Whitebark Pine | Chapter One

Journey across the Flathead Indian Reservation to the most important tree you’ve never heard of.

The Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/

Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation: https://whitebarkfound.org/

Pictures of Ilawye, the Great Great Grandparent Tree: https://flic.kr/p/2mtQsSH

Ben Cosgrove Music: https://www.bencosgrove.com/

Claire Emery Art: https://www.emeryart.com/

See more show notes on our website: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/photosmultimedia/headwaters-podcast.htm

Journey across the Flathead Indian Reservation to the most important tree you’ve never heard of.

The Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/

Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation: https://whitebarkfound.org/

Pictures of Ilawye, the Great Great Grandparent Tree: https://flic.kr/p/2mtQsSH

Ben Cosgrove Music: https://www.bencosgrove.com/

Claire Emery Art: https://www.emeryart.com/

See more show notes on our website: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/photosmultimedia/headwaters-podcast.htm

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TRANSCRIPT:

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

[harsh, scratchy calls of a Clark’s nutcracker]

[pensive piano music begins]

ShiNaasha: This tree knows a lot about me. Every time I do come up here, I'll pray to it. I'll talk, I'll cry.

Mike: You met Ilawye. So that's you know, to me, the other side of that. I mean, Ilawye is not alive, but it still has to me, it's like power or spirit. Just when I talk about it, I mean, I get kinda the goosebumps and the chills. But being able to put your hand on it or even hug it, and just knowing that this tree has been here for over a thousand years.

ShiNaasha: This tree has been here longer than me and knows more than me. It's like a lifeline. It's like a lifeline to that, to that other side, to that spiritual realm, you could even say. Imagine if we were to lose this tree, this species—you lose a lot more than just a tree.

[music slowly fades out]

Peri: This story begins on top of a mountain, sitting at the foot of the largest whitebark pine tree I've ever seen. It's called Ilawye, the Great, Great Grandparent Tree. I feel a sense of awe at this tree and what it's seen over the years, and I'm wondering how many generations of trees have grown from its seeds. But this tree is dead, like so many other whitebark pines. More than half of all the whitebark in Glacier National Park and across the western U.S. have died, and we're losing more each day. [Headwaters Season 2 theme begins to play: somber piano music] Meeting Ilawye was my introduction to whitebark pine and the start of a relationship I didn't expect.

[music fades out as Peri starts talking again]

Peri: My name is Peri, and this is season two of Headwaters, a five episode story about my journey with a tree over the course of a summer in Glacier National Park. But this story is about so much more than whitebark pine—it's also a story about the purpose of national parks and our relationship with the places we love.

Andrew: Hi, this is Andrew.

Michael: And I'm Michael. We're all rangers here in Glacier.

Andrew: You don't need to listen to season one to understand this story, but if you're planning a visit to the park, last season will be a great place to start.

Michael: This season is all about whitebark pine, an incredible tree that could soon disappear. Over the course of five chapters we'll learn why it matters, why it's dying, and meet the people fighting to save it.

Peri: It's about a lot more than just a tree. Let's start simply, though. [sounds of a pencil scribbling on paper] Here's Claire Emery, who created the cover art for our podcast this year. We went into the park to find and sketch some of these trees.

[quiet, pensive guitar music begins playing]

Claire: One of the things that caught my eye first about whitebark pine was the silver branches that all reach in the same direction to model what way the wind is blowing, and how they would all just… “phewsh.” It's like they're all, it's like they're flying in the wind, but they're... but they're not moving, you know, and how can they be both at once? It's just so amazing to me that something so static can look so alive.

Peri: When I think of conifers, I usually picture a Christmas tree shape—that classic spruce or fir silhouette. But whitebark pines aren't really like that. They sort of have a wise old, tough look about them. The tops are bushy, with their branches reaching up like a candelabra, and they're not too big as far as trees go. The tallest ones are about 50 feet tall and their bark is white-ish gray—hence the name. Whitebark is part of a group of closely-related trees called five-needle pines, just like the western white pine and limber pine, which also grow in Glacier. What sets whitebark apart, though, is that they only grow at high elevation near treeline, that they have tasty, nutritious seeds, and that they can live for over a thousand years.

Claire: I actually think that's the thing that's the most compelling about it is that it's like... It looks... it is this embodiment of vitality. The shape of those branches, the twist of the wood. It just—they're muscular. They're strong, they're beautiful and they're graceful. They're all of it.

Peri: [in the field] Like a dancer.

Claire: Yeah, yeah. Like a wind poem. I think seeing their brushiness in life, their tuftiness in life—and then their silver poetry in death. [drawing sounds] I think that they're kind of a nice combination of both of those things.

[fun, jaunty piano music begins, marking a transition]

[bird sounds and footsteps begin to play]

Peri: So I'm walking up the Piegan Pass Trail, which is a place in Glacier with a lot of beautiful whitebark pines, and I'm hoping to see how many park visitors have even heard of this tree.

Peri: [in the field] So have you guys heard of whitebark pine?

Visitor 1: No.

Visitor 2: No.

Peri: [in the field] Have you ever heard of a whitebark pine?

Visitor 3: No.

Visitor 4: Uh, no.

Visitor 5: White pine, for sure.

Visitor 6: Yeah, but I don't know if I could identify it.

Peri: [in the field] Have you heard of whitebark pine?

Visitor 7: I have not.

Visitor 8: You graciously pointed one out, however, had you not pointed one out, I would have been clueless.

[music finishes, marking a transition]

Kaylin: 99.9 percent of visitors that attend my program have no idea what a whitebark pine is.

Peri: That's Kaylin Brennan, who's an interpretive park ranger here. She does her evening campfire program on whitebark pine. And for a lot of park visitors, that's their first introduction to this species.

[expansive synth music begins to play]

Kaylin: [giving an interpretive program] So you come around this corner, right when you're getting really tired, you're so ready to take a break. You come around this corner, you see this tree, and it looks like it's floating above the trail, and you're like, “whoa.” So you sit down underneath this tree. It's about 20 to 30 feet high and you hear this bird, you watch it fly to the top of this tree. [Clark’s nutcracker calls] That's the Clark's nutcracker.

Kaylin: [in an interview setting] The trees don't get as much recognition as all the other animals and aspects of Glacier, but yet they're the foundation of all of that.

Peri: Kaylin has been doing her evening program about whitebark pine since her very first season 12 years ago. When she heard we were doing a whole season of the podcast about this tree she couldn't wait to talk to us.

Kaylin: I was wildly excited, like jumping up and down, excited. I was just excited that a bigger audience could learn about the story of this tree.

Peri: [in the field] So you've been giving this program for, what, 12 years now? What do you hope that visitors take away from this story?

Kaylin: I think it's that when humans choose to make a positive impact on the landscape and come together, we can.

Peri: So Andrew, what do you think about that?

Andrew: It's a really nice sentiment. You know, I think it's a pretty commonly held belief that in nature, humans are a bad influence, that we're a virus on the planet.

Peri: I mean, that was more or less the reason behind creating the National Park Service, right?

Andrew: Yeah. There's this idea that in order to keep a place wild and to keep it natural, you have to keep humans out of it. Right? Like a national park.

Peri: Right, or a national forest or...

Andrew: ...a wilderness area.

Peri: Sure.

Andrew: But this is a fairly recent conception, maybe only in the last hundred years have we started to think this way. Once these areas seemed like a limited resource, it became popular to try to protect them by excluding people. It's an idea called fortress conservation,

Peri: like trying to keep that place quote unquote pristine.

Andrew: Yeah, keeping that human influence out because it's seen as a bad thing. But Kaylin seems to think that whitebark pine tells a different story.

[echoes of Headwaters Season 2 theme playing]

Peri: So as I begin this project, I really don't know whitebark pine very well, and most other people don't either. But those who do know these trees love them. And I wanted to find out why.

Peri: [in a car] We've been driving south through the Flathead Valley down onto the Flathead Reservation.

Peri: It's my first day working on Glacier National Park's podcast. But the park is in the rearview mirror.

Michael: [in a car] First field day!

Peri: [in a car] First field day!

Peri: The stories we tell on this show revolve around Glacier, but whitebark pine doesn't recognize lines on a map. These trees are a key piece of the park, but they also occur throughout the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, which Glacier is just a tiny piece of, and at high elevations throughout western North America.

Andrew: [in a car] I think we're going to make a turn in three miles off of the main highway.

Peri: So today we're driving across the Flathead Indian Reservation. It's even bigger than the park, and it covers a lot of Flathead Lake and the Mission Mountains. The reservation was established in 1855 and is home to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, or CKST. I'm here because I'm curious what it's like to have a relationship with whitebark pine that goes back thousands of years. To find out, I spoke with Tony Incashola Jr., the head of the CSKT Forestry Department.

Tony: Whitebark pine is a first food for us.

Peri: Mike Duglo Jr., who is the head of the Tribal Historic Preservation Department, joined our conversation as well.

Mike: The story that I've heard is that when we went over Lolo Pass, for instance, they would gather some of the cones that had fallen on the ground and put them by the fire. And when those roasted up and were made easier to open, then they would eat those seeds.

Peri: So I asked if they'd tried whitebark pine seeds themselves.

Tony: Yeah, it's—it's very, very tasty, very good. And that's kind of our goal is to collect enough seeds not only for our reforestation efforts, but also to help introduce it into our cultural feeds again.

Peri: Mike said he hadn't, but—

Mike: I'm looking forward to, you know, having that little bit of a taste someday, too.

Peri: I hadn't heard the term first foods before, so I asked Tony if he could explain that.

Tony: So first food, it's a traditional food for our tribe. Our tribe would follow the seasons nomadically, so to say, and harvest different plants and roots and berries at different seasons of the year. And so first foods would be something our tribe would traditionally use in their diet.

Peri: So in addition to these trees carrying nutritious seeds, they also carry stories and cultural meaning.

Tony: The culture committee has hundreds, thousands of hours of tapes where they've recorded elders and learned from them and their conversations, kind of like we're doing right now, to preserve those stories and that history. And they, they let us know that historically those were used on hunting trips, camping trips and just generally in those high elevation areas. You know, I like to call our tribe a forest tribe. A lot of our ceremonies, a lot of our traditions happen in the forest and especially the high elevation forest—it holds a special meaning for us.

[car noise]

Michael: [in the car] Peri, where are we?

Peri: [in the car] We're several miles up a forest road towards Ilawye.

Peri: A forester with the CSKT Forestry Department named ShiNaasha Pete kindly offered to take us up to meet Ilawye, the Great, Great Grandparent Tree.

Michael: [in the car] How would you describe the road?

Peri: [in the car] It's been pretty bumpy, pretty windy. Some big drop offs on one side, which I didn't love.

[beeping sounds as the car parks]

Daniel: So you think this is it?

Michael: Must be.

Peri: I mean, I hope so.

[seatbelts unbuckling, doors opening]

Peri: We made it!

ShiNaasha: I know, that is such a haul.

Peri: It is a haul!

ShiNaasha: Yá’át’ééh, I am ShiNaasha Pete. I am Navajo and Shawnee. I am a reforestation forester for the CSKT tribal forestry. I've been working on whitebark pine since 2014, as an intern graduating out of SKC, which is Salish Kootenai College, and I am very blessed to be working for the tribal forestry now.

Peri: I have this mental image of foresters as gruff, no nonsense types of folks who carry hatchets and are covered in tree sap.

Andrew: [in the field] Were you into trees and plants and stuff even as a little kid?

ShiNaasha: Oh my gosh, yes, [laughing] I was such a nerd. My friends would be like, “Do you want to go ride bikes and go over to the playground?” And I'd be like, “Do you guys want to go collect mint? I found this really nice patch and we can make sun teas!” And they're like, “what?”

[everyone laughs]

Peri: In a cruel twist of fate for a forester who works on pines, ShiNaasha has a pretty vicious pine allergy.

ShiNaasha: I have a real honker, too. [laughing] It's like “what's that goose in the background? Some goose in the mountain, a mountain goose!”

[everyone laughs]

Peri: ShiNaasha is incredibly bubbly. Like, she jumps back and forth between rattling off scientific names of the plants we're seeing, telling stories about her son, and how different generations of her family are connected to trees.

[pensive, sparse acoustic guitar music begins to play]

ShiNaasha: My grandpa, he was a logger. And so, yeah, so on my maternal side of the family, my grandpa had a logging business, and everybody worked in it. My grandpa, you know, he'd come home and he'd smell like chainsaw and trees and the forest, and I loved it, it was Grandpa. He talked about whitebarks, big whitebark back in the day. How huge it was. It was really cool actually to hear his stories about it and him seeing it and and how, you know, even then, he didn't ever cut it. And then my grandma, she would do all the books and stuff like that. So she was always at home. And when I would hang out, we would go for these long walks in the woods. She would teach me all the trees and all the species, and we'd pick flowers and make bouquets.

Peri: Now ShiNaasha is the one passing this knowledge on to a new generation.

Michael: How old did you say your son was?

ShiNaasha: He's 12.

Michael: What does he think about what you do?

ShiNaasha: I go, “Let's go on a hike.” “No.” “No? Come on!” “Every time we go for a hike, it just turns into a plant lesson.” [laughs] But yeah, he sees that I love it. But what's really cool with him is I can connect it to the cultural side. And then it's more of like, okay, you know, instead of like, “Oh yeah, that's cool.” That's more just like, like understanding or like a realization like, “Oh okay, that that's why—the purpose of it.”

Peri: [in the field] So it's not just trivia, like, “that's what this plant is.” That's why this matters.

ShiNaasha: Exactly.

Peri: She now focuses her work on whitebark pine.

[music finishes playing]

ShiNaasha: When this project started to come together and they brought elders together to talk about the cultural component of whitebark pine, there was an elder from up on Blackfeet country, and it took him a while to remember the name. If you lose the tree, then, yeah, you can lose that story. And then when you lose that story about the tree, then you're going to lose the story about the nutcracker.

Peri: That's the bird that feeds on whitebark pine seeds.

ShiNaasha: It continues on and on. So if we lose whitebark culturally, then like I say, you're going to lose those lessons.

Peri: Glacier is home to Native America Speaks, or NAS, which is the longest running indigenous speaker series in the National Park Service. And like this podcast, NAS is funded by the Glacier National Park Conservancy. The program includes over 100 events each year, bringing together speakers from the Flathead Reservation where ShiNaasha, Mike, and Tony live, and from the Blackfeet Reservation to the east of the park. I spoke with one of the NAS presenters, Robert Hall, just before one of his talks in Two Medicine.

Robert: [Speaking Blackfeet] nō´m˝ṫoōṫoō ǎmssk̇ǎaṗiiṗiik̇ǔni, niṫtsiṫō´ṗii iiṫo´nnyō´•ṗ´. My name is Robert Hall—well… [introduces himself in Blackfeet] and my white name is Robert Hall, and I grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation, and I live in Browning, Montana.

Peri: Robert works on Blackfeet Language revitalization, and I wanted to get his perspective. And the first thing I wanted to know was the word for whitebark pine.

[quiet piano music begins to play, building throughout the conversation with Robert]

Robert: The pine tree is ṗǎa˝ṫo´k̇ii. What it means, it just means pine tree, and then the woodpecker ṗǎa˝ṫō˝ksissis.

Peri: [in the field] Is that the same as Clark's nutcracker?

Robert: Pretty much, and if you want to get more specific, you know, and someone would say, tsǎ ǎnissṫǎapsii ṗǎa˝ṫō˝ksissis, what kind of woodpecker? You just say sikssk̇ii, it's got a black face, right? And what it means is, all it means is like a pounding nose.

[Robert tapping his finger on the wooden bench to demonstrate the woodpecker’s pounding nose]

Peri: [in the field, laughing] Very appropriate.

Robert: So again, there's a kind of a little insight, if you will, of how our language is focused on what things do, to an extent.

Peri: I only had a few minutes to speak with Robert before his program, but I was curious how your language can shape your relationship to nature. I asked about the Blackfeet language, but Robert flipped the question on its head.

Robert: Really, I think the question more so that we need to look at is why is English so separate from the earth? It's kind of obvious why most indigenous languages would be entwined with the earth, because that's our natural state is to be with the earth. That's who we naturally are, right? It's the English language that is kind of odd.

[music finishes, marking a transition]

[branches snap]

Peri: The hike up to Ilawye isn't long. But there were a lot of fallen trees after the winter.

[footsteps on a trail]

Michael: [out of breath] Yeah I'm worried that people listening to this will not be sufficiently impressed with us. [chuckling] Can you describe what we're doing?

ShiNaasha: [laughing, out of breath] We are dying on the side of the mountain. [whole group laughs] Scrambling over blowdown of dead trees and getting swatted by false huckleberry, and wishing that these berries were ripe. But the tree is not very far from here.

[loose rocks clatter and clank underfoot]

Peri: [in the field] So this is Ilawye?

ShiNaasha: Yes, this is her. It's definitely, definitely gorgeous. All the green in the background and then just like this one big, huge white skeleton against all this black talus, yeah, it's pretty.

Peri: I squinted in the midday sun and I could see Ilawye standing alone, with distant peaks beyond. We walked across the loud clanking slope of rocks and kind of nestled among Ilawye's huge silver roots. It was very quiet, and it felt sacred. This is how I am first introduced to whitebark pine—to a tree that will totally upend how I see the world around me.

ShiNaasha: The base of it is so huge and just the way the branches are so big and it's like, like lazy octopus arms, like they're too big, they can't pick them up. But then you're like, well, you know, is, is that the branch or is that the root system, you know? If it was the root system, then imagine how even more big this tree was.

Peri: [in the field] I didn't even think about that.

Peri: It's sad to meet the species through a dead tree, but it's also kind of fitting. But even in death, Ilawye is a pretty great ambassador. Even though only the bottom 15 feet or so is still standing, the trunk and branches are enormous, bigger than any tree I've ever seen at this elevation, which is almost 7000 feet.

ShiNaasha: But I can't imagine what this looked like back then. This tree had to be huge, like redwood status for Montana, it really had to be. And I can't imagine like how much it stretched out.

Peri: I think a lot of people would probably say they love trees, especially big, tall, ancient ones. But asking people to articulate why they feel this way or trying to do that myself kind of hits a dead end. ShiNaasha was the first person I talked to who was really able to answer that question.

ShiNaasha: Think of all of the energy that they have absorbed from everything that has happened over that time, whether it's bad or good. [slow, pensive piano music begins to play] But then even when you have an opportunity to come to something so old and filled with wisdom from all of that energy absorbed, if you were to take that time to go to it, it's going to share energy with you.

Peri: My science education emphasizes learning about the natural world. So I saw Ilawye as something to study or observe. But ShiNaasha sees Ilawye almost like a friend or a family member, someone to learn from. And a tree can teach you a lot, if you're willing to listen.

ShiNaasha: Perseverance. That's what I see. You go through hardships, but you keep going. Sometimes in life, you have setbacks. Sometimes you get the strength yourself to continue going by adapting or you have a helping hand. You take that helping hand and move forward. You know, what's funny is like this—I love this place, and I’ve always wanted to bring my family here, but I have not yet gotten the opportunity to bring them here. I really wish I could have brought my dad.

[music swells and then finishes, marking a transition]

Tony: Traditionally, that's how, you know, a lot of our stories have always been told, is we watch the animals. We watch how they take care of the land. The land was here, put here, and the animals took care of it for us and they prepped it, and we watched them and how they do it. And so after watching them and learning from them now, it's kind of our duty to continue it. And so all of our stories, all of our values come around keeping everything together as a whole, as a system, so it can function correctly.

Peri: Even for those of us who've grown up without this worldview, one of the reasons I think we all feel that sense of awe around ancient trees is how old they are, and how much they've seen. Trees are rooted in the same spot, sometimes for thousands of years, as the world changes around them.

Tony: And you look at the site it sits, the view it has, it looks over the Mission Valley. You know, it's seen a lot of things. It's seen a lot of change, a lot of shape.

Peri: When Ilawye was young, over a thousand years ago, Tony and Mike's ancestors were living in the valley below as they had since time immemorial, [somber synth music begins to play] and Ilwaye watched as settlers arrived and everything changed. Now, Tony and Mike are working to revive and pass on traditional knowledge to new generations.

Tony: And that's part of our success story we wrote about, too, is we're bringing this to our younger generation now. You know, I'm a little younger than Mike and whitebark pine traditionally hasn't, I haven't learned about it until until recently, and so there is a little gap in there. And it's awesome to see, you know, groups of children out there on field trips, hiking trips and starting to show them the importance, not just for, like you said, ecology for restoration, but introducing that culture back into the young generation.

Mike: And bringing kids up there to meet Ilawye is, you know, pretty special for them. They're not just learning about the importance of the tree and the seeds, they're learning the importance and the significance of our great, great grandparent and how, you know, throughout history this has been part of our lives.

Peri: [in the field] Where did the name Ilawye come from?

Mike: I named that tree.

Tony: Yeah.

Mike: And I got to touch the tree. And I was like, this is a special tree. It's kind of like my medicine tree.

Peri: Most relationships begin when you learn someone's name, and I guess that's true of the natural world, too. For me, learning the names of wildflowers and birds started out as trivia. [pensive piano music playing] But eventually, in addition to just asking, “What are you?” I started to ask, “Who are you and why are you here?” I started to notice which birds live, where, what time of year glacier lilies bloom or raspberries ripen, and when animals migrate in or out of my neighborhood. Species became individuals—not just a hummingbird, but the rufous hummingbird that zips around my flowers every day. Not just a huckleberry plant, but the patch I visit and pick each year. In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous author and scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer says that paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, and that learning names of the beings around you is a sign of respect, the first step toward that reciprocal relationship. Which is why meeting Ilawye, the Great Great Grandparent Tree, felt like a fitting introduction to whitebark pine.

[music finishes]

ShiNaasha: You know, trees and plants and medicines are here to help us. That's why we help them.

Peri: In the past, it never occurred to me to frame the relationship with nature or a tree in this reciprocal way where we take care of each other. The National Park Service mission is to preserve and protect this place, but until now, I had thought about that relationship as mostly one-sided—people protecting nature. It didn't occur to me that the natural world could take care of me too. And Tony explained to me that the CSKT Forestry Program incorporates that kind of thinking. It's not just about growing and harvesting timber as a crop. It's about restoring the ecosystem.

Tony: And that's something I've always learned from my father is—is what I do now is not for me, it's not for my kids, it's for my kids’ kids. [wistful, somber music plays] And that's why forestry and our tribe is connected with forestry so much. I think it's because whatever we do and whatever restoration efforts we do, it's looking down the road and the future. And with climate change, that's really why we've looked at our future.

Peri: And Tony mentioned this idea of thinking seven generations down the road.

Tony: It's—we're learning from generations past. We're applying it now for generations future.

[music finishes; we hear again the sounds of rocks clattering underfoot that we heard while visiting Ilawye]

Peri: I set out on this journey to meet a tree, and I discovered a lot more.

ShiNaasha: This tree is the oldest that I know, so there is a lot that I have learned from it already. It has a lot that I still will learn.

Peri: This is not just a story about a species and the efforts to save it. It's a story about how we relate to the world around us, [slow, somber music begins to play] what we stand to gain if we can think of that relationship in a new way, and also about what we could lose.

ShiNaasha: Imagine if we were to lose this tree, this species. It's like losing a whole other soul. You lose all of that knowledge, you lose the culture, you lose a lot more than just a tree.

Peri: And this is a very real possibility. And in addition to their spiritual and cultural significance, they also hold together our high elevation ecosystems.

ShiNaasha: You're going to lose that tradition. You will lose that cultural component of that piece of nature that makes your tribe, your tribe.

[music finishes, marking the end of the episode]

Michael: Next time on Headwaters, we explore the ecosystems tied to whitebark pine, including grizzly bears, birds, and squirrels, but it all starts with a puppet.

[sweet, joyful music playing on a banjo]

Brad: [laughing] Piney is like an artificial Christmas tree that's been truly gussied up.

Michael: So she's about three and a half feet tall, three feet tall, green sequined dress.

Brad: [vamping narrator voice] “She's… a little… mysterious, sassy.” Oh no, her base fell off. [laughs]

Michael: That's next time on Headwaters.

[music finishes; different guitar music plays under the credits]

Peri: Headwaters is a production of Glacier National Park with support from our partner, the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Peri: Glacier is the traditional lands of several Native American tribes, including the Aamsskáápipikani, Kootenai, Séliš, and Ql̓ispé people. Headwaters was created by Daniel Lombardi. Andrew Smith, Peri Sasnett, and Michael Faist produced, edited and hosted the show. Ben Cosgrove wrote and performed our music, and Claire Emery let us use her woodcut piece titled "Wind Poem" for this season's cover art.

Peri: Special thanks this episode to Bill Hayden, ShiNaasha Pete, Tony Incashola Jr., Mike Durglo Jr., Robert Hall, Sierra Mandelko, Claire Emery, Kaylin Brennan, Debby Smith, everyone with Glacier's native plant program, the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation, and so many others. If you enjoyed the show, we love it if you'd rate, review, and subscribe and share it with a friend.

[music ends]

Lacy: This is like for the end?

Daniel: This is in it, yeah. You saying that? That's gonna be in it.

Michael: [laughs]

Lacy: The Glacier Conservancy is the official fundraising partner of Glacier National Park. To learn more, visit glacier.org.

Peri: I think that's the best time you've done yet.

Lacy: OK, do I need to get one more time?

Michael: I think we're good.

Peri: Yeah I think this is good.