Not So Far From Home by Samuel Tyrrel

I laughed with Stella as we sat in her mountain log home. You might not see the underlying resemblance between the older woman sitting my opposite, but together we shared many similarities. Born to hard-working fathers focused in agriculture and community-advocating women from the East. Stories of making fun out of the little things, like mud puddles or wash bins as the rural kids we were. Making do with the meager water nature provided in our borderline desert youths. Our collective hatred of invasive species threatening our local ecosystems like the oxeye daisies littering her backyard. Stella, however, is an environmental consultant from Saskatchewan with 45 years of experience, a doctorate and post-doctoral fellow, who currently serves on the International Joint Commission dealing with international waterway issues between the US and Canada, and I’m just a soon-to-be college grad from Montana.

This kinship of culture is not the first I had experienced while exploring the Great White North. While doing trail work along Canada’s Great Divide Trail, I heard many of the same resource extraction extremes that I did growing up in proximity to the complex issue of coal mining. The environmental assessments of eco-activists vying for a leg up over the economic benefits of industry in our increasingly globalized society, all playing out in front of the baked potato I had backpacked in the day before. Stepping into a Crowsnest Pass Canadian Legion had me experiencing whiplash to any American Legion or VFW equivalent that I had frequented back home. Conversations with legionnaires always leading back to the same talking points I would use with ranchers and farmers when I didn’t know how else to bridge the generational gap. Weather. Fire. People moving in. What has changed and what has stayed the same. Our collective experience as members of the Northern Rocky Mountain Front (or Southern depending on which way your country ran), shaping our consciousness more than any fleeting political or national divide. It’s this regional commonality of conservation culture that I believe will carry us forward.

As NoFrills and Great Canadian Superstores advertise buying “Canada First” and particular politicians give talks about adding a “51st state,” as a conservationist I have to reckon with more uniting issues. Chronic wasting disease. Wildfires intensified by climate change. Pollution poisoning watersheds. Invasive species, from feral hogs to zebra mussels. All of these ecosystem menaces threaten to undermine the very landscape that culturally shapes who we are as a people. Being born and raised in this region, my childhood was shaped by immersion in the outdoors. From fishing to hunting to hiking to even just dodging deer driving home at night, being a Montanan meant purposeful interaction with the land around me. This consistent interaction with the natural world ignited a passion for place that I hope to carry forward into whatever career I end up in. Through this course I have found that this place-based mentality is mirrored by most everyone who calls this region home. By taking the time to consider this area not just by the boundaries that split it, but by the larger systems that unite it, conservationists such as myself can help to create relationships that will last into the future.