Ecological Consequences
By Hannah Telling. This story was collected and recorded at a live storytelling event at the Montana Folk Festival in Butte on July 15th, 2023. The event was held in partnership with Resilient Butte, Families for a Livable Climate, and the County of Butte-Silver Bow.
When I think of who I am, I think of skis slicing through fresh snow, coating my hair in shimmering ice. I think of hikes deep in the Pintlers where liquid heat drips off my arms and mountain bike rides through changing autumn colors. However, even amongst the joy of a life lived with the people I love in the landscapes I love, I am ultimately from a life shaped by the havoc of climate change and environmental destruction. I am from living ghosts and haunting futures.
One of my earliest memories: I was five or six driving the canyon between Boulder, where I lived, and Helena. Every week, my family made this drive to shuttle me to ballet and gymnastics classes. Every week I would spend the whole drive with my nose pressed against the car window, mesmerized by the dramatic mountain sides and rolling armies of trees marching towards the horizon. But over what seemed like mere weeks, the landscape became marred by bright red trees dying at an alarming rate from beetle kill. The rusty red needles made it look like the whole forest was coated in dried blood. My parents, who are both teachers, explained the infestation was driven by climate change.
Looking back on this memory now, what stands out is how my younger self was struck by such a deep sense of loss and grief and helplessness. Without the ability to process these emotions, climate change felt unstoppable, like a looming apocalypse.
Looking back on my life, I realize I grew up surrounded by living ghosts. In the lush forests of my childhood, I chased stories of my great-grandparents—immigrants, miners, union members. In the heat of summer, I leapt over deep, linear trenches marking collapsed mine tunnels, explored desolated, alien planet landscapes caused by toxic mine waste, and unearthed strange, rusted machinery from Montana’s industrial past. In the winter, I followed my grandma’s spoken memories through deep snow drifts, tracing the path of my great-great grandfather’s trapping lines. Through my footsteps, legends and historical fact became one in the same until I grew so connected to the landscape it was as if its trails were my own arteries.
I now realize that I mythologized the land and these remnants of settler-colonialism and environmental destruction as being part of the Wild West where brave adventurers overcame great obstacles to thrive. However, what I did not see is that this narrative works to erase the violence that churns at the center of the West’s story—the genocide of Indigenous peoples, the oppression of workers, and wide-spread environmental destruction. Tactics that increase the wealth and power of the few at the expense of the many. By buying into the mythos of the Wild West, I blinded myself. My understanding of Montana and America did not include stories of ongoing Indigenous resistance and resiliency, movements to secure public land rights, and unions’ fights against corporate control. Without these stories, these models of coordinated, community-based action, no wonder my younger self felt so helpless in the face of climate change.
My ecological consciousness—my ability to understand and respond to the systems driving climate change—began to form at the age of 17 on a State Department sponsored trip to study environmental conservation, citizen ambassadorship, and genocide in Cambodia. While picking my way through bone fragments scattered across Cambodia’s Killing Fields, mass graves holding the victims of the Khmer Rouge’s genocide of one third of Cambodia’s population, I nurtured a growing realization that education and stories dictate who is remembered, who is valued, and therefore, the shape reality takes.
Before this trip, I had never learned of the Khmer Rouge and the United States’ role in bringing the dictatorship to power. I had never learned about the links between environmental conservation and a healthy democracy. All of this history, and the people of Cambodia, were absent from my education. To fill my blind spots, I studied with Cambodian activists across the country who faced down resource-draining international corporations, protected old growth forests from deforestation, advocated youth voter participation, and leveraged their education to imagine and create new realities for their country. Throughout this trip, I felt my helplessness evaporate. Education and connection makes change possible. While in Cambodia, I decided to become a teacher.
I hope to do for my students what Cambodia did for me—give them new lenses through which to view their roles as changemakers within our city, state, and world. How do we look at climate science and not just feel despair? How do we empower our students to pull levers within existing systems and create new paths that tackle a transition to a cleaner society? In my students, I see the desire to preserve Montana and address climate change. Recently, I taught an argumentative unit on radical optimism in which students selected an issue they cared about and, through research, designed solutions that painted a picture of a radically optimistic future. Many students tackled climate change; I was blown away by the varied and insightful solutions they imagined! The act of imagining is an act of opening new lives to live. With this, their essays breathed life into hopeful futures—and our students’ hope is worth investing in and cultivating to build a resilient community.
Therefore, one prong of the climate crisis solution is to invest in public education, invest in teachers, and invest in students. Many studies prove that healthy schools are foundational to creating healthy, resilient communities. Public schools are a public good where students gain agency, shake off the silencing effects of helplessness, and claim their voices. In looking to support and grow climate resiliency for the people of Butte-Silver Bow, we must look to our schools.
And yet, as our climate changes so does the politics surrounding public education. A loud, small, organized group of people are driving book bans, history bans, and legislation designed to tie teachers’ hands. These bans are threats to climate resiliency because education empowers students to become critical thinkers ready to fight for their right to a healthy environment and economy. So buy banned books. Demand that teachers can teach. Support our students; give them opportunities to deepen their thinking and engage with their work.
Hannah sharing her story live at the 2023 Montana Folk Festival
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Hannah Telling is a lover of smelly ski socks and steaming bowls of green curry. When she’s not skiing the backside at Disco or finding new trails to bike, she’s teaching English at Butte High.
