Creation Care Mom

Pretty much everyone I have met that is doing this work was drawn into it through love. Love, which we are only capable of, because we were created in God’s image.

For me, that love is for a specific place, Yellowstone. I spent my early childhood living within its boundaries. Then spent my middle and high school years within a 2 hours drive. As a young adult, I returned to work within it four separate seasons. And now, even though we live in Kansas, we know that the next time we move, we will move as close as we can to my favorite place in the world.

Yellowstone is truly a place of wonders, from geysers and hot springs, to waterfalls, canyons and wildlife. There is a reason that people from all over the world flock there in the millions every year. In fact, its unique nature and love from the public creates real challenges to support high visitation while not diminishing the wildness of the place. Frustration with lack of parking, crowds, and bathroom lines are real, but improvement is limited to protect the park itself.

The experience isn’t the same when you live within the park. With no demanding travel deadlines, you can skip the overpacked parking lot and come back another day. Evenings and early mornings can bring opportunities to be free of tourists. But you also get to explore the park more intimately. Take slower hikes. Take longer hikes. Take less popular hikes. View it under a early fall snowfall. View it at the peak of spring runoff. Learn the names of the wolf packs and where the bison like to roam at different times of year. Catch surprise geyser eruptions. Catch a geyser under the full moon. Pause. Hear the trees creak. Hear water roar or trickle. Sunrises and sunsets. Rainbows and downpours. The longer you are there the more the place weaves its way into your being. Fills you with the thrill of being alive and the knowledge of your smallness. It speaks to your soul its unique place to declare the wonder of God. You come to hear the whole place singing God’s praise, and you cannot deny the work of his hands. In Yellowstone is where God speaks loudest to me and where I feel closest to him. It’s the place where I feel most authentically myself, without the burdens and cares of this world.

And in the midst of all of that, Yellowstone is a place of change. Geysers change their patterns. Earthquakes shake. Rivers shifts. Fires clear trees and new forests sprout up. It has always experienced some amount of change, but climate change is speeding some of those processes. The record breaking floods 2 years ago were deemed a 1 in 500 year event. The amount of water flowing in the Yellowstone River reached heights never recorded before (since 1892). However, with climate change, the dice are loaded, tipping towards for frequent extreme weather. In Yellowstone, that is looking like and earlier and wetter spring, followed by drought conditions much of the rest of the year. That may not seem like much, but it is changing the park. Increasing the chance of floods and fires. Even a place as wild and large as Yellowstone cannot escape the effects of human caused climate change.

I grieve the losses that Yellowstone is and will experience in my lifetime. We don’t know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future. He grieves with me at the damage we have done, and yet I know he will restore and redeem when the time is right. Go in peace.