Sarah McMillan and Hannah Vinje

00:00 Hannah vinje I'm 78 lb 79. This is winter that says Friday June 5th 2020 in Hot Springs Montana and my daughter Sarah is my conversation partner and this is Sarah McMillan and I am in Missoula Montana. I am 53 years old. And again, it's June 5th 2020. My conservation partner is conversation partner. I'm in conservation which is why we are Conservation Park.

00:43 My mother Hangout

00:47 So Mom, one of the reasons we decided to do this was that we've been sequestered at home for the last heading towards 3 months now and we've all been thinking about what that means. What does because of Co bedsole. I've seen you once I'm outside and 62 park in that time, even though we're only an hour and a half part and I'm just it's got us thinking about what home means and then it also got us thinking about some of the

01:21 Unusual places that we have called home where you are now and maybe how it's if it's feeling more like home because I know you've been going back and forth between Minnesota and Montana for a few years now now,

01:46 Why do I guess I'm wondering if you can tell me if it's starting to feel like home. And if so, why what what makes it that way?

01:56 Well, I actually have been going back and forth from Minnesota to Montana my entire life starting at age 8 and living in both places back and forth and now the pleasure of being in one place longer here in Hot Springs, then I would otherwise have been because we would have packed up and gone back in May to continue our Chimney Sweep business.

02:29 So it is giving a much stronger feeling in me. And I think in both of us a belonging here in our new home, so beautifully help to come about by all of you. It's the best home.

02:48 We've ever been in.

02:50 Because of you and

02:54 Becca your sister and your dad and Caleb and family creation and we get to live here all by herself a chicken coop. It's not a house falling off the cliff. It's plastic Hut. Yeah, it's not a recycled Motel unit. It's not a tent. It's an actual and it's wonderful and we have spaciousness around us, which is lovely so we can guard pick time and then your Mother's Day gift of a new kind of home a beehive which I have always wanted and we installed the please and so now we're beekeepers and how wonderful is that an Arby's are very happy there except for 2 days ago.

03:52 When the old Queen and 50 million other bees decided they'd rather live in the woods with the papers. Thank you very much. And so they took off for wild places unknown to make their own home. However, we have two new Queen in the hive who is making her home with her new brood. So homes are everywhere. You can make them in the sanctity of home.

04:24 And during these times of covid-19 police invading privacy the need for refuge and Shelter From the tumult of the world.

04:40 Is very important for all of us. So we just do her quite quite content and quite happy to be at home here. Do you have to have an acre? Is that what it is around the house?

04:56 What's 20 / right next to tribal land that is open several Acres. So I'm it's quite quite a bit to the mission mountains. It's all open truly beautiful. Watch the sunrise over the mouth. Make it feel like home. Do you think

05:24 Kroger close to all for kids in Missoula New York accessible not 1300 miles away.

05:33 And I think the community aspect the sense of Home Community is growing for all of us were beginning to trade skills to barter tools. They help each other with this and that whoops. Julian has left his phone basket and is trying to join the conversation are orange Cassidy such a social Kitty.

06:02 Yeah, you want to come?

06:09 Sarah Sarah his other favorite person in the world used to be a feral cat, but now he's

06:21 Sarah I know you mentioned of his Queen shelter from your childhood Early Childhood, which I call a quonset hut I'm wondering what your fond memories of that are. So I mean, I think about that you bought I don't know how many acres it was. It was 5 Acres or something like that and in western Washington, the town was called town was called birdsview, but it was near Concrete Washington and I remember feeling like this was this sort of magical place that I could just explore it will wandering around in the woods finding blackberry bushes, and just wondering and then you created a shelter home of sorts with this is my memory and I may be misremembering it but I feel like there were pallets on the floor and then that you cut saplings and served.

07:21 Turn them into arches and put visqueen plastic over them and how it felt to me was like we were living in a greenhouse. So it was it felt like we are outside basically all the time, but because it was Western Washington, we were happily protected from the rain, but it just I think it it has it was probably the source of my love of camping and backpacking just because it was essentially living outside and one of the things that I remember most about that place was

07:57 Waking up in the middle of the night and seeing what I saw what I thought was a white wolf sort of circling our I wasn't scared at all. It was this magical. I was young right but my thinking it was possible that there would be a white wolf coming to join our family and and it turns out it was a dog and he did come join our family and he was Slither and he just slithered into our lives, but he was the best dog and I always associate him with that place and then the freedom I guess and the the kind of

08:42 Wild Child said that I had it, you know nowadays they call it free-range parenting you were definitely a free-range parenting before before that term existed and that was one of the places where I felt so free and and safe to even though it's just a plastic plastic sheeting over some sampling.

09:06 Yeah, what about you? Did you like that place or did it feel?

09:12 Oh, I love that place and it wasn't, you know, we have our own way and we had come there because we have come from the gray house in Bellingham, which is used to be a brewery two-story all the old place. Can you hear?

09:33 Where we rented it and it was out in the country that's part of its side of Bellingham Washington and Becca and you and I live there and we took care of Elmer the owner who lived in the basement who walked around the neighborhood. He must have been 90 with his old chainsaw asking if anyone needed to have any trees or branches cut because he couldn't give up being a lager.

10:06 And he has you had mentioned he would lose track of.

10:13 What era of time he lived in he's come upstairs from the basement in the middle of the night and try to get in bed with us because he thought I was G his wife in all his old long underwear and we have to take him Elmer. No, no. No, it's it's 19670. You have to go back down and he would say and go back down. She was a lovely and he had an old 49th and Ford in perfect condition in the barn and he wanted us to take him on drives cuz he couldn't drive anymore to see his old fishing wants and we had our rabbits and ducks and geese and everything there.

10:59 And and we walked through the corrupt Barnyard area get the barn take him to the old places and he'd say oh

11:10 And it's not like it was always a little different now.

11:17 And told him if we go somewhere else, you know that. Let's go to the other plate most of the time things that change they've been developed a host Ridge had changed or been diverted. So it's an interesting thing living intragenerational e with young children Elmer and the basement made I was teaching head start at the time and you went to Rufus Jones Quaker School.

11:49 And what happened was after that. We were there for some years the highway department was going to put a highway through the gray house.

11:59 And we had to move and they didn't want to pay renters, but I got the ACLU to interfere. And so they and they also after the AC how you got involved. They wanted to determine what at her house. I was allowed to rent with the money that they were going to give me and we fought that I said to know I want to buy land.

12:29 And we finally won and they gave me $3,000 and that was the down payment on the 5 acres and birds. That's how we got there a house was actually was those fishing trips in my mind again. I was three or four whatever I was but they were fishing trips and maybe it was just driving around but I remember getting in the back of this so carefully maintained car that was different from the cars that we had where doors were bungee cord it on to keep them from falling off and and then so not only did.

13:10 Direction we have no car. We had a wagon had a Red Flyer wagon, whack leaving and sitting in the back and being so scared of messing it up and then and not that he would have done anything, but I was worried and then him handing us those.

13:34 Now they're horror thick but at the time it was just sugar these orange slices. They're not really Orange. It's candy which just sugar to Candy stuff and it was just going to be eating straight sugar driving fancy cars.

13:53 Would you weren't allowed to have any candy ever?

14:02 What a rush in a car when she candy.

14:12 Yeah, that was a great place. Cuz we you could walk to Fairhaven Park is wonderful beautiful Park and then walk around and pick blackberries everywhere and it was a wonderful place is too and that's where we were and I was planting trees for Pico River ranger station in fighting fires. And did you start all women either fire replanting crew that right? Yeah. They put me I was driving the rig after a few years to planting trees. They gave me the rig.

15:02 And I could hire my own crew so I hired a women.

15:08 And we all went out planting trees and it was great. It was so I drove the rig and they all you know road with me and

15:18 I miss back logging roads to get up to the site that steep terrain and a couple of the women became pregnant during some of the season.

15:30 And somehow simultaneously we discovered that the stuff they put on tips of these little fir trees.

15:40 What is coated with fire from a chemical to stop deer from chipping off the top and killing the tree? Will I have looked up about that and it was carcinogenic dangerous for for DNA poor for People's Health and so on so we talked about it. We tried to get them to stop doing the 4th of surface with struck.

16:08 We refused to go to work.

16:10 And and overtime in the state they changed it was maybe it only lasted a week or something, but they said okay will do it anymore. So we went back to work then we discovered that the thought from additionally we had discovered that syrum was being kept in the refrigerator in Mount Vernon where women kept their lunches were they were working with the trees and skipping the tops of the trees before they got to

16:47 So we went back and said you have to change that. You have to change the whole system once wherever even though they're not tipping our trees and the women still have to do this in the trees go elsewhere. You can't do that either so it changed they changed it so we could continue planting trees.

17:10 Home Depot Southwest reserved anyway something like that. That's kind of an outline of what happened the planting trees you were also fighting forest fires, right?

17:28 And did you know that was a mixed-gender crew I have this memory of going out with you one time and sleeping in the cab cuz you are a single mom and you were going out for days at a time and sleeping in the cab of a truck with one of those silver foil blankets around me. It was completely illegal, of course to bring your believe I did that. Oh my gosh, how things had fallen through but but what did you how long did you do that the forest fire fighting?

18:13 Oh, I was fun the ranger station fire crew and then I was on a Hotshot crew for several years and we would fly all over with low doses of the Snake River the fire we flew all over the state with the corner while I was gone, but one time.

18:35 We are flu in.

18:38 Was it a helicopter or not? I think it was a plane a smoke smoke playing a flu cuz you are in Lummi Island with your dad. We have fluid it land at the airport in Bellingham and you got in and you rode with us on the ident has smoke trying to get her identification.

19:03 Yeah, we flew all over Mount Baker and he looked out the window. He said I see Mountain. I remember to hide me and pretend it wasn't really there.

19:18 Yeah, if you weren't supposed to do it, it was like eichorst the captain I said, please don't need some. Well, okay, and I went to bed. Could it come too but they said no only one I was the more important anyway.

19:37 Well, that's

19:44 You were always the littlest daughter. So it was like I had to protect and take care of you more than you always keep your little ones don't you know?

19:58 Yeah.

20:00 Yeah. Yeah the chicken coop we lived in.

20:06 That was back in Bellingham. And that was also after we had to leave the gray house because of the highway and it was in Iran before we got two words for you.

20:19 Unfortunately, it was very sweet in her Cedar a beautiful Chicken Coop huge. And as you say the chickens will beautiful memory. Did you smell wonderful, but it was to hear them sort of roosting.

20:45 Yeah, unfortunately, we so often didn't have electricity. We were living out in a while the end of its didn't and a cat knocked over kerosene lamp.

21:05 And start a little fire witch burned at quilted n didn't even giving you yet. I still have pieces of it and we put it out but the owner said no more living in a chicken coop.

21:24 And so that's when the whole land thing happened and in birdsview and then that's when the nuclear plants came in proposed on the Skagit River and a group of us formed scam schedule is concerned about nuclear plants and we fought that for years and you were involved with picketing in Seattle and with the hearings in Olympia.

22:05 Clearly and I would fall asleep and somebody would carry me out and wake up and then I'd be angry that I got woken up. And but I think it probably also is a huge part of what his given me purpose in my life and my career where you know conservation attorney and I now in the conservation director for an organization and I think you introduced me to all of that to sort of a life with purpose and trying to make a difference and improve things. It's unsure it started there. Even if it really made me mad.

22:40 Remember, sometimes you're just going to run to the grocery store really quickly and it be 45 minutes later because you would have met with somebody else. He was also organizing around the anti-nuclear work and you be talkin and I just be so mad.

23:02 So sorry, but I did it all for you. It was all for you.

23:08 Can I can I ask you a question?

23:11 What are you interested in all of the environmentalist things that you became involved in? And and why did why have you cared so much overtime about it?

23:24 You're going to make me cry later be careful here because it is dangerous all of us the home in Bridgeview.

23:39 Skagit River was our neighbor was part of our community Home and these two 1.2 billion dollar nuclear plant built. My back till were proposed to be placed on that wild and Scenic River and they tried to lure people by jobs and we'll will warm up the water is only a little bit. It'll Grey's baked salmon because it was wanting River were all five species of salmon.

24:10 And one of the last remaining Rivers for that and then it was connected with what was called in Northern Tier pipeline, which has to do with oil coming down by ship from Alaska to port to Anacortes and then be shipped across the pipeline that would be electrically operated through these nuclear plants along with other things the electricity needs of the nuclear plants and all of that was threatening.

24:46 Not just my little kids. Everybody's little kids aren't safe water. Are are are everything with the waist and in solution and who you know all of that. So it's sort of I guess business seen in my life and all our lives all our kids life ever since their protection of the Earth being our Home Sheep Home.

25:14 The Earth is our home and it is must be Sanctified and kept life must be preserved rather than poison.

25:27 So that that took a very long. Of time, but we won.

25:33 We went out they were never built and that's because it finally went and we we created the magic Skagit music that's all to pay for geologists to come and testify. We went to Canada cuz of the prevailing winds. We is a tectonic plate examination out in the waters and got a geologist from Canada to come down to testify cuz of currents would go up and have faith and couver and you know people in Canada and you and Becca came to do the habitat Forum United Nations have to have for him where we at and people came

26:15 And then it finally wins wood in it.

26:20 The people voted it down and that's how it was only because of that was the Skagit able to be designated as a wild and Scenic River because obviously if there were two nuclear power plants on it. It couldn't have been designated as wild and scenic but I

26:41 It was wild and Scenic before.

26:46 I believe so. Maybe I'm wrong, but

26:50 Yeah, I don't know about that. Forum the Habitat for Humanity that was in Vancouver that right. Yeah, I remember going there and yeah, I think it was a hostile and there were so many people that it was just like the dining room was turned into a place people to sleep on the floor and we were just sleeping like 50 people on the floor in the in the living room and dining room. Do you remember that?

27:22 No, and then the thing that I really remember no was going to end this was probably 72 or 3 or something.

27:34 Going down there was a maybe the first Greenpeace office and that office and that's where I like being hunted and I decided that I was going to tell whoever it was was it Gorbachev?

27:52 And you didn't yes you wrote that letter asking him to please don't kill the whales anymore. We need to protect the wheel and you never sent it.

28:08 Oh, it was so beautiful. I couldn't with the spelling them five-year-olds that you were so hard felt it was.

28:21 Prestige in our Brezhnev or somebody took right? Yeah, you wrote to the Russian president to cuz we know Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd and he was telling us about the hunting Japanese and Russian hunting of the whale.

28:44 That was played after that. We went to New Mexico.

28:51 And lived and then there was another.

28:56 Anti-nuke. There was Pecos radiological radioactive research lab

29:03 Proposed right on the Pecos River right next to where we work are taking over and she had to go into battle if yeah, you know her place.

29:16 Things change challenge

29:24 That makes you think about throwing you say New Mexico makes you think about them all Dave and ranch.

29:31 Elkhart azita, which was our place it was this I was in college, so I only visited you there and never lift their butt.

29:42 Remember visiting you there and it was this Grand estate. Basically that was kind of crumbling into the ground. There was a swimming pool that they that either was naturally fed, or they filled with snakes with doubt.

30:00 Huge huge place cienda and some of the rooms are kind of falling apart. And then there was a central large kind of ball that had an original bake off. Is that right?

30:31 Add a god SS Dawn is your gall and I think there was even a Picasso in there because I'd love to but she was the most wealthy people and they have these original.

30:47 Paintings is not

30:50 Yeah, well this place and I took care of Erica who had Parkinson's she had been in World War II that ship had docked at Nagasaki and the captain had said to all the nurses. She was a nurse. You want to take a walk leave the ship.

31:09 And it was right after the bomb had dropped and she believed that she had gotten Parkinson's from that walk. So is another thing about

31:21 Uranium radioactive stuff and then the research light was just drained you left Washington for here, and then it happened all over again and yeah, long story.

31:39 Man-in-the-middle, West Mexico

31:44 So many other places that you could make home out of the base of a tree if you had to in order to stick by your ethics and your values and life would take care of you doing work memories of almost anywhere we lived whether it was a chicken coop for a tent. Maybe not the tent in Mexico, but pretty much everywhere else is the geraniums were a big part of you making a place a home you are so cheerful. They grow relatively easily. They can have my neglect and you've always had your radio everywhere you go you you're a massive Gardner anyway, but it seems like geraniums and in the past dogs. Now you have a cap and both yes and go and go and go.

32:45 Yeah dogs on the Great Pyrenees dogs, we raised and yeah, but thank you for the geranium you brought I have it and I don't know here.

32:58 Yeah. Yeah, it's very cheerful. We've had a very exciting and adventurous life together Sarah and your work has somewhat been inspired by that but you have a long and sestro history of Grandpa and and then your dad's outdoor the nature-loving and Montana your connection with preserving. All of that is

33:34 I made a life for you. That's so beautiful. And if we don't protect protect the water and the air, if we don't protect the wild places that we don't have a home and at the same time here, we are in the midst of this incredible.

33:57 Racial unrest because of racial Injustice and it makes me think about okay, so I'm working to protect Wilderness and Canada lynx and grizzly bears but people are being killed in their homes by police officers black people are being killed in their homes, and I'm just so aware of my privilege and my whole body feels absolutely safe and I know that other people don't feel that at all and whether that's my home my house or my home my town. It's just the last few weeks. I know it's been going on. I mean obviously forever but and for 50 years and especially for the last few weeks, but I'm just so aware of it after the events in Minneapolis with George Floyd being suffocated by police officer and before Brianna Taylor being shot in her house and

34:57 Barbri being hunted down by two men in their pickup trucks and just the sort of

35:05 Sorry to go there but it's just been so shocking and it's not shocking because I know it's been happening for hundreds of years. So I don't enraging I guess I'm feeling it more just really because I know how.

35:21 Safe I am and that's so wrong and unfair.

35:26 So I don't know why I went there. I guess I just thinking about what what is in my work and then it makes me quite people are being killed in the streets by by supposedly are public servant police officers. This is crazy. So we probably shouldn't go there because I know

35:55 Well, it's all package should a human hand trust his economic Injustice and natural world Injustice. It's all together in that does seem like there's a cry from all of us a whole world to change how we relate to each other to Nature to all of life and the panda planet in the cosmos. Do you play your part? I have played Vine.

36:23 And you know in terms of home, it's what we think about Caleb and Becca. We all had a kind of her focus on his way to sign love of color Fila building homes in architecture. And and you're gorgeous. I always think has an oriental feel to it if I could count all it's you and that he built a good part of that. He has built a good part of a good part of his house or dad.

37:03 And in all of us together have are creating and have created beautiful homes for ourselves and safe phones, and we're all involved in one way or another high Amber.

37:19 With contributing to the safety and and sense of belonging to home on the planet with each other. That's your opinion. You were born into a family you choose a combination of those things. That's also a huge part of what it means to have a home in to make a home and to feel at home and that kind of safety and connectedness.

37:54 Well, we have so many other homes that are interesting and adventurous that we could have talked about and crazy, but you still house falling off the cliff.

38:13 A wild Swan injured Birds print finding and protecting injured bird starting with a swan and a bathtub in this tiny bedroom or bathroom. You guys are to go to the toilet.

38:29 We had an injury doll and injured Crow dog in the log cabin house and had your own kin Kingdom.

38:42 But we had would cheat we had kerosene lamp. We were happy. We were happy at home. We loved our home.

38:54 You would have loved each other in that created and we were always connected with nature.

39:00 Chose that so

39:05 I guess we're kind of towards the clothes. We have layaway up so many more places we can go.

39:14 By the Sea of Cortez, you know in hunting for shells and

39:29 It's really fine. I've enjoyed it a lot. I think we should continue this at some point, or maybe I'll write about it or something, you know, you would enjoy that and then we can talk about it and help remind you of things to because that's part of the conversation is that I'll forget things and you'll remind me and you'll forget things and I'll remind you and then sort of the memories come back in in in more substantial ways when we're reminded in conversation about things I think.

40:07 And I wouldn't say no. No, it wasn't like that.

40:12 And it turns out that we each had a different Viewpoint of whatever it was. Yeah. Well, it has been lovely. Thank you Sarah for doing this and Leah.

40:26 It's been just great. I enjoyed it very much and enjoyed storycorps all the time when I hear it so loved in PR. Thanks.