Montana 2009: Day 5

Today we drove all around the surrounding area.

BUT FIRST, MAJOR EXCITEMENT!!! I saw my first moose today. Three of them, to be exact. I feel somewhat guilty about this, because Tim has always been perturbed to be the only Ewald not to see a moose in the wild. Now somehow his little Southern belle of a wife has stolen a march on him, and seen not one, but THREE moose in the wild. How does that happen in a fair universe? It's a mystery. By the way, they are huge in person. I was glad to be in the car. I don't think I got a picture of all three of them, as there appeared to be a mom and two calves. The mom was mostly lying down in the tall grass, taking a break while she could, most likely. My pic is of the two calves.

I didn’t take many pictures, because it’s hard to do justice to the scenery from a moving car with a tiny little digital camera. We did see not one, but two, spectacular lakes and went to check out the local ski resort. I’d love to come back and ski sometime. Not when I’m heavily pregnant THIS winter, but maybe another time.
We found a wonderful picnic spot that was very scenic and peaceful and absolutely surrounded by wild sage. It smelled delicious. This picnic was much better than the one the day before, even if Steve did have a run in with the wild sage brush! He was very heroic about his injuries.

In the midst of our driving around, I realized that all the houses looked familiar to me. Oddly enough, this is because of one particular house in NC, on Badin Lake, to be exact. The Jacksons’ neighbor built a cabin beside their lake house out of logs that he flew down from Montana. This cabin had a very bright teal tin roof, which always struck me a somewhat obnoxious color, but now I realize he was just being accurate. The houses in Montana really do have brightly colored tin roofs. So I should apologize to this person for mentally slandering his choice of roof color. Now I say “Well done, way to do the thing all the way!”

This was our last full day at the cabin, and Bonnie and Sylvia actually left that night to go back to Helena. Mary and Steve and I plan to leave the next morning, after cleaning and straightening things up. This trip has been wonderful, but I’m looking forward to being back home. The extremes of weather and terrain have sculpted some incredible scenery and some extremely self reliant people. Native Montanans actually remind me a lot of Mainers…they both live in sparsely populated areas that are incredibly beautiful. I think it makes for a sort of “rugged individualism” that I can’t quite mimic. I appreciate their qualities, but always feel a secret relief to be fleeing back to long showers and easily accessible box stores. I do think it’s worth thinking about how self reliant and competent people here have to be to survive: that’s a skill that many Americans, including myself, have lost or never had. More on this subject later.