New Big Creek director getting, giving education

The Glacier Institute’s Big Creek campus has a new homegrown director in Tyler McRae with deep ties to the site.

McRae grew up in Kalispell and took classes at Big Creek when he was a sixth-grader. Now he’s overseeing the entire North Fork campus. The 24-year-old is not just an educator — he’s getting an education himself.

“I had to learn to become a plumber,” he said.

During a cold snap in March, McRae found himself busy fixing ruptured pipes. He got some help from his father, who’s pretty handy, and through YouTube videos.

The Big Creek center is off the grid — it has no utilities, save for solar panels and a propane generator. The campus includes a main lodge and classrooms and several dorms, all in a pretty wild neck of the woods. It’s not uncommon for a black or grizzly bear to walk by the place. Last summer, a pair of great horned owls raised their young in a big Douglas fir in the yard.

McRae’s love for the woods started out hunting and camping with his family. He began hiking and skiing seriously in high school and graduated from Flathead High School in 2008.

He went on to the University of Montana and graduated in 2012 with a degree in environmental studies and biology. After graduation, he happened to visit a friend who was working at the environmental education school and thought it might be something he’d like to try, even though he had no background in education.

He spent last summer at Big Creek and worked as a substitute teacher at local schools. He says he enjoyed teaching.

“It’s not as scary as I thought it would be,” he said. “Turns out I was all right at it.”

Last week, he was helping lead a group of seventh-graders from Whitefish in an orienteering class with fellow teacher Julie Nelson.

Nelson led the students through a thicket of lodgepole pine, as students used their compasses and their wits to make it back to camp. McRae offered advice from the rear. He has the patience of a saint — it took a good hour to go about a quarter of a mile.

But McRae enjoyed the students’ enthusiasm. They appreciate the world in a different way, he noted.

“They get excited about things that adults don’t,” he said. McRae is replacing former director Beau Servo, who resigned to further pursue his college education.

All told, about a thousand students will attend classes at Big Creek. For more information on the Glacier Institute, call 755-1211 or online at www.glacierinstitute.org.