It's Earth Week, and Dorothy Bradley, an esteemed Montana stateswoman, asks: "Can we really look young people in the eye and claim we're securing them a better future?"
Sandhill cranes set down on earth again as the sun starts to set. Jackson Hole nature photographer Thomas D. Mangelsen has followed crane migrations on several different continents, including flocks passing through his native Nebraska and Greater Yellowstone. To see more of Mangelsen's collectible imagery go to mangelsen.com. This image used with his permission.
by Dorothy Bradley
Two sets of sandhill crane families erupted in conversation this morning, checking out the landscape in the Cottonwood Creek drainage near the Crazy Mountains, still full of snow and ice but broadcasting their voices up and out from a natural Greek amphitheater. I could see the families, three birds in each, flapping, talking, taking wing, circling.
This is the month when the two parents start throwing “junior” out of the nest, so to speak—the sight which my own family unabashedly personified, likening the big birds to our own human experience, and openly weeping at the plight of poor “junior” suddenly realizing he would not have the security of mom and dad for the rest of his life.
Hard to tell if my sentimental condition is brought on by the birds, my own vivid memory of leaving the nest, or missing my family members for whom the scenario was an annual spring ritual. I wonder this spring of 2023 what these beautiful birds saw and experienced on their way north to Montana, passing above the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. It was only three years ago when their migratory route would not have been shared with massive airline traffic, distinctive engine rumble, and jet streams crisscrossing the sky every which way.
Everyone was holing up with Covid. The skies were blue, untracked, and quiet. I would look up at those stunning skies and wonder if others, like me, would swear off more and more travel, and opt instead for a quieter, more nature-driven life. No chance of that. It is as if we went into a travel frenzy as soon as we stripped off our masks.
The annum just past, 2022, was yet one more year where the carbon our society emits into the atmosphere increased, in spite of what we know it is doing to our planet. It has been noted that while cleaner fuels are being incorporated into our energy pool, the increase in air traffic more than made up for the savings. That is a fact we can actually see and believe when we look up and across our own big sky.
We are going to be blessed, it seems, by a year of sufficient water, if it doesn’t pour out of the mountains in a single, early flood. But even this late snowfall, and months of horrendous ice, exceed the normal, and all the former normals familiar to some of us old timers.
The days of being able to predict the weather based on 50 years of experience are being superseded by the days when it is something we haven’t previously experienced. How often do we hear, down at the local gas station, “Well this is something in all my years that I have never seen!”
It is, however, a scenario predicted by scientists.
I believe I could stop worrying about the future if it was simply a matter that is out of our hands—if it was a massive asteroid heading our way, or the potential supervolcano eruption in Yellowstone National Park. But it is hard to sit quietly by when the disastrous future we are facing is of our own making, and in our own hands to divert. How can we—the most educated society ever to roam this earth—settle in and fold our wings?
I believe I could stop worrying about the future if it was simply a matter that is out of our hands—if it was a massive asteroid heading our way, or the potential supervolcano eruption in Yellowstone National Park. But it is hard to sit quietly by when the disastrous future we are facing is of our own making, and in our own hands to divert. How can we—the most educated society ever to roam this earth—settle in and fold our wings?
In a recent discussion, we spoke of the tragedy that little school kids are suffering from serious depression and mental illness. Childhood, it was said, should be the one time of life when we are carefree. Some think this anxiety is the fault of schools, and maybe we should prohibit the teaching of climate change—or science, altogether.
I wonder, as an alternative, why we can’t unleash everything in our power to address this problem, and then be able to look our children in the eye and tell them we are doing our best.
About Dorothy Bradley
Dorothy Bradley, who makes her home today in Clyde Park, Montana in the northern reaches of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, is a former eight-term Montana state representative. Bradley ran for governor in 1992 and narrowly lost to Republican Marc Racicot. At age 23, she helped organize Montana’s first Earth Day and won a seat in the Montana House where she was the only woman in 1971. She was among the young people present during Montana's constitutional convention in 1972 who helped produce a modern constitution touted as being among the most foresighted in the country. Among its provisions is that all citizens have "the right to a clean and healthful environment." Bradley also was at the forefront of women's rights, conservation and pondering water policy, which is especially important now in a time of climate change.
