50 amazing kids and a bunch of awesome science teachers from around the state converged on Livingston in October for the 2nd Montana Youth Climate Summit. Largely organized by PCEC (Park County Environmental Council) with assistance and funding from other NGOs (like ours) and Founcations, the 2 days event brought inspiration to youth and adults alike!
Now we just need to figure out haw to reach the kids in smaller schools without environmental science clubs!
Building Belonging In a Time of Anxiety By Haley Yarborough
The room hums with the soft shuffle of pen and paper. Around tables scattered with empty lemonade cups and notebooks, high school students, college students, and their teachers trace their hands on white sheets 一 a simple exercise led by poet and psychologist Shann Ray. At the center of the hand-drawn palm, he asks the crowd to write a “daily joy.”
He moves to each finger, then to beneath the palm, at the wrist.
“Now write one thing you love about people,” Ray said.
Across the room, laughter rippled. Attendees exchanged words about spending time with their pets, people’s laughter, and the undeniable resilience of the human spirit. The exercise is disarming, a small act of presence when the future feels like too much to hold.
Later, Ray would speak about the same themes that run through his new book, “Where Blackbirds Fly”, a story of love, forgiveness, and the courage to stay tender in a fractured world. Ray was one of two speakers at the Montana Climate Summit, held on Oct. 26 and 27, in Livingston, Montana. The symposium brought together students, educators, and community leaders from across the state to discuss Climate Change 一 and how to live with it. The gathering was not just about protest, it’s about art, storytelling, and mental health in a time of crisis. The summit, now in its second year, was created by Alecia Jongeward, a former Park High School teacher who started her school’s Green Initiative Club.
“It was the kids who came up with it,” Jongeward says. “They asked, ‘Aren’t there other students like us?’ So we decided to find them.”
When Jongeward began searching for youth climate conferences, she found the nearest in San Diego and Maine, too far from Montana and far too expensive to travel to. So she built one herself. With support from the Park County Environmental Council and Livable Climate, she gathered a small team of teachers and volunteers and invited high schoolers from around the state. Fifty students came to the first summit in 2023. Attendance was higher this year, filling classrooms at Livingston’s middle school with conversation and laughter.
“We wanted to create a space for belonging,” Jongeward said. “A lot of students feel isolated talking about climate change — especially in Montana, where the politics can make it hard to speak up. Here, they see they’re not alone.”
‘We’re Not Silly For Caring’
One of those students in attendance was Eva Villalva, a senior at Helena High School. She first joined her school’s environmental club — the “Green Group” — during her sophomore year, after hesitating for months.
“People made fun of it,” she said.
At first, she joined the outdoor club instead, thinking it would be safer. But eventually, she decided to step into advocacy — and found that it changed her life. She’s now president of the Green Group, one of the few students still keeping it afloat as other members graduated or drifted away. At the summit, Villalva wears a handmade glass pendant, a swirl of greens and blues she fused herself. She’s as much an artist and an athlete as an activist.
“I’m trying to figure out how to combine it all一 writing, art, horses, the environment — into something that matters,” Villalva said.
One of Villalva’s peers shares this sentiment on the significance of connection. Samantha Wedgewood, also a senior at Helena High and vice president of the Green Group, said the summit reminded her that action can coexist with anxiety.
“It becomes like a burden,” Wedgewood said. “We know it’s either up to us or we’ll just be pushing it on to the next generation. But we can’t give up hope — even the small things we do matter.”
She added that hearing others’ stories, even small victories, helps her stay grounded.
“It’s comforting to know there’s still good in the world,” she said. “That people do still care and that we can still change this.”
Unearthing stories from iceEarly in the climate summit, Lisa Baril — an ecologist, writer, and author of The Age of Melt — takes the stage. Her talk feels both scientific and poetic, anchored in wonder. She begins by explaining that her field, ice patch archaeology, didn’t exist until recently. It was born not from discovery but from loss; from the slow unraveling of glaciers and ice patches across the northern world.
“Ice patch archaeology is a field born from the climate crisis itself,” she said. “As these ancient bodies of ice retreat, they reveal what’s been hidden for hundreds, even thousands of years — arrows, baskets, animal hides, pieces of clothing, tools. Each one is a story thawed from time.”
Behind her, slides flash images of artifacts: a frayed sinew cord, a bent wooden shaft, a tattered piece of woven grass preserved in ice since before recorded history. She explains that many of these objects are organic remains. There are fragile, once-living materials that would have decomposed long ago if not for the cold.
“They were in a kind of suspended animation,” she says. “Now they’re melting into our present, asking us what we’ll do with what we’ve uncovered.”
Baril tells students that studying these discoveries requires collaboration between archaeologists, climatologists, and Indigenous scholars — people who bring not just data, but memory and story. She reminds the audience that the artifacts don’t just reveal ancient lives; they show how deeply human survival has always depended on the environment.
Then she turns personal. Before becoming a writer, Baril spent decades as a wildlife biologist, tracking birds and studying ecosystems across Yellowstone and the Channel Islands. Her path, she says, was shaped by curiosity rather than certainty — by listening to the land.
“Follow your curiosity wherever it leads,” she tells the students. “You never know what you’ll discover.”
She pauses. “For me,” she said, “science has always been about story. These artifacts, these animals, these landscapes — they’re all chapters of the same book. The question is how we choose to read them.”
The art of wilderness and forgivenessAt the front of the auditorium, Shann Ray begins his keynote, “The Art of Wilderness: Climate Leadership and Forgiveness in the Age of Uncertainty.” The talk weaves through memory, philosophy, and faith, drawing from his new book, Where Blackbirds Fly — a meditation on love, loss, and the landscapes that shape us.
He tells a story about his grandmother, who ran a small post office on the Montana plains, her red door always open to neighbors seeking warmth or conversation. “She loved people deeply,” Ray says. “She built community through listening. And that’s what leadership looks like — not control, but care.”
Ray’s tone is part sermon, part invitation. He asks the students to imagine a different way of being in the world — one grounded in connection rather than coercion.
“Coercion is based on fear,” he says. “Consensus is based on love.”
He quotes the writer Hermann Hesse: “Children live on one side of despair; the awakened live on the other.” Then he looks out at the crowd of teenagers, who sit quietly, phones tucked away for once.
“Gratitude,” he says, “is the antidote to despair. It’s the most radical act of resistance we have.”
For Alecia Jongeward, that permission — to feel, to connect, to act — is exactly the point. “There’s so much talk about solutions,” she says. “But before you can act, you have to belong. You have to feel like you’re part of something bigger.”
The summit’s workshops range from “Climate Circles” on mental health to hands-on science sessions on water monitoring and storytelling. Students learn to record interviews, write narratives, and connect art with advocacy. It’s less about producing policy than building emotional literacy..
“You can’t fix what you don’t love,” Jongeward says. “And you can’t love what you feel disconnected from.”
Now we just need to figure out haw to reach the kids in smaller schools without environmental science clubs!
Building Belonging In a Time of Anxiety By Haley Yarborough
The room hums with the soft shuffle of pen and paper. Around tables scattered with empty lemonade cups and notebooks, high school students, college students, and their teachers trace their hands on white sheets 一 a simple exercise led by poet and psychologist Shann Ray. At the center of the hand-drawn palm, he asks the crowd to write a “daily joy.”
He moves to each finger, then to beneath the palm, at the wrist.
“Now write one thing you love about people,” Ray said.
Across the room, laughter rippled. Attendees exchanged words about spending time with their pets, people’s laughter, and the undeniable resilience of the human spirit. The exercise is disarming, a small act of presence when the future feels like too much to hold.
Later, Ray would speak about the same themes that run through his new book, “Where Blackbirds Fly”, a story of love, forgiveness, and the courage to stay tender in a fractured world. Ray was one of two speakers at the Montana Climate Summit, held on Oct. 26 and 27, in Livingston, Montana. The symposium brought together students, educators, and community leaders from across the state to discuss Climate Change 一 and how to live with it. The gathering was not just about protest, it’s about art, storytelling, and mental health in a time of crisis. The summit, now in its second year, was created by Alecia Jongeward, a former Park High School teacher who started her school’s Green Initiative Club.
“It was the kids who came up with it,” Jongeward says. “They asked, ‘Aren’t there other students like us?’ So we decided to find them.”
When Jongeward began searching for youth climate conferences, she found the nearest in San Diego and Maine, too far from Montana and far too expensive to travel to. So she built one herself. With support from the Park County Environmental Council and Livable Climate, she gathered a small team of teachers and volunteers and invited high schoolers from around the state. Fifty students came to the first summit in 2023. Attendance was higher this year, filling classrooms at Livingston’s middle school with conversation and laughter.
“We wanted to create a space for belonging,” Jongeward said. “A lot of students feel isolated talking about climate change — especially in Montana, where the politics can make it hard to speak up. Here, they see they’re not alone.”
‘We’re Not Silly For Caring’
One of those students in attendance was Eva Villalva, a senior at Helena High School. She first joined her school’s environmental club — the “Green Group” — during her sophomore year, after hesitating for months.
“People made fun of it,” she said.
At first, she joined the outdoor club instead, thinking it would be safer. But eventually, she decided to step into advocacy — and found that it changed her life. She’s now president of the Green Group, one of the few students still keeping it afloat as other members graduated or drifted away. At the summit, Villalva wears a handmade glass pendant, a swirl of greens and blues she fused herself. She’s as much an artist and an athlete as an activist.
“I’m trying to figure out how to combine it all一 writing, art, horses, the environment — into something that matters,” Villalva said.
One of Villalva’s peers shares this sentiment on the significance of connection. Samantha Wedgewood, also a senior at Helena High and vice president of the Green Group, said the summit reminded her that action can coexist with anxiety.
“It becomes like a burden,” Wedgewood said. “We know it’s either up to us or we’ll just be pushing it on to the next generation. But we can’t give up hope — even the small things we do matter.”
She added that hearing others’ stories, even small victories, helps her stay grounded.
“It’s comforting to know there’s still good in the world,” she said. “That people do still care and that we can still change this.”
Unearthing stories from iceEarly in the climate summit, Lisa Baril — an ecologist, writer, and author of The Age of Melt — takes the stage. Her talk feels both scientific and poetic, anchored in wonder. She begins by explaining that her field, ice patch archaeology, didn’t exist until recently. It was born not from discovery but from loss; from the slow unraveling of glaciers and ice patches across the northern world.
“Ice patch archaeology is a field born from the climate crisis itself,” she said. “As these ancient bodies of ice retreat, they reveal what’s been hidden for hundreds, even thousands of years — arrows, baskets, animal hides, pieces of clothing, tools. Each one is a story thawed from time.”
Behind her, slides flash images of artifacts: a frayed sinew cord, a bent wooden shaft, a tattered piece of woven grass preserved in ice since before recorded history. She explains that many of these objects are organic remains. There are fragile, once-living materials that would have decomposed long ago if not for the cold.
“They were in a kind of suspended animation,” she says. “Now they’re melting into our present, asking us what we’ll do with what we’ve uncovered.”
Baril tells students that studying these discoveries requires collaboration between archaeologists, climatologists, and Indigenous scholars — people who bring not just data, but memory and story. She reminds the audience that the artifacts don’t just reveal ancient lives; they show how deeply human survival has always depended on the environment.
Then she turns personal. Before becoming a writer, Baril spent decades as a wildlife biologist, tracking birds and studying ecosystems across Yellowstone and the Channel Islands. Her path, she says, was shaped by curiosity rather than certainty — by listening to the land.
“Follow your curiosity wherever it leads,” she tells the students. “You never know what you’ll discover.”
She pauses. “For me,” she said, “science has always been about story. These artifacts, these animals, these landscapes — they’re all chapters of the same book. The question is how we choose to read them.”
The art of wilderness and forgivenessAt the front of the auditorium, Shann Ray begins his keynote, “The Art of Wilderness: Climate Leadership and Forgiveness in the Age of Uncertainty.” The talk weaves through memory, philosophy, and faith, drawing from his new book, Where Blackbirds Fly — a meditation on love, loss, and the landscapes that shape us.
He tells a story about his grandmother, who ran a small post office on the Montana plains, her red door always open to neighbors seeking warmth or conversation. “She loved people deeply,” Ray says. “She built community through listening. And that’s what leadership looks like — not control, but care.”
Ray’s tone is part sermon, part invitation. He asks the students to imagine a different way of being in the world — one grounded in connection rather than coercion.
“Coercion is based on fear,” he says. “Consensus is based on love.”
He quotes the writer Hermann Hesse: “Children live on one side of despair; the awakened live on the other.” Then he looks out at the crowd of teenagers, who sit quietly, phones tucked away for once.
“Gratitude,” he says, “is the antidote to despair. It’s the most radical act of resistance we have.”
For Alecia Jongeward, that permission — to feel, to connect, to act — is exactly the point. “There’s so much talk about solutions,” she says. “But before you can act, you have to belong. You have to feel like you’re part of something bigger.”
The summit’s workshops range from “Climate Circles” on mental health to hands-on science sessions on water monitoring and storytelling. Students learn to record interviews, write narratives, and connect art with advocacy. It’s less about producing policy than building emotional literacy..
“You can’t fix what you don’t love,” Jongeward says. “And you can’t love what you feel disconnected from.”
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