During the summer David and I were blessed to be able to carry out a dream of ours. We traveled by train across the country, seeing Glacier National Park in Montana, Banff and Jasper Parks in Canada, and some of the cities along the way. We left in mid-June in order to reach Glacier National Park when it opened.
The mountains, lakes, and forests of Glacier were stunning. Glacier Lodge, built in the early 20th century, features huge wooden pillars made from entire immense old-growth trees, so large it would be hard to find anything similar today. It was a joy to breathe the clean air of the park, as cottonwood blossoms flew by, in that cathedral to nature in the Rocky Mountains. We loved the freedom of taking our backpacks and getting on the train to tour the Pacific Northwest.
At Glacier, we regretted the lack of actual glaciers, though. In the age of global warming, the park that once featured 125 glaciers now has something like 26—all in remote places inaccessible to the average visitor. Later in our trip we did see, and stand on, a glacier in British Columbia. And we drank in the loveliness of the glacial lakes in the Canadian Rockies, Lake Louise, Maligne Lake, Emerald Lake, and more. The splendor of the mountain scenery from the observation car of the Canadian “VIA rail” train from Vancouver to Jasper was part of that magic.
However, everyone asked us if we were troubled by smoke from the British Columbia wildfires during our trip. We weren’t, luckily hitting a time between at least two periods when some had enough trouble breathing that they wore masks in the Canadian parks. We were grateful for the freedom to explore these magnificent parts of Creation without coughing and tearing up, during this summer of so many wildfires. Off the coast of Vancouver, we were also blessed with a visit from a friendly humpback whale. These whales, with a population numbering about 450 in the 1950s, have been protected, and they’ve now recovered to a population of about 25,000. Careful tour boats now regularly share enchanting visits like ours with some of them. There are many species in peril, and we also have these examples that show that we can save many of them.
Being free to see some of the vast expanses of our continent is part of our identity as Americans. My grandfather, a fisherman, traveled from Detroit to fish all over the Great Lakes region. Then he found property in Georgian Bay in Ontario, so that we and our children continue to enjoy that beautiful place. This year we had smoke from wildfires in Quebec for a few days during six weeks in Georgian Bay. But as in our time in the Northwest, nearly every day we were free to enjoy Georgian Bay. We want that for our children.
There is a terrible irony in burning fossil fuels to drive north to enjoy Ontario. So we are looking at electric cars and other ways to reduce our carbon footprint. As Christiana Figueres says in The Future We Choose—The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to the Climate Crisis, we have the freedom to choose. Let’s keep the grandeur of our planet for our children to enjoy.
Judy Young is a retired United Methodist pastor. She convenes Gettysburg for
Gun Sense and the Adams County branch of the PA Prison Society, and is a
member of the Green Gettysburg Book Club.