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 Sa