8 minute read
Healing spaces
Contents Contents Contents Healing spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Fishing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Swimming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Farmers markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Bear aware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Theatre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 SKQ Dam history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Flathead Lake drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Water safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Glacier National Park . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Aquatic Invasive Species . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
MONTANA SUMMER 2020
2020
Montana Summer is a yearly publication of the Valley Journal newspaper (PE 23-190) published weekly by Valley Journal LLC at 331 Main Street SW in Ronan, MT. Periodi cals postage paid at Ronan, MT.
Office hours ar e 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Distribution is by mail subscription ($59 per year in Lake County, MT; $74 per year elsewhere in U.S.) and by newsstand sales. Postmaster: send address changes to Valley Journal, P.O. Box 326, Ronan, MT. 59864.
Your homegrown newspaper serves residents of Lake County and the Flathead Indian Reservation.
Deadline for display advertising is 2 p.m. Thursday. Deadline for news submis sions, calendar items, classifieds and legal adv ertising is noon Friday, for the following week’s newspaper.
News, letters to the editor and calendar submissions may be sent by email to: vjed itor@valleyjournal.net. Classified and legal adv ertisements requests should be emailed to: vjmail@valleyjournal.net.
All print subscriptions include full access to online news, archives. Sign up online at: www.valleyjournal.net/subscribe
For general inquiries: call 406-676-8989, email summer@valleyjournal.net, or send mail correspondence to P.O. Box 326, Ronan, MT 59864.
Copyright 2020, the Valley Journal. All rights reserved. Reproduction, reuse or transmittal in any form or by any means is prohibited without written permission of the Valley Journal.
Staff: Publisher / sales ................... Summer Goddard Adv. manager / owner.......... Boone Goddard Editor...................................... Karen Peterson Reporter / graphic artist..... Rob Zolman Contributing writer ............. Mary Auld Copy editor ........................... Kathi Beeks Office manager...................... Leni Baker Photographer ........................ Nicole Tavenner
healing spaces
Penned up by the pandemic, Montanans try to get well by getting out
Craig Macholz hunched in a small lawn chair near Missoula’s Rattlesnake National Recreation Area trailhead on April 25, soaking up the sun as he waited for a buddy to return from a trail run. Cars and trucks filled the surrounding parking lot and lined the roadside for more than 100 yards beyond. Pairs of bikers zipped by. Individuals and families with small children wandered past, giving each other wide berths.
Macholz had just finished a run of his own, his first since the coronavirus pandemic put Montanans in nearlockdown. As a software engineer, Macholz was lucky to be able to work from home. But until now he’d felt too guilty to leave his wife and two kids behind in the name of exercise.
“It was just so beautiful, so peaceful,” he said of his Saturday outing. “I forget how wonderful this time of year is. With the larch leaves, you can see very far, and the trails are just spectacular. It’s fun to be out.”
As much as he enjoyed the fresh air, Macholz was keenly aware that others around the country don’t have the luxury. COVID-19 prompted widespread closures of public spaces nationwide over the past five weeks, from coastal beaches to national parks. Ski areas throughout the Rockies ended their seasons early, with some resorts pleading for state officials to give them even one more day. In Montana, concerns about the health and safety of gateway communities prompted late-March closures of Glacier and Yellowstone national parks, and the U.S. Forest Service opted to shut down developed sites and rental cabins across the state’s national forest system.
That the public is increasingly turning to open spaces in this time of crisis is abundantly clear. Officials in southern California are already rethinking recent decisions to reopen beaches after a warm weekend back drew large crowds. Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry recently defended reopenings in Florida after reports of similar crowding drew national criticism. The glut of vehicles at Missoula’s Rattlesnake trailhead last weekend is of a piece with a spike in public lands traffic in Montana. Pat
FROM PAGE 5 Doyle, marketing and communications manager for Montana State Parks, noted a 61 percent increase in visitation to state parks during March 2020 over March 2019.
“Places like Makoshika State Park in Glendive, out in Dawson County in eastern Montana, we’re seeing numbers that kind of rival their summer numbers,” Doyle said. “People just want to get outside. They want to be outside. They want to regain some sense of normalcy in their lives.”
In that way, the pandemic is underscoring a point many wildland advocates, government officials and health care professionals have touted for years: Outdoor recreation, indeed nature itself, is critical to mental health. The therapeutic potential of exposure to nature has prompted numerous scientific studies around the world, and nonprofits across the U.S. have worked with the National Park Service and other partners over the past decade to develop criteria for localized “ParkRX” programs that, according to the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, “involve health or social service providers encouraging people to spend time in nature to improve their health and well-being.”
According to Sara Boilen, owner and chief psychologist at Sweetgrass Psychological Services in Whitefish, some studies have shown that the effects of a 30-minute daily walk are equivalent to the effects of the antidepressant Prozac. She said she and the nurse practitioner at her practice often recommend regular walks to clients before considering prescription
medication.
“There’s all the athletic and physical pursuits that we can do in nature, but there’s also just being in the presence of nature that is so healing,” Boilen said. “We have sandhill cranes right now out at our place. They’re so spectacular, and it can almost take your mind off coronavirus for a second. You can almost feel like other things don’t matter, and that’s pretty special.”
Based on her research, Antonia Malchik, the Whitefish-based author of the 2019 book A Walking Life, partly credits that healing power to the cognitive role the simple act of walking plays in human development. She also reports a recent uptick in outdoor activity in the Whitefish area, evidenced by packed trailhead parking lots and neighbors who don’t normally bike
- ANTONIA MALCHIK AUTHOR, A WALKING LIFE
suddenly pedaling with their children every day.
“I don’t think people would be doing it if there weren’t a deeper need,” Malchik said. “If there weren’t a craving to be out there, if we weren’t feeling attached to nature and in some way feeling the draw of it for ourselves, then we could just sit on our couches all the time.”
As Montanans wrestle with the new realities of pandemic life — job loss, remote work and schooling, social distancing, the absence of human touch and normal routine — maintaining mental health has become a more pressing priority than ever before. And the outdoors has become a vital component of that maintenance. The Japan-born practice of forest bathing is being promoted across the globe. The Icelandic Forestry Service is encouraging people to hug a tree for five minutes a day to fill the void of human contact. Andrew Person, a Missoula attorney, military veteran and former Democratic state legislator, has recognized the therapeutic value of wildlands through conversations with fellow veterans and the work of his nonprofit, Montanans for National Security, which takes veterans onto those lands. He said the general public should be turning to those lands now.
But with so many people already flocking to trails and fishing access sites, concern about those areas becoming sites for the transmission of COVID-19 has become top-of-mind for local health officials and land advocates alike. Municipalities across the state have closed playgrounds in the name of public health, and Missoula County Incident Commander Cindy Farr said the potential for large crowds congregating at trailheads has spurred public messaging on the importance of maintaining social distancing. It’s the same approach Rachel Schmidt, director of the Montana Office of
