My Change Across Climate Change
By Anita Taylor
Moving to Montana, I was excited for beautiful mountain summers filled with clear skies and fresh air. You know, the stereotype plastered on all the postcards. I desperately wanted to escape the California traffic, smog, and environmental chaos and return to the mountains of my (Colorado) youth.
Instead, the summer skies when I arrived were filled with wildfire smoke, as Montana faced unprecedented drought and heat. My selfish side was bothered by how this would interfere with the hikes I had planned. My better nature understood how the smoke, drought, and heat would wreak havoc on people’s health and livelihoods.
I had seen it before, during my medical training in California: Billboards lining the highways asking drivers to “pray for rain,” crops that failed to grow and left farmers desperate, elderly people hospitalized with heat stroke, wildfire smoke cancelling children’s sports teams and sending asthmatics to the ER. People fleeing wildfires in the dead of night. People dying in those same fires. That was there. But that is also, already, here.
As I write this, 89% of Montana is in severe drought or worse. 61% is in extreme drought. Kalispell saw its hottest summer on record in 2021, Bozeman its second hottest. For my part, I did my best to follow the billboard advice and pray for rain, and then for snow this winter. But September turned into October, turned into November, and my (selfish) dreams of a white Christmas faded. My (less selfish) dreams of an end to the drought remain unfulfilled. I have the drought monitor website saved under favorites on my phone. Last summer, I had the air quality/smoke maps saved. It was the first thing I would check in the morning, before even brushing my teeth.
I’d hoped that, by leaving, I could escape many of the environmental disasters facing California. As it turns out, and as much as I hate cheesy slogans, we are all in this together. California, Colorado, Montana, and the rest of the United States. The rest of the world. Wildfire smoke from the west blanketed the East Coast this summer. I have this imaged saved on my phone as the ultimate symbol of our interconnectedness within the changing climate. Montana, for all its beauty, and independence, and resilience, and rugged natural splendor, is suffering the same climate effects as the rest of the West.
I did not escape it by moving. I will not escape it by ignoring it. I never thought I’d be pulling out my rain jacket instead of snow gear in the middle of November…in Montana. I never thought I’d be praying for colder winters and more snow…in Montana. I never thought that I’d move 800 miles north of the Colorado of my youth only to find that the weather here is almost the same as back there…back then. I’m currently using this argument to try to persuade my aging parents to move up here, with limited success. I love Montana. I plan to stay here for as long as it will have me. I can imagine telling my grandchildren how I came for the wild but stayed for the people. I worry that climate change is now threatening both.
—
Anita Taylor is a physician in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in Helena, Montana and currently serves on the board of Montana Health Professionals for a Healthy Climate. Originally from Colorado, she completed medical school and residency at Stanford. Her passions include pain medicine, hiking, backpacking, skiing, conservation, and the health affects of climate change.
As Montana health professionals and health organizations, we work together because the climate crisis threatens the health and future of Montanans, including our communities, our resources, and animals. We declare our commitment to addressing climate change as a public health issue.