Becoming | Stained by History

Glacier has a history of oil extraction. We travel to Many Glacier to see the consequences, and the causes of climate change. Along the way we talk to young people about how it feels to live with the weight of history.

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Eric Carlson art: https://www.instagram.com/esccarlson/ Behind the scenes pictures: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmSxSe2J

Rising Voices Poetry Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast

Glacier has a history of oil extraction. We travel to Many Glacier to see the consequences, and the causes of climate change. Along the way we talk to young people about how it feels to live with the weight of history.

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Eric Carlson art: https://www.instagram.com/esccarlson/ Behind the scenes pictures: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmSxSe2J

Rising Voices Poetry Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

[wolves howling]

Narrator: It’s the winter of 1902, and I’m cold and content. Each night seems to grow longer, and each storm brings more snow—a welcome break after a hot and sweaty summer. I usually have this place all to myself... [sparse and eerie music begins, with strings plucking] But not tonight. A flash of orange erupts from the valley below, a ball of fire and billowing black smoke—leaping flames joined by a chorus of shouting, desperate men. It all started a few years ago with the sound of footsteps in the valley below. Men sharing around a campfire the story of what brought them here: [crackling of a campfire] rumors of bears covered in petroleum. “If we can find where the bears wallowed,” they said, “we’ll be rich.” I’d never seen men like this before, and I’m not sure if they saw me. But they did find what they were looking for: black puddles seeping out from the rocks along the lake... Oil. [sounds of water lapping at a lakeshore]

Not long after came hooves: twenty horses loaded with clanking metal, and twenty men clamoring with excitement.

[men’s voices in the background] From my perch on the mountainside, I watched trees crash to the ground. I heard the thumps and scrapes of hammers and saws that built cabins, boats, and a small sawmill. The sizzling of a cookstove; grumbling about canned food. Noise was constant. [squeaking of a drill; men’s voices quietly in the background]

But the most frequent sounds were the hopeful conversations of men as they stood around a massive drill. Through the wind and snow, they looked to the ground—some dreaming of a better life, others of power and riches. [wind howls] Eventually, their drill reached a bubble of flammable gas that inflated their hope to new heights. Profitable oil cannot be much deeper, they thought.

[men’s voices; the roar and crackle of a fire] Tonight, in a flash of fire, the promising gas is accidentally ignited, and all their work burns. Their cabins, their tools, their dreams, glow red as they die.

[a driving drumbeat begins, adding to the music already playing[ I am Kintla Glacier, and I have watched over this valley for thousands of years. I grew to my largest in the 1800s, in an era of rainy summers and blizzard-rich winters. Those times are gone, but I am finding a new equilibrium at the dawn of the 20th century. I’m smaller, but stable. I could survive for centuries more… Unless something changes...

[drumbeat finishes suddenly; crackling of a fire slowly fades under Headwaters Season Three theme: Wild West, by Frank Waln, which begins with a haunting flute line]

Daniel Lombardi: [a drumbeat begins, and strings layer in with other instruments] Welcome to Headwaters, a show about how Glacier National Park is connected to everything else. I'm Daniel. This is season three, and it's all about how this place became what it is today.

[theme song continues to play, then finishes]

Daniel: There's a thing that people say: “Oh, that's ancient history.” Meaning that because it's history, it can't be relevant anymore—that something buried in the past doesn't have the power to impact the present, let alone the future. But I don't buy that. History is the study of what happened in the past. But it's also a study of the present and how we got here. This episode is about the search for oil here around 1900. Before this place was known as Glacier. But this story is also about how the past in the future can get tangled up. The climate crisis has a history here. It goes back more than a century. The very first oil well in Montana was drilled in what is now the park.

Gaby Eseverri: It's a surprising story about the way history is always closer than we think. This season, we're looking at history from different angles. And before we turn back the clock, I want to start with the world today.

Daniel: This is Gaby. Gaby, you've been talking and interviewing young people all summer long.

Gaby: Yeah. To talk about climate change and to learn how they cope with it. And it varies. Some use poetry, some use humor. [footsteps walking on concrete] And a good place to start is a trip I took to Browning High School right outside of the park. I'm walking up to Browning High, and I'm wearing my favorite sweater vest, because I'm hoping it'll make the high schoolers that I'm about to talk to think I'm cool. It's this blue vest, and it's covered in geese, strutting and honking all over the place. [sound of a doorbell] I like to think that some of them are mid honk.

Employee, through an intercom: Pull on the door.

Gaby: [in the field] Thank you.

Student: Oh, my God. I love your sweater.

Gaby: [in the field] Thank you.

Gaby: My goose gamble paid off. I'm here to meet with the Rising Voices Poetry Club. I'm introduced by their librarian and advisor, Amy.

Amy Andreas: Guys, this is Gaby.

Gaby: And they introduce themselves to me.

[sparse music in the background, playing just a few haunting notes]

Amy: I'll just have you start and you guys go around and introduce yourselves.

Sovereign Smith: My name's Sovereign Smith.

Trysten Hannon: Trysten Hannon.

Emily Williams: Emily Williams.

Rebecca Edwards: Rebecca Edwards.

Emaeyah Bird: Emaeyah Bird.

Kiera Big Horn: Kiera Big Horn.

Lily Crawford: Lily Crawford.

Amy: My name is Amy Andreas, and I’ve graduated. [all laugh]

Gaby: We gather in this cozy little space called the coffee shop, which is the usual meeting place for the club.

Student: This room is the coffee shop.

Gaby: [in the field] Because there's coffee?

Student: Because there's coffee--

Student: We usually run a coffeeshop

Student: --sometimes, sometimes we sell. [all laughing]

Gaby: [in the field] Wait, wait. Can someone please read that?

Amy: Well, she wrote it. So I made her write it up there this morning cause I was like, I love this.

Rebecca: I had to write a small poem about a very minor incident that I still remember, for my English class.

Gaby: [in the field] What was the incident?

Rebecca: It-- [laughs] It's, it's called "Milk." I don't trust it. It's weird how it curdles How it's fine one day and spoiled the next The horrendous aroma emanating off the milk Burned my nostrils.

[the group chuckles]

[sparse music from before plays briefly]

Gaby: At the beginning of the episode, we imagined the past, our history of oil exploration, but these students are trying to imagine what that history means for their futures.

Student: I don't really like thinking about climate change too much. I start getting scared and then angry. And so I usually just like push it aside and I feel like, it's really unfair because we're so young.

Student: It's—it's just it's a lot of pressure for young people to take on.

[sparse music plays briefly]

Gaby: I reached out to Amy a few weeks ago to ask if any student would be interested in writing and sharing a poem with me. And I'm glad they agreed. Articulating our feelings about climate change is hard.

Student: It took me until, until I had, like, five days left to actually sit down and write it because I wasn't in the headspace until that day. Our society like, their past mistakes and just—”you're our future generation. You got to fix this when you're older,” like—[distressed noise]

[sparse music plays again]

Gaby: Surveys show that Glacier County, where these students live, ranks the highest in the state for concern about climate change. And you can hear that in their poems.

Lily: "Terminus" by Lily Crawford. Her air whispers of decay Melting the Arctic's frozen waters, breathing fumes Through branches traveling with every howling wind Increasing slowly Soon becoming Over time like dominoes slightly too far apart Just close enough to gently knock over the next Every crash gets closer and closer Then all at once Noticeable within one's own lifetime Things begin to shift

Gaby: [in the field] Lily, so what was that about?

Lily: The world is kind of dying, a little bit, and that makes me sad.

Daniel: Okay. Gaby.

Gaby: Daniel.

Daniel: We looked forward—you talked to young people about their futures. But now let's look backwards. How did we get here?

Gaby: Of course, the climate has changed naturally in the past, but today the biggest cause by far is burning fossil fuels like oil.

Daniel: Yeah, this is a good place to start. I think of Earth's atmosphere, it's like a blanket surrounding the planet. And when we burn fossil fuels, like oil, that releases greenhouse gases into the air, gases like carbon dioxide.

Gaby: And those gases trap heat.

Daniel: That's, I guess, why they call them greenhouse gases. They get added to the atmosphere and they make that blanket thicker and thicker, trapping more heat.

Gaby: And what's wild is that those gases stay in the atmosphere for a long time.

Daniel: Yeah, at least hundreds of years, sometimes as long as a thousand years. Anyway, the point being, history does not stay in the past. Digging up and burning fossil fuels here in Glacier, even way back in 1901, that has consequences today.

Gaby: And because greenhouse gases are still accumulating, there is even greater impact on young people and future generations. [swainson’s thrush calls] Let's see what more of this history we can find if we head into the park.

[swainson’s thrush singing repeatedly]

Daniel: [in the field] So this is my kind of list of things I want to talk to everyone about today, introduce myself, and then talk about the consequences and causes of climate change.

Gaby: We're here to meet students visiting through the University of Montana. They bring a group to visit Glacier every summer to learn about climate change.

[more birds singing]

Gaby: [in the field] Why that order?

Daniel: [in the field] I think I just want to get out of the way—the consequences, which are the things that I think everyone expects to talk about here, which is like melting glaciers and more wildfires.

Gaby: [in the field] Right. More fire, less ice.

Daniel: [in the field] Exactly. So we'll talk about that a little, but then I think the more interesting, bigger focus of today will be the causes of climate change.

Gaby: Usually these students would come here to see shrinking glaciers, a consequence. Which makes sense. Over the past 50 years or so, every glacier in the park has gotten smaller. But we have something different in store for them today.

[western tanager singing]

Instructor: Good morning. Welcome to day two of our trip to Glacier. And they are—Daniel's going to be taking a group around to look at some scenes and talk about an oil seep, and the connection between the petroleum industry and the park that's a little surprising.

Gaby: But before that, we're going to try to see one of the most famous glaciers in the park, Grinnell.

[bird songs fade out]

[sparse electronic music from earlier plays briefly]

Gaby: [in the field] To start off, can you tell me your name, age and what you're studying?

[outdoor sounds in the background; birds singing: yellow-rumped warbler singing, robin tutting]

Claire Ferguson: So my name's Claire Ferguson. I'm 20 and I'm studying history and then also environmental studies. You know, I've gotten to sit on rocks and look at the stars for hours, and, like, the only sound around me was wildlife. It was nature. And I feel guilty, you know, being able to have those experiences and appreciate nature. I feel guilty not doing enough. I feel guilty by not trying my hardest to save it.

Gaby: [in the field] So all that being said, how do you or do you think you contribute to climate change?

Claire: Honestly, I think it's almost impossible to not contribute to climate change in our society.

Gaby: [in the field] So do you feel like you're part of the solution?

Claire: I want to be able to say that I helped and that's why, like, like we have a future on this earth.

[yellow warbler singing; footsteps crunching on a trail]

Gaby: So we're hiking along the shore of Grinnell Lake, and I'm getting distracted trying to spot a yellow warbler that I can hear but can't see. [yellow warbler continues singing] But the students are looking for a very specific spot.

[bird songs and footsteps continue]

Student: One of these photos was taken in 1888. The other was taken in 1914. And they're both looking at Grinnell Glacier from this bend in the stream. And we're trying to repeat those photos.

Gaby: [in the field] But it's kind of hard to find.

Student: It is kind of hard to find. And that's what we're trying to do right now. And we're going to do some bushwhacking down the stream and hopefully get to the spot where those photos were taken. But a lot of the vegetation is different, so we're having a hard time finding it.

Gaby: [in the field] Yeah.

Gaby: We love repeat photos here. Basically they're before and after pictures of glaciers. The older historic photo shows what the glacier looked like back in the day, and then we take a new picture, perfectly lined up to match the old one. As a kid, I was obsessed with playing those “spot the difference” games in magazines at the doctor's office. This is kind of like that. Except I'm not left feeling the same pride for my attention to detail, because spotting the difference today is really easy.

[fox sparrow singing]

Student: Looking at Grinnell.

Daniel: Jack just--

Student: yeeted himself

Daniel: --yeeted himself into the willows.

Student: Yell every once in a while so we know you're alive.

[plants crunching and swishing past the microphone; birds continue to sing]

Gaby: [in the field] Because Jack just started walking into all these plants. Now we're kind of following him and we're bushwhacking a little bit. But there are like plants and shrubs as tall as me. I'm five four. Oop!

[splashing, birds singing]

Gaby: [in the field] Cool, we made it to a little clearing now.

Student: What do you see?

Gaby: [in the field] Oh, there it is.

Daniel: [in the field] A yellow warbler. You wanna look through the binos?

Student: Oh, sure. It's yellow?

Daniel: [in the field] Yes, right.

Student: Oh, geez! There it goes. Now he's in the back one.

Daniel: [in the field] This is, that's what-- That's it. Singing right there. They say it's “sweet, sweet, sweet. I'm so sweet.”

Gaby: Someone needs to cross the stream to get the exact right spot for the photo and Jack, the cool guy of the group, is quick to volunteer.

[sounds of running watter]

Daniel: [in the field] Jack is taking off his clothes, this is getting serious. He popped his shirt, I think somewhat unnecessarily.

Gaby: [in the field] He's perfectly dry.

Daniel: [in the field] The water is up to his knees.

[all laughing]

Gaby: Most people take off their shoes and socks to get into a stream. Jack also took off his shirt for good measure. So he has a camera in one hand and a laminated copy of an old photo in the other. He closes one eye and holds up the photo, trying to line it up just right. He has that look on his face of, yeah, I'm making this look easy, but it's harder than it seems. To his credit, it's harder than it seems because what's in frame today is so different. It takes him a while, but he does it and eventually wades back to shore to show us what he got.

[birds continue to sing]

Gaby: [in the field] Okay, Jack's coming back.

Daniel: [in the field] Okay, let's debrief. Jack, show us the photo. And what do you think? How'd it go?

Jack: It went well. It was pretty hard because, like, the flow of the river has definitely changed. Looks like it's widened a little bit. More trees, there's taller trees that were kind of blocking the view, so it was hard to get the exact angle, but...

Daniel: [in the field] Yeah, commitment. Like, we wouldn't have got even anything, and you got wet, got in the water.

Student: MVP for the day!

Jack: Definitely worth it.

Daniel: [in the field] It kind of got lost in, like, looking for the photo and everything. But like, the huge thing is that you used to be able to see a massive glacier right above those waterfalls.

Gaby: That massive glacier you could see in the old photo was Grinnell Glacier. And today...

Daniel: [in the field] Now you can't see the glacier at all. It's back tucked under the mountain, and away out of our view. You can see the glacier was massive. It went up hundreds of feet. [pensive, wistful music begins to play] And now that's just bare rock. And so then this is we call this now the Salamander or Salamander Glacier.

Gaby: You can still see some ice, but Grinnell Glacier itself is completely out of frame. Headlines are one thing, but moments like this make them feel real.

Sylvia Blodorn: Yes. My name's Sylvia Blodorn. I'm 18. It's a sad thing to look at because the thing with the receding glaciers is that, like, I'm not going to be able to see what people saw 100 years ago, and my kids aren't going to be able to see what I'm seeing and like, you know, on and on. So we're kind of watching the destruction happen in a way, and it's hard, but it's also necessary.

Gaby: The story of melting glaciers is a pretty common one, but we're really here for another reason. To look for a cause of climate change. Oil.

[music fades out]

Daniel: [in the field] You know, bears have very powerful noses. They're very good at smelling things. They love smelly stuff. There are early stories from before Glacier was established of bears sniffing out muck and rolling in it and the people following these stinky, messy, dirty bears and realizing that they were covered in oil. These traders, they're trading furs and pelts and animal skins, and they're coming across these bear pelts—they smell like gas or kerosene or oil. So early people looking to make it rich start following these bears and the bears end up leading them to oil seeps inside what is now Glacier National Park.

Gaby: I picture the scene in my head, and I imagine little cartoon men in old timey clothes running around looking for oil. And as soon as they smell the bear pelts, their eyes change to big green dollar signs. [cha-ching sound] And when the bear leads them to the oil seep, the dollar signs in their eyes are replaced by even bigger ones.

[bigger, louder cha-ching sound]

Daniel: [in the field] The very first oil well in Montana was drilled in the north fork of the park at the head of Kinta Lake, right below Kintla Glacier, by a company called the Butte Oil Company.

[birds singing]

Gaby: The Butte Oil Company began drilling at Kintla in 1901. The company's six employees put up an 80-foot derrick at the head of the lake. Their expenses were high and production was slow and money was running out.

Daniel: Ultimately, oil extraction was never profitable in Glacier, and the Kintla effort went up in smoke after just a few years. But despite the dangerous nature of this product, the world was going crazy for this new goo. There were even pop songs about it, like the "Oil Fever Gallop."

[hip hop beat begins]

Gaby: It's not really the kind of business a family might start to serve a small town—not then and not now. It required a lot of capital to get started. Before failing, the oil well at Kintla Lake sucked up $40,000, about 1.4 million today, adjusted for inflation.

Daniel: Instead, oil had the appeal of a slot machine. It was the kind of thing that can make anyone filthy rich overnight. It just required enough cash to drop into the slot, enough work to pull the lever, and enough luck to hit the jackpot.

[beat finishes playing]

Gaby: The first gusher that inspired the country's oil fever was tapped in 1861 in Pennsylvania. That well gushed 3000 barrels per day.

Daniel: And like the one at Kintla Lake decades later, when the oil from that well shot into the air, something ignited the escaping gases, setting off an explosion that killed 19 people and blazed on for three days.

Gaby: And just as the oil fever broke at Kintla Lake, it spread to Many Glacier. Then on to Waterton Lakes National Park. [footsteps begin] Now we're following Daniel around Many Glacier because he thinks he can lead us to a place where oil is seeping out of the ground.

[song sparrow singing]

Daniel: [in the field] Um, so I have a cool photo, but... You can see Grinnell Glacier right there in the background with the Salamander Glacier above it. That's an oil well right in the center of the photo. And then you have—s So you have the causes of climate change, and then what would become the consequences in the background, the... Grinnell Glacier.

[yellow warblers and other birds singing; running water in the background]

Gaby: But what isn't pictured is the carbon dioxide that was being released and building up in the atmosphere.

Daniel: [in the field] Yeah, I didn't. I don't know. I wanted to like I want to build the excitement about an oil seep, but I also don't know if I'll be able to see anything.

Student: You're going to disappoint us. [everyone laughing]

Student: So do you have coordinates for it? Do you have, like, a general idea of where it is?

Gaby:I have three things on my to-do list for the day. Find a melting glacier, check. Find a yellow warbler, check. Find oil, working on it.

Daniel: [in the field, with footsteps in the background] Someone sent me a picture of a map, but it's also not like, like a spring of oil, like spouting out of the rocks. It's more like a general area where oil kind of oozes up through the gravel.

[running water]

Student: Yeah.

Daniel: [in the field] So the oil seep is like along the creek, kind of on the bank.

Gaby: So we aren't lost, but we don't know exactly where we're going. Not lost. Just wandering. I've seen that on a T-shirt. The plan is to show the students a raw source material for climate change: oil. But it's proving to be a bit more of a challenge than we thought for two reasons.: it's hard to look for something you haven't seen before, and even more so when that thing is underground.

Daniel: [in the field] I don't think this is the trail I've been on. [group laughing] Oh, there it is. Yeah.

[bushwacking sounds and rustling]

Daniel: [in the field] You think it's right here?

Gaby: [in the field] Well, I see just a little. A little path.

Daniel: [in the field] Yeah.

Gaby: [in the field] Okay. It looks like it could be here.

Gaby: It took us kind of a while to find the right spot.

Daniel: [in the field] Unless there's another spot like this, like, right up there, then I think we've got to it. Okay, everyone. Time to dig for oil.

Gaby: [in the field] We have no shovels. So.

[sound of a boot kicking at pebbles and sand]

Gaby: [in the field] What about like a little higher up here?

Daniel: [in the field] Well, Gaby, that's easy for you to say because you're not the one digging.

Gaby: [in the field] Someone has to record!

Gaby: They start to get hopeful, but strike water again and again. My job, though, is to fill in the holes, to leave no trace. A job I'm good at because my big boots keep doing it on accident.

Daniel: [in the field] It was like... Gaby! You just filled in our hole!

Gaby: But the students stay motivated to uncover what could be.

[more sounds of digging]

Daniel: [in the field] You should have been an oil tycoon, Hallie.

Daniel: [in the field] Still digging.

Gaby: [in the field] Still digging.

Student: She's just money hungry.

Student: I'm gonna strike it rich.

Daniel: [in the field] Yeah, waiting for the oil to like spurt up. [everyone laughing]

Student: That's the goal. If it doesn't, I'm going to leave here disappointed.

Gaby: I am just about ready to give up when it finally happens. Hallie's eyes turn into huge green dollar signs.

[cha-ching sound]

Gaby: [in the field] Oh, wait. Keep going.

[sounds of digging; water and pebbles]

Daniel: [in the field] Oh, look at that. Now let's look at this rock. I mean, it looks like it's covered in black oil, but. Oh, my God. Look.

Student: Oh, interesting.

Daniel: [in the field] On my finger you can tell it's oil. Wow. Oh, when it's on your hands, that's when you can really tell. It looks like motor oil. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Look at it on your finger. I feel like I gotta taste it.

Student: That's a good idea.

Daniel: [in the field] It doesn't really taste like anything, it just tastes like a rock.

Student: It's like kind of the sliminess you would expect from touching algae slightly. But it's not algae. It's just like, yeah, you can see the sheen on the surface of the water now. I'm just gonna try and grab a few more rocks.

Gaby: [in the field] You want to touch that?

Student: [in the field] Oh, my God.

[outdoor sounds fade out; pensive notes that we’ve heard before play briefly]

Koby Ben-Ezra: My name is Koby Ben-Ezra. My age is 21. I'm studying philosophy and environmental studies at UW Madison.

Gaby: [in the field] You think you contribute to climate change?

Koby: Yes, I do.

Gaby: [in the field] How does that feel?

Koby: It kind of feels, um. It kind of feels annoying, I think, because personally, I know that I care about the environment. I know that I try as much as I can to help rejuvenate the environment. And I know I have that, like, ethical feeling towards the environment, but but yet I can't really shift myself in a lot of ways. So I kind of would describe the relationship as annoying, kind of frustrating.

[same pensive notes play, marking the transition back to the field]

Student: Oh, my God. That is really gross. [aughing] You're right. It doesn't feel like algae. And then, like, when you spread it, it just turns your fingers bright orange.

Gaby: [in the field] Yeah, look at that. So what were you all picturing when we said oil seep?

Student: Yeah. I feel like it's easy to take for granted with how many oil sites around the world we've already figured out are easy to extract, like, oh, there's just some places that have oil. But it does make you think like how much work goes into looking for places and how much work is like goes into seeing if things are even profitable. And that there's a lot of things in between, like no oil and profitable oil. Sometimes it's just like slimy water in the ground.

Daniel: [in the field] Yeah, that's a good point.

Student: I don't think—I can't say I've ever felt oil before so.

Student: Well now you have.

Student: Now I have.

Daniel: [in the field] And this make sense, right? Like this is why it was never profitable. Just because there's not, like, oil gushing out of the earth here. It's it's very low concentrations.

[haunting violin music begins to play briefly]

Gaby: The oil may be diluted and buried under the earth, but this history and its consequences are concentrated and on the surface. The stains left on fingers will wash away. But the stains of this history won't.

Daniel: [in the field] So the park has a real history with fossil fuel and extractive industry, also logging and mining and of course fur trapping. [birds singing] People have been trying to extract wealth out of this place for a long time. And most of it didn't work. There wasn't really good enough oil or gas to make profit. In the end, the thing that turned out to be most profitable was tourism and the Great Northern Railway really saw that and was able to capture that.

Student: Well, yeah, it makes you think like what this place might look like if they were able to extract money from oil here. Especially I'm from Bakersfield, where there's a huge, huge oil industry and the entire city is just covered in oil rigs. And it's one of our most beautiful hikes, and if you search up hikes in Bakersfield is Panorama Park, and it's an overlook of an oil field. And it's, it's pretty—it's pretty gross looking, and we have a lot of problems there with air pollution and water pollution, so it makes it hard to live there. So I'm glad that this place got that we weren't able to make money from oil here.

[violin music picks up again, with additional instruments slowly layering in]

Gaby: Daniel and I say bye to the students and the one oil tycoon and start heading home. As we drive out of Many Glacier. I look in the side view mirror to see this valley fade into the distance, and something catches my eye. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. I've seen this helpful reminder a thousand times, but today it takes on a deeper meaning. All of us depend on fossil fuels in so many ways, and yet this is a crisis set in motion over 150 years ago. Sometimes history and historical moments can feel so distant, but this doesn't feel so far away. These choices made 150 years ago—they are closer than they appear.

Emily Williams: “An Age” by Emily Williams From Ice Age to Stone Age to industrial to digital to none A change of times Chemicals Atmospheres Fumes Seeming to carry a whittler’s tune Wood Water Oil Coal Stone Clock Stop Stop for a minute and look A whittler can't replace what has been took But they don't seem to write that in your book All that's left is discarded pieces

But unlike the whittler’s disarray Similar to the potter's clay Of pieces new we form Something of a new time A society on the brink of change Generations willing to right ways To handle and shape this lump of clay To mold an idea of endurance and change With gentle hands adapt we must As we lay here on this cusp To try once more In this new age

[many fingers snap]

[music continues to play under the credits]

Daniel: Headwaters is a production of Glacier National Park, with support from our partner, the Glacier National Park Conservancy. This season of Headwaters was made by me Daniel Lombardi, Peri Sasnett, Michael Faist, and Gaby Eseverri. Frank Waln wrote and performed our music and Eric Carlson created this season's cover art. Special thanks this episode to the instructors and all their students. Jim Elser with the Flathead Biological Station. Dalton, Sylvia, Jack, Hallie. Megan, you're awesome. Mark Hansen with the Wild Rockies Field Institute and all your students. You really got me thinking. Koby. Kaylie. Claire. Margaret. Julia. Delaney. Catalina. Katherine. Serendipity. Lily. Also awesome. And of course, big thank you to Amy Andreas with the Rising Voices Poetry Club at Browning High, Kiera, Emaeyah, Lily, Vita, Rebecca, Trysten Sovereign, Emily.

Gaby: Thanks for sharing your coffee shop and good vibes.

Daniel: Thanks for listening.

[a hip hop beat plays]

Lacy: Next time on Headwaters.

Gaby: We travel back in time, over 12,000 years to discover a frozen world full of surprises.

Justin Radford: I think the Missoula floods are nearly incomprehensible in today's society.

Shayne Tolman: A living, breathing mammoth, not the bones, the dead part. You're looking at your living behavior.

Shane Doyle: Think about how they must have been comparing their lives to other species. Must have made those people feel like they were on the edge of tomorrow.

Gaby: That's next time on Headwaters.

Gaby: [to Andrew] Hey, Andrew.

Andrew Smith: Hey Gaby.

Gaby: [to Andrew] So Headwaters is supported by the Glacier National Park Conservancy. Yes. What else do you guys support?

Andrew: Another project that we support in the park is HawkWatch. And I heard that you got to be involved with HawkWatch this year. What was that like?

Gaby: [to Andrew] It was amazing. It was amazing. We saw so many golden eagles. I was up there for two days, and it was a really beautiful experience.

Andrew: Yeah so HawkWatch is a raptor monitoring program where park biologists and volunteers, they go out and they count how many birds and what species are migrating through the park. And they're collecting some really amazing data that's helping us understand what's happening with birds in this region.

Gaby: [to Andrew] Absolutely. It's so important.

Andrew: Yeah. So thank you for being involved and we're excited to keep HawkWatch going.

Gaby: [to Andrew] So if people want to learn more about Hawk Watch and other projects at the Glacier National Park Conservancy supports, where can they go?

Andrew: Yeah, they should check out our website, visit Glacier.org