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Today we turn our gaze toward Glacier National Park in northern Montana. Above is Lake MacDonald, the crown jewel of Glacier National Park’s lake offerings, situated just west of the Continental Divide. MacDonald is the largest of Glacier National Park’s lakes and serves as the heartline for the southern end of the park. If you visit Glacier National Park, this is one of the places you’re likely going to remember — this vast, long, stretch of silken water bedrocked by smoothly eroded pebbles of brightly colored rock and stone.
When you view photographs and stories about Glacier National Park, you’ll often see testimonies of the park’s many mammalian species. One such species, quite common throughout the higher elevations of the park, is the Columbian ground squirrel, Urocitellus columbianus. It’s a small ground squirrel quite abundant throughout the higher elevations, along with Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and mountain goats, but it isn’t seen too frequently in the valleys of Glacier National Park. In short, when you’re down low, you’re in the land of bear and moose, of lake and stream, and when you’re up high, you’re in the peaks and hanging valleys of sheep and goats, of glacier and ice.
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Urocitellus columbianus
I’ve been to Glacier National Park twice: once in the summer of 2007, en route to Alaska, and then once again in 2011, en route back south from Alaska. The 2007 trip was by far the more photogenic and memorable of the two. My second trip, the 2011 visit, was plagued by harsh winds, cold temperatures, and late-season shut downs from snow and ice. But this 2007 trip? My oh my, the area was spectacular and unfolded itself before me with an inviting and staggering perspective of one tiny chapter of North America’s varied and diverse geological story.
If you want to get a sense of the colorful, geological confetti lying beneath and within the North American continental divide, ease yourself into the shallows of Lake MacDonald and look down beneath your feet. Sure, the animals on-high are remarkable and seductive for the lens and eye (and you can’t help but to ascend, to surround yourself in their grace), but the small, quiet testimonies of space and time at the bottom of Lake MacDonald prove to be just as remarkable to me — this vast blanket of stone and pebble, hinting at an ancient and enduring story of erosion and change. They were there long before I was born and there they will (mostly) remain — long after I have slipped from experience’s enabling grasp.
Quite beautiful, these lakes and rocks on the Continental Divide.
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~ janson
Filed under: Landscapes, Mammals, Montana Tagged: Urocitellus columbianus Image may be NSFW.
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