Field Trip · The Washington Post

Glacier National Park

June 28, 2023·57 min·3 clips

Standing at Chief Mountain, the Blackfeet leader's 1895 words hit differently: 'Chief Mountain is my head. Now my head is cut off.'

The road begins at sunrise. The host is in a car with Bishop Sand and Emma Talcoff, heading toward Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park. They scan the trees for bears and bobcats, but the quieter discovery is the park before the day's traffic arrives. Access has rules now. Going to the Sun Road is popular enough that a reservation can shape the visit before the view does. The story then moves onto Blackfeet territory. Theda Newbreast and Rosalind LaPierre bring knowledge rooted in history, spirituality, health, and lived experience. The welcome is direct. Theda's Blackfeet name, Makoyo Sokoyi, means wolf's trail or the Milky Way. Rosalind adds another layer. As a professor and ethnobotanist, she frames Chief Mountain as more than a stop on a visitor's map. Its summit is sacred, so she and Theda lead the group part way up instead of to the top. The scene stays wonderfully concrete: long skirts, Rosalind's dog, a pickup truck, a loud radio, and a holstered nine millimeter. Wildlife is not scenery here. Rosalind talks plainly about grizzly bears, moose, and mountain lions, with moose getting the sharpest edge of fear. The host listens and notices, thinking of the buffalo that once would have been part of the landscape as they climb toward the base.

As heard by us

Glacier feels different when it is treated as lived-in territory, not just scenery.

Field Trip frames Glacier National Park less as a postcard than as a place tied to access, belonging, and the Blackfeet people who know it as territory as much as scenery.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want Glacier before the crowds, with Blackfeet voices guiding you through the road and its sacred edges.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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