I recently heard this story on a Radiolab episode entitled “oops”. They were talking about accidents and unintended consequences, and this story stuck out as an amazing demonstration of divine providence and Creation’s amazing ability to take care of itself.

The Berkeley Pit, in Butte, Montana is the site of what was the richest hill on earth, producing over one billion tons of ore, including copper, lead, zinc, gold, and manganese over a 27 year period. It was closed in 1982, and when the owners of the mine shut off the groundwater pumps, it began filling up with groundwater. It now holds about 40 Billion gallons of water, making one of the largest lakes in North America.

It began leaching pyrite out of the earth, which reacted with water and air, creating sulfuric acid which hastens the removal of metals from the earth, turning all this water an iridescent shimmering red and green and brown and orange. It is now part of the largest federal Superfund cleanup site in the United States. The pH of this lake is an amazing 2.5 (rain is about 5.6, and drinking water is around 7.0)

Back in the mid 1990’s, 342 Snow Geese landed on the shimmering lake overnight. The next morning they were all dead, having drunk some of the water. It was a notorious tragedy.

So, here’s the story:

It seems this couple, Professors Don and Andrea Sterley moved from California to the University of Montana to take a job studying microorganisms growing on Caribbean sponges.

They began finding microorganisms in the nasty, uninhabitable water of the pit, which have found uses in all sorts of medicines and industrial applications. Cool? Yes, but wait…

A few years after they got into their research, a new yeast showed up: a gooey, black thing that is able to absorb metals out of the water 900-times more effectively than any other till-then known organism. They began searching for it in nature, and finally found the ONE place in all of nature where this organism occurs:

in the rectal tracts of geese.

OK sure, this was on National Public Radio, and it was on Radiolab, not Speaking of Faith, so we don’t expect them to look at it through the eyes of someone seeking any sort of spiritual insight. But, when you do look at it that way; when you consider that this mess was created by men who had no real viable solution to deal with it.

That the ONE thing we now know will clean it was in the ONE bird that landed on the lake that fateful night.

That only through that bird’s death was the healing power released to that lake…

You sort of have to pause

• and ask yourself “just who is in control, here?”
• and look outside yourself for answers to your own “pit”.
• and perhaps, even for an answer on global catastrophes, including our Gulf oil spill.

Now, I’m not saying that we should not make an effort. But perhaps we should take a broader view as we move forward, to see how we might align ourselves with what is already all around us. If we draw first on that, we might find our efforts greatly multiplied. We might find a solution to even our most daunting problems.

We might find God.