With stay-at-home order in place, PCEC celebrates 'Earth Day, Every Day'
Last week the river started rising and the ospreys returned to their nest atop the pole in Sacajawea Park. The birds swooped down onto the baseball fields, collecting branches out of the outfield to rebuild their nest.
Since Saturday, the snow returned. Not just a little. On 8th street in Livingston, cars were covered, but the sidewalks cleared themselves by noon.
In a time where everything has seemingly stopped, these sure signs of spring in Montana are enough to stop you in your tracks.
We are lucky to call Park County home. Right now, bison, elk, pronghorn and big horn all graze alongside Old Yellowstone Trail. We have enough trails and public land near us that even in a time when everyone goes on long walks to keep themselves sane you can still find an empty trailhead. If you’re trying to parse through the ever-changing world surrounded by nothing but pine trees and sagebrush, the hyper awareness of grizzly bears emerging hungry from their dens is sure to give you a jolt of life’s electricity.
The Park County Environmental Council and the Park High Green Initiative were excited to celebrate all of this and more with you next week. A dedicated group of staff and volunteers including Susan Regele, Adelle Welch and Robin Addicott had planned a full week of events to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day: a Trashion Show, Boomerang Bag sewing bees, Beer for a Cause, and a community celebration art expo.
In light of the stay-at-home order, all of these events have been put on hold. Instead, we invite everyone in Park County to take a picture of something you love about our beautiful corner of the planet and send it to info@pcecmt.org to share with the community.
The theme of this year’s events was “Earth Day, Every Day”—an appropriate message considering now we really ought to continue to celebrate throughout the year, rather than just focusing on the events during this one week.
“The theme is kind of perfect,” said Regele, a PCEC volunteer who lives in Livingston. “We all have to start thinking about it every day, making it a part of our lives and lifestyle.”
Welch, a senior at Park High School and former PCEC intern, spent her semester doing an independent study focusing on the Green Initiative, which included planning Earth Week. She said most of the work for the events was completed prior to realizing they would be canceled.
“By the time we didn’t go to school anymore, we pretty much had everything squared away,” Welch said. “It’s good practice of running the Green Initiative and seeing a major event shift because of the pandemic. It’s part of learning how to be flexible, still celebrate and to have a plan B.”
At a time when classes are online and a graduation ceremony is up in the air, Welch said she’s happy to be able to celebrate living in such a beautiful place and continuing to live in an eco-friendly way every day. Prior to the recent snow, Welch said she was hiking every day, appreciating the beauty surrounding us.
“We’re still going to celebrate senior year and Earth Day. The form changes, and that’s disappointing, but we’re still going to celebrate,” Welch said. “It allows you to celebrate on your own time.”
Welch said she hopes the events might still happen this summer, but if not, she’s excited another student can help coordinate them next school year. In the fall, Welch is planning to go to Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, to study environmental science and economics.
There isn’t yet a plan for if those events will still happen, Regele said.
“It’s difficult to know right now what’s gonna happen,” she said. “We don’t have a firm plan, just a conviction that we’d really like to bring some programs that we were planning to the community.”
But like the river rising and the osprey returning, the work continues at PCEC, even if it's changing for a little while.
“We are lucky we live here, in such an amazing, beautiful and open place. We should be celebrating it every day,” Regele said.