By Cassidy Randall, Rolling Stone
Grace Gibson-Snyder takes a sip of chai from her reusable mug in the crowded coffee shop. She grew up here in Missoula, she says, “with a love of nature untainted by worry.” Every year on her birthday, her family took her to Yellowstone to hike and backpack. She rafted the Clark Fork that runs through town in the summers and skate skied the snow up a local canyon in winter. A sixth-generation Montanan, this gold-hilled, water-laced landscape shaped her fundamentally.
Close to five years ago in this exact place, she was brainstorming with her mother about a service project at the start of her freshman year in high school. Her mother showed her an article about China ceasing to take the world’s plastic recycling and suggested her daughter choose something environmental for the assignment. That moment was Gibson-Snyder’s first awakening to a planet in peril.
