Friends, family reflect on the legacy of Flathead Valley conservationist 'Lex' Blood
Feb. 28—William "Lex" Blood had only lived in the Flathead Valley a few years when the first Cabinet Creek mines threatened to poison Northwest Montana waterways, but the former miner quickly became an unlikely hero when he led the effort to stall the projects.
Over the course of 50 years, Blood taught countless students at Flathead Valley Community College and founded multiple land conservation and education organizations. The gregarious geologist was a community hallmark, so much so that few of his closest colleagues could recall a time before knowing Blood.
"He was sort of like the air you breathe," said Steve Thompson of Whitefish. "Any time you look out the window and see the mountains and the lakes and you remember that this is still a special place, you can thank Lex Blood for that."
The famed conservationist and educator died Feb. 13 in Kalispell. He was 91 years old.
Blood's route to local stardom was circuitous. He was raised on the East Coast and harbored early dreams of working in the mining industry like his father. After an abbreviated stint at Yale and a two-year service in the Marines, Blood moved his young family west to study geological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.
"I always looked up to my dad," recalled Blood's daughter, Lisa Flowers. "The sense of adventure, it was really instilled deeply in me."
Flowers described her parents as "early hippies" with a strong land ethic. Instead of a lemonade stand, the Blood kids ran a rock shop supplied with specimens their father brought home from work, and the family often spent their evenings outside playing sports and weekends camping in the woods.
Blood graduated with a doctorate in 1968, but after a decade of working in mines across the U.S., Africa and South America, he was beginning to have second thoughts about his career.
"I began to realize that technology was leading us by the nose," Blood said in a 1999 Daily Inter Lake story. "We could do this, but should we?"
In 1972, the family crammed into a pickup camper and spent the summer roaming the Pacific Northwest in search of greener pastures. They settled in a log cabin near Lake Blaine, where Blood cultivated a new career as an outdoor educator and conservation advocate.
Almost immediately, Blood became a leading voice in early efforts to stall open-pit mining projects in the Canadian Flathead. In the 1970s and 80s, two projects on Cabinet Creek threatened to dump tailings and other toxic refuse into the North Fork of the Flathead River, which would then flow downstream into Montana. Blood organized local Montanans into a citizen advocacy group called the Flathead Coalition and later served on the steering committee for the Flathead Basin Environmental Impact Study. Both efforts heavily factored into international negotiations to halt mining activity.
In 1975, Blood started teaching geology courses at Flathead Valley Community College. While he described himself as an indifferent student, Blood quickly proved himself as a talented teacher.
"As an instructor, he was so dynamic and so enthusiastic," said Ursula Mattson.
A naturalist and outdoor educator herself, Mattson reached out to Blood in 1983 with an idea for a local outdoor education organization in Glacier National Park. Blood immediately responded, saying he had been considering the same idea. The two quickly founded the Glacier Institute with the goal of providing place-based field courses for park visitors and Flathead residents.
Blood served as the organization's president until 1999 and taught many of the courses himself, crafting lessons that extended far beyond simple facts to, as he said, "tell the story behind the landscape."
"His teaching was very much part of who he was," said Mattson. "He wanted to share the depth and breadth of his knowledge."
Blood also helped found the Montana Environmental Information Center, Glacier Park Associates, Montana Environmental Education Association, Crown of the Continent Ecosystem Education Consortium and the Flathead Forestry Collaborative Project, all while maintaining a vibrant teaching career at Flathead Valley Community College.
Blood supported many other organizations through his post-retirement work with the Sustainability Fund and the Non-Profit Development Partnership. He often lent his decades of geologic expertise to Montana Land Reliance, Flathead Land Trust and the Nature Conservancy of Montana, conducting mineral analyses for conservation easements across Northwest Montana.
"He just showed up," said Flathead Land Trust Executive Director Paul Travis.
He described Blood as a mentor and a close friend.
"He was always there and always using his advice and leadership to lead the way."
Flathead Audubon honored Blood with an Outstanding Contribution to Conservation Education Award in 2006, and Whitefish Lake Institute granted him the Lifetime Achievement Stewardship Award in 2008.
Throughout his life, Blood remained an avid outdoorsman and a voracious scholar. He spent many afternoons scaling rock walls and swimming in the Flathead River with his four granddaughters and continued to bike well into his 80s. Even as his abilities waned, Lisa Flowers said her father often expressed gratitude for the life he had led.
"He was a lover of the community he was a part of. It ran deep in his bones," said Flowers. "My dad was a thinker, a deep thinker with deep care and a huge personality."
Reporter Hailey Smalley can be reached at hsmalley@dailyinterlake.come or 758-4433.
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