You can’t see the copper, says our guide,
You’ll see some sparkles—but that’s fool’s gold.
Moly’s in your mascara and Ensure breakfast drink,
but it’s mostly in hard steel that goes to PA.
This mine’s the second largest consumer of electricity in the state of Montana.
Those 600 ton trucks? They don’t go to the garage to get fixed,
You gotta fix ’em yourself on the field in January.
Work here long enough you’ll be defined by the dimensions of the pit.
Through the windows of his van, we study its cavernous gap:
One mile long, half a mile wide, 900 feet deep and acidic—
slowly eating deeper into the earth each year.
Heavy with cadmium, arsenic, cobalt. Unearthly green.
Nov 28, 2016, snow geese came down outta Yukon, Alaska.
It was warm up there so they skipped their Canadian stops aimin’ for Texas,
but the weather changed, and everything froze.
No open water in Great Falls.
Helena was ice.
Missoula doesn’t have a lake.
Berkeley was the last fluid surface.
We started getting calls from Anaconda
that the sky was filled with geese.
Sounded like helicopters overhead.
I mean— it was white with snow geese.
Estimated 80-100,000 birds on radar.
We surrounded ’em with high power air rifles, drones…
It was minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit
an’ our guys were shootin’ rounds at 3AM.
Day two, we knew this was gonna be a mortality situation.
Tried to get a flotilla device down there, called the news stations.
Day three, four, we’re seein’ corpses:
A snow goose has no kidney, so they drink water to feel better.
The wildlife biologists say it’s like humans drinking ocean water…
About 800 of ’em washed toward the station,
blisters up and down their bowels.
Every major newspaper in the country was calling me.
And just ordinary people thinking they had the solution—
like we hadn’t tried everything over the years.
A lady from Atlanta said to poke a hole in the pit,
let water run to California.
Other people said build a dome,
well that dome would have to be the size of 10 Dallas Cowboy stadiums.
I got death threats
– I mean—
I was in 10th grade when they turned off the pumps for Berkely Pit!
Some Iowa farmer called to say ‘good job’
and wanted to know how to run the geese off his corn fields.
I called him back just to tell him we didn’t do it on purpose.
We lost about 4,000.
Currently, we get 99.8 of any birds out.
There’s 6 million snow geese a year fly south.
If we see a flock comin’, it’ll be 3rd of July here in Butte.
They’re vocal… you can hear ’em a mile away.
They got red feet an’ pink bills.
Their lifespan’s anywhere from 10-20 years
and they mate for life.
When they come in, it’s like—
it’s like a soft white cloud,
some people call it a ‘snowstorm’
like confetti in the sky,
black-tipped wings —
He can’t say it in a hard hat or a company truck
but when his voice falls silent his face speaks—
I wonder if anybody saw their spirits
lifting off—
strong white bodies
carrying ’em up,
calling to relatives, in ancestral chorus—
This way!
This
way!
This
way!
We’re
almost
to
ancient
moving waters
wild, with fish—
and reeds
lapping at
blameless dreams.
—
Jessica Jones is on full-time faculty at Kent State University where she teaches creative writing, Native American literature and place-based composition. She comes from a long line of makers and musicians in Northern Appalachia where trees and animals were among her first teachers. She holds a Masters from the University Montana, and regularly returns to see loved ones and teach/learn on the Flathead and Blackfeet Indian Reservations. Her chapbook, Bitterroot (2018), can be found at Finishing Line Press.
