Parable of the Melting Glacier
 

At a national parks "dinner party," writer, naturalist and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams conveys thoughts inspired by her imagined interaction with "dinner guest," Glacier National Park.  From a 2017 interview with radio host and producer, Rick Steves.







Excerpted from: "National Parks Dinner Party...," Travel with Rick Steves, August 19, 2017, https://tunein.com/radio/Travel-with-Rick-Steves-p55519/, accessed 9/16/2017 on NPR (KDAQ, Shreveport, La.).  Reproduced in accordance with the "fair use" provision of Title 17 U.S.C. § 107 for a non-profit educational purpose.  A transcript of the above video follows.


STEVES: The issue of our day — really in so many ways — is climate change, if ever there was an existential threat.  Who would I talk to at this party where I could gain that perspective?

WILLIAMS: You would meet Glacier National Park and stand before her retreating glacier with humility, with resolve and with a devotion to stand in the heart of change with as much resolve as we can, to do what we can with the place where we find ourselves now.

STEVES: Is it conceivable that the day will come when Glacier National Park would be more properly named No Glacier National Park?

WILLIAMS: I think Glacier National Park will remind us of a world we once stood in the middle of and failed to recognize as holy, and that the gift of Glacier National Park around this dinner table is: She gives us the courage to thank the future, uncertain as it is, with the fortitude to state the sacrifices that are going to be required of us.

We are at a crossroads.  We can continue on the path we've been on in this nation that privileges profit over people and land, or we can unite as citizens of the common cause.  This is the hour of land, and the time has come for us of reverence and restraint on behalf of the earth.  I would ask us to listen.  Hands on the earth, listen, and remember what it means to be human.



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