A Tale of Two Chemists: Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park

Tuesday 30th May - Friday 2nd June

Glacier National Park is beautiful. The scenery is spectacular, but the name is becoming something of a misnomer. When the park was established in 1910 there were 100 glaciers. By 1965 two-thirds of them had disappeared, and at this point in time half of those remaining are too small to be classified as glaciers and are defined as “not active”. In perhaps another sign of environmental changes that are happening all around us, the park has been the victim of countless forest fires. While the frequency and intensity may be increasing, apparently there has only been one year since the park was opened that there hasn’t been a forest fire. The evidence of burned trees and cleared hillsides is hard to miss.

In 1987 when we visited Glacier we didn’t have the greatest time. The weather was damp and cold, and we freaked out about bears, although we never saw any! This time we enjoyed ourselves a lot more. The drive over from Flathead Lake was stunning in bright blue, cloudless skies. We stopped at a cafe for lunch in East Glacier and had one the best pies we have ever eaten in a restaurant … homemade blackberry/raspberry pie, fresh and still warm from the oven! Our campsite at St Mary was very pleasant, and once we got set up we still had time for a short walk. We then had two excellent days of hiking. On the first day we hiked the Triple Falls trail off the “Road to the Sun”, and as the name suggests, saw some beautiful waterfalls. On the second day we hiked up to Grinnell Lake from the “Many Glacier” area of the park. The weather was somewhat overcast, but we didn’t get rained on (much!). We also got to see some wildlife, including two grizzly bears, a fox, deer, beaver, marmot and several new bird species during our stay in the park. The first bear we saw was from a foot-bridge over the St Mary river, near the campsite. We were out for short evening stroll and Gloria spotted the grizzly wandering along the banks of the river near the campground. It disappeared behind some willow shrubs and then we heard much shouting and banging of pots from the campground. The bear re-appeared, walked into the river and swam across to an island in the middle. It was being swept down stream as we watched and at one point I thought it might come right under the bridge. However, it made landfall on the island, shook the water of its fur and wandered off into the trees.

The weather turned rainy on our final evening and you couldn’t even see the mountains around. Fortunately, in the morning it was dry and we packed up and headed east across Montana. We encountered a fair bit of rain as we drove to our next campsite at Sleeping Buffalo Hot Springs, but we got lucky with a couple of dry hours and we managed to get our tent up, dinner cooked and get showered before the storms rolled in. We ate dinner (chicken and bean chili) in the car, and that’s where I am sitting writing this blog.

As we have travelled the past ten weeks we have been constantly reminded of the two great environmental issues that we face on this earth. The first we talk about constantly, but make little headway, and that is climate change. (At this point I should acknowledge that Gloria and I realize that that we are only contributing to this issue in driving around the country.) The second problem in my mind is a bigger and more threatening concern and that is population growth. We rarely if ever talk about it, and if we do, it’s only to portray the negative economic aspects of low growth and the challenges of an aging population. Whilst this is clearly a global issue the information I have relates to the USA. Did you know that in 1776 the population of the USA was 2.5 million and that in the past 250 years it has grown 130 fold, and that since 1950 it has doubled? When we consider the impacts of climate change, for example on drought and water supply in the south west USA, nobody seems to frame the situation as a population rather than a changing climate problem. There are too many people for the available water … maybe we should be addressing the number of people rather than hoping that we can turn around the runaway train that is global warming in some vague expectation that there will miraculously be enough water to go round. It’s a really tough challenge for countless reasons, but one reason to be pessimistic is that capitalism, our underlying religion, relies on constant growth, which in turn fundamentally relies on increasing population. This seems to me like a serious vulnerability when it comes to long term future of humanity. From the perspective of the USA, does anyone think that a cross country trip that resembles a 3000 mile drive down Manhattan is an attractive prospect? We should think about that every time we cheer an uptick in “new building starts” as a sign of a vibrant economy.

Mike