We drove into Glacier National Park under an orange sky, and the first thing Odin asked was how smoke from fires in Oregon and Washington got all the way to Montana. It took the whole episode to answer him. We start at Lake McDonald, ten miles of lake we can't see across, and pull rocks out of the water that are red, green, and purple — ancient mud that rusted in the sun a billion and a half years ago, before any dinosaur existed. We sit in on a ranger talk and learn how every animal here solved the same problem: a winter that lasts most of the year. Bears sleep through it (and don't pee for six months). Mountain goats wear it. Pikas store it — and steal from each other. A moose grows a pound of bone out of his head every day, then drops it in the dirt. Then the rain washes the smoke out of the sky, and we drive Going-to-the-Sun Road: fifty miles, one road across the park, blasted out of a cliff by men hanging from ropes with half a million pounds of dynamite. On the dry side, things get fast. The buffalo, gone in about fifteen years. The Blackfeet, who called these mountains the Backbone of the World, pressured into selling them for gold that was never there. A railroad man named Louis Hill who wanted a national park because a national park sells train tickets — and built the Many Glacier Hotel out of logs with the bark still on. Then we meet Lisa McKeon, a USGS scientist who hikes to the glaciers every August holding a hundred-year-old photograph, looking for the exact rock the photographer stood on. We hear about the scientist who put 111 baby bull trout in a backpack with an oxygen tank and carried them five miles up a mountain to a lake cold enough to save them. And we learn the one thing a kid can do about the smoke: drown, stir, drown, feel. Ages: roughly 6–12, and the adults in the front seat. Includes an honest, kid-level conversation about climate change and wildfire — no doom, no dodging. LINKS: Plan your own Glacier trip: https://roamschoolfamily.com/destinations/glacier/ All 63 parks, every episode, in one place: https://roamschoolfamily.com/learn/podcast/ Every destination we've visited: https://roamschoolfamily.com/destinations/ This episode features tape from: Headwaters, the podcast produced by Glacier National Park with support from the Glacier National Park Conservancy, hosted by Andrew Smith and Michael Faist: https://go.nps.gov/headwatersGlacier National Park Conservancy: https://glacier.orgHear this park from the people whose mountains they are: Sun Tours — Blackfeet-owned interpretive tours on Going-to-the-Sun Road: https://www.suntours.coNative America Speaks — the Park Service's program of talks by Blackfeet, Salish, Pend d'Oreille, and Kootenai speakers: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/historyculture/native-america-speaks.htm
