Today, the glacier is not impounding the lake at all. There's there's still a significant meltwater lake up there, but it is flowing, flowing freely past the glacier, to the outlet.
Daniel: Right.
[Music fades in and then concludes.]
Daniel: One of the cool things about the National Park Service is—and about this park—is that we are getting to see this what is usually a very long geologic process. We are seeing it play out in on a human timescale, a human lifetime. We're seeing ice retreat and then plants and trees and things grow back into place. Like that's pretty wild.
Diane: And I feel like that's one of the things that makes the hike to Grinnell Glacier such an incredible opportunity for people today. I see people have all sorts of emotional responses to that area. It's beautiful. It's it's gorgeous. It's it's stark. And to be up in the Grinnell base and close to the lake, to the upper lake and close to the ice itself is really unlike any place else people experience in Glacier National Park. And today, people understand that that ice is disappearing and it's not going to be with us forever. And people express a lot of sadness about that. And I certainly feel that that sadness, that sense of loss as well. But at the same time, I try to focus on the incredible opportunity we have that, this is in a national park. It's a place that we do have the opportunity to actually be connected to what's happening. It's not just something that we're reading about in the news. It's not just some lingo about climate change, but because of these resources protected by the National Park Service, people are able to experience that up close and see it for themselves and and have that much emotional response, which perhaps is what people need to have in order to take climate change seriously.
Daniel: To understand it. So do you encounter a lot of people feeling sad or grieving or saying goodbye to the glaciers when they come on your hikes?
Diane: I do find a lot of people who are who are sad and almost distraught in some cases, and I've been amazed in recent years how many visitors I have met throughout the park who verbalized that they came to Glacier National Park because they want to see this place before the glaciers are gone.
Daniel: Wow. So when when you encounter those visitors that are distraught, what's what's your approach? What do you try and tell them?
Diane: Well, I certainly don't tell them how to feel. I give them the information that that I can share about what has happened at Grinnell Glacier in the past, what seems to be happening. Right now. We it's it's very unlikely that anything could change that eventuality right now.
Daniel: Hmm.
Diane: But I try to focus on the fact that there are things that humans do still have control over with climate change. Certainly the rate of change, you know, how extreme it's going to become or are things that are still within our control and the human species is pretty incredible.
Daniel: Right.
Diane: We we have incredible abilities with technology and problem solving. None of it's going to be easy. And I think that's in my opinion, that's where we are right now, is that as a society, perhaps we're wrestling with how much we're willing to commit to to solve a problem that is not simple.
Daniel: It makes me think of how special of a place this park is in Grinnell Glacier especially. And the you know, as a ranger, you going up there and using the place to help people figure out how they can be a part of that change, how they can, what they can do.
Diane: And that's one of the amazing gifts of a national park, is that it's a place that each person can experience individually. And and if they have some of those sad feelings up there. Perhaps that's okay. Perhaps. Perhaps that's a good thing. I try to not leave people in despair. I try to to point out some of the positives that can come about simply because of that awareness and and some of the positives. You know that there are endless possibilities. But at the same time, I'm not the one to tell every body that things are going to be okay.
Daniel: Yeah. So, Diane, when you hike up to Grinnell Glacier these days, how does it feel for you?
Diane: In a way, I guess it feels profound. It feels... It feels like a gift for me personally that I have been able to experience this valley over enough years to actually see the changes myself. It's it's not something that I have to read about and and wonder, you know, "What is this climate change thing? What's really happening?"
Diane: Whether we had words for it or not. I have experienced and seen incredible changes up there. And I think it's natural that with changes, I think for many of us, there's a sadness. There's there's a longing for the way things used to be.
Diane: It's not just the glacier. This park has a visitation today that's double what it was when I started working here. And so there there are changes in the glacier. There are changes in the visitor experience. And of course, there is a sadness. And yet I do I do feel excitement that at least we have places like Glacier National Park where I'm able to to see and experience these raw, real realities.
Daniel: Yeah... When you think about all the people, you know, driving and flying out for vacation at Glacier and or when you think about the Vice President flying and all these helicopters and airplanes to get there, there is a kind of contradiction, you know, in the amount of fossil fuels being burned for us to go see and say goodbye to this glacier that's melting because of the burning of fossil fuels.
Diane: Life is not simple. The world is not simple, and the world is not black and white. I lead a life that's dependent on on a lot of fossil fuels. And here in Glacier National Park, as the Park Service, we really do care about these issues. And yet one of the most iconic experiences in Glacier National Park is driving going to the Sun Road. Our park is known worldwide as being the park with the iconic road, the first National Park Service road, where actually driving the road was the experience as opposed to simply getting from one point to another. So it's all wrapped up and it's all complicated. And I think I think it's a slippery slope when people expect there to be easy black and white answers.
Diane: To a certain extent, I feel like we look at the Grinnell Glacier base and we understand Grinnell Glacier is receding and for a moment we just need to be with that reality. And then the next step is that maybe we'll be able to start doing something about it.
Daniel: Hmm. That's really well-put. How have you changed since your first visit to Grinnell?
Diane: My hair got gray. That happened ridiculously early, though. I think one way I have changed is that I have accepted that reality. That things aren't simple and they're not black and white. I think when I was younger, I wanted to jump to answers and I wanted to know it all. And I wanted to think that I had all the answers. And now I'm not so sure that there are easy answers for most of the things that I wrestle with. But I believe we need to keep wrestling and and we'll find our way to an answer at some point.
Daniel: And being okay with living in that complicated, contradictory gray area.
Diane: And accepting the fact that a place like Glacier gives us that opportunity to feel more connected to the world, at least at least for me, I can't I can't speak for other people. But protected places such as Glacier allow me the time and the space to ponder and problem solve and process some of those issues.
Daniel: I think you're, of course, connected to the Many Glacier area, to Grinnell Glacier. But do you feel like you're kind of part of it?
Diane: I think it would be presumptive of me to to be part of it, but it's part of me. Many Glacier is a huge part of me, and for that I am very thankful.
Daniel: Well, thanks for coming and talking to us, Diane.
Diane: Thank you, Daniel.
[Ending music fades in and plays under credits.]
Peri: Headwaters is funded by donations to the Glacier National Park Conservancy. As an organization dedicated to supporting the park the Conservancy funds a lot of sustainability initiatives, from solar panels on park buildings, to storytelling projects like this one, the Conservancy is doing critical work to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. You can learn more about what they do and about how to get involved at Glacier.org.
Peri: This show is created by Daniel Lombardi. Michael Faist. Gaby Eseverri, and me, Peri Sasnett. We get critical support from Lacie Kowalski, Melissa Sladek, Kristen Friesen, and so many good people with Glacier's natural and cultural resource teams.
Peri: Our music was made by the brilliant Frank Waln, and the show's cover art is by our sweet friend Stella Nall. Check out Frank and Stella's work at the links in the show notes. Besides sharing this episode with a friend who might appreciate it, you can help us out by leaving a rating and review in your podcast app. Thanks for listening.
A conversation with longtime interpretive ranger Diane Sine about a lifetime of watching change in Glacier. This episode was recorded in May of 2023.
Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Stella Nall art: https://www.instagram.com/stella.nall/
Overview of the park’s glaciers: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glaciersoverview.htm