Montana Rising

Years ago, more than I would like to confess, I read Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty.  His exquisite story detailed two retired Texas Rangers, Gus and Call, and their quest to drive cattle from Texas to Montana.  As the pages fell away, I began an affair of the heart with Montana.  As soon as I could make time and money align, I convinced a friend that we needed to go west, and we packed our bags for a two-week excursion.

That trip, the last I would take as a single woman, served only to deepen my inexplicable attraction to Montana.  When my work life would begin to feel like an excerebration, I would imagine myself there in a classic Western bar, serving beer to cowboys while listening to their problems. Later, when I was at my wit’s end with two very clever children that ran intellectual rings around me, I would call Frank and say, “if you come home and the kids tell you that I am at the grocery store, I am not. I am in Montana. Find me.” 

Thanks to kismet, Harrison and Sarah get to lay a blood claim to Montana.  Frank’s grandfather, Frank J., was raised in Bozeman. His father, Frank O., owned a dry goods store and was known as the “Road Builder” for his leadership in getting the town’s streets paved.  While Frank P, my Frank’s father, did not live in Montana, he spent his summer there both as a boy learning to hunt and fish, and later when he would spend his summers working in of all places -- a pea-canning factory which, in 1912, produced nearly 75% of the peas consumed in America.  To the day that he died, Frank P. did not eat peas.     

Neither Frank O. nor Frank J. would recognize Bozeman today. I barely did.  Like Jackson Hole, it has gone mainstream. In fact, the Cannery District where Frank P. worked has been reimagined as a trendy part of town. Pick a chain or a box store and Bozeman has them along with upscale restaurants and bars, but just not wooden roadhouses where an 86 list hangs in full view, the kind I envisioned in my cowboy-beer fantasies that, with a small degree of perseverance, can still be found in micro-towns like Hungry Horse.   

When I decided to take this excursion, I knew one of the cornerstone destinations would be Glacier National Park. Along with Yosemite that soars into its own stratosphere of natural wonder, Glacier is one of my favorite parks in America. Sitting high in the northwest corner of Montana, Glacier remains largely untouched by man. It is a land that has seen the ages unfold. It feels lost in time. When I am there, I half-expect to see a pterodactyl fly over the Going to the Sun Road, the only way up and over to the glaciers near Logan Pass.

There, they measure snow in stories, not feet.  On average, drifts range between five and six stories.  For all my Southern friends, let that sink in for a minute. Five or six STORIES (about 80 feet) of accumulated snow.  That stuff just does not melt and go away on its own, so in late spring, teams of plows begin the tedious work of snow removal, beginning from opposite ends of the Going to the Sun Road with a goal to meet in the middle.  Until this happens, the road is open only as far as the Park Service can guarantee the safety of visitors. 

Last night, the plows met somewhere between Logan Pass and Siyeh Bend. Currently, only 29 total miles of the road is open due to a recent avalanche that trapped more than a dozen bikers until they could be rescued. The death-defying narrow roads around The Loop and Logan Pass, the places where the true awe of Glacier’s glory is found, will remain closed until the threat of more avalanches has abated, possibly June 22nd, but it could just as easily be July 1st.

In planning this trip, I knew that road closure was a possibility, but I decided to wager against the weather.  It was a bad bet. Even so, on our first day in Glacier Frank and I were able to drive one of the open sections of the Going to the Sun Road. The forest was damp, fresh with spring growth. Delicate spears of bear grass dotted the hillsides while new moss was budding on the ancient rocks.  The winter’s melt rushed headlong into cascades and falls. We stood above them on a wooden footbridge to watch the clear, peridot green glacial waters leap into waves of white so fine that they looked like delicate lace hanging in the filtered sunlight.  

More than showing the park to Frank, I wanted to see his reaction when he walked into the lobby of the Lake McDonald Lodge. Finished in 1913, the lodge is a combination of European mountain architecture that appealed to American tourists and the Montana that his grandfather and great-grandfather loved. Like the park, it is a place untouched.

I am confident that they, along with my Frank’s father, Frank P., spent time at the park and in the lodge. One of the treasures we had inherited from the Wilton family was a small, bronze lamp featuring a kneeling Native American, inscribed with the words, “Glacier National Park.” It was the kind of souvenir that a parent would buy a child.  After Harrison left for the University of Michigan, the lamp sat on his bedroom windowsill. I insisted that it remain lit both day and night so he could always find his way home.

Today, Frank and I returned to the Lodge to have lunch. We enjoyed a charcuterie of wild game and cheese, a Montana burger with a side of huckleberry sauce, and a salad with a healthy serving of mountain trout. A huckleberry margarita also had my name on it. Afterwards, we again drove the small section of the Going to the Sun Road that was available to us, spying waterfalls high up in the mountains that had been obscured from our view the day before by clouds.

This is the essence of nature. If you are patient enough, it will reward you with glimpses of such beauty that no camera can ever truly capture its awe.

Tonight, up on Logan Pass, there will be snow.  At the base of the mountains, it is raining but tomorrow we will wake to a frozen mix.  With snow falling again in the higher elevations of Glacier, no one can say with certainty when visitors will be allowed through again, so I don’t feel bad that our park trek was abbreviated. It was glorious just the same.  It just means that we will come back -- preferably in August -- and with Harrison and Sarah.  They need to know their roots, their Montana.

Before I left the Lodge today, I popped into the gift shop.  As per my custom, I grabbed a Christmas ornament to commemorate our visit. As I was about to pay, a small light caught my eye. It was a tiny replica of the cylindrical, painted lampshades that adorn the large chandelier in the lobby of the Lodge.  I doubt this battery-operated light will last for generations like the bronze one that will someday be passed on to “Frank H.,” but I felt a need to buy it anyway. 

For the moment, I have no idea where this little light will live in our house, but I will keep it burning, just like my desire to always see Montana rising on my horizon.