This story almost begins on a dark and stormy night in November of 1995, when 342 snow geese landed on Berkeley Pit Lake. Unfortunately, this was no ordinary lake and the story did not end well for these birds.

But they are part of a larger story that actually began for us four months earlier, in July, when my husband, Don, and I first found life in the Berkeley Pit, an abandoned open-pit copper mine situated a mile from our lab at Montana Tech. This is a dual tale of a damaged ecosystem closely connected to Missoula by the Clark Fork River, and of the possibility of finding value in even the most unlikely of places. Listen for more…

This Field Note was written by Andrea Stierle. Would you be interested in writing one? Contact Allison De Jong, Field Notes editor, at adejong [at] montananaturalist [dot] org or 406.327.0405. Please visit the Field Notes website at the Montana Natural History Center for more information.