GNP Centennial - Zoe Zulakis

Glacier National Park was not born in 1910. Some billion to million years ago it was covered by inland seas, and romped by dinosaurs. It was thrust upward by what we theorize today to be a collision with a micro continent that no longer exists and then carved away by the meticulous fingers of icy glaciers. Glacier National park was not born in 1910. It was the spiritual home of the many people who came before the US government drew its lines; the Blackfeet, the Salish, the Kootenai, the Pend Oreille. Glacier National Park was not born in 1910. 1910 is merely a year that happened 100 years ago. This incredible parcel of land will itself rise and fall with the tide of the tectonic plates. In the great epics and eras that this world has yet to see, our title to 100 years of ownership, will not be long remembered.
So at the centennial celebration of plotted lines, we must clear our mind of entitlement. We are stewards of this beautiful place, the crown of this great continent where we live, but which is not ours. So we must take stock of our role as caretakers of the land. When the conservationists, Gifford Pinchot, and Teddy Roosevelt, secured 180 million acres of land in the famous “midnight reserves,” of 1906, their impetus was not to secure timber harvests from our national forests. When William Howard Taft signed legislation, on May 11, 1910, protecting Glacier National Park, it was not to carve dizzying roads, through the hearts of our National Parks. It was to “ensure that the people in 2010 would have a country of clean water, healthy forests, and open land…” (The Big Burn, Eagan, p. 138). It was for the future, so that tomorrow could appreciate a brief glimpse of what yesterday had, untouched and undamaged.
In the 100 years since, our woods have been eaten away by acid rain; our water systems damaged by toxic wastes of abandoned mines; our bodies corrupted by exposure to chemical and nuclear wastes; our glaciers (125 of them in Glacier National Park alone) disappearing. On the day in the very near future, when Glacier National Park runs out of Glaciers, the world will know. And assuming that the oil spill will no longer be at the forefront of the nation’s attention, this new (or not so new) crisis will hold us captive. So, are we doing our job? Are we being good stewards of the land? Are we proud?
One hundred years ago, Glacier National Park was not born. It was, however, put aside as one of the last remaining gems of this country. We will never own Glacier National Park, we will never own any parcel of land. It will never be ours to keep. It belongs to the past, and it belongs to the future. We have a responsibility to both. We owe it to our predecessors to keep fighting, as Pinchot would have described it, “the alliance between business and politics…the snake that we must kill.” We owe it to our future- the land, the animals, the water, the trees, the people- to make it seem as though we have never been here; to disappear quietly, just as the majestic mountains sink into the humble valleys.