Montana

It was 1991 the first time I saw Montana’s mountains looming above the freeway as I traveled east on I-90. The hills grew steeper as heavily timbered mountains seemed to go nearly straight to the rivers and creeks below. I felt a familiarity which went beyond the fact I had lived in the Pacific Northwest all of my life.

From the start, there was something in Montana that I knew; and as I visited historic places like Buffalo Jump where buffalo herds were driven off the cliffs to feed and cloth the Blackfeet, Salish, Shoshone and others, I wondered had I been here in a previous lifetime? I let myself feel the trails, the sky, and the hills. Was I here as a Lakota woman? Maybe Blackfeet? Or was it all imagination? Montana is a wonderful place for imagination.

I had traveled to a lot of places in the west but can't say why I put off coming to Montana until I was 48. I think I expected it to be another Oregon or Washington. In one sense, it is-- only with faster and bigger rivers, steeper mountains and less people—although the less people part is changing fast. Because of its history, the wildlife roaming free, the people who value freedom more than some places-- it's not like anywhere else I have been.

Those first trips were the years where sleeping in the van was my kind of camping. Curtains quickly clipped in place, pads and sleeping bags laid out and it was easy to stay anywhere for a night; however, Montana taught me the fallacy of that thinking one summer when I thought a fishing access site along the Yellowstone River would be lovely. It was-- except for the flies. I have never, to this day, had more flies descend from nowhere. It was like a horror move, only The Flies instead of The Birds, and rapidly led to changing where to sleep that night.

Montana has a way of doing that—revising plans. Head up a trail and see a young moose carcass partly eaten or find still steaming bear scat (big enough to be grizzly) and hiking plans change. The days when I came here with the freedom to vagabond were the most fun. Go somewhere and if the fishing was good, you stay. If it isn’t, you go where the river is higher or lower or the hatch had just erupted-- and those insects do seem to erupt. I am always on the outlook for streams with round rocks where I can wade looking into the water, along the beaches, staying downstream from the fishermen, but turning over a lot of rocks to find that nearly perfect round shape.

When I try to think of one main thing people seek when they come to Montana, I am not sure. Yes, there is Yellowstone, Glacier, the Little Big Horn, but I think most come for the experience of the wild, the feeling of freedom. You find that experience when you see bear tracks along a river, or are hiking a trail to a waterfall, sometimes even along a freeway when a moose runs across the lanes in front of you. (That only happened once but I keep hoping for a repeat—of course, far enough in front to not endanger bumper or moose.