#1: Headwaters Trailer

Glacier National Park has always been a confluence of conflicting and competing forces that come together in unexpected ways.

ANDREW:
When you picture Glacier National Park, what comes to mind?

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.