A walk in Montana to remember Iowa’s past

Editor's note: John Lawrence Hanson, Ed.D., of Marion teaches U.S. history with an emphasis on environmental issues at Linn-Mar High School and sits on the Linn County Conservation Board. This is the first of a two-part series on a trip to Glacier National Park. 

Our temporary guide never spoke on our final hike.

He walked ahead as we climbed a grade. An assortment of silent pilgrims followed obediently.

This area was the transition from the dark and ancient forest of cedars to the slopes leading to Avalanche Lake. Up and around the right-hand bend in the trail, the guide walked with an easy but deceptively fast gait. And then he was gone and I had to wonder if he was even real. But the young Mule Deer buck in velvet was real and we continued our journey.

I was in search of what was lost, or about to be lost. I made a pilgrimage to Glacier National Park this summer. My family was four among the almost 3 million to visit the park, to offer ourselves as pilgrims, to beg for agreeable weather, and to marvel at its wonders.

The glaciers still are in Montana. I was anxious to see them because climate change is melting them into rivers. They were not lost, yet.

The glaciers are lost to Iowa. Three times a special kind of winter came and ice sheets plowed south, crushing everything in their paths. Only northeast Iowa, the 'Driftless Area,' was spared their geological remodeling.

The last glaciers flattened the north central wedge of our state. The Des Moines lobe of the Wisconsin glacier smothered it into an inland ocean of grasslands and wetlands. This Prairie-Pothole Region was an awe inspiring fount of bird production, especially for ducks and shorebirds. But no more.

Our ambitions and modern engineering did from below what the glaciers did from above: wrought total change.

Untold miles of subterranean pipe now drain away the water. A pox for birds, a blessing for corn.

The Brook Trout is a survivor of Iowa's glacial past, despite our carelessness. The Brookie demands the coolest and cleanest water, moreover it deserves it. Of course, it's not really a trout, it's a Char. Knowledge of that helps make its existence in Iowa all the more special.

A PILGRIMAGE

A proper pilgrimage demands suffering. I didn't know that when we crafted the trip.

The journey was to be joyful and an important memory maker. Plans were made, reservations confirmed and all the gear was readied.

But first, I donned a hair shirt. I didn't want to, and I didn't ask to, but I had to. Days before our departure, I somehow got into a mess of poison ivy. And now I carried a spreading and fiercely itchy rash along for the journey — now a pilgrimage.

Five national sites and more than 1,500 miles marked our route to Glacier National Park. My personal ambition was the Grinnell Glacier, a famously receding glacier losing itself into a pool of magnificent blue — Grinnell Lake.

If I could make it to Grinnell Glacier, if I could touch that ancient ice, if I could prove firsthand that glaciers were real, then, I told myself, I would be satisfied.

From Bozeman we drove north, racing the mountains that paralleled the highway. Try as I might, I could not outrun them, those mountains seemed to go on forever.

This pilgrim from the flatlands yielded and accepted their vastness. Humbled and awe-struck, I turned west and into the peaks themselves. I hoped to be accepted as an earnest supplicant. The sunny sky suggested I was welcome.

Our first foray into the park was on the serpentine road to Many Glacier Lodge. A bear ambled across the road in front of us, it was brown. Despite my hoping it carried the prominent shoulder hump of a grizzly, it was a Black Bear.

FIRST HIKE

Grandeur. The resplendent hotel rested in an amphitheater of mountains topped with snow and rock, transitioning to evergreen forests. Swiftcurrent Lake provided the reflective surface for eyes and souls.

Obscured, but ahead was Grinnell Glacier. Visible was Salamander Glacier, its easy access made it less attractive. Charging directly to the glacier was too forward, perhaps insulting. No, this pilgrim needed an initial offering.

Accordingly we walked a trail encircling Swiftcurrent Lake. Clockwise, we padded the well-worn footpath. The lake was to our right, peaks towered on our left.

Not so long ago everything in the park was covered in ice. A human life span is the antithesis of geological time, and I admit difficulty comprehending it all.

Pine, spruce and people ringed the lake. Our walk passed several fly-fishing. They looked quite miserable in their attempt to have a good time. Pilgrims, too?

My desire to scratch kept a beat with my steps. I wore a long shirt to shelter my skin and hide my rash. Tomorrow was going to be our hike to Grinnell Glacier, the push pin on the map of this summer.

A temporary sign caught my eye near a trailhead as we finished circumnavigating Swiftcurrent Lake. It advised against hiking to Grinnell Glacier, in places the path was supported by ice, now eroding.

Gobsmacked, I looked at my wife, we stared at each other. We planned this entire vacation for this trek. Our minds were racing. We agreed we couldn't go, marching our children to such a place would have been selfish and reckless.

I think my itching just got worse.