If I have not posted this before, I am sorry. If I have, well, it's a good one. I came across this reading through my old documents:
It was an incredibly long day to say the least. We had initially planned on driving from my parent’s house in Lolo, Montana to Browning and then down the Middle Fork of the Flathead and back to our starting point. That all changed when we realized, via the weather forecast, that 20 to 30 mile an hour winds were common and 50 miles per hour gusts were likely that weekend in May. We therefore opted for the more protected route of traveling through the Bighole on our way to an anticipated antelope-hunting area near Dillon. The mountains should provide a break from the wind and we should still be able to enjoy the nice weather BEFORE the storms.
He picked me up in my mother’s car (who was in New York visiting her Mother), minutes before 0930. We had agreed upon a time between 0830 and 0900, but to simply fit the routine, it ended up being more like 0930. I had made a pot of coffee at about 0600 after waking up at 0530 due to my internal alarm that for some reason wouldn’t allow me to sleep in. Work is a demon like that. When you wake up to beat the traffic throughout the week, your body won’t let weekends stand in its’ way. Not to mention my cat. She has learned that the alarm clock, set inadvertently or not, is her cue to meow until someone gets up to cuddle her. And I, being the only one in the house, am the lucky one who must bend to her rules…like any guy following the important girl in his life’s rules. I actually had time to make a second pot of coffee and feel like I had enough time to practice shooting my bow. Luckily it was spitting rain that morning, so it was a short practice session; and I still had time to drink another cup of coffee to boot. I got settled in to watching a fishing derby on ESPN when a seemingly impatient knock came to my front door. I figured it was my neighbor, trying to tell me I was making too much noise grinding coffee at 0600 in the morning…luckily it was my Dad. I would have been in an incredible position to comment on her ability to make the most noise with slamming cupboard doors while fixing breakfast…or doing anything in her house for that matter (I’m currently residing in a duplex where absolute privacy is a dream.)
So off we went. We traveled down the Bitterroot, fighting early morning traffic as we went. It always amazes me on the amount of people who are out in the valley on Saturday mornings. They all seem to be headed to Missoula for their ritualistic Saturday-morning shopping or the inevitable quest for good yard sale deals. (I have found that the best morning to be driving around in Sunday morning…maybe everyone has an insatiable tendency to go to church…I don’t know, maybe Saturday is just the first morning they can all feel like they can get something done. Anyways, we ended up passing a car that had a crumpled hood and smashed windshield, with blood as a telltale sign of the deer they waylaid on the way to Missoula. It was a small buck that had tried to cross the road at the wrong time. He was dead on the south side run of the road, they were heading north. Obviously THEY had been in the right place at the wrong time.
Over the course of our journey to Lost Trail pass, we spoke of environmentalists, post-modernism thought, and life in general (there is no time for daydreaming with our family.) We talked about my career and what might become of my evolution through my career in the Forest Service. We talked a lot about my sister and her ability to adapt and seemingly to overcome all hardships in her life. She has an incredible ability to focus on what is important in her life at the time. She is awe-inspiring to my father…never a dull moment; always thinking. His favorite description of her is, “tough as salt leather” and “she’d make the gunny proud.” She teaches special children and even when I sit in on her classes, she makes me sit up straight and pay attention. She has an air about her that is simply unquestionable.
I will give her all the praise she deserves…the girl made it through living in the insane city of Houston for two years, teaching deaf-education and dealing with all the problems that come with being in Texas. She has stories of the levy’s being filled with water and overflowing onto the highway and avoiding getting swept away by the current, corralling the kids in the center of the school for tornados, and to handling her job during hurricanes. She is one of the very few women you would not want to deal with when the shit hits the fan and you are the one who is in the way of her getting the job done. Really, she is THAT tough. Standing at five foot-nine, she doesn’t look the part, but put her in a tough situation, and she’ll get the job done. She is one of the toughest people anyone who is around her knows…guaranteed.
We made it over the Pass and down to Wisdom. We worked our way through to the Bannack ghost town cemetery and got a chance to stretch our legs. We perused around the gravestones and remarked on how young most of the deceased were when they died. Most of them were younger than thirty years old! It was a tough life then. I learned that a fit of cholera could wipe out about two thirds of the youngsters in those old mining towns. Imagine how that would feel, seeing over half of your friends die of a disease you could just as easily acquire and die from. I imagined how that graveyard would feel at night…with all the dead children sitting around watching the desolate landscape they called their final resting place; sitting in a circle, talking about the old times…it was creepy to say the least. Even in full sunlight, I got a feeling of incredible loneliness. But then I thought, maybe this actually is a great place to spend the rest of your days. Perhaps all those young people thought of the opportunities that awaiting them in that place with fishing, hunting, and mining for gold. Perhaps that was the best place in the world for them. And as if to speak of the life everlasting, we say a young rabbit perusing the graves. You never know, maybe that was that one kid that only lived a month that was buried there; maybe he or she was finding their calling in that place I saw as desolate. I was encouraged to think of a cold November day with spitting rain…the bagpipes playing Amazing Grace over the hill and out of sight. It was where my father wanted to be buried. Through the morbid-ness of that thought, I felt like I learned a lot about that man who raised me, and why he exists the way he does.
We left Bannock and traveled to the south over the same small pass Lewis and Clark came over on their journey west. They described the area the same way I saw it then in their journals, with sagebrush and desolation as far as they could see. I could imagine seeing those snow-covered mountains looming before me and trying to decide the best course of action from there. I could imagine the cold, biting wind even in the warmest of summers, because it is an area of high altitude (about a mile high on average.) But I could see at the same time, the warmth that sight must have brought the early trappers to the area, seeing a valley devoid of people and full of beaver as far as the eye could see. I can only imagine the valley was crawling with elk, antelope, and mule deer…yielding to the skilled trapper an endless supply of winter food. It was a place secluded from civilization (which isn’t too different from what I could see now) to rest and prosper in. The only problem seemed to be, “too find enough horses to carry out all the beaver pelts” as my Dad put it. The quote of the area for him was, “you know, it’s a good place if you can pee and shoot off of your deck without worrying about upsetting your neighbors.” It is still like it was back in the golden days of Montana. Compared with the commotion of the Bitterroot and Missoula valleys, it is like a drink of pure water washed down with rich history.
We traveled from there, still south, and then west. We checked out the area we were planning on hunting for antelope in that fall… “The home of the gophers” a local school had printed above its door. We can only assume that is the name of their athletic teams and pray it gives them some sort of confidence…us, it gave none. We saw numerous antelope from the road and received fantastic, bountiful visions of the hunting season to come in the near future. To date our trip, instead of writing down the phone number of the sign that promised a cabin for rent, we took a digital picture of it. This we will call to set the date we wish to hunt and reserve our waking place for the fateful day. We both agreed that it would be worth it to spend a weekend in this part of the valley, just to wake up to see the morning autumn sun warming the rocky peaks to the west. It would be enough of an experience just to wake up and be living in the past for just one day.
From that point, we drove towards Dillon along an old two-lane highway. It didn’t take long before we arrived at Clark Canyon Reservoir and ate a lunch of cold fried-chicken and diet Pepsi…a fare that has become rather common on our trips. We sat out of the wind and munched on the chicken while commenting on the number of winged insects that inhabited the area. When the wind died down to only a slight howl, you could hear those bugs whining around your ears while you inhaled them up your nose. Funny how people so opposed to wind can wish it to rear it’s annoying habit again. I thought of Alaska and how it must be unbearable on the tundra without that wind blowing off the Bering Sea. I finally understood the blessing it was to have a constant twenty-mile per hour wind up there while hunting caribou. It seemed miserable at the time, but was probably what made my trip in that country bearable.
We left the reservoir and made our way to the interstate and the Beaverhead River. The Beaverhead is more like a “crik” to us, which means it’s about ten yards across and flanked by cow pastures. But this was the first day it was open this year and a permit was required to fish there. You would not believe the number of people that were stacked, “elbows to assholes” to quote my father. They were lined up on the crik, as if they didn’t realize other waterways were open the entire year around there. We had to stop and take a couple pictures just to capture the ridiculousness of it all. Through our bad-mouthing these people, we made our way by the REAL Beaverhead landmark… that is NOT what the interpretive signs tell you. The REAL Beaverhead is actually quite a few miles south of what the signs will tell you. If you are ever in the area, you must travel the highway north from Pocatello on the interstate to see the true Beaverhead landmark. We all are not sure how this got confused in history, but it is readily apparent to those willing to actually look at the landforms in the area.
We then traveled east of Dillon up an (for these purposes) unknown valley and found fields of alfalfa full of mule deer and antelope. We figured that the songs were actually true and their was an actual PLACE where the “deer and antelope play.” You couldn’t even drive two miles without seeing more than 100 antelope and mule deer together. It was unanimously decided that this was the place to live…if you can stand the constant wind. It seemed to be the epicenter of life in western Montana.
We switched drivers in Dillon and made our way north to the cutoff that would lead us back to the Bighole Valley through Wise River. This has got to be one of the most untouched, beautiful valleys in Montana. There was absolutely no traffic and we actually could stop the vehicle in the middle of the highway and look at the snow-covered peaks, pastures, and Bighole River. We dreamed about living in that area and what it would be like with no one around. We dreamed of peeing of the front porch along our 500-plus rifle range and being able to walk out our back door to hunt elk, deer, antelope, black bear, and gophers, not to mention the incredible fishing that may be available in the river.
We accepted the fact that since we had been on the road for about seven hours then that we should make our way back to home and a warm bed…much to our discontent. After crossing Lost Trail Pass again we ran into traffic and the typical Big Horn sheep herd…while being tailgated. We gradually worked our way into the Bitterroot valley north. The once-beautiful Bitterroot Mountains became hills and just common attractions to the spectacle we had seen earlier that day. No more was it the paradise we had left; now it became just a place…if you can imagine such a thing.
I am in love with Montana and the beauties it beholds. I cannot believe there is another place where you can drive a simple two hours from a metropolis and be taken back to the 1800’s. Where you can place yourself in an environment that makes you feel like you are an insignificant speck in the universe. It is surely an incredible place that, in itself, will take a lifetime to explore and not even be able to skim the surface of what it is.
