Celebrating 50 Years of a National Refuge

On this early morning, Bob Danley takes a minute to gaze out his office window at a pond covered in ice and the distant mountains just beginning to show through a swirling mass of steel-gray clouds.

The Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge’s outdoor recreation planner finds himself thinking of the Japanese and Muir.

In Japan, researchers have made it a point to learn just what a walk through a wildlife refuge can mean for human health.

They took blood pressure measurements of people just before they entered and then again when they left.

Danley wasn’t at all surprised to read what they learned.

“It’s a very healthy experience for people,” he said. “They have real data to back it up. Going into wild places is healthy and not only physically, but I think spiritually too.”

“Muir was right,” Danley said.

In all of the lower reaches of the Bitterroot Valley, there’s nothing quite like the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge for the common man.

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