Podcast
Michael:
All right, Andrew, my first season working for Glacier, I was a receptionist at Park Headquarters.
Andrew:
Okay.
Michael:
Lowest paid position in the park, mind you, answering questions people had via phone, email and letter.
Andrew:
Gotcha.
Michael:
Occasionally we had people in person come to the front desk with a question. And one of the most challenging questions we ever got was: "where is your World Heritage Site plaque?"
Andrew:
[laughs] Our what?
Michael:
We are a world heritage site—recognized by the United Nations for protecting natural and cultural resources that are important to the whole world. And every world heritage site gets a plaque to commemorate this designation.
Andrew:
Okay. I don't think I've ever noticed this before. Where was it?
Michael:
Well, that's the thing. Nobody knew. I told them I'd never heard of it and neither had my coworker. So they described to us a two foot by three foot bronze plaque. And we started asking around. We asked our boss who coordinates exhibits around the park, he didn't know. We asked facilities management, they didn't know. We asked the superintendent... Nope. We asked everyone in headquarters, and started calling all over the park to see if anyone had any idea where it might be. And then—it turned out it was in Canada.
Andrew:
Oh, that explains it.
Michael:
Glacier national parks in Northern boundary is the 49th parallel. Also known as our border with Canada and right across the border in Alberta is Waterton Lakes National Park. And the World Heritage Site plaque was displayed at a pavilion in Waterton. So I wanted to call up somebody who works there.
Natalie:
No, that's a great question. And I don't know that I fully know the answer to that. Um, we've recently redone the pavilion in Waterton. So I don't know if the plaque is actually still visible there or not. That's something I'll have to go and look for now.
Michael:
The mystery continues!
Natalie:
Exactly.
Michael:
That's Natalie Hodge.
Natalie:
My name is Natalie
Michael:
Who works for parks, Canada, the Canadian counterpart to the NPS.
Natalie:
I am the interpretation coordinator in Waterton Lakes National Park
Michael:
Waterton, a literal stone's throw away has been Glacier's neighbor since the very beginning.
Natalie:
Yeah. Waterton was actually created in 1895 and it was originally entitled the forest park reserve
Michael:
Two years before glacier was established as a forest preserve in 1897.
Andrew:
Wow. That's really early.
Michael:
Not to mention that Parks Canada—the Canadian counterpart to the NPS—also beat us to the punch
Natalie:
Parks Canada was actually founded in 1911, and it actually became the world's first national park service.
Andrew:
Predating the National Park Service by five years!
Michael:
The two parks administered separately and their respective nations oversee a contiguous landscape that doesn't recognize the political boundary that separates them.
Natalie:
There's many jokes about animals, not needing a passport in order to go back and forth between the two nations. We see blackberries go back and forth across the border with no issue. Um...
Andrew:
[Laughs].
Michael:
[Laughs]
Natalie:
Sometimes same with moose as well.
Michael:
Now that elusive plaque that I mentioned...
Andrew:
yeah?
Michael:
If you managed to find it, wherever it is, it wouldn't say Glacier National Park on it.
Michael:
So we refer to our park, each of our parks is kind of abbreviated names: Glacier National Park, Waterton Lakes National Park... But what is the full name of our parks together?
Natalie:
The full name of our parks together would be Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.
Michael:
Our two parks share more than an international border Waterton and Glacier National Parks agreed that this incredible landscape deserves our cooperation. Setting aside political divisions to cooperate in the management of everything from invasive or endangered species to wildland fires.
Natalie:
For example, if there's a fire in Waterton Lakes National Park, often fire crews from Glacier will come down and help, and then vice versa.
Andrew:
And while there are over a hundred international or transboundary parks and protected areas today, back in 1932, we were the first ever international peace park,
Michael:
Which on top of signaling management cooperation was a symbol of goodwill between nations. A statement of unity that—in 1932 in between two world wars—must've been refreshing. With a passport, Waterton is just a few hours away from most places in glacier. And there are a lot of ways to experience it.
Andrew:
Yeah, there are some remarkable hiking opportunities in Waterton that range from short trips to all day outings.
Michael:
And a personal favorite of mine is to visit some of the phenomenal restaurants in Waterton Townsite.
Andrew:
Yeah, we don't have quite the same variety down here,
Michael:
But Natalie leads, what I think is the coolest way to see the place, a way to really experience the international part of our title: the International Peace Park Hike.
Natalie:
I have definitely been fortunate over the years and have been able to lead that Peace Park Hike. And it's probably one of the coolest elements of my job working for Parks Canada. The hike is unique really in the sense that participants start out hiking in Canada, get to cross an international border by foot, and finish the hike in the United States. And our audience members are generally quite excited about the opportunity to be able to hike in two countries in one day.
Michael:
It's so cool. They even hold a little hands across the border ceremony.
Natalie:
And this is where our participants line up on either side of the international border, and they shake hands as a sign of peace and Goodwill with those across from them. And this is a long-standing tradition of the hike, and it's been ongoing since the creation of the hike in 1978.
Michael:
The International Peace Park hike or IPP is 14 kilometers long, or just over eight and a half miles. You essentially walk the length of Upper Waterton Lake to wind up back in Glacier, where you'll finally catch a ride on The International, a 200 passenger boat that's ferried people across Waterton lake since 1928.
Andrew:
Yeah. And from having taken that ride myself, it really stands out as one of the most unique experiences anywhere in either park.
Michael:
Yeah. I agree.
Andrew:
Even just looking into the other country, let alone getting to hike or boat into it is... Powerful.
Michael:
Now again, you do need a passport to visit and you need a reservation to ride the international or to join the IPP. But no matter what you do on your visit, seeing both sides of the border will only enrich your experience. So the next time you come to visit, make sure you visit our sister park, keep that spirit of goodwill alive. And maybe if you're lucky, you could even find that plaque.
Michael:
Welcome to Headwaters - a Glacier National Park Podcast. Brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy, and produced on the traditional lands of many native American tribes, including the Blackfeet, Kootenai, Selis and Qlispe people.
Andrew:
We’re calling this season: The Confluence, as we look at the ways that nature, culture, the present and the past all come together here.
Michael:
I’m Michael.
Andrew:
I’m Andrew.
Michael:
And we’re both rangers here. Now, we've mentioned so far that Glacier has a lot of titles.
Andrew:
National park world heritage site...
Michael:
But today we're going to focus on just one of them: International Peace Park. An agreement between the NPS and Parks Canada to cooperatively manage our shared resources.
Andrew:
And no place better represents the International Peace Park than Goat Haunt, one of the most remote and least visited regions of Glacier.
Michael:
Okay, real quick. What's with the name? Goat haunt?
Andrew:
Yeah. It's kind of an archaic term, but a haunt is a place where someone or something hangs out. So essentially Goat Haunt is a place where the mountain goats like to hang.
Michael:
I see. Well, odds are, even if you've been to Glacier before you probably haven't made it to Goat Haunt. And for good reason!
Andrew:
Yeah, there are no roads leading to it. And the shortest hike to get there is 22 miles
Michael:
Shortest hike from the U S that is.. So you can either backpack for a few days South of the border, or you can drive to Canada.
Andrew:
Yeah. Goat Haunt sits at the Southern tip of upper Waterton Lake. One of the largest lakes in either part, which stretches across the border into both Canada and the U S
Michael:
Meaning Goat Haunt is just about three miles from the Canadian border.
Andrew:
Yeah. So people overwhelmingly access Goat Haunt from Waterton lakes National Park.
Michael:
Oh, now I understand where the name comes from. Waterton Lake, Waterton Lakes N--. Okay, whatever.
Andrew:
[laughing] Yeah. So some people get there on foot, uh, like on the International Peace Park Hike, but most people arrive to Goat Haunt by boat,
Michael:
including even the Rangers that work there.
Andrew:
Talk about a commute.
Michael:
In this episode, we'll be looking at what it means to be an International Peace Park; how it happened in the first place and how it has affected those that live and work here.
BACKCOUNTRY
Michael:
All right, Andrew, where is our border with Canada?
Michael:
I think it's about 20, 30 miles north of here, as the crow flies?
Michael:
Yeah. Well, could you be even more specific? Where is the border?
Michael:
It lies on the 49th parallel.
Michael:
Yeah, exactly. The 49th parallel was first proposed as a border by the Hudson's Bay trading company in 1714, which is a story for another day, but it was ultimately adopted by the U.S. and British governments, because at the time, Canada was still under British rule. Now, British and American teams surveyed the border in the 1860s, with brief interruptions for the Civil War and monuments were erected that cemented a border nearly 4,000 miles long.
Michael:
But did you know that that survey was actually wrong?
Michael:
Wait, really?
Michael:
Yeah. The border was first surveyed when we still thought the earth was a sphere, but it's actually an oblate spheroid.
Michael:
What??
Michael:
Essentially it's a sphere that bulges at the equator due to rotation. All that to say, the original line doesn't perfectly follow the 49th parallel.
Michael:
Really!
Michael:
No, it's close, but it's not exact.
Michael:
Spheroid and all, it does transect present-day Waterton Lakes and Glacier National Parks.
Michael:
And visiting the border between the parks today, you'll notice the only thing separating the two countries is a swath of cleared trees - a 20-foot-wide unvegetated line, continuing into the horizon.
Michael:
And as far as this area is concerned, the most meaningful discussions of that symbolic boundary occurred not in the halls of Congress or Parliament, but on the trail and around the fire.
Michael:
Two of the earliest proponents of a jointly managed park were John "Kootenay" Brown and Albert "Death on the Trail" Reynolds.
Michael:
Big fans of nicknames.
Michael:
Yeah. Brown was the first superintendent of Waterton Lakes National Park.
Michael:
Reynolds was the first ranger stationed in the present day Goat Haunt area.
Michael:
Yeah, and it was these two that hatched the idea that two parks in two countries could be managed together.
Michael:
And the story of their friendship is an origin story of the Peace Park itself.
Michael:
We actually know an awful lot about John "Kootenay" Brown. He was raised by his grandmother in Ireland during the great famine and led a colorful life. After leaving home, he joined the Royal Militia in 1858, but never saw combat. In search of excitement, he chased a fortune in the gold fields of British Columbia, working as a prospector, constable, trapper, guide, mail carrier, swamper.
Michael:
Swamper, what the heck is that?
Michael:
Someone who steers canal boats. 50 years later, he had garnered a reputation for knowing the region as well as anyone, which led to his appointment in 1910 as the first supervisory forest ranger of Kootenai Lakes Forest Reserve, which is now our northern neighbor, Waterton Lakes National Park, at age 70. He earned $75 a month to manage the whole area.
Michael:
Wait, only $75? That's like the highest ranking position in the whole park.
Michael:
Yeah. It's $2,000 in today's money.
Michael:
All right. Now much less is known about Albert "Death on the Trail Reynolds." Born in Wisconsin in 1847, he and his wife moved to Montana's Flathead Valley in 1871 so he could work at a lumber mill. And to escape the nervous strain of work, 30 years later, he retired from being the supervisor at the lumber mill to become a ranger at the then-Flathead Forest Preserve. When that preserve was converted to Glacier National Park in 1910, he was stationed on the Southern end of upper Waterton Lake. And while there have been biographies written of Brown, most of what we know about Reynolds, we learned from his diary. Take this entry from 1912, where he's looking for poachers.
Bob Adams:
Found where some hunters had camped and hauled down a sheep or deer from the mountains. But it was in Canada about six miles from the boundary line.
Michael:
Which had been brought to life here by the voice talent of ranger Bob Adams. Reynolds lived in one of the most undeveloped and least visited areas of the park, often with only wildlife as his company.
Bob Adams:
Friday, October 25, 1912. When I arrived at camp, a bear had been there last night and he raised hell all aroound camp he went, looking into all three windows, took a bath in the wash tub and stood in front of the looking glass and combed his hair with a scrubbing brush.
Michael:
His nickname "Death on the Trail" was self-described, and his disdain for horses led him to walk everywhere. He regularly walked 17 miles south to get his mail.
Michael:
I walk just about one mile to get my mail. And I thought that was rough. But Reynolds would also walk north to visit Waterton, where he befriended Brown.
Michael:
Yeah. He walked the full 12 mile length of upper Waterton Lake, which starts in Montana at Goat Haunt, and ends in Waterton townsite in Alberta, walking that whole way to visit his friend Kootenay Brown, unless he could catch a boat ride.
Bob Adams:
Sunday, October 20, 1912. Left the camp 7:00 AM in one of Mr. Hazzard's boats. Went as far as Weeks' Landing, where I walked to the post office, got some mail, then went to Mr. Browns.
Michael:
His duties as a backcountry, ranger included looking out for poachers, forest fires and other "threats to the park."
Michael:
Okay. So what constituted a threat to the park?
Michael:
Well, in the early years, the Park Service was guided by a fundamentally different understanding of ecology than it is today. And Reynolds' writing illustrates this really well. Early park managers were especially eager to protect ungulates like deer. He would actually follow deer in order to chase them towards better foraging habitat.
Bob Adams:
Left camp. As soon as I could. Went up the trail that the deer took up the mountains, I located them up on a high bench, almost at the top of that mountain. I managed to get above them. There were about 40 of them. I got above them after a hard struggle, snow was deep.
Michael:
He thought he could get them to go somewhere where they'd be happier and safer, if he could only jump out and surprise them.
Bob Adams:
Some went one way, others took my trail and went down. Last of them that I saw was about two miles and still going. They're safe.
Michael:
I think if I did that in a uniform today, people would think I was totally crazy.
Michael:
On top of chasing deer around, he would actively hunt and kill anything that could harm them. To kill coyotes, he even enlisted the help of his friend, Brown, the superintendent of Waterton.
Bob Adams:
I went to one of Mr. Brown's baits for coyotes, and I found that the coyote had been here this morning and had taken a meal out of it. I followed his tracks for nearly two miles and he did not show any signs of the poison. So I left. Canadian poison is no good.
Michael:
In the years since, we've come to understand that predators like coyotes, wolves, and mountain lions play essential roles in the ecosystem, and the practice of poisoning them has long since been abandoned.
Tracy Weisse:
It's not part of our job anymore, no. It's, it's nice that, uh, attitudes have changed in that respect and decided that all animals have a right to be here, not just the ungulates.
Michael:
That's Tracy Weisse.
Tracy Weisse:
Yeah. My name is Tracy Weisse. I've been working here at Belly River for the last 16 summers,
Michael:
The Belly River Ranger Station where she works is one of the northernmost in the park. In fact, to hike in to meet her, I parked at the Canadian border, spitting distance from the customs office. And while Tracy and her husband Bruce work here in the summer, Reynolds worked and lived near Goat Haunt yearround, with only a wood-burning stove for warmth.
Bob Adams:
It was 12 below freezing this morning and now 6:30, it's 10 below.
Michael:
Even on holidays.
Bob Adams:
I made a bread pudding for dinner and took a cup of cold water. That was my Christmas.
Tracy Weisse:
I honestly cannot imagine the rangers that spent winters out here in that kind of cold and that kind of wind. It must have just been phenomenal.
Michael:
But rain or shine, Reynolds would travel north to visit Brown.
Bob Adams:
December 27, 1912. The snow was deep and soft. The wind was awful. It took till 4:00 PM to make Mr. Browns.
Andrew:
From what we can tell, the two were fast friends, even though Brown, who wrote poetry and spiritual musings, never seemed to write much about Reynolds.
Michael:
Yeah. And, Reynolds, you know, in the journals of his that we have, he doesn't write about his friendship with Brown either. His journals are really utilitarian. A simple summary of what he did that day, often signing off with the number of miles he had traveled, but even still, Reynolds wrote often about his trips to visit Brown.
Bob Adams:
Wednesday, December 4, 1912, left camp 9:15 AM with Mr. Brown. He went as far as Weeks' Landing with me to see if I got safe over the river, I had to break ice about a hundred feet before I got into the main stream, but I made it okay.
Michael:
They collaborated for work. They shared notes. They sought one another's advice and they socialized. And as you know, Andrew, the winters here can be pretty drab.
Andrew:
Yeah. Cold, gray skies, socked in.
Michael:
Which, by all accounts gave them plenty of time to discuss the philosophical facets of their jobs. Like the artificiality of the line separating the two parks they were sworn to protect. One person who met Brown and Reynolds was Samuel Middleton, an Anglican reverend in Canada. And after meeting the two rangers, he wrote about their discussions of the boundary.
Andrew:
Emblematic of the trouble with dividing the two parks was Upper Waterton Lake, which lay partially in the United States and partially in Canada.
Michael:
Reynolds suggested that geology recognized no boundaries. And that as Waterton Lake lay in its glacial cirque, no man-made boundary could cleave its waters apart. It'd be better, then, to accept nature's creation by removing the boundary line and acknowledging one park, one lake, in its own territory.
Andrew:
And Brown agreed. He said that since the lake could not be physically divided, it was senseless to divide its management.
Michael:
This was a powerful idea at the time.
Andrew:
A subtle suggestion, through the lens of a landscape, that a political boundary could not divide us.
Michael:
This idea of theirs to jointly manage the two parks could not come to fruition in their lifetimes.
Bob Adams:
All the days I ever saw, today has put the cap sheath on them all. Talk about wind, it has been a corker. I had to face it every step of the way, 18 miles. 9:00 PM. Beautiful storm raging. Don't know where from, and can't open the door to look out. Snowdrifts all through the house.
Michael:
Reynolds was clearly an incredibly tough person with a fortitude that's hard to fathom today.
Bob Adams:
Wednesday, January 15, 1913, went up to the lake, had to use my snowshoes. It snowed hard all day. It was so soft, I sunk in above my knees on snowshoes. I reached home camp, found six feet of snow on the roof. I had to go up and shovel it away from the stove pipe before I could build a fire. It took over three hours. Did not get it nearly all off. Will finish in the morning. It was 10 below zero all day and snowing hard. Distance, six miles. And one frozen toe.
Michael:
But, as tough as Reynolds was, the winter of 1913 began to catch up to him, and he caught a cold he couldn't shake. In one last journey, he ventured north to visit Brown, who mentioned Reynolds in his own journal for the first and final time.
Andrew:
4 February, 1913. Mr. Reynolds here. 32 below zero. Rode and snowshoed west side of park to pass. Miles: 20. Reynolds very sick. Up all night with him.
Michael:
Four days later, Reynolds died.
Andrew:
And three years after that, Brown passed away as well.
Michael:
Over the course of the next 20 years the parks remained under separate management. A new Waterton superintendent was appointed to replace Brown, as was a backcountry ranger to replace Reynolds. Visitors came, people enjoyed the parks and life continued, but Reynolds and Browns' idea of an international park lived on. Because in July of 1931, the local Canadian Rotary Club called a get-together of Montana and Alberta Rotarians to discuss for the first time the creation of an international peace park.
Andrew:
And while Reynolds and Brown had entertained the notion, it had never before gained traction. In fact, this would be the first International Peace Park in the whole world.
Michael:
Yeah. And this new idea was drafted in a resolution by the newly inaugurated president of the local rotary club, Samuel H. Middleton.
Andrew:
Who just so happens to be the same guy we quoted earlier, who had interviewed Reynolds and Brown about their thoughts on the border.
Michael:
The very same. Now, it's worth noting that Middleton first came to Waterton in search of a summer camp for St. Paul's Indian school, of which he was the principal, one of many schools of its kind that sought to suppress native culture, taking kids from reservations away from their families to boarding schools, where they were taught more or less how to be white.
Andrew:
This policy was called at the time, kill the Indian, save the man.
Michael:
Yeah. But, acknowledging his racist efforts towards indigenous people, he was an important advocate for the establishment of the peace park.
Andrew:
A bill establishing the peace park passed the U.S. Congress in December. And it was echoed by the Canadian government the following year.
Michael:
The details of this new designation were not clear cut, leaving park managers to decide how they would jointly oversee the two parks, parks that have evolved a great deal in the years since. In his day as a backcountry ranger, Reynolds hardly ever saw anyone, but Tracy, the modern backcountry ranger working along the border, says her main job is to work with people.
Tracy Weisse:
Well, I really see the main part of our job as educating people in the backcountry.
Michael:
Today, more people visit Waterton-Glacier on an average summer day than the parks used to see in a whole year during Brown and Reynolds' time, but that doesn't change why they're protected or why they're important.
Tracy Weisse:
People that do come here, and there are more all the time, they're looking for something real - to go backpacking, to reconnect with nature. That's what these parks are all about. And I think every day that goes by, they're more important than than in the past.
Andrew:
Throughout the last century, with all the changes it's brought, the two parks have strived to work together.
Michael:
So, whenever our two parks share wildland firefighting resources, whenever we lead cross-boundary hikes, boat trips, you know who to thank. A couple of tough old curmudgeons with an idea.
Bob Adams:
Sunday, December 29, 1912, Oh, heavens, how it does snow and blow. A person can't see 200 feet and it is coming harder and harder. I wish I was back in Helena.
DUCKS
Andrew:
So Michael, we've been talking about the international peace park today. What is Waterton glacier international peace park mean to you?
Michael:
Selfishly it makes for a pretty awesome place to work. You know, I got to hang out with a lot more Canadians than I ever did. And the coolest visitor center around here is the Alberta visitor center. I feel like, uh, like Wilson from home improvement, like peering over the fence at my neighbors. Cause from a lot of trails in the park, you could actually see Canada. So I think it's, it's pretty unique to be part of that symbol of cooperation, uh, as an employee and as a visitor.
Andrew:
I totally agree. It's it's pretty cool. When you think about, you know, the ecosystem here, the plants, the animals, you know, even the rivers and lakes, they don't know where the border is. They don't care where the border is. They're just interacting with each other in the way they always have. And to think that we can overcome the challenges of the border to manage this place jointly, to take care of this ecosystem as a whole, instead of as two separate parts that are divided, you know, just by a line on a map is a pretty special thing. I think.
Michael:
Yeah. Two countries, two parks kind of choosing to work around or to work through a political boundary for the joint management of a, of a place like this. This is neat.
Andrew:
Yeah. And on that note, I think we should move into our next story about how scientists from two different countries came together across the border to study some important animals that spend time on both sides of the international boundary.
Lisa:
Always look back in there. Yeah. And you're good at recognizing ducks.
Andrew:
It's 7:00 AM and Lisa bait is thinking about ducks.
Lisa:
I would every year, the weather channelizes things differently, but usually this is really deep on me, like that, to like go through,
Michael:
Are they talking about walking through that water?
Andrew:
Yeah. Duck science, as it turns out, involves a lot of water.
Lisa:
So I don't think you're going to be able to do that for safety reasons. So then you just exit and come out
Andrew:
Today, we're doing a brood survey where we'll review the river to see if any of the female harlequin ducks there, have new chicks with them.
Lisa:
Since you're going to have to wait for awhile. What you could do is just walk up the boardwalk and look for ducks on Avalanche Creek. And then when you're finished, come back down.
Andrew:
Lisa Bate is a wildlife biologist here in Glacier National Park. And one of her projects is to study the parks, Harlequin ducks, observing these birds takes a lot of eyes. So Lisa enlists a ton of volunteers to help her collect that data. It's a pretty fun project to be involved with. And as it so happened, all of us in the podcast, somewhat independently got involved with it this year. Michael and I and producers, Daniel and Alex have all gone out with Lisa to study the ducks. Michael even ended up pretty wet from his experience.
Michael:
Yeah. If you want to hear that story, you got to go to the Many Glacier episode.
Andrew:
Before we get into the study. I did that morning. There's a few things you need to know about Harlequin ducks.
Michael:
First, the name 'harlequin ducks' are named for the males' breeding plumage, which resembles the makeup of a harlequin, a jester-like character popular in early modern European theater.
Andrew:
And harlequin ducks are migratory birds, but unlike most migratory birds...
Lisa:
They don't migrate North-South when their the breeding season arrives instead because they're sea ducks, they actually migrate East-West.
Andrew:
But just because these birds migrate East-West doesn't mean they're not international.
Michael:
How so? I know a bird that migrates North-South, like a robin will spend time in Canada, the U.S. And Mexico. But if you migrate straight West of here, you'll just hit ocean. Not Canada.
Andrew:
Yeah. It turns out the migration path isn't quite straight West, but check out this map of one duck Lisa tracked.
Michael:
Oh wow! It spent part of the year in Washington part in British Columbia part in glacier and part in Waterton Lakes National Park. The next thing you need to know is that these birds love whitewater. They feel right at home in crashing surf and fast running creeks. And that's part of the reason why they're so hard to study.
Andrew:
And the last thing you need to know is that harlequin ducks are very loyal.
Lisa:
Extremely loyal. Um, as far as we know, the females only nest on the streams where they were born, their natal streams though, we've banded nearly 300 harlequins in Montana thus far, we have yet to document a breeding female dispersing to a stream other than her natal stream to reproduce.
Michael:
Well, what if something happens to the natal stream?
Andrew:
Yeah. That's kind of what makes them such a sensitive species. They seem to not be able to just find a new home.
Lisa:
I think this is one of the leading reasons that harlequins are a species of concern. Their range has shrunk. We used to have Harlequins in Colorado, many streams in Idaho and Montana and we no longer have for a variety of reasons. And right now I think it's highly unlikely that those streams would ever be repopulated. Unless we can document that females will disperse to other streams.
Andrew:
It's not just streams that they are loyal to. I asked Lisa if the ducks are loyal to a particular mate as well.
Lisa:
If you asked me that question at the beginning of this study, I would say very loyal. Um, we, the first three years of this study, we just saw incredible, I think a hundred percent mate fidelity since then we have seen some so-called divorces, but I'm working on a paper with some Canadian biologists and they just documented a female, um, with a certain mate one year, the next two years with a different mate. And then in the fourth year, she returned to that original mate. So we know that sometimes things happen. We don't know why.
Andrew:
And if a duck's mate dies...
Lisa:
Documented times when the female died and the males have already migrated back to the coast, but the following those single males will come back here looking for those females. And we've seen three, possibly four males return looking for their females. I assume that's what they're doing. And we have one male who I know now has returned three years in a row, always single, never with another female and never with the original female. And we just assume that that female has died.
Michael:
I can picture the Hallmark movie now, lonely duck wintering on the coast and spending the summer searching the Rocky Mountains for his missing mate, looking for a love he'll never find.
Andrew:
And Lisa told me that there's about 33% more males than females on the wintering grounds. So he's single males are pretty unlikely to find a new mate.
Michael:
At the beginning of her research. Lisa didn't really know how many ducks there were here.
Lisa:
When I first started this project, I thought maybe there were 40 pairs of harlequins throughout the whole park. Because you can't tell because they look identical. It wasn't until we started putting colored bands on them that we realized that we had more ducks just on upper McDonald Creek drainage alone, than we realized.
Michael:
So to tell individuals apart, you've got to catch them and put a unique band on their leg.
Andrew:
Biologists have developed lots of ways to safely catch birds, but none of them could really account for the challenges of dealing with a bird whose preferred habitat is whitewater.
Michael:
In the spring when both males and females are in glacier, the water on the creeks here is dangerously high and fast. Wading out into a raging creek to try to catch a duck was potentially deadly. So for a long time, we knew very little about these birds.
Andrew:
But it's not just raging waters that Lisa has to deal with.
Lisa:
There are some years that we're walking over like 40 foot deep avalanche drifts still.
Michael:
So there were lots of challenges, but there was a lot of pressure to understand these birds better because they seemed to be disappearing.
Lisa:
Biologists throughout the western half of their range have all documented a decline or a shift in distribution.
Andrew:
But today when I joined with Lisa, we weren't catching any ducks. We were just counting them. We broke into teams to come every foot of the Creek and observe if any of the hens had chicks. If we found any chicks, then later in the summer, they could be caught and get a band before they migrated back West. But this wasn't just walking down a trail... To stay along the stream was a lot of bushwhacking.
Lisa:
Yeah., and it gets really bushwhacky when the water's high... That and at some point we're going to just start walking in the creek because there'll be a lot easier than bushwhacking because the bushwhack is like through Hawthorne and real fun stuff like that.
Andrew:
And eventually we just went right into the water. We walked in the creek through water that was above my knees.
Michael:
Well, did you find any ducks?
Andrew:
We did! Lisa and I saw seven harlequin ducks that day. And we were able to collect data on other birds as well. We saw some American dippers and spotted sandpipers. The sandpipers had just had little babies and they were about the size of a piece of popcorn. They were so tiny and fuzzy–.
Michael:
Popped popcorn? Yeah?
Andrew:
Popped popcorn, Yeah. So we actually ended up seeing a lot more pipers and dippers than harlequins.
Background:
[A bird singing and water rushing.]
Speaker 2:
A dipper is just flew downstream, singing. Hear it? Yeah. That sound. Yeah, it is unusual to hear them this time of year, there are more like February, March and April when they're really singing up a storm. Flying and singing. Andrew just saw a spotted sandpiper.
Andrew:
As far as Harlequin ducks, we had seen five single females so far. Is that a lot?
Lisa:
I don't know. Sort of depends on what they get down low. Yeah. Like I said, like a high count norm would be 12, so we still have a long ways to go.
Michael:
So how did this research get started in the first place?
Andrew:
At first, Lisa just wanted to figure out if the ducks were even successfully breeding here.
Lisa:
I was like, okay, well, to do that, we need to find the nest and monitor them. And so we started like looking for nests and we never found one, I think in 20 or 30 years of surveys here in the park, only one had accidentally been found when someone almost stepped on one, they were walking along the shoreline. So I'm like, well, how are you going to monitor nests? If you can't find them?
Andrew:
Luckily for all of us, we're not just in Glacier National Park. We're in Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.
Lisa:
Waterton Lakes National Park and Glacier National Park: Every year we have a "Science and History Day..."
Andrew:
...A full day science conference, where experts from both sides of the border present, what they've been working on.
Lisa:
...In my first year as a biologist here, I met Cindy Smith. She is the retired conservation biologist in Waterton Lakes. And I knew that she had done research on harlequin ducks in Banff National Park. So I was lucky enough to meet her and introduce myself. And I was like, Hey, I'm thinking of doing some research on Harlequin ducks and trying to find their nests. I said, we just aren't having any luck. I was like, how did you do it? And she's like, telemetry, you have to put radios on them! And she was totally right, because when we first started trying to find their nest, even with radios on, I mean, I think it'd be a one in a billion chance trying to find those nests because they're so cryptic, they're so hidden. And some of them literally were like 2.5 miles up off of another drainage and on a cliff and a burn habitat. I mean...
Andrew:
But to put radios on them first, you have to catch them. So Lisa and Cindy, an American and a Canadian biologist, working together developed a mist net method of capturing harlequin ducks.
Michael:
That must've been what I saw.
Andrew:
Yeah. Do you remember how it works?
Michael:
Well, Gerard Byrd, who joined us on the Grinnell Glacier hike in the Many Glacier episode, and a friend of his paddled, an inflatable kayak full of a couple people and a pole across the creek. The pole had a rope attached. Uh, so there was the near end and the far end one that stayed on shore and the one that went across the creek in the boat. And when the crew on the far side of the creek got out, they pulled the net taut.
Andrew:
Oh, that makes sense. So no one had to be in the water.
Michael:
No, that you floated across, but you stood on either side and pull it tight. And because harlequin ducks, unlike mallards, that fly way up in the air, harlequin ducks fly down low, right over the water. So they go straight into the net.
Andrew:
Okay. So what would you do if you caught one in the net?
Michael:
So the net is suspended on a cable that runs from one end to the other. And if they catch a duck in the net, the crew on the far side will twist their pole to close it disconnected from their side. And then the near side crew will pull the net all the way along the cable until the duck is in their hands.
Andrew:
And then they can handle it on shore without having to get into the water.
Michael:
Yeah. Precisely.
Andrew:
So what was your job then?
Michael:
Oh, I had a really critical, a very important duck catching job.
Andrew:
Yeah. What was that?
Michael:
I, uh, was I sat, uh, probably a half mile up the road, just looking at the creek with binoculars to see if ducks were coming.
Andrew:
Okay. That sounds pretty important. How many ducks did you see?
Michael:
None. Well, okay. No, I saw mallards and I saw some mergansers. I saw mergansers. But no, no harlequins. They didn't, they didn't come down the creek that day.
Andrew:
Well, hopefully you still felt useful.
Michael:
I did for, you know, for all the lofty ambitions I had of catching a duck that day, uh, Lisa valued, you know, all the effort we put in.
Andrew:
Lisa reminded me that even if you don't find any ducks, knowing that they're not there is useful data for her too.
Lisa:
Yeah, people get disappointed when we don't see many debts or zero ducks. And I always remind people that zero is a real number too. It's a sad number, but it's an important number.
Andrew:
And even though you didn't see any ducks that day, this method has been incredibly successful here.
Lisa:
We have not had any serious injuries to any people. And we have non had any injuries or mortalities than any of the birds. And we have probably captured 250 birds now.
Michael:
Do Lisa and Cindy still work together?
Andrew:
Yeah, they do. In fact, Lisa spoke really glowingly of their collaboration.
Lisa:
Cindy Smith has been a mentor of mine for years. She's amazing. Even though she's retired, as she told me, she's retired from bureaucracy, not biology. So she's, I've worked with her on a number of publications and she still mentors me on several projects.
Michael:
That's a real Peace Park success story.
Andrew:
And the success isn't just with the science they've done.
Lisa:
We're not just colleagues. She's become a very close friend.
Andrew:
A friendship that's been able to thrive across the international border.
GLACIER NATIONAL PARK CONSERVANCY AD
Andrew:
Each episode, we seem to cover at least one thing that like this podcast wouldn't be possible without the support of the Glacier National Park Conservancy.
Doug Mitchell:
With the help of some friends over there, we got the number of executive director, Doug Mitchell, and decided to call him up out of the blue to ask about these projects.
Andrew:
For this episode, we wanted to ask him about a very special bird.
Doug Mitchell:
Glacier Conservancy, Doug Mitchell speaking.
Doug Mitchell:
Hey Doug, it's Michael and Andrew.
Doug Mitchell:
Hey fellas. How are we doing today?
Michael:
We're doing great, but we have a question for you. Are you much of a birder?
Doug Mitchell:
Uh, I am not much of a birder, but I am anxious to learn.
Michael:
We've got a great little bit of audio trivia for you. We're going to play a bird call and want to see if you can guess who that call might belong to.
Doug Mitchell:
Okay. I'm up for I'm ready.
Michael:
All right, here we go.
Andrew:
Does that ring any bells for you?
Doug Mitchell:
I'm going to default to one of my very favorite projects in the park, and I'm going to say Harlequin duck.
Andrew:
You got it.
Michael:
You nailed it. How do you know about Harlequin ducks?
Doug Mitchell:
You know I, I have come to know Harlequin ducks, to be honest through my work here at the Conservancy.
Andrew:
We actually got to see a few of them with Lisa Bate.
Doug Mitchell:
Count me jealous. I have not to my knowledge seen one, my wife has watched a mom Harlequin duck kind of teach her young to navigate the rapids there on McDonald Creek. It was, she said, a really neat experience. Yeah, they're a very, very special, beautiful animal.
Michael:
So are you involved with Lisa's research at all?
Doug Mitchell:
We've, we've been very fortunate here at the Conservancy to be able to support Lisa's research in a number of areas, including with these Harlequin duck studies and also trying to do some work, repairing some of the trails. There are some social trails that can be disruptive on the McDonald Creek area. So we've been very, very fortunate to be able to be part of that process as it's been ongoing.
Andrew:
That's pretty cool. It's a, it sounds like it might allow some more people to have an experience like your wife did when they visit the park.
Doug Mitchell:
Yeah, I think that would be, that would be great. Right. That's what we're all about at the Conservancy--preserving the park for future generations to enjoy and to be able to think about being able to protect this species and have people later on be able to enjoy that is really, really a special thing to be able to think about. Right. That's work worth doing.
Michael:
Absolutely. Awesome. Well thank you for taking some time out of your day, Doug. We'll talk to you later.
Doug Mitchell:
All right. Thanks guys. Take care.
ROMANCE
Michael:
So Andrew, neither of us grew up in Montana, right?
Andrew:
That's correct. I actually grew up in Washington state.
Michael:
Yeah. And I grew up in Ohio. So, the fact that we not only met, but became friends, is something that just flat out never would have happened if it weren't for Glacier.
Andrew:
Absolutely. Over the course of a year, this place serves as an intersection of people from all over the world. A couple of years ago, I was working as a ranger up at Logan Pass. And a guy asked me if I was the same Andrew who had refereed his kids’ soccer game like six years ago. And I was.
Michael:
No way! So, the Peace Park provides a unique opportunity to meet other people and experience cultures on both sides of the U.S.- Canada border.
Andrew:
Just by virtue of having the Alberta Visitor Center near the West entrance here, we've had the chance to meet and befriend a lot of Canadians over the years
Michael:
From the little things like celebrating Canada day on July 1st, to having them go out of their way to get me Canadian candy, ketchup chips, or Frutopia that you can't find down here. The International Peace Park is like a confluence of two countries coming together into one unique thing. I mean, it's a lot of fun.
Andrew:
And just in this episode, we've heard a few examples of employees befriending their counterparts from across the border.
Michael:
But I want to close us out today by meeting some folks that took the whole cross-border friendship thing to the next level.
Justin McKeown:
You know, I would say we got the full story, from the Peace Park perspective.
Michael:
Meet Justin and Kim.
Justin McKeown:
Yeah. I'm Justin McKeown.
Kim McKeown:
And I'm Kim McKeown.
Justin McKeown:
We're currently at our home in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Andrew:
Some Canadians?
Michael:
Well, yes and no.
Kim McKeown:
I'm from Ohio.
Justin McKeown:
And I grew up in the prairies of Canada in Saskatchewan.
Andrew:
Oh, I see where this is going.
Michael:
Justin and Kim both worked in Waterton-Glacier in the early 2000s. Justin, how did you wind up working here?
Justin McKeown:
My uncle was Park Superintendent down in Waterton Lakes, National Park. So I had some exposure of going out there and visiting him and my aunt. It was a job and lifestyle that appealed to me at sort of a younger age.
Michael:
Then, around the time he went to college, or university, as they call it up there, he got a job with Parks Canada.
Justin McKeown:
Started at Elk Island National Park, and then moved down to Waterton Lake
Andrew:
What did he do at Waterton?
Michael:
He was an interpretive ranger, just like we were, leading guided hikes and campground programs.
Justin McKeown:
You know, I can probably look back on it and say, it was like the best job I ever had.
Michael:
Kim, how did you wind up working here?
Kim McKeown:
Um, so my dad decided to come out and play park ranger from Ohio. I missed him and I came out to work for the boat company in 2003, the year before Justin and I met.
Michael:
What was the name of the boat that you captained?
Kim McKeown:
What was the name of the boat...Morning Eagle was on Lake Josephine, and on Swiftcurrent was Chief Two Guns.
Andrew:
Oh, so she worked at Many Glacier.
Michael:
What is memorable specifically about the job of being a boat captain?
Kim McKeown:
If I think back now, like it seems it should have been a more difficult job than it was. It didn't feel difficult to drive these boats. And I really enjoy like giving the talk on the boat and I liked making people laugh. You're getting sometimes to show people bears for the first time and the hotel there employed a lot of young people. And so you're just around a lot of other, basically university-aged people. It's like summer camp for adults.
Justin McKeown:
I think they call it college down in the United States, dear.
Kim McKeown:
[Laughs] I’m Canadianized.
Michael:
And they actually met at work.
Kim McKeown:
We actually met on the boat dock at Many Glacier. It was one of the other boat captains that was like, he's cute. You should go for a hike.
Michael:
Justin, a Park Canada interpreter, was milling about in Many Glacier in the first place for his job.
Justin McKeown:
Yeah, so this would be part of a longstanding exchange within the Peace Park, whereby a Parks Canada interpreter would go down to Glacier National Park and deliver a program every Friday evening. And then a counterpart, an interpretive ranger from Glacier National Park, would come up to Waterton to the Falls Theatre, to provide exposure to each other's parks within the International Peace Park.
Michael:
But work wasn't the only reason he wanted to go to Glacier.
Kim McKeown:
Pretty soon after, I think I invited myself to come for a hike with Justin in Waterton and yeah, after that first hike, it was basically like, it was a thing. It was the start of a relationship.
Andrew:
Well, that's adorable. And not your typical workplace romance. The two parks brought them together, but they're from two different countries. Long distance is hard enough without a border in between you. How did that even work?
Michael:
Well, as you can imagine, it did make it tough, but they were able to find a way. [To the McKeowns]: So, how long did you do the distance thing?
Kim McKeown:
We dated cross border for seven years.
Michael:
Kim worked as a teacher on the Blackfeet reservation, living in East Glacier, and Justin could find year-round off-and-on work in Waterton.
Andrew:
Okay. That's only a few hours apart.
Michael:
So, relatively close, but they still crossed the border a lot, to the point where Customs and Border Patrol got to know them by name. [Speaking to the McKeowns]: I'm wondering, when you started seeing each other, how normal in your brain was the idea of dating somebody from another country?
Kim McKeown:
It became quite normal. I mean, it definitely took a while. Like, figuring out the differences between the two countries in the early stages of dating. I remember at one point making Justin a little paper dictionary, translating Canada speak into America speak, and then Justin made me his edition. So I think I had put things on there like it's a beanie, but you call it a tocque, for a winter hat.
Justin McKeown:
I don't remember that to be honest, but I know it was mentioned before.
Kim McKeown:
Oh. well, there were lots of things like that. And eventually it just kind of melded into like, this is normal. Like, my Ohio accent kind of became a Canadian accent. Although, in Canada for a long time, they still thought I talked like an American. But my American family would make fun of me when I came home because I was speaking like a Canadian.
Michael:
So, they made it work for years. But as time wore on, crossing the border to see one another grew more and more cumbersome.
Justin McKeown:
We sort of recognized the fact that we dealing with an international border.
Kim McKeown:
And it was really cramping our relationship style.
Michael:
And one way to remedy that would be to put a ring on it.
Justin McKeown:
And plans were afoot, you know. I realized I wanted to ask this girl to marry me. Somebody was kind of getting impatient at some point in time. They're not thinking it was actually going to happen. So we went out on a hike some evening, sort of on the shoulder of Galway mountain in Waterton. So it's up the Red Rock Road, and sort of found this little off shoot that had a great view of the valley. You know, asked Kim to marry me, and obviously, she said yes.
Michael:
So they found a local Justice of the Peace that liked hiking, and they hiked up Avian Ridge in Waterton with a few friends and got married.
Justin McKeown:
We have that date, that's our proper wedding anniversary. And we have that date stamped on the inside of our rings. And, um, yeah!
Michael:
The following year, they had a full-blown ceremony in Waterton with family coming from all over, although it was September in Alberta, so the weather was a bit of an adjustment for some.
Kim McKeown:
My grandmother actually came from Florida and the wedding was in the fall, and she moved to Florida because she does not like the cold and my, my uncle as well. So he kind of had brought her, and I know that he had to go to the drugstore in Pincher Creek that morning and buy her longjohns that she could wear under her dress clothes because she was too cold in Canada.
Justin McKeown:
It was like 50 or 60 degrees. It was a nice day, as far as we're concerned.
Michael:
And I, for one learned a thing or two about Canadian weddings.
Andrew:
Yeah? Like what?
Michael:
So, they ask a family member or close friend to preside over the event instead of a DJ or MC and they have something called midnight lunch, essentially, a full-blown late night snack. People eat at the reception, then they get up for dancing and drinks. And then a little while later, bam. Poutine.
Andrew:
Okay. That sounds really good.
Michael:
Yeah. But what Kim and Justin did the best, I think, was the dessert.
Kim McKeown:
We didn't have cake at our wedding. We had pie. We had like a variety of pies, but our wedding pie that we cut into was apple-Saskatoon-huckleberry. And it was apples to signify Ohio, and Saskatoon berries to signify Saskatchewan, and huckleberries to signify the Peace Park. And so that was the kind of pie that we cut into as like our ceremonial cake cutting.
Michael:
[Responding to Kim]: Aw, that’s something else. [Break, and music comes in] Today, 16 years after they met at the boat dock in Many Glacier, Kim and Justin are raising a family together in Calgary.
Andrew:
So, not too far away.
Michael:
Right. Close enough to visit. Now, we have spent a lot of time talking today about how the International Peace Park recognizes that the landscape we share knows no boundaries, but as this story shows, neither does love, friendship, or camaraderie. Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park is an invitation to see ourselves in one another, a much-needed reminder to see not our differences, but the things that we share. Justin and Kim lived this firsthand in a way more dramatic than most of us ever will. [Speaking to Kim and Justin]: So, I was curious, what does the designation International Peace Park mean to both of you?
Justin McKeown:
I think, I think it is a place that you can sort of leave jurisdictions and politics behind to some degree or another and focus on this sort of contiguous landscape.
Kim McKeown:
To me it means family. You know, if it wasn't for the International Peace Park, we wouldn't be a family.
Michael:
To see what the International Peace Park means to you - well, you’ll just have to come find out.
CLOSING
Michael:
That’s our show—for more information on the International Peace Park, on Waterton or Harlequin Ducks, check out the links in our show notes.
Andrew:
Thanks for listening!
CREDITS
Renata:
Headwaters is a production of Glacier National Park with support from the Glacier National Park Conservancy. The show was written and recorded on traditional native lands. Andrew Smith and Michael Faist produced, edited and hosted the show. Ben Cosgrove wrote and performed our music. Alex Stillson provided tech support Quinn Feller designed our art Renata Harrison researched the show, Lacy Kowalski was always there for us, and Daniel Lombardi and Bill Hayden were the executive directors. Support for the show comes from the Glacier National Park Conservancy. The Conservancy works to preserve and protect the park for future generations. We couldn't do it without them, and they couldn't do it without support from thousands of generous donors. If you want to learn more about how to support this podcast, or other awesome Conservancy projects, please go to their website at glacier.org. Of course you can always help support the show by sharing it with everyone you know— your friends, your family, your dog... And also leave us a review online. Special thanks this episode to Natalie Hodge and our friends at Waterton Lakes National Park, Tracy Weisse, Bob Adams, Lisa Bate, Diane Sine and Kim and Justin McKeown.
Featuring: Natalie Hodge, Tracey Wiese, Lisa Bate, and Justin and Kim McKeown. Voice acting from Bob Adams.
For more information, visit: go.nps.gov/headwaters
Michael:
It's Thursday, August 10th, 2017. And I have the day off.
Andrew:
For context, we were both rangers here in the summer of 2017.
Michael:
Yes. And the job of leading guided hikes campground talks and staffing the visitor center is very rewarding, but can also be exhausting. So when the weekend rolled around some friends and I planned a relaxing backcountry, camping trip. We got a permit for the backcountry campground on the West shore of Lake McDonald. One of the few back country campgrounds that you can paddle a canoe to. So we loaded our gear into dry bags, packed our life jackets and set sail for some RNR. The campground itself is known for being sunny, that burned over in a wildland fire in 2003 and the remaining lifeless and limbless trees offer little in the way of shade.
Andrew:
That's an understatement.
Michael:
So we set out in the afternoon thinking we'd arrive after the heat of the day had passed. The first half of the paddle was nice and sunny, but the further we went, the clouds began to roll in. With each stroke the sky seemed to grow darker and we paddled faster and faster and faster to reach the shoreline. We thought we'd beaten the weather as we pulled our canoe ashore, but a clap of thunder echoed off the mountains and signaled the night that was yet to come. As we frantically assembled our tents and shabby burritos, the storm arrived. Rain came in a torrent instantly soaking me through my jacket. We hung our food up so we could retreat to our tents. But then the wind began to pick up. In my memory what came next was a loud, deafening blur. Rain pelted the ground, and began to sound like angry radio static.
Michael:
The wind was strong enough you had to brace yourself against it or be blown over and begin to topple the trees around us. And as they crashed down left and right, we ran to the lakeshore for safety as lightning and thunder reverberated up above. But just like that, it was over. The air was calm. The rain had stopped and we breathed a collective sigh of relief as we returned to the soggy rice and bean burritos we'd put away. As we ate, we tried to make sense of what had just happened, pointing out the trees that had fallen down, comparing how well our jackets had worked. But only then, with mouthfuls of burrito, did we notice a column of smoke across the lake. Smoke that would eventually grow to become the Sprague fire that burned 17,000 acres and the Sperry chalet.
Andrew:
Wow, that's crazy that you sat through the storm that started it all. I was actually just straight across the lake from you. At the same time at the Lake McDonald lodge, I was supposed to give the evening ranger program up at the Lake McDonald lodge auditorium that night. It was super stormy as I drove up from Apgar. And while I was getting ready for my talk, the power went out in the building. It was pitch black in the auditorium. I didn't think people would really be able to safely walk around the room so I just decided to cancel the program. So if you were trying to attend the ranger program at the Lake McDonald Lodge auditorium on August 10, 2017, I'm very sorry. You'll have to catch me another time. When I canceled, I stood outside the building to let people know that the program wouldn't be happening that night. It was at 8:36 PM, a few minutes after the talk was scheduled to start, that lightning struck the hillside above me and ignited the Sprague Creek fire. With no program to give I drove back down to my office in Apgar. There were lots of people just standing around and watching the flames. So in a routine that would become common over the coming months from across the Lake, I watched the fire glow against the dark night sky. I was still wearing my ranger uniform. So I stayed on the beach there for hours answering questions from concerned visitors.
Michael:
The fire became a spectacle. At night people would gather to watch it burn. Slowly at first, then rapidly as one hot and dry week was followed by another.
Andrew:
In all the Sprague fire burned for about three months on the east shore of Lake McDonald, until it was finally extinguished by autumn snow.
Michael:
Here on Lake McDonald, wildfire is a fact of life for plants, animals, and people are like, if you want to exist here, you've got to learn to live with it.
Andrew:
In this episode, we're going to learn about something that's becoming an everyday concern for people around the American West: what happens when people and wildfire come together. Welcome to Headwaters - a Glacier National Park Podcast. Brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy, and produced on the traditional lands of many native American tribes, including the Blackfeet, Kootenai, Selis and Qlispe people.
Michael:
We’re calling this season: The Confluence, as we look at the ways that nature, culture, the present and the past all come together here.
Andrew:
I’m Andrew.
Michael:
I’m Michael.
Andrew:
And we’re both rangers here. And today we're in the Lake McDonald valley.
Michael:
Near the west entrance of the park, the Lake McDonald area is the most visited region of Glacier. Lake McDonald itself is one of the park's, most cherished attractions, at 10 miles long, and over a mile wide it's also the largest lake in glacier.
Andrew:
This area gets hit with a ton of lightning, and that means that wildfires start with considerable frequency.
Michael:
What happens in a place dense with people and fire. And that's what we're going to explore in this episode.
TRAPPER PART 1
Michael:
To start out. I wanted to talk to someone who knows the park as well as anyone even better than most rangers.
Chris Peterson:
My name is Chris Peterson and I am the editor of the Hungry Horse News.
Andrew:
Oh yeah, Chris!
Michael:
Hardly anything happens in Northwest Montana without Chris writing or at least knowing about it.
Andrew:
It seems like he's been here forever. How long has Chris been around?
Chris Peterson:
Since 1998, which would make it a, this will be my 23rd summer.
Andrew:
I've seen his byline a lot, but he's a photographer too, right?
Michael:
Yeah. You're right. After graduating college, Chris started working for a small town daily newspaper in New York where he started to pick up photography.
Chris Peterson:
Back in New York, uh, at the daily you had to shoot your own photos. So my photos were terrible. I was awful photographer. Didn't know what I was doing. And so I started shooting Buffalo bills, games, you know, at a Buffalo bills game you know, it was like 85,000 people there, but there's also 120 photographers. So you could, you can learn a lot just by watching the other guys.
Michael:
And after he really developed his photography skills.
New Speaker:
Oh boy.
Michael:
He landed a new job.
Chris Peterson:
So that kind of set up my portfolio and then the Hungry Horse News had put out an ad for a photographer and I applied and I got the job and the rest is kind of history, I guess.
Andrew:
That's a big switch to go from photographing Bills games to bald eagles.
Michael:
Yeah. It's a big adjustment, but he took to it. But part of covering news in the West is wildfire something Chris didn't have any experience with from his time in New York.
Chris Peterson:
Oh, well, you know, in, in New York there are, I mean, big fires. Yeah. But they were all houses or, um, you know, tire dumps.
Michael:
But it didn't take him long to get experience. The second summer, he covered the West Flattop fire, two years after that the moose fire, then the Anaconda fire.
Chris Peterson:
So, so I'd cut my teeth.
Michael:
All of which led up to 2003. You had a couple of seasons of experience then covering summer fires. What was the feeling going into the summer of 2003?
Chris Peterson:
You know, in retrospect, um, we probably should have known that we were going to have a big fire year, but I can remember in June, like just people just having fun. Cause it didn't rain. I mean, June typically is one of the wettest months. If not the wettest month in the park. It didn't rain. So everyone was having, you know—everyone's camping and fishing and float. And you know, the park is just full of people...
Radio:
The fire danger rating has been moved up and is now high.
Michael:
But by July fires began to crop up. In fact, on July 17th, after a morning storm, six fires were spotted in the park.
Andrew:
Wow. That's a lot.
Michael:
Yeah. More fires than the park season. Some whole years, just in one morning. The next day, Numa Ridge lookout spotted the Wedge Canyon fire in the North fork, which within two days had grown to 4,000 acres. And due to the number of homes in the area was the number one priority fire in the nation.
Andrew:
Wow. Uh, so what was Chris doing at the time?
Chris Peterson:
We were out running around, taking photos of them. You know, drove up and looked at Wedge Canyon and man, it was ripping across the ridge one day. So we knew unless it rained that things were probably going to get worse, not better. I don't think we thought they'd get as bad as they did.
Michael:
At the same time the Wedge Canyon fire was burning in the North fork, a fire was burning in the heart of the Upper McDonald Creek Valley: the Trapper Fire. The fire at the heart of our story was at the time. So remote that it was seen as a low priority. Park employees like Chris Baker, the lookout stationed on Swiftcurrent mountain, described what it looked like. She wrote an article after the fire all about it. Here, can you read the first part?
Andrew:
Okay. "When I arrived back at Swiftcurrent, flattop mountain was puffing here and there, but the smokes just weren't that impressive. The lightning storm had planted its seeds, but nothing much was showing yet." So for a while, trapper was underwhelming?
Michael:
Yeah, it was.
Andrew:
But that obviously didn't last forever.
Michael:
No, it did not.
Chris Peterson:
July 23rd comes along, changes everything.
Michael:
The forecast for the 23rd called for extreme winds, 30 miles an hour or more.
Chris Peterson:
Right. Right. Exactly. And so that's why, that's why we're at the loop on the 23rd.
Michael:
Now, if you've ever driven the Going-to-the-Sun Road to Logan Pass from Lake MacDonald, you may remember the loop as the single hairpin turn on the whole route. As the road turns back on itself, you've got eight miles left to Logan Pass as you rise above the trees, getting a view of the McDonald Creek Valley—And, Chris hoped, the Trapper fire.
Chris Peterson:
Okay, it's pretty windy day. Let's get up there, see what's going on. And let's take a look at it.
Michael:
His instincts were right. Chris Baker, the lookout at Swiftcurrent watch the trapper fire grow that day. And rather than have you read everything, Andrew, I had a friend read the rest of her quotes for it.
Chris Baker:
There was no mistaking it when Trapper decided to make its move. I was looking right at it when it did. That wimpy white column suddenly grew tall, turned to brown, then black. Then it was wider and moving.
Chris Peterson:
And you could see that fire probably I'm guessing five miles away. And it's just starting to look like a tornado. If you can imagine a huge, a really big tornado in the sense that it's like this big circular cloud black and it just starts spinning and you can see it and it's coming closer and closer and closer.
Andrew:
That's nothing like what I expected.
Michael:
And Chris was far from the only person at the loop watching this unfold.
Chris Peterson:
I mean more and more people showed up and were just watching it. And there were other people there everyone's taking pictures.
Michael:
So there were reporters like Chris there, visitors had stopped to take pictures. There was even a corporate marketing team there.
Chris Peterson:
One of the more memorable things was there was this a couple of women in their twenties, um, with like tank tops on. And they had a red bull pickup truck, you know, red bull, that energy drink, but it had it like a big fake can on the back of a pickup truck.
Michael:
As the fire was coming closer and closer and everyone was taking photos. The red bull staff was running around with free samples.
Andrew:
Okay. I think watching a fire race towards you is a situation where you definitely would not need the extra boost from an energy drink.
Michael:
[laughing] Yeah, I think you're right. But without the Red Bull, Chris described the atmosphere being charged with anticipation and excitement.
Chris Peterson:
So we're taking pictures of her with the smoke and the fire and smoke and stuff in the background and they're taking pictures and it just kind of got into like almost a party type atmosphere in the sense that here it comes. And it came like right to the edge of the, you know, the Canyon.
Chris Peterson:
It was just a, like a, you know, a freight train.
Andrew:
But he must've gotten out safely.
Michael:
He did.
Chris Peterson:
The fire gets to the loop. Everyone he takes off because it didn't burn over the loop. It's obvious it's not going to stop.
Michael:
As it burned over the loop. It claimed anything in its path vehicles that were parked there, trail head signs, heck for years there were stains on the pavement from where port-a-potties melted into the asphalt.
Andrew:
That's kind of gross. Uh, what happened next?
Michael:
Well, the Trapper fire continued to burn uphill straight towards the Granite Park Chalet and... Well you'll have to wait and see. I talked to Mike Sanger, one of the employees that was at granite park chalet that night later in the episode.
Andrew:
I see.
Michael:
But Chris' experience goes to show that even when it's coming towards you, even when it's endangering your own safety, you can't help but watch fire. As powerful and destructive as it is. It has a sort of magnetism.
TRADITIONAL FIRE
Tony Incashola:
My name is Tony Incashola Sr. I'm the director for the Salish Kalispell Culture Committee for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes.
Andrew:
People interacting with wildfire here is not a new phenomenon. In fact, it's been happening for thousands of years. To learn more I decided to talk to Tony Incashola Sr. about the role that fire plays in the traditional Salish way of life. We talked about how, from Tony's perspective, not enough people understand the significance and value of fire. This misunderstanding of our environment makes fire more dangerous. And he talked about how national parks are a place where we can learn to connect with the natural world. So Tony, if we have listeners from other parts of the country or the world who aren't familiar with, the Selis people, what do they need to know about Selis history?
Tony Incashola:
According to the stories from our elders, the Selis-speaking people have been in this area since the last ice age. My, my group, my band of Selis are the most eastern Selis-speaking people here in Montana, and our aboriginal territory consisted of about 22 million acres. And then it came along in 1855 when more settlers and homesteaders moved into our area a treaty was, was negotiated. And it took several days before the leaders of the tribe agreed to, to be put on a reservation. And so that's why we are where we're at today on our 1.3 million acre reservation here. So that's kind of in a nutshell from the past where we started and how we got to where we're at as Selis-speaking people.
Andrew:
So I wanted to have you in today to talk about fire. What role does fire have in the Selis tradition?
Tony Incashola:
The Selis people, they would set fires to their favorite hunting areas, their favorite spots. When the weather was predictable, they would set fires knowning that the fire would be put out as soon as the snow got here. So there was no fear of that being a wild fire. When they did that, they'd go back into spring time and where they had set fire, they could see all the new growth coming up, the green grass, clearing the underbrush for the berries and for all the other foods that were necessary, both food and medicinal plants. It would clear it out. It was like doing work in a garden, you know, as you go in the garden, you clean out all the weeds. That's what they used fire for.
Andrew:
Were there other advantages to setting fires?
Tony Incashola:
The other thing they use it, of course, before they had horses and before they had rifles, you know, getting buffalo, hunting buffalo, sometimes was very difficult on foot. So sometimes they'd look at certain areas and they'd see these areas and they'd use fire to bring the herd to certain places. And then once they get to these certain jumps they'd build these running lanes and they used these cliffs for buffalo jumps, so go over there. So that was another way of using the fire.
Andrew:
That's really interesting, using fire to manage vegetation and to drive buffalo over cliffs, to hunt efficiently. It's a pretty amazing technique. How did traditional people actually manage these fires?
Tony Incashola:
Just like our professionals today, we have professional fisheries, water, people in those areas. Well, back then they had these people that were dedicated and assigned to fires and they were the only ones that would set the fire, because they've studied fire, they've understood fire. And so they're the ones that were allowed to set these fires.
Andrew:
And how did they actually start the fires? Where did the embers come from?
Tony Incashola:
They used buffalo horns or different things to carry these embers of fire because it was so hard, you know, to, to make fire. So they'd make a fire and then take these embers and store them in these buffalo horns or something, then they'd have these firestarters, what they call them, firestarters. They'd gallop to these different places and set fire. And like I said, only those people were allowed to do that.
Andrew:
Why do you think so many people have negative feelings about fire?
Tony Incashola:
One, I think is a misunderstanding exactly what fire is, what it means and what it could do. The other thing is fear. Naturally, it's frightening. I mean, you look at California today and how dry, how brushy some of those go up like matchsticks. And I think that's what people are afraid of, that because they don't understand fire, not knowing how our environment works, how the trees, how the animals, how the rain, how the fire--everything has a role in our ecosystem. And the people today don't understand. They don't understand how our ecosystem works. They need to know that fire is necessary. Fire must happen so that we don't get what we're getting in California today.
Andrew:
What's the reason for this poor understanding of ecosystems?
Tony Incashola:
I think because of the values, value system that we created and the values that we think are more important now today. That our lives are put first, rather than together with other things. You know, everything goes hand in hand. One of the things, when I was growing up, my grandparents and my parents and all of my elders that have always taught me, and always said, every living thing is equal. You treat it as an equal. You don't think you're better. You don't go, you don't dominate, because you dominate you destroy. And that's what we have as human beings. We've dominated certain things. We've changed certain things, and we've destroyed that. And so I think a lot of that is as misunderstanding. And national parks are kind of a stronghold of what used to be. So national parks are places that continue to be very important, especially to me, especially to natives that understand what the park is. You know, because it used to be this whole country. And there's still a need for parks. There's still a need for areas like this for our spirituality, for our wellbeing, for our minds. How many times have we in our lives have got so frustrated with our jobs, with the things that we do every day over and over that we need these areas of solitude to go, touch the ground again, to put your feet back on the ground and kind of soothe everything. All of that weight seems to lift and create something, a peace of mind that lets you move forward again. We need these places.
FIRE ECOLOGY
Andrew:
So, fire has a long history in this place. It can be a creative as well as a destructive force. And whether you like it or not, it's a factor that has to be considered in deciding how to manage this park. To learn more about what role wildland fire plays in the ecosystem here. I decided to talk to Dawn LaFleur.
Dawn LaFleur:
My name is Dawn LaFleur, and I am the vegetation management biologist for the park.
Andrew:
What does a vegetation management biologists do?
Dawn LaFleur:
What does that entail? It basically manages the vegetation for the park. So that's anything from forest management, basically making sure we have healthy forest ecosystems, as well as maintaining native plant communities. So whenever we have disturbance, human-caused disturbance, we go in behind the disturbance and utilize native plant materials that we've collected and grown at our native plant nursery. So basically trying to manage the native vegetation as well as the invasive vegetation to maintain healthy ecosystems.
Andrew:
I met Dawn on the site of the Howe Ridge fire, which in 2018 burned about 14,000 acres on the west shore of Lake McDonald. It was one year after the Sprague fire, which we talked about at the top of the show, and on the opposite side of the lake. At times, it can be a bit noisy here now that there's not much of a forest to shelter you from the wind. I asked Don what this area had looked like before the fire.
Dawn LaFleur:
It was cedar-hemlock, big old growth trees. Usually anywhere between a 100 to 200, 300 year old trees were here. And then we had the Howe Ridge fire that came through and actually burned it very, very hot, where this hadn't burned at least for 400 years.
Andrew:
So that was a pretty intense fire?
Dawn LaFleur:
It was very intense. It was very unusual. We had the extreme fire behavior happened at night and came down here very fast, very quickly and burned very intensely.
Andrew:
About two weeks after this spot burned, Dawn was one of the first people to come back here and start to assess the impact.
Dawn LaFleur:
So what we were looking for were signs of vegetation, any potential signs of vegetation recovery already, as well as the impacts to our soil.
Andrew:
The type of soil impacts Dawn is looking for are things like, how burnt is this soil? Will things be able to grow in it? And she'll look at hillsides to see if any of them have potential for erosion now that root systems that were holding them together might be burnt out. Do you remember what your initial impressions were at the time?
Dawn LaFleur:
Oh my goodness. Oh my gosh. All we have left are toothpicks, were my initial impressions.
Andrew:
For a fire to burn up essentially every tree was unusual. Typically when Dawn visits a recently burned area, the fire
Dawn LaFleur:
doesn't wipe everything out. It'll find a section of vegetation or trees, a pocket of trees to burn in and move around and kind of skip and create a mosaic or little islands of vegetation, which actually helps for rehabilitating the landscape afterwards.
Michael:
So why was this fire so intense?
Andrew:
It was a combination of factors. For one, the summer of 2018 was extremely hot and dry, but fire suppression efforts in the early 1900s had also disrupted some of the natural cycles here.
Dawn LaFleur:
Has a huge role in this natural ecosystem. We have plants and tree species like lodgepole pine that are fired dependent.
Andrew:
These are species that have evolved to rely on fire to succeed. Lodgepole pines, which need a lot of sunlight, have special cones that are tightly bound shut by resin. The seeds are trapped inside the cone until there's a wildfire, the type of event that would clear out the canopy and make it sunny enough for them to grow. When fire passes through
Dawn LaFleur:
the coons get heated up and release their seeds and they establish a forest. And then after about 20, 30 years, you have mountain pine beetle, which is also a native.
Andrew:
The mountain pine beetle will kill a few of the pines, but not all of them. Since these two species evolved together, the pines have a natural defense against the beetles. Then a low or medium intensity fire would burn out the killed trees, thinning the forest.
Dawn LaFleur:
So it's been a natural cycle between 20 and 30 years of fire to be on the landscape. We've been suppressing it since the 1920s. And so that's why we're starting to see more intense fire on the landscape.
Andrew:
In Dawn's career she's witnessed summers get warmer and drier, and the snowpack disappearing earlier in the spring, allowing soil and vegetation to dry out. These effects are changing the role that fire plays in the ecosystem.
Dawn LaFleur:
What it is is climate change. We're getting drier and hotter sooner. And then the other thing we're seeing is with extreme fire and not enough moisture in the spring, what takes advantage of those open niches after a fire are non-native plants. The opportunists, we're seeing a lot more non-native invasive plants coming in into our burned areas than we have had in the past.
Andrew:
But Dawn hasn't lost hope. She still has a clear and optimistic vision of how this area can recover.
Dawn LaFleur:
My hope would be in five years, we should have conifers that are three to four foot tall, a good diversity of conifers. I would hope a lot of larch in here, cause they tend to be fire resistant. And it would be wonderful to see pockets. I don't expect it all across the landscape up here, but little pockets of moisture where we could see cedar-hemlock coming back, and this would be completely green and you've got woodpeckers utilizing the snags and everything. We would be standing here and we would be, we would have vegetation over our heads.
Andrew:
Sounds lovely.
Dawn LaFleur:
And as we get more vegetation established, that will out-compete, as we get an overstory, it'll out-compete these, newly established invasives. And so much more native plant diversity.
Michael:
Protecting plant diversity in Glacier National Park is a collective endeavor. Dawn can't do it alone.
Andrew:
She asks that when people visit here, they take a moment to think about how their actions will affect the plant life around them.
Dawn LaFleur:
Stay on the trail, definitely stay on the trail, walk in the mud, don't go around mud holes and don't pick the flowers. Please don't pick the flowers.
Andrew:
The reason to walk through the mud is that if you go around, you'll widen the trail and disturb the vegetation around it. And we leave flowers where they are so everyone can enjoy them. And because they're part of the ecosystem here.
Dawn LaFleur:
Yeah, minimize your impact by just being respectful of the vegetation.
Andrew:
The plant life in Glacier National Park evolved in the presence of fire, and is adapted to frequent burning. Fire can be a source of renewal and even catalyze the processes of growth and change that make Glacier home to an incredible diversity of plant life, over 1100 species.
Michael:
As climate change affects the behavior of wildfire and fire ceases to behave in the way plants are adapted to, its destructive tendencies can start to outweigh its constructive ones.
Andrew:
It's something that scientists in Glacier like Dawn will continue to monitor.
Michael:
When a wildfire changes the makeup of a forest and what kind of species grow there, the effects aren't limited to just plant life.
Andrew:
These changes to the vegetation are going to have consequences that ripple down the whole food chain, affecting everything from the bushy tail wood rat up to the moose and grizzly bear.
Teagan Hayes:
Mule deer in particular are browsers. And so they rely really heavily on shrubs and other kind of nutrient dense species. So...
Andrew:
That's Teagan Hayes. She's a wildlife biologist. Her master's thesis was about ungulate forage in wildfire, dominated landscapes. In other words, how deer food is affected by fire. One of the study areas was not far from where we're standing right now. Teagan explained to me that wildfire...
Teagan Hayes:
...allows for species to get the nutrients they need in their home range or in their population range. And so for my research, when I was looking at mule deer, mule deer don't really change their home ranges very much geographically. And so change is especially important for a species like that, where if you never allowed disturbances to happen, then they will not be able to find the food they need. So, and that's the same for a lot of species in the park.
Andrew:
In other words, mule deer need fire. It promotes the growth of shrubs that are the bulk of their diet and they aren't keen to move around to find these plants. They need the fire to happen right within their home range. A deer population, in turn, is necessary to support grizzlies, mountain lions and wolves, a whole thriving ecosystem dependent on regular wildfire. I took Teagan to the Forest and Fire Nature Trail near the Camas Creek entrance to the park, this trail is a great spot to get an introduction to the fire ecology of glacier national park. Burnt in the 2001 moose fire, it's now home to a thriving lodgepole pine and aspen forest.
Teagan Hayes:
So we are now in a young aspen stand. Of course you have the nice rustle of the leaves, which aspen are named after the quaking aspen, the vegetation, the shrubs and the understory are a bit taller. So we have, there's a little more diversity here.
Andrew:
Aspen is one of the habitat types that responds best after a fire. Aspens that burned down are able to re-sprout from underground roots. In no time or recently burned stand of aspen will be a lush and suitable deer habitat.
Teagan Hayes:
They tend to love aspen. Aspens provide a different kind of cover and they provide a different suite of forage species and they tend to stay kind of cooler and wetter for longer. So I think they offer that, kind of that multitude of things, where you have higher diversity of plants, you have longer blooming period often, or period where things are fresh and nutritious. They tend to provide pretty good security as well.
Andrew:
As we moved down the trail, Teagan pointed out a flower, which I was surprised to hear was a good food source.
Teagan Hayes:
Oh, we've been seeing rose, which despite its prickles is also actually usually pretty sought after by ungulates too. So they'll nip just the ends off and avoid the worst of the prickles.
Andrew:
Wildfire is kind of a contradictory thing here. On one hand, it's natural and totally necessary for many of the plants and animals. But on the other hand, climate change is making it much more common and severe. And regardless of whether it's good or bad, it's always tough to live with.
Teagan Hayes:
Yeah. I mean, some of the most interesting and kind of disheartening research is when there's abnormally hot fires or more frequent fires than would normally be occurring in a forest. And they'll actually burn so hot that the seedlings can't establish anymore. And so you can end up having what was once a forest become a grassland or you can, you'll see that the tree species that used to grow in an area are no longer suited to the climate or the climate that a disturbance has created.
Andrew:
Still, she recognizes the importance of having natural fire on the landscape.
Teagan Hayes:
Fire, because it's a hot and dry climate during some of the year, it's one of those natural disturbances that Glacier and other mountainous places are adapted to and so it's, it's a necessity.
Andrew:
Of course, what applies in a national park where there are no subdivisions full of houses will be different from a policy that makes sense in a more densely inhabited area.
Teagan Hayes:
We can't always let fires burn due to all kinds of challenges, whether that's with human structures or infrastructure. So we're really right now just trying to find the balance between what we, what the ideal situation is for fire and what the ideal situation is for living in this area.
Andrew:
In places like Glacier National Park, where natural processes still dominate, and where we try to minimize our intrusion into the web of life, fire will continue to play a part, and scientists like Dawn and Teagan will continue to try to understand it. In the Lake McDonald Valley, where humans and wildfire are both common. We need to learn to live with fire, to let it play its natural role, creating the rich, diverse and thriving ecosystem that we come here to enjoy.
Page Break
GLACIER NATIONAL PARK CONSERVANCY AD
Andrew:
Each episode, we seem to cover at least one thing that like this podcast wouldn't be possible without the support of the Glacier National Park Conservancy.
Michael:
With the help of some friends over there, we got the number of executive director, Doug Mitchell, and decided to call him up out of the blue to ask about these projects.
Andrew:
For this episode, we wanted to ask about Sperry chalet.
Doug Mitchell:
Glacier Conservancy, Doug Mitchell speaking.
Andrew:
Hey Doug, it's Andrew and Michael, how are you doing?
Doug Mitchell:
Hey, good. How are my favorite podcasters today?
Andrew:
We're doing well, just enjoying the beauty out here. Got to go up and check out the new Sperry chalet. And it was phenomenal. It, it looked just like before, even down to the stonework.
Doug Mitchell:
Yeah. It's really incredible what they were able to accomplish. I'm glad you brought up the stonework. I was talking to Zach Anderson of Anderson Masonry and his family were the original stonemason family. So if it looks the same, there's a reason and the care they took to make sure that it looked the same way it did when it was originally built in 1913 is really rather remarkable.
Andrew:
Yeah, and it's a great thing for people to check out while they're visiting and go see all the attention to detail and craft that went into it.
Doug Mitchell:
It really is a remarkable discovery. I was able to hike there this year with some people who had never been there and we hiked through Gunsight and to come over the top and see Sperry, it's almost like you just have to stop in your tracks as they did to see how is this possible. I've hiked 13.1 miles into the wilderness and look at what is there. It really is. It really is something. Yeah.
Michael:
We wanted to talk to you about it because we know the Glacier National Park Conservancy as the park's official non-profit partner played a huge role in helping restore the chalet.
Doug Mitchell:
We were in the superintendents office the very next morning at 10:00 AM after the fire burned Sperry. And by later that week, we had taken our lone credit card down to the hardware store here and bought the pieces of wood that held Sperry up over the winter. And it really was a remarkable public-private partnership that really made the improbable happen.
Andrew:
Thanks for taking some time to talk to us. It's always great to hear from you
Doug Mitchell:
Always great to talk to you guys and thanks again for all you're doing.
Michael:
Absolutely. Thanks for funding it. We'll talk to you soon.
Doug Mitchell:
Alright, cheers.
Michael:
Bye.
TRAPPER PART 2
Michael:
So we just heard from Dawn and Tegan about how plants -
Andrew:
Like Lodgepole pine,
Michael:
- and animals,
Andrew:
Like mule deer,
Michael:
- can benefit from the presence of fire in the ecosystem.
Andrew:
And from talking to Tony, we know that the Salish and other Indigenous communities have a deep understanding of fire's role on the landscape, and would use, it as he put it, almost like a gardening tool, to invite new and healthy plant growth.
Michael:
Working here, a big part of our job has been sharing that knowledge with visitors, talking about the plants and animals that thrive in fire’s aftermath. Yet knowing and understanding these things won't change how you respond to fire when you're faced with it - when the flames themselves are bearing down on you. So, we met Chris Peterson earlier, who watched and photographed the 2003 Trapper fire as it made a run over the Loop...
Andrew:
Yeah...
Michael:
But after it burned over the Loop, it kept going, racing upwards towards the Granite Park Chalet, a historic compound of stone cabins high in the mountains that still provide rustic lodging and dining accommodations.
Andrew:
To get there, you can either hike the Highline trail from Logan Pass, or start up from the Loop on the Loop trail.
Michael:
I hiked up to Granite Park this summer to talk with someone who's worked there since 2002 and was there on July 23rd, 2006.
Mike Sanger:
My name is Mike Sanger. I'm from Great Falls, Montana originally. I live in Belt, Montana now. I've worked for the Park Service, this will be my 19th year here at Granite Park.
Michael:
Mike keeps Granite running, managing the waste disposal system, addressing bear encounters, medical emergencies...When I caught up to him, he was fixing the sink in the chalet kitchen. And having grown up in Montana, Mike had been familiar with wildfire from afar.
Mike Sanger:
Seeing them in the distance, not quite as close as I did here [chuckles].
Michael:
But, in the unprecedented fire year of 2003, he came face to face with the Trapper fire.
Michael:
Well, I understand you were hiking up here on July 23rd. Is that right?
Mike Sanger:
I was. My boss, Walter Tab, had dropped me off at the Loop trailhead. The trail was already closed at that time and it was smoky there at the parking lot. And I asked him, I said, well, the trail’s closed. And he goes, well, you better get moving. You need to get up there. And on the way up, I passed a female ranger, and what they were doing at that time was sweeping the trails for people and trying to get them up here. And she asked me if I knew where the fire was. And I said, I have no idea, but once we get to Granite, we'll probably be able to see better and know exactly what's going on.
Andrew:
As I understand it, Mike's up there for a week or so at a time, then rotates out with a partner.
Michael:
Exactly. He was originally scheduled to hike back in to tap out his partner on the 23rd, but was sent up that day with a different goal: to help protect the chalet itself.
Mike Sanger:
And we made really good time getting up here to Granite Park.
Michael:
Yeah, goodness. When did it sink in that it was going to be a problem?
Mike Sanger:
When I got up here and I saw fire hoses strung out all over the place and Chris Burke, my partner was here and I asked, I said, where's the fire? And he pointed towards Flattop. And it was immediately apparent that we had a problem on our hands.
Michael:
So, they had to fortify the compound. With limited time and supplies, that meant converting their finicky drinking water pump into a sprinkler system to keep the buildings wet- an approach that they weren't confident would work.
Mike Sanger:
We went down to start the pump and it took two or three times. And you had to talk nice to this thing. And Chris pulled it, and the first time, it went off, and we're all high-fiving...
Michael:
But celebrations could wait. As the fire grew closer and closer, conditions only worsened.
Mike Sanger:
It was really horrific for quite a while because we had no idea where the fire was. The winds were horrific. I mean, they were blowing probably 70 plus miles an hour. And, um, and we were having embers starting to come down. And what we did is we pulled all the railings from the chalet. We were trying to reduce fuel in case the fire did get here.
Michael:
What did it sound like?
Mike Sanger:
You know, a lot of people paraphrase this with tornadoes and everything else, but it sounded like a freight train. And it was just unbelievably hot. I've always had a mustache. And after this was all over, it had curled and burnt and I just ended up whacking it off. That's the first time I've not had a mustache in many, many years because it was just glowing orange.
Michael:
Around the same time. Chris Baker from Swiftcurrent Lookout was choked with smoke.
Chris Baker:
I can remember using the word surreal a lot in my journal that afternoon. It didn't take too long before my vista towards the West was nothing but amber billows of smoke and embers. Visibility deteriorated to nothing. And I began coughing from the intense smoke. So I soaked a bandana in water and took to breathing through it, to filter some of the soot.
Andrew:
Oh my gosh.
Michael:
Yeah.
Andrew:
That's a scary situation.
Michael:
It is. In the face of it all, Mike and Chris were doing everything they could to protect the chalet and everyone in it.
Mike Sanger:
And, uh, we charged our hoses. We had everybody inside the chalet, sitting on the floor. We had the tables up against the windows because the wind was horrific and it was blowing ash and embers all through the area. And we charged the hoses and started wetting the roof.
Andrew:
How many people were in it?
Michael:
Well, between the guests that had planned to stay there that night, and hikers that were seeking refuge, there were quite a few.
Mike Sanger:
We had 39 people trapped up here. We thought the fire was actually going to come up and go over the top of this and down the other side. Why it went up Swiftcurrent Pass, I have no idea. You know, every bearing that we had, and the wind was blowing directly at us, and fires like to run uphill...so I was quite sure the fire was going to come up and over us, and instead it made a turn, and went up over to Swiftcurrent.
Andrew:
It missed them?
Michael:
Somehow, they were saved. The fire avoided the chalet and falling embers were effectively combated by the hoses and sprinklers they'd set up.
Mike Sanger:
Because could have really gone south for us and it really could have been a horrific thing. And you know, through God's graces, or whatever, the fire didn't come over. Chris, we each made one phone call, brief phone call to our wives and said, we don't know what's going to happen. We just wanted to call and tell you right now, we're all right. And we're doing the best we can.
Michael:
And while they didn't know what the next day would hold, they allowed themselves to breathe a small sigh of relief.
Mike Sanger:
Chris and I came in here, it had been a long day for both of us. He was due to go out that day and I'd hiked up, or ran up, here that day. And his wife had brought him a little bottle of Black Velvet whiskey. So we each had a drag off that and it actually felt a little better and he goes, let's get on with it. And I said, all right,
Michael:
After feeding and finding beds for everyone at Granite, the two of them stayed up all night watching the flames.
Mike Sanger:
We'd take turns. There was a chair between this building and the chalet, and one in front of the chalet, and about every hour we'd switch.
Mike Sanger:
Also up all night was Chris Baker, watching the flames from her vantage point at Swiftcurrent lookout, a thousand feet above the chalet.
Chris Baker:
Night fell. And finally, I could see the fire up here through the smoke as a thousand points of flame and torching trees. I remember just staring a lot in unbelief. Sleep wasn't even an option. This was history and I was privileged to have a front row seat.
Michael:
It was a long night and a close call. Thankfully, no one was hurt. And the chalet was saved. Mike and his partner, Chris Burke were even honored by the Department of the Interior with Valor awards, for their heroism and bravery. But Mike's a humble guy. If you have the chance to meet him, you might hear him tell stories of that night. Sometimes the chalet even asks him to give a program about it to their guests, but you won't hear him bragging. He's seen firsthand the power of fire and worked in its aftermath every year since, but even that, that night standing guard, after hours of fear and uncertainty, he could see a beauty in the flames.
Mike Sanger:
The one thing that struck me is once it got dark and you could see the fire, you know, despite what was going on, it was actually kind of pretty to look at. And, you know, I don't mean to sound morbid or anything, but it was, it had its own kind of natural beauty to it.
Michael:
A month later, the Trapper fire had died down, and Chris Baker reflected on the fire. She hiked down from Swiftcurrent lookout for the last time of the year.
Chris Baker:
I regaled in the switchbacks down to the tree line, gazing out over the pristine beauty of the divide. But then I came to the trees, those beautiful firs I have come to love. My friends and companions on my ascents and descents of Swiftcurrent mountain, the ones that frame Heaven's Peak in all my photos. And that my kids have learned to take for granted. They weren't there. Instead, I saw blackened ghosts and charred ground cover. I hiked through a lunar landscape that I knew was both natural order and devastation. I thrilled and mourned all at once. I don't think I will ever feel that again.
ARCHAEOLOGY
Andrew:
So were you up there on the night that Sperry Chalet burned down?
Brent Rowley:
No, I was actually on this trail when it burned down and I actually heard it all go down on the radio...
Andrew:
That's Glacier Park Archeologist Brent Rowley.
Brent Rowley:
...which was kind of a crazy experience. I was actually just back there probably a few hundred yards, and I heard this radio transmission that was like calling the incident management team on the radio. I'd be like, you know, I need to give you a satellite phone call cause we need to have like a conversation right now. And it turns out that was the chalet catching on fire, like the dormitory building.
Andrew:
Fire teaches us about the natural world, but it also teaches us about ourselves, and sometimes in unexpected ways. When the Sprague fire burned down the main building of Sperry Chalet on August 31st, 2017, it felt like we had forever lost a piece of our history. But the fire had another effect as well, by clearing out the vegetation around the building, it unearthed a wealth of archeological sites from lots of different eras. Out of the ashes Brent found a whole world of history.
Michael:
In a place like glacier, the vegetation is so thick that you can't see the surface of the ground to find artifacts. A fire that comes in and clears out the vegetation will often reveal major archeological sites.
Andrew:
After the Sprague fire, Brent and his team found a series of dumps where all types of people like construction, crews, cooks, and chalet visitors had thrown their garbage for decades, starting in the early 19 teens. Brent was intrigued. He told me that these types of sites hold a lot of information that you can't just read about.
Brent Rowley:
In the history books about a site, like say Sperry Chalet you only hear about the experiences of the people that are actually staying in the chalet. You don't hear the story of the people that worked at that chalet, and that may have worked at a trail camp or a CCC camp that built a lot of the infrastructure in the park. And a lot of those dumps preserved the information of like, what was daily life like for them? What were they eating? We might find game pieces or, you know, what were they doing in their spare time at their backcountry camp?
Andrew:
As we hiked the six miles up to those archeological sites, Brent told me all about his experiences that year.
Brent Rowley:
And I got assigned to the fire as a resource advisor for cultural resources. So during that summer, I probably hiked this section of the Sperry Trail forty times. And you know, so I got to watch the fire come down this ridge and sort of change the forest gradually, cause in the cedar forest, the fire just kind of creeps along. It rarely ever like really gets up into the tree tops. It kind of travels along the deadfall and through the root systems.
Andrew:
When the fire in the chalet was finally extinguished, the stone exterior walls were still standing. The fire had only burned the interior and the roof of the building. A few days later, Brent was flown to the site in a helicopter to help the park determine if the still standing walls would survive the winter.
Brent Rowley:
It was really surreal, like all the bed frames had melted kind of look a little like a little bit of a wasteland inside.
Andrew:
The stone walls were able to be salvaged. And over the next two summers, the chalet was reconstructed within them. Brent and I arrived just days before the grand reopening, when the chalet would welcome guests for the first time since the fire, it was also the first time that Brent had been in the new building, and he was a bit taken aback by the difference.
Brent Rowley:
The last time I was standing in this very spot, I was like four feet lower. And then, you know, there was debris everywhere and you know, it's pretty crazy to be standing in the same spot, but now in a constructed building.
Andrew:
After the fire, Brent and his team were tasked with surveying the burned area and noting any archeological sites that had been revealed. What they found was a vast assemblage of objects that painted a vivid portrait of early 1900s park life. What kind of objects are we talking about? Well, actually one of the most common things they found were chamber pots. What do they look like?
Brent Rowley:
They're just bowl shaped, but a little, oh, right there is one. A really good one.
Andrew:
Yeah, it looks like a, just a small bowl but with kind of a big rim around it.
Brent Rowley:
Yeah, just big enough to do your business in, you know. But those things were all over the place like down this hillside, it's kind of interesting. I just like to imagine someone walking out in the morning and getting ready to toss the contents of it over the hill and accidentally loses their grip, and there it lies. Cause that one definitely is not broken.
Michael:
Okay. That did paint a vivid portrait. What else did you find?
Andrew:
One thing that really caught my eye were these tubes of clear blue glass. Brent explained to me that those were insulators for a historic phone line.
Brent Rowley:
So in a phone line, you've got the wire that the message travels through through vibrations, the insulators allow you to attach that wire to a telephone pole or a tree or whatnot, a solid object, without interfering with the signal. And so I'm guessing, considering there's a scatter of them here that you know, once they pulled down the phone line here, sometime probably in the 1940s, they just chucked it over the hill.
Michael:
So until the 1940s, there was phone service at Sperry chalet?
Andrew:
Yeah. I think maybe a lot of people imagine the early days of the park as a much wilder time, but in many ways the visitor experience was much more managed than it is today, at least for some types of people.
Brent Rowley:
So I think out here on this point, there was some sort of tent camp set up and I don't know exactly the dates of the tent camp, but I think it was certainly early on in Sperry chalet's history. So probably 19 teens, maybe even into the 1920s. And so there's a lot of the really diagnostic artifacts that have actual Great Northern Railway logos. And you know, that differentiates it from like say a worker camp for the workers that built the chalet or maintain the chalet because those higher end ceramics would be what you would serve the very wealthy guest, oftentimes, that were coming to the chalet. Whereas, in a little bit, we'll go to a worker camp and they were eating out of cans.
Andrew:
I pointed out a ceramic shard. It was about the size of my hand, to see how Brent could interpret it.
Brent Rowley:
So this is probably like a large serving platter dish that would have been about that big. So like a communal, indicating like a communal dinner setting where sort of family style dining, I guess you would call it today.
Michael:
Oh, that's, that's interesting from just that small piece, he was able to figure out about how they dined.
Andrew:
Yeah. What was most interesting about spending the day with Brent was seeing how these little pieces of what seemed like just garbage, gave him really deep insights into how people thought and behaved a long time ago.
Brent Rowley:
I don't know how this dump got here, but it's one of the most interesting assemblages of stuff. This is it all spread out because it's all jammed in that crevice and there's everything from an assortment of condiment bottles, like this is probably ketchup, there's a medicine bottle. Here's one of those coffee ration containers. There's poison bottles like multiple of them. So it's like a really strange thing. Like, I don't know if this was like kind of where maybe some workers at some point were camped out, like the poison bottle in particular I mean kind of throws me. Like that tells me, I feel like that it's gotta be related to workers
Michael:
Wait, okay. What was the poison for?
Andrew:
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Brent told me it was probably to poison rodents of some sort, maybe mice, pack rats, or a particularly aggressive marmot.
Michael:
How did they find all this stuff?
Andrew:
There's a couple different ways these sites get discovered.
Brent Rowley:
This one a firefighter showed it to me. But usually, yeah, when we survey areas, we do transects.
Andrew:
One of the main things that Brent has found here is the class distinctions between the different people who used this area and how this manifests, even in their trash.
Brent Rowley:
Up at that tent camp, everyone was always eating off of, you know, fine ceramics and being very proper, I guess you would say. And here it's like, you just open up the can and eat out of the can sort of thing, which is more indicative of I guess, lower class status, you know, like a worker, rather than someone that's on a very expensive vacation. Do you know what would have been in these cans? Some of them. See like, a can like this where you can tell by the openings. So see this had to be liquid. And in fact, I think this was probably a milk can. So, so they slit that one open. So when we record these cans sites, we always record what type of openings they have. Cause it can tell you a lot about what was in them.
Michael:
Wow. So we can learn something from even just the way I can was opened.
Andrew:
Exactly. There's so many levels to it. Brent even says it, the way that trash is hidden can tell us what era it's from.
Brent Rowley:
In the 19 teens, the way everybody all over America treated their waste was to throw it over the cliff or over the hillside or into your pit toilet. Later on though, people started, the ethic started changing of like, you need to hide your garbage, you put it in a centralized, garbage dump. And here, obviously, they've tried to hide it. So probably after that ethic changed, which really started, you know, in the 1920s and 30s.
Andrew:
A desire to learn about people whose stories aren't always told as motivated Brent's career from the very beginning. The first excavation, he was a part of, on a plantation in West Virginia, showed Brent the significant differences in artifacts from enslaved people versus slave owners. This technique of using historic artifacts to understand how people were treated in the past is an idea that still drives his work today.
Brent Rowley:
In Glacier, you can learn a lot about indigenous people's history prior to European settlement. And we can learn a lot about what people were doing in this landscape by what artifacts they leave behind. And those people were often, you know, are often not included in the history books. And in fact, I hate the term prehistoric or pre-history because it implies that indigenous people don't have history. It's just, their history is documented in different ways--by oral history and also by the archeological evidence that their ancestors left behind.
Andrew:
There are countless stories covering thousands of years of history, buried in archeological sites, all around glacier.
Michael:
Some of these stories will be lost forever. If these sites are disturbed.
Andrew:
So please leave historic objects where you find them. Brent says that objects are best to telling their story when they stay in their original location.
Brent Rowley:
Once they're removed from the site, they are kind of just meaningless objects. But when they're in the context of the site, they tell the story of like what sort of products people were using as they visited Sperry Chalet.
Andrew:
Our discussion was interrupted by a mountain goat grazing on the forbs that had sprouted up where fire had cleared the canopy and finally allowed sunlight back onto the forest floor. We had to step off the trail to let the goat pass....
Brent Rowley:
Then I went to work for... Oh crap.
Andrew:
There's a goat coming.
Brent Rowley:
Hey, move aside, don't eat my poles either.
Andrew:
As we sat there talking about the history of the area, a new chapter was already being written. As Brent and I moved out of the goat's path. It was hard not to think that we needed to do the same as the goats and flowers here--to learn from what we couldn't control and to flourish in the sunshine that followed.
That’s our show for today—If you’re interested in learning more about the role and history of wildfire in Glacier, or about the Selis Kalispell Culture Committee, check out the links in our show notes.
Michael:
Thanks for listening!
CREDITS
Renata: Headwaters is a production of Glacier National Park with support from the Glacier National Park Conservancy. The show was written and recorded on traditional native lands. Andrew Smith and Michael Faist produced, edited and hosted the show. Ben Cosgrove wrote and performed our music. Alex Stillson provided tech support Quinn Feller designed our art Renata Harrison researched the show, Lacy Kowalski was always there for us, and Daniel Lombardi and Bill Hayden were the executive directors. Support for the show comes from the Glacier National Park Conservancy. The Conservancy works to preserve and protect the park for future generations. We couldn't do it without them, and they couldn't do it without support from thousands of generous donors. If you want to learn more about how to support this podcast, or other awesome Conservancy projects, please go to their website at glacier.org. Of course you can always help support the show by sharing it with everyone you know— your friends, your family, your dog... And also leave us a review online. Special thanks this episode to Chris Peterson, Tony Incashola Sr., Dawn LeFleur, Teagan Hayes, Mike Sanger, Sarah Peterson, and Brent Rowley.
Featuring: Chris Peterson, Tony Incashola Sr., Dawn LaFleur, Teagan Hayes, Mike Sanger, Sarah Peterson, and Brent Rowley.
For more information, visit: go.nps.gov/headwaters
Featuring: Bill Schustrom, Jeff Hoyt, Emlon Stanton, Will Rice, and Darren Lewis.
For more info, visit go.nps.gov/headwaters
In our search to understand how Grinnell has changed, we meet someone who last visited the glacier over 30 years ago and hike with a researcher who discovered the power of portraits.
Featuring: Gerard Byrd, Bob Adams, Diane Sine, and Lisa McKeon
For more info, visit: go.nps.gov/headwaters
AGGASSIZ Andrew: So Michael, if I asked you how many glaciers there are here, what would you say? Michael: Well, that's a common questions, so I think I actually have this one. As of 2015, the last year we have complete satellite imagery, there were 26 named glaciers, larger than 0.1 square kilometers. But some of those may have fallen below that threshold since our last measurement. Andrew: So you said 26 named glaciers. They have names? Michael: Yeah. There's Grinnell glacier, Sperry glacier, Jackson and Blackfoot glaciers, to name a few famous ones. Andrew: Exactly. Yeah. I've actually got a list here of all 26 names. I'm going to give it to you. Looking at this list. What do you notice about the names in general? Michael: Well, some of them are named after indigenous people or tribes like Piegan glacier. Others are named for non-native people like Sperry glacier, and some seem to be named for their shape or nearby geographic features like salamander glacier. Andrew: Have you ever wondered why these glaciers are called by these particular names? Michael: Yeah. These features must have had many names over the years. Like Kootenai names, Selis names, Blackfeet names, and probably multiple English ones too. Andrew: Well, you might notice that while people use a bunch of different names for a place, all official government publications, like our park maps here, will use the same name. Michael: How did they decide which name to you, I mean, who decides, what name to use? Andrew: To avoid confusion and ambiguity in these place names, all federal agencies use names approved by the United States Board of Geographic Names, which was created by an executive order of president Benjamin Harrison back in 1890. Michael: This board comes up with the names, pulls them out of the hat? Andrew: The board doesn't actually come up with names. They just adjudicate which proposed name should be the official one. Most of the official names of places in Glacier National Park were approved by the board before 1930. So they're pretty old and kind of a grab bag of different things. Michael: Yeah. Some of the features have names that come from native people in the area, but others are clearly names given by homesteaders or other early non-native visitors. Andrew: Yeah. And even the native names are kind of a mixture of different things. Some names are English translations of Blackfeet, Selis or Kootenai words, like Many Glacier. Some places are named after indigenous people by non-native people like Siyeh Pass. There are even some places where there's still debate over whether the name comes from an authentic native story or one concocted to sound authentic by white visitors, like Going-to-the-Sun Mountain. Michael: There are even some places that are named after the indigenous name, given to a white person like Rising Wolf or Apikuni, named for Hugh Monroe and George Willard Schultz, respectively. Andrew: Yeah, so it's really all over the place with these names. Michael: How do you know so much about the board of geographic names? Andrew: Well, I started to look into it when I got curious about the origin of Agassiz glacier's name. Michael: Yeah. Oh, I've seen that one. That there's a phenomenal view of it from the pit toilet at the Boulder pass backcountry site. And honestly, I didn't even know how to say it. Agassiz? Andrew: Yeah. You've got it. It's Agassiz. Yeah. It's up in the North Fork. The glacier's on the seldom seen southeast shoulder of Kintla Peak. Michael: So what did you find out about that name? Andrew: Well, at first it seemed really simple. Agassiz glacier was named for Louis Agassiz. He was a Swiss scientist who is credited with discovering the ice age. Michael: Given the importance of the ice age here, it seems like a natural enough connection. Andrew: Yeah. But then when I looked into the history a little bit further, things got complicated. Michael: Go on... Andrew: Well before he took up glaciology Louis Agassiz had actually been an ichthyologist, studying and classifying different species of fish. And he was really good at it. He had studied under some of the greatest scientists of his time, like George Cuvier and Alexander Von Humboldt. Michael: So how did fish connect to the ice age? Andrew: Yeah. Agassiz was looking for a way to kind of make his own name and step out of the shadow of his mentors. While vacationing in the Bernese Alps of his native Switzerland, he was hiking. And he started to wonder about the origin of the large boulders scattered around the valleys. Michael: Like the ones you'll see along the Avalanche Lake trail, erratic boulders? Andrew: Yeah. And for anyone who doesn't know what is an erratic boulder? Michael: Sure. Yeah. During an ice age, huge glaciers, scrape massive rocks from the mountains, carrying them down into valleys. And as the ice age ends and the glaciers retreat, the boulders are left behind. And we're talking about huge boulders, they could be car or even house size rocks sometimes. Andrew: Exactly. So then in 1837, he made a speech where he laid out his theory that the boulders, like the ones in the Bernese Alps or on the Avalanche Lake trail had been carried to those spots by moving ice sheets that had once covered much of the world. Michael: The ice age! Andrew: Exactly. But this is where the story gets messy. The ice age wasn't really Agassiz's theory. His old college friend, a man named Carl Schimper had already proposed a similar theory, and he'd even used the term "ice age" in a letter he wrote to Agassiz. Michael: Oh, well, I mean, there's still a glacier here named after him. He must've gotten away with like scientific theft, so to speak? Andrew: He did. And to figure out how he managed to do that. I decided to bring in an expert, Christoph Irmscher. He's a provost professor of English at the University of Indiana Bloomington and the author of the book, Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science. Michael: What did you find out? Andrew: Well, Christoph told me that at the time Agassiz announced his theory of the ice age, he hadn't actually collected any data to support it. Was just kind of going off his instincts. So then Agassiz had to figure out a way to quantify this ice sheet movement that he had described. Christoph Irmscher: One of the mountain guides said a little cabin that he built, and Agassiz noticed when he went up to the glacier that this guy's cabin had been traveling, which was an indication that the glacier was moving. Eventually it was entirely gone. So Agassiz started his own field station. He would put stakes in the ice and measure their locations, keep track of their locations. You had a thermometrograph, so you would do temperature readings. So it was sort of a host of things that he would then use, data that he would accumulate. In one particular famous episode that was illustrated at the time, he had himself lowered into one of the crevasses in the glacier, you know, going all the way down. Which of course added to the luster of the famous Agassiz, that he wasn't afraid of doing these things, physically. Andrew: Agassiz wasn't just a scientist. You should think of him as like a celebrity. He tried to cultivate an image of a brave, manly and physical person. Michael: Kind of sounds like his approach to the ice age theory too. He was less concerned with actually coming up with a theory, then he was getting credit for it. It's all branding. Andrew: Yeah. He was very much concerned with his image, but that's not to say he didn't do any good science. Michael: Yeah, I mean, measuring the movement of stakes and taking temperature readings of the area are similar techniques to what glaciologists use today. Andrew: Yeah. So he made some real contributions to the development of the scientific field of glaciology. Michael: I guess the marketing element is important too. A scientific theory doesn't do much good if no one in the scientific community buys into it. Andrew: Yeah. That's true. And Christoph told me that Agassiz was pretty effective at this marketing. He was able to gain acceptance for the ice age theory in not much time. Christoph Irmscher: It was actually surprisingly, as far as these things go, when you think about, you know, how long it took for Darwin's theory really to take hold universally. I mean, again, it wasn't super long, but Agassiz was very, very quick. Partially because he was so charismatic and he was his scientific entrepreneur, meaning that once he has a theory, he just goes around to talks about it. So a year later he's at a gathering of naturalists in France, he talks about it. He travels to England and very, very famous people at the time contemporaries, there was some people who never came around, but famous contemporaries would say, okay, yes. Great, fantastic. Yes, I'm on it. Really within a year, a year and a half, you see people essentially saying yes. And of course it helps that other people have been doing the work too and people knew about it at the time. Michael: What about the other people that were already working on the ice age theory? They couldn't have been happy to see Agassiz get all the credit. Andrew: Yeah, that's for sure. Agassiz burned a lot of bridges in Europe, both in his professional and personal life and not long after he started this glaciology work, he had to pack up and leave for the United States. Christoph Irmscher: It was not so much a move or a planned move. It was Agassiz getting out of Dodge really in a way. Because as I mentioned before Neuchatel had become rather precarious for him, for different reasons. His wife left him, which is really unprecedented if you think of it in 19th century terms. His professional life had become complicated because there were people who resented what he'd done. He was a scientific con man in some ways. Taking other people's ideas is never going to win you many friends. And he was in financial trouble. I mentioned that he had his own printing press. He was broke. There was really not much of a way forward in some ways. And Humboldt managed to help him get an invitation to Boston where he delivered the Lowell Lectures. Andrew: After coming to America, Agassiz never really worked on glaciology again, but at that point, glaciology didn't need him anymore. Once people started thinking about the ice age, they would see evidence all around them. Michael: That's definitely the case here. Andrew: Yeah, can you name some of the features here that provide evidence for an ice age? Michael: Well, I mean, just about every road in the park follows a glacially carved valley. So you could drive through those big U-shaped valleys, looking up at the mountains, you could see the fingerprints of glaciers all over them. There are features like aretes where there's a glacier on either side leaving this knife's ridge. Or horns, like that had three or more glaciers that create these points like the, the Matterhorn. Andrew: Exactly the features of glacier national park were carved during an era called the Pleistocene glaciation, the most recent of Earth's five major ice ages. It started about two and a half, million years ago and the Pleistocene glaciers here probably totally melted out just over 10,000 years ago. So the glaciers that visitors to the park see today, like Agassiz glacier, are probably mostly distinct from the massive 3000 foot thick ones that carved the valleys in the park. Michael: Okay. So I pulled up the fact sheet, Agassiz glacier, like all of the glaciers in the park, is currently shrinking. Between 1966 and 2015, years where we have data from every glacier, it shrank by 213 acres, which is actually more acreage loss than any other glacier in the park for that timeframe. Andrew: Yeah, it's really shrinking. And like the glacier named for him, Louis Agassiz began to shrink as well, but in reputation rather than size. Christoph Irmscher: He was really convinced that science had a public relevance and American naturalists were thinking about race, and were trying to come to terms with it. Agassiz arrived as slavery was being hotly debated. And he felt that science had to play a role there. And he went over to the dark side in terms of what was happening in the scientific discussion. Michael: The dark side... That's ominous. What did he say? Andrew: After moving to America, Agassiz became a proponent of what can really only be called a racist pseudo-science. Michael: He had never been interested in that stuff before? Andrew: No he really never wrote about race in his European work. And it's not like no one in Europe was thinking about these things. Lots of European naturalists of his era had started to develop theories about race, but it was something about his experience here that piqued Agassiz's interest. It's a bit of a mystery, what exactly motivated his racism, but Christoph gave me a couple of theories. Christoph Irmscher: It gave Agassiz in a sense, a chance to affirm or to privilege whiteness and to make himself a little less of an alien than he was. You know, he'd left his own country behind. He was not an American. He spoke with a very noticeable French accent. He was somebody who had come from outside, that sort of emphasizing that European element of American society gave him sort of a way of normalizing who he was. All these explanations of course don't excuse it. And his racism had very, very tangible forms and left a legacy. Michael: What did his contemporaries make of all this? Andrew: When Asa Gray, the great botanist, first heard Agassiz lecture. He was pretty disturbed Christoph Irmscher: Asa Gray said, oh my god, that's not what's going to help us. He said, he doesn't realize how dangerous this is here in America. He doesn't understand it. He's coming from somewhere else. You know, this is not what we need. Andrew: So his views were pretty offensive to many people in his circle. His particular racial theory, which was called polygenism was dismissively summarized by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as the idea that there was a separate Adam and Eve for each race. In fact, Christoph first came to studying Agassiz because rangers from the National Park Service at Longfellow House, National Historic Site in Massachusetts, asked him to look into how Agassiz and Longfellow could have even been friends when they had such disparate views. Michael: Yeah, I guess that's pretty disturbing to think of. Andrew: Yeah, and there's an ongoing conversation about what to make of historic figures with views like this. And it's not just about Agassiz, but also other people that are important to the conservation movement, but who held racist views, like John Muir. Only by acknowledging the dark parts of the past and shedding light on them can we begin the process of healing. Michael: Well I guess with what we know about his life, Louis Agassiz's name itself carries a lot of baggage. Andrew: Yeah. And Christoph told me that some institutions, like schools, that had been named after Louis Agassiz have now changed their names for that exact reason. Christoph Irmscher: Yes. And if people are now saying his name should be dissociated from the museum of comparative zoology, I have no problem with that. The fact remains that he was the one who gave the impulse for that he, you know, implanted in people's minds the notion that science literacy is important. Unfortunately, Agassiz didn't apply it to himself and made himself as literate in everything regarding science as he should have been because that obviously would have educated him about race. But that's something that is also part of Agassiz's legacy. And as you know, we have an enormous, enormous knowledge gap. And when it comes to science today and the public about global warming and so forth, which we always come up against whenever there's opinion polls or something like that. So I would sort of describe these different impulses. If he had not gone to the United States, he would probably be remembered as a great data guy, right. A data collector essentially, but he did his best to destroy that when he came over here. Michael: Well, nature here is sort of taking care of that name question already. As the atmosphere warms and ice melts that outlined around his name is shrinking on the map. Eventually it'll be gone. Andrew: Yeah. It's interesting. Louis Agassiz's reputation and Agassiz glacier have followed kind of a similar trajectory once big and formidable. They're both now reduced to a mere shadow of their former selves. Michael: So it seems like now through his own doing Agassiz's remembered more for his racist beliefs than for his science, if he's even remembered much at all. Andrew: Yeah. Because of his hubris, he failed to recognize the mistakes in his own thinking. He didn't turn the scientific lens back on himself and his own actions and ideas. Michael: But I suppose in his mistake, we can see a better path forward. Andrew: Definitely. One where there's a confluence between a scientific mindset and our collective action. One where we can come together to forge a better future for our planet. Andrew: After the break, our final story. GLACIER NATIONAL PARK CONSERVANCY AD Andrew: Each episode, we seem to cover at least one thing that like this podcast wouldn't be possible without the support of the Glacier National Park Conservancy. Michael: With the help of some friends over there, we got the number of executive director, Doug Mitchell, and decided to call him up out of the blue to ask about these projects. Andrew: For this episode, we wanted to ask about the preservation of historic documents. Doug Mitchell: Good afternoon, Glacier Conservancy. Doug Mitchell speaking. Michael: Hey Doug. It's Michael and Andrew. Doug Mitchell: Hey fellas. How's it going in the park? Michael: It's going pretty well. And for this episode, we want to learn more about historic fire lookouts. So we're going to put you on the spot. Doug Mitchell: Okay. Michael: Do you happen to know when the Numa Ridge Fire Lookout up near Bowman Lake was constructed? Doug Mitchell: I do not have any idea, but it's a great question. You know Glacier Park has a terrific archives that is really becoming publicly accessible through a digitization project we've been very proud to support at the Conservancy, the Montana Memory Project. And I think that's really going to be a great tool for people to answer these and other great questions about the history of the park. Andrew: That's a good idea. I've heard that they've digitized some superintendents reports all the way back to 1911. Doug Mitchell: It's really amazing. I've been able to see some of those, you know, Franklin Delano Roosevelt came out to the park in 1934 and the superintendent notes about that and the preparation for that are really something to see. And, and this Montana Memory Project and the work that's happening to be able to take those documents and make them accessible to the public is really, really significant. Michael: I mean, it's hard enough to get access to things anymore that started digital. So to be able to bring elements of the past into the present is pretty remarkable. Doug Mitchell: Yep. You can go online and find a lot of information and we're adding to that every year. Not everything's there yet, but our goal is to be able to really make as much as possible and whether that's in written form or film form or audio form, eventually gentlemen, you're going to be in the archives and people are going to be wanting to look this up a hundred years from now. Michael: Oh gosh. That's... Andrew: ...that's a scary thought. Michael: Well, thank you so much for pointing us in that direction. We'll be sure to add to the show notes where people can find this information, but I guess we'll talk to you later. Thank you. Doug Mitchell: Hey, thanks you guys, take care. Michael: Bye. LOOKOUTS Michael: For our last story, we're going to fast forward a little bit beyond Louis Agassiz's time to May 11th 1910, when an act of Congress established Glacier National Park and protected over a million acres of pristine Rocky mountain landscapes. A few months later, it was burning. Consumed by one of the worst fire years the West had ever seen, over 120,000 acres of Glacier had burned by the end of 1910, burdening park managers with their first real problem. Now we know that public land managers sought to totally suppress wildland fire for much of the 20th century, and we talk more about that history in the Lake McDonald episode. But before anyone could fight fires, they first had to find them. Beth: They started to make camps and people were climbing trees and doing everything to see if they could find fires. Michael: That's Beth Hodder. Beth: Yes, I'm Beth Hodder. Michael: She's a board member of the Northwest Montana Forest Fire Lookout Association. Beth: We are soon to be changing our name to the Northwest Montana Lookout Association because we will... Michael: An association that safeguards structures that have been integral to our relationship with fire: fire lookouts. Structures built on mountain tops and high vantage points, allowing observers to spot fires as soon as they start. And this new approach proved to be pretty effective. Beth: Anyway, these lookouts kept building and building and building because it was easy to put these buildings in—not easy, but I mean, they had the ability to do that and they wanted— Michael: Glacier built 17 lookouts in the park, but the neighboring Flathead national forest built 147 lookouts by 1939. Beth: Until all of a sudden World War II came along and they no longer had the funds to go into these lookouts. And from there, they started to realize that they could not take care of all of them. Michael: Of the 17 towers erected in Glacier, today only nine remain. And of the eight that were destroyed, some were claimed by weather, but many were raised to the ground by Rangers. Why would they be tearing down lookouts? Beth: There were airplanes and helicopters and infrared technology and everything that was a lot cheaper to look for fires than to have people funded up in lookouts. Michael: Despite it all, several lookouts in the park are still staffed today. And while a lot of people are drawn to the structures themselves—their architecture and location—I've always been fascinated by the people who staff them. People who spend their whole summer living in extreme mountaintop tiny homes. In the North fork, nearly 3000 feet above Bowman Lake, you'll find the Numa Ridge Lookout, and it's been staffed off and on since its construction in 1934. In 1975, it was even staffed by Edward Abbey—the controversial but celebrated author of books like Desert Solitaire and the Monkey Wrench Gang. And most who know Abby know him for his musings about the desert. Sometimes they were angry manifestos about industries like ranching or mining. And other times they were love letters to what is now Arches National Park, and the idea of being alone in the wilderness. Michael: His writing from his time at Numa Ridge is sometimes poetic, often funny, but always grumpy. Karen: Yeah. I don't think Abby liked the weather much. Michael: That's Karen Reeves who staffed the lookout in 2020. Karen: he was used to the Southwest and he really was a desert rat. And he didn't. Michael: And it's worth noting Abby, wasn't up here on his own. Michael: I think his wife did most of the lookout duties when they were up here. Uh, at least she made most of the entries in the actual day-to-day journal. Michael: And Abbey infamously wasn't alone during his time at arches national park, either stories about Edward Abbey and fire lookouts, often romanticize isolation, celebrating a sort of rugged individualism. And these ideas are appealing. Heck I think when I first moved to Montana, that's what I was looking for. But that's not what this story is about. The longer I've worked here, the more I've come to understand that this place isn't the utopia for rugged individuals that I'd imagined, but a place where folks from all walks of life bond over a shared love of a place. When I was looking into the history of numerous lookout, I learned about Kay Rosengren. Kay (Interview): I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, flat as a pancake Fargo. Michael: Beth Hodder from the lookout association interviewed Kay Rosengren a few years ago about her experience as a lookout. Kay (Interview): What year was this? This was in 1958. Okay. Michael: Kay also provided copies of letters to the Northwest Montana Lookout Association as part of their ongoing work to preserve lookout history. Kay (Letter): Dear Mom and Dad Rosengren: Well, here we are in Glacier National Park and loving it. Michael: In 1958. Kay turned 21, got married to her husband, Keith, and they both moved out to Montana to staff the Numa Ridge fire lookout. This is the story of that summer. A story about how no matter what it is that brought you to Glacier, you can find yourself, head over heels, and welcomed into an ever-growing community of park stewards. And right off the bat, you get a sense of Kay's personality, witty, charming, and empathetic. Kay (Letter): Before I go on it is only fair that I clear something up. I am not pregnant. I say gathered. You thought when we told you over very modest and hurried wedding plans, the reason we mobilize so hastily was because we didn't know until three weeks ago that I would have a job too. Did you even know that Keith had a job out here? Did you know that we were engaged? I suspect not as your son is not much of a communicator. Michael: A friend had suggested to Keith, her boyfriend at the time that he should apply to be a lookout. So he applied and got the job. In his hiring paperwork, it mentioned that for some positions, they also hired wives. Kay (Interview): So my husband wrote back and said, if I get a wife, will you hire her? Well, about two weeks later, he got a letter saying you better get that wife because she has a job. Kay (Letter): Keith will be on the payroll five days a week. And I will work two days a week. Kay (Interview): I finished college finals the day before, and then we got married in, came up. Kay (Letter): The challenge now is to learn to cook. I can boil water, scramble eggs, but beyond that and completely ignorant, I will try not to starve or poison Keith Michael: After arriving in glacier. Kay and Keith went to fire school or training for their new job. Kay (Letter): Fire school was interesting and scary. We were told we would receive just 40 gallons of water every two weeks. And those gallons will be for everything. These precious drops will be delivered by mule pack, train to you, dudes. The words leave me imagining Keith and buckskins and me and a Calico. And Sunbonnet, as you can tell, I'm trying really hard, but not successfully to resist the romance of the old West. However, fanciful, my image of life on a mountain top is there was one young wife at fire school from Chicago whose grasp of reality is even shakier than mine. She asked me what kind of washing machine there will be in their lookout. At first I thought she was joking, but then I realized that she either didn't hear or chose to ignore no electricity and water bypass drain. I didn't tell her there was no Maytag in her immediate future, less she cut and run right back to Illinois. Michael: After training, they set out to reach their new home. Beth: Now, to reach the lookouts. Did you hike? Did you head, were you given a horse to take up? Kay (Interview): No. You hiked. Kay (Letter): The hike up here was beyond my powers of description. Suffering of the sword is not noble. Kay (Interview): And I thought I was going to die. I didn't know about altitude and breathing and... Beth: Where they towers? Did they sit on the ground? Kay (Interview): They sat on the ground. Two stories. The bottom of was storage. And then the top was where you lived. And that was glassed in, of course. Kay (Letter): Your son. You may notice the change from my husband to your son found my faint heart did not make me a fair maiden. He arrived up top all you're going as to explore the mountain, then the lookout, while I languished on the lumpy mattressed cots. Beth: Cats or. Kay (Interview): Two cots, and, um, a table in the corner. Michael: And I asked Karen the lookout from 2020, the question on everyone's minds, where is your bathroom? Karen: It's down over the Hill. I just got a new outhouse last summer. The other one was chock-full Kay (Interview): The outhouse on Numa was wonderful because the view was fantastic [laughs] and there was nothing in front of it. Nobody could come and see you. Michael: Once they got there, they settled into the job itself. A job they quickly learned was less solitary in practice than it was in theory. Kay (Letter): Today, we turn on our two-way radio. We check in at 8:00 AM and at 4:00 PM. Once in a while, we are expected to report to headquarters or to the lookouts on Apgar mountain. In the evening, we have a little up here containing some instruments and Duff pine needles, et cetera, to simulate the forest floor and doing this. We get the burning index BI, which gives us a fair idea of how dry the forest is and how quickly fire might spread. Michael: Their work was only effective because they were part of a network of other regional lookouts and fire managers, their new community, who all worked together to protect their new home. Kay (Letter): During fire school, we were taught to assess the kinds of clouds. We have their stages, et cetera. We keep speculating that all of the other lookouts in the Northwest are as unsure as we are about what they're seeing. Keith and I often disagree. And we shudder to think that our collective ignorance might be taken as gospel. To track the lightning, a fire finder is used. It is a large round wheel with a map in the center. It has a metal rim that can be moved. To the middle of the contraption is what looks like a ruler. When a storm threatens, we are to place a piece of paper on the map and draw a line—along the metal piece, on the paper—to indicate the line of sight from the lookout to the lightning strike. Beth: Did you have fires while you were up there that you had to call in? Kay (Interview): Yes, the first year again, you know, they tell you in fire school, well, "fire might smolder for two weeks" and I thought oh yeah right. You of course record all your lightning strikes, and our first fire was two weeks after we had recorded that strike. Kay (Letter): We were told to record strikes until storms are so close the hair on the backs of our necks stands up. At which time we are to retreat to the safe corner. The fire finder is metal, as are the cots and the stoves, which means only the corner with the wooden table and chairs is safe. Karen: And it's kind of fun. When you get lightning storms, it's kind of a front row seat to a pretty extreme firework show. Michael: Now some parts of the job are flashy, even scary. Like the neighbors. Kay (Interview): I tell you, I'll be honest. I thought some grizzly had been given my name and I did not leave Numa the whole summer. Michael: In reality. One of the biggest challenges of the job is not bears, but boredom. Kay and Abbey both brought a load of books to Numa just to stay entertained. Karen: It's a good place to bring projects. And you find out if you are interested in that hobby at all or not. I found out that I was not a quilter. [laughs] You bring it up here and you've got the time. So if you're not going to do it up here, you're not ever going to do it. So, um, I've been able... Michael: The way Kay tells it though. The hardest part was cooking. Kay (Letter): Perhaps the biggest challenge up here on Numa Ridge is learning to cook. I clearly remember pledging not to poison your son. There are days when I feel as if that was a promise made in haste. There's no way bread can be kept here. There's no freezer never mind a refrigerator. So I had my first foray into the wonderful world of baking bread. It was heavy enough to be a doorstop. It was gray and it quivered. Spam is a staple for us and we are both sick of it. But Keith has devised a sauce that kills the taste of the stuff, not to mention our taste buds. I am grateful. I'm also grateful for a small stained booklet that goes with the place. It is a basic cookbook written with bachelor lookouts in mind. It has become my Bible. Kay (Interview): It was invaluable because I didn't know how to cook. I did. I knew nothing. Kay (Letter): The recipes are simple and clearly explained on the cover. It says it was compiled by some wives of forest service personnel. Bless them. Karen: The cookbook was very specific that you should eat butter at every meal as a cookbook I can get behind. Michael: Finally, she highlights the moments that stood out. Kay (Letter): A father and son hiked up from Bowman Lake campground a couple of days ago. The son appeared to be about 16. Kay (Interview): The kid said to me: "What do you miss most up here?" And I said: "A, Coca Cola." And the child hiked up with one for me. It's the sweetest gift I ever got. Kay (Letter): If anyone had told me before we signed on for this job, what life up here would be like, I would have cut and run a bare bones description would have sounded grim and impossibly austere. What it is instead is an adventure and proof that much of what we prize in the way of possessions and comforts is expendable. I've saved the best for last. The view of Bowman Lake below us is sublime. The water is emerald green with a touch of turquoise. And when it is still, the surrounding scenery is perfectly mirrored. The whole area is so lovely that I get teary at times. As we have no camera, our memories of this awesome splendidness will have to suffice. Kay (Interview): No, we didn't have a camera at that time. Beth: Okay. Kay (Interview): No, we didn't get so many wonderful photographs that we could have gotten because we didn't have a camera. Kay (Letter): If I could be granted one wish while I live on this mountain, it would be that we could somehow communicate the beauty of this place, and the exhilaration of breathing the air, and the reverential feeling we have as we go about our daily chores. Karen: And I can't emphasize enough how much the light and the play of light is one of my favorite things about being a lookout. Kay (Letter): Mornings, especially are magical. I find myself holding my breath as if the very act will break the spell and will be sent below to live among mortals. It is not hard to see why the Greek mountains inspired toxic gods and special beings. Karen: Sunrise, sunset, moonrise, reflections of Bowman Lake, northern lights. This year, the comet NEOWISE, I mean. There's just. The light is always playing. It's fabulous. Kay (Letter): This morning dawned with just the peaks of surrounding mountains, and us, above clouds. Which were white and perfect, and looked solid enough to walk on into infinity. It is a picture we will treasure always. Beth: If you had to do it again, would you? Kay (Interview): Oh, yes, it was fine. And there was something new every day. Never once wished I was somewhere else. Yeah, no, I certainly would have done it again. Michael: Kay and Keith have both since passed away. These letters and her interview give us the chance to share in her charm and wit and to be transported back to life as a lookout in 1958. And a lot has changed since then: there was the moon landing disco, the Berlin Wall, perms, Y2K and Facebook. But throughout all that time, life as a lookout has more or less stayed the same. Karen has a few more gadgets in 2020, but otherwise her job is the same as Abbey's in 1975 or Kay's over 60 years ago. From Numa Ridge, it is easier to see the things that have—like the lookout itself—stayed constant. And Kay's story helps to show that the passion for the park I've seen in visitors, friends, and peers, a love for glacier and a commitment to preserving it—time hasn't changed that at all. Lookout towers were built by an optimism that our participation in public lands could protect them. And while we romanticize the isolation that comes with their location, protecting a place like glacier is a burden too big for any individual. So if you're in search of a weekend alone in the woods, by all means come and visit. But you may find more than you bargained for. After all, even in one of Glacier's most remote destinations, Kay and Keith found a life and community here, and spent summers in Montana for the rest of their lives. Michael: That’s our show for today—If you’re interested in learning more about the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, fossils, Louis Agassiz, or fire lookouts, you can find links in the show notes for more info—including to the Northwest Montana Forest Fire Lookout Association website. Andrew: Thanks for listening! CREDITS Renata: Headwaters is a production of Glacier National Park with support from the Glacier National Park Conservancy. The show was written and recorded on traditional native lands. Andrew Smith and Michael Faist produced, edited and hosted the show. Ben Cosgrove wrote and performed our music. Alex Stillson provided tech support Quinn Feller designed our art Renata Harrison researched the show, Lacy Kowalski was always there for us, and Daniel Lombardi and Bill Hayden were the executive directors. Support for the show comes from the Glacier National Park Conservancy. The Conservancy works to preserve and protect the park for future generations. We couldn't do it without them, and they couldn't do it without support from thousands of generous donors. If you want to learn more about how to support this podcast, or other awesome Conservancy projects, please go to their website at glacier.org. Of course you can always help support the show by sharing it with everyone you know— your friends, your family, your dog... And also leave us a review online.Special thanks this episode to Colter, Brian Dao, Echo Miller-Barnes, Dale Greenwalt, Kurt Constenius, Teagan Tomlin, Emily Crampe, Christoph Irmscher, Jean Tabbert, Karen Reeves, Lora Funk, Beth Hodder, and the Northwest Montana Forest Fire Lookout Association.
Featuring: Colter Pence, Amanda Wilson, Kurt Constenius, Dale Greenwalt, Christoph Irmscher, Beth Hodder, Karen Reeves, and interviews & letters from Kay Rosengren—courtesy of the NWMT-FFLA.
For more info, visit: go.nps.gov/headwaters
Featuring: Debby Smith, Bob Adams, Tabitha Graves, and Lee Rademaker.
For more info, visit: go.nps.gov/headwaters
In this episode of Headwaters, food offers an introduction to the area’s indigenous communities. We also explore the longest-running indigenous speaker series in the National Park Service.
Featuring: Darnell Rides At The Door, Vernon Finley, Mariah Gladstone, Rose Bear Don’t Walk, Tony Incashola Sr., and Kelly Lynch.
For more info, visit: go.nps.gov/headwaters
SARAH: Standing in a forest and there's birds chirping.
NATE: Big craggy peaks is what I see.
MICHAEL: Now known as Glacier National Park, this corner of Montana is renowned for its rich cultural history, charismatic wild animals, and scenic beauty, a place of peace and serenity on the surface anyway. The reality... Well, that's a bit more complicated.
ANDREW: I'm Andrew Smith.
MICHAEL: And I'm Michael Faist, and we're both rangers here in Glacier National Park.
ANDREW: We're going to tell you the story of a paradoxical place, a landscape at odds with itself, where all sorts of forces, large and small converge in interesting and unexpected ways.
LISA: Well, our glaciers are going. They're on a track to disappear now.
BILL: It's just one dangerous, damn hard thing that we were involved in.
BOB: Crazy. We could have died using this, but we had a shaved off wooden baseball bat and we'd shout at the bear and run up and whack it in the butt.
MICHAEL: Brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy, this is Headwaters--a seven part podcast exploring the characters and contradictions that shape the park.
ANDREW: Join us as we travel to Glacier's busiest and most remote destinations to see what happens at the confluence of an international border,
MICHAEL: rivers of ice,
ANDREW: grizzly bears,
MICHAEL: more than 10,000 years of human history,
ANDREW: wildfire,
MICHAEL: and pit toilets.
ANDREW: Really pit toilets?
MICHAEL: Even pit toilets.
ANDREW: The result is something creative, destructive, maybe even magical. It's Glacier National Park.
