Watersheds without borders: Microplastics, Place, and Eco-Justice

I had long imagined living in one of the most wild places in the United States. When I accepted a position at the Teton Science School in Jackson, Wyoming, my daughter and I were also seeking a place where we might begin to heal from the tragic loss of her father. The Tetons felt like the kind of landscape that could hold that hope — mountains rising sharply from sagebrush valleys, rivers running clear from alpine snowpack, wildlife moving across open ranges in ways that made human concerns feel briefly smaller. The beauty is breathtaking, and it invites the assumption that such grandeur must be untouched. Yet living there complicated that assumption. Beauty does not equal immunity. The idea of pristine wilderness is often less a reality than a story we tell ourselves about places we long to preserve.



Yellowstone and the greater Jackson Hole region now receive millions of visitors each year, and increasing tourism has become what National Geographic describes as a stress test for park ecosystems and infrastructure.¹ Sustainability initiatives such as the Jackson Hole and Yellowstone Sustainable Destination Program have emerged precisely because ecological, cultural, and economic pressures converge there. ² Even well-intentioned stewardship operates within a tourism economy dependent upon travel and consumption. Wilderness is not and cannot be separate from human systems anymore. While sustainability initiatives and scientific monitoring are important steps, they address symptoms more than structural causes. Reducing plastic production and rethinking consumption patterns would be necessary to meet the demands of ecological and intergenerational justice more fully.

Long before tourism campaigns and national park boundaries reshaped the Tetons, the valleys and rivers surrounding Jackson Hole were seasonal homelands and travel corridors for Shoshone, Bannock, Crow, and other indigenous peoples whose lives followed migration routes and watershed cycles. the creation of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park depended in part upon narratives of untouched wilderness that obscured this presence and restricted traditional subsistence practices. Many Native communities connected to these landscapes were relocated to reservations far removed from the ecological abundance visitors now associate with the region. Any conversation about ecological justice must therefore ask not only how landscapes are protected, but who has historically borne the cost of that protection. 

 At Teton Science School, ‘place' is approached through ecological, cultural and economic perspectives, encouraging learners to examine both the past and future of the landscape. Living within that landscape complicated my own assumptions. Place was no longer scenery or refuge but relationship--layered with memory, labor, economy, and responsibility. For example, the ski resort where I worked on the weekends had a season that adhered to strict closing dates in order to accommodate animal migration patterns. This awareness was sharpened when my colleague at Central Wyoming College, Professor Kirsten Kapp, documented microplastics throughout the Snake River watershed, including alpine environments many imagine untouched.³ Microplastics have also been identified in Grand Teton National Park lakes and in fish inhabiting those waters.⁴ When contamination appears at the headwaters--where rivers begin--the illusion that harm is local collapses. The watershed itself becomes a record of connection. It carries not only snowmelt and sediment, but also the consequences of how we live.

Christoph Stueckelberger asks a difficult ethical question in the context of ecological crisis: "Who dies first? Who is sacrificed first?" He writes that "those who have contributed least...suffer first and most," insisting that justice must prioritize vulnerability rather than convenience.⁵ His framework of ecological, distributive and intergenerational justice clarifies what is at stake. Intergenerational justice, he argues, requires that we not live at the expense of future generations." ⁶ Microplastics drifting through alpine snowpack suggest that sacrifice has already begun--quietly and without consent. 

Shamara Shantu Riley similarly refuses to separate environmental harm from systems of domination. She argues that "environmental degradation and the oppression of people are interconnected," emerging from the same mentality that permits extraction without accountability.⁷ Riley's insight also reframes the history of conservation itself. The displacement of indigenous communities from landscapes later celebrated as pristine wilderness reveals how environmental protection and human exclusion have sometimes emerged from the same structures of power. Plastic fragments found in Wyoming snowpack may originate hundreds or thousands of miles away, carried atmospherically before settling into alpine ecosystems. Ecology, Riley reminds us, is always a justice issue. 

Thich Nhat Hanh offers a different response, not through prediction but through attention. '"We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness."⁸ The Earth is not something outside of us but something we participate in continually. I have sat beside the Snake River and Reservoir no. 6 in Connecticut's Farmington River watershed,  chanting the same words over very different waters. Today, reflecting on the many rivers I have lived beside--from the Chao Praya in Bangkok, to the East River in NYC--I am reminded that water refuses borders. Snow becomes runoff. Runoff becomes river. River becomes ocean. The Atlantic and Pacific eventually meet through global circulation whether we acknowledge it or not. The practice does not change the current, but it changes the way I understand my place within it.

 There are forms of ecological damage that cannot be undone. Microplastics already circulate through oceans, soil, snowpack and our bodies. Some thresholds have already been crossed. Yet Yellowstone also tells another story. Research shows that bison herds restore grasslands through nutrient cycles that redistribute fertility across the landscape.⁹ Within ecological systems, what appears to be waste becomes nourishment. Plastic pollution represents the opposite relationship--accumulation without return. Eco-chaplaincy asks us not only to witness harm but to relearn participation in renewal where it remains possible. Sitting beside a reservoir whose waters will eventually join an ocean without borders, I am left less with certainty than with responsibility, and with the uneasy recognition that I, too, live within the systems I critique. A watershed moment is not only a crisis point; it is also a turning point. 

Footnotes (Chicago Notes Style)

1. National Geographic, “Booming Tourism Becomes a Stress Test for Yellowstone,” National Geographic Magazine, May 2016.

2. Sustainable First, “Jackson Hole & Yellowstone Sustainable Destination Program,” accessed February 2026, https://www.sustainablefirst.com/sustainable-destinations/americas/jackson-hole-yellowstone-sustainable-destination-program/.

3. Central Wyoming College, “Tiny Plastics, Big Problems,” 2024, https://www.cwc.edu/about/2024-2025-news/tiny-plastics-big-problems/.

4. Mike Koshmrl, “Microplastics Found in Fish in Upper Snake River Watershed,” Jackson Hole News & Guide, 2024; and “Microplastics Found in 2 Grand Teton National Park Lakes,” Jackson Hole News & Guide, 2024.

5. Christoph Stueckelberger, “Who Dies First? Who Is Sacrificed First?” 48.

6. Ibid., 52.

7. Shamara Shantu Riley, “Ecology Is a Sistah’s Issue Too,” in This Sacred Earth, ed. Roger Gottlieb (New York: Routledge, 2003), 413.

8. Thich Nhat Hanh, Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm (New York: HarperOne, 2013).

9. Natalie Krebs, “Bison Poop Is Restoring Yellowstone National Park,” Outside Online, 2023.

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Bibliography

Central Wyoming College. “Tiny Plastics, Big Problems.” 2024.

Hanh, Thich Nhat. Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm. New York: HarperOne, 2013.

Koshmrl, Mike. “Microplastics Found in Fish in Upper Snake River Watershed.” Jackson Hole News & Guide, 2024.

 “Microplastics Found in 2 Grand Teton National Park Lakes.” Jackson Hole News & Guide, 2024.

National Geographic. “Booming Tourism Becomes a Stress Test for Yellowstone.” 2016.

Riley, Shamara Shantu. “Ecology Is a Sistah’s Issue Too.” In This Sacred Earth. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Stueckelberger, Christoph. “Who Dies First? Who Is Sacrificed First?”

Sustainable First. “Jackson Hole & Yellowstone Sustainable Destination Program.”

Krebs, Natalie. “Bison Poop Is Restoring Yellowstone National Park.” Outside Online, 2023.

Between Flash and Thunder

The Maroon Bells–Snowmass Wilderness sits outside Aspen, Colorado. Above tree line, the forests fall away. At 12,000 feet there is no shelter. Just rock, tundra, and sky.

I was there as a new teacher at a Rocky Mountain boarding school, leading ninth and tenth graders on their orientation trip. We were hiking part of the Four Pass Loop. Long miles. Heavy packs. Thin air.

It was our third day on the trail. The students had already climbed steep switchbacks, slept two cold nights above 11,000 feet, and learned how hard it is to carry weight at altitude. Blisters had formed. Shoulders were raw.

It had rained all night.

In late August in the Rockies, afternoon storms are common. I suggested we take the longer route down through the valley. More miles, but lower and less exposed. The pass promised better views and a quicker exit. So up we went.

We climbed for two hours. Step by step. My eye on the clouds rapidly rolling in.

Near 13,000 feet, the sky split open.

The thunder did not roll. It cracked.

Rain slanted sideways. There was nowhere to hide. We were the highest things on the ridge. The gap between flash and thunder was closing.

“Spread out!” I yelled. “Stay low!”

We moved into lightning position. Packs on. Crouched on the balls of our feet. Heads down. Spaced apart along the trail.

Even crouching, you feel exposed. Your legs shake. Your calves burn. You try to make yourself small in a place that does not shrink. The rain whipped my face and dripped off my nose as I stared at the grass and counted out loud.

Gary Snyder writes that “the wilderness can be a ferocious teacher, rapidly stripping down the inexperienced or the careless” (The Practice of the Wild, 25). That day, the lesson was simple. The mountain did not care about our plans. It stripped us down to breath, bone, and the ability to endure.

Some of the students were crying. The wind stole their voices.

“Count with me,” I shouted over the wind.

1-1001.
 1-1002.
 1-1003.

Three seconds. Too close. Stay down.

Counting gives the mind something to do. It creates order inside chaos. There were moments when it felt as if we were inside the storm itself—when the pause between flash and thunder was too short to measure.

Val Plumwood calls her crocodile attack “a cautionary tale about survival and our relationship with the earth, about the need to learn to recognize who we are in different terms that acknowledge our own animality and the ecological as well as ethical context of our lives” (Being Prey, 91). On that ridge, I felt the limits of the ethical sphere alone. Staff hierarchy, confidence, even gender—those belonged to our cultural world. Lightning belonged to another order.

The rain the night before had been a warning. Wildness speaks. The question is whether we listen.

1-1001.
1-1002.
 1-1003.

Thomas Berry writes that “we are most aware at such moments of transition that the world about us is beyond human control” (The Wild and the Sacred, 7). Waiting between flash and thunder, I felt that in my body. The storm was not punishment. It was weather moving through a system in which we happened to be standing.

Eventually the interval widened.

1-1001.
 1-1002.
 1-1003.
 1-1004.
 1-1005.

Five seconds. Farther away.

We sighed. We stood. Legs stiff. Packs heavy. We crossed the pass. The views were there. No one stopped to admire them. The march down to the trailhead was humbling. We were a cold, wet, tired line, putting one foot in front of the other.

 A week later, I learned that the nausea, the headaches, and the deep fatigue I blamed on altitude were something else. I had assumed the thin air was responsible. I kept walking. The students were watching. Leadership meant steadiness. One foot in front of the other. Again and again.

My body had already begun building another life.

On that ridge, crouched against the lightning, I was not one body but two.

I did not yet know the story that was beginning.

The sacred shifted for me that day. It was no longer the triumph of standing high and looking out. It was the humility of lowering myself close to the ground. It was the counting. It was the responsibility of keeping fragile bodies safe—my students’, and unknowingly, my own child’s—in a world that does not bend to our pride.

Above tree line there is no hiding. Not from weather. Not from illusion. Not from the truth of who we are. I carry that kind of courage with me still—the kind that lives between flash and thunder.


Citations

Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild, p. 25. Val Plumwood, Being Prey, p. 91.
Thomas Berry, The Wild and the Sacred, p. 7.