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rebeccmeisterMontana was, in a word, beautiful.
On Friday, A and I drove up from Salt Lake City, the first time I've ever approached Ennis from the south. Utah had some nice-looking mountains (fairly reminiscent of Arizona mountains), Idaho was rather flat and featureless (though the buyhashbrowns.com sign was amusing), but almost as soon as we crossed the Montana border, the mountains--real mountains--started to spring up around us. We traveled up I-15 through Dillon, and then headed east through Sheridan, the town where my aunt Pam and uncle Chris had built their retirement home. Sheridan is spared from the winds that whip through the Madison Valley, and Pam and Chris's house is built next to one of the tree-lined creeks that runs down towards the Ruby River (as usual, correct me if I'm wrong, Dad). Uncle Chris told me that Pam had discovered morel mushrooms all over the property and had collected up over five gallons of them to eat and dry and store.
Past Sheridan, we drove through the ghost towns of Nevada City and Virginia City, favorite destinations on family visits to Ennis. It's hard to call Virginia City a real ghost town now, for it has profited enough from tourism to attract no small number of full-time residents. My parents' Roadside Geology book taught us about the gold-mining processes that have left behind enormous windrows of rock in the valley there. Leaving Virginia City, we crested up and over the Virginia City hill, and then traveled down, down, down to the Madison Valley and Ennis.
My family's traditional approach into Ennis has been from the north, traveling along I-90 through Butte and reaching the Madison Valley from the Norris Hill, heading past Ennis Lake towards Ennis. With this approach, one sees the mountain ranges that surround the valley creep up on the left and the right, the Gravelly Range to the west and the Madison Range and Spanish Peaks to the east.
Approaching from the west, in contrast, one is confronted with a direct and glorious view of the Madison Range, especially striking if one arrives in the evening in time to see the sun light up the peaks. Front and center is Fan Mountain, named for the beautiful alluvial fan below the true summit in the center.
Fan Mountain, 10,304 ft.
It took me four attempts across four separate summers before I was able to overcome agoraphobia and we successfully dodged thunderstorms to reach the top from the northern approach. I believe that was the last time I was back in Montana, the summer of 2002, the summer after Granddad died. This trip, I went for a jog out to the cemetery to visit Grandma and Granddad's graves, oriented so that they, too, face Fan.
The other peak that always stands out for me is actually two peaks that appear merged from a distance: a red-orange, domed pate when viewed from the western approach. The mountains are the Helmet (aptly named), and behind it, slightly to the south and east, Red Mountain, standing at 10,876 feet. That was the first mountain whose summit I reached, encouraged by my father and the coaching of my cousin-in-law, Jim.
---
This trip, we did not climb any mountains. As we sat on the front porch of our small cabin at the El Western lodge, the morning before we left town, my father told my mother and I about another adventure that he and his best friend Kit had out in those mountains [Incidentally, yesterday would have been Kit's birthday.]. Past Fan Mountain, out towards the north and east, is another distinctive peak, Beehive Mountain. My father and Kit had set out for an expedition up to the top one year, which they successfully reached. The real adventure began when they headed back down. Somehow or another (and this is starting to seem like a familiar pattern for adventures among these mountains), they ended up traveling down into an adjacent valley instead of back to the valley from which they had originated. I should note that many of these mountains either lack trails or possess too many trails (game trails or cowpaths), which add to the adventure when one is out hiking.
As night began to fall, they realized that they were lost, so they built a fire to stay warm, and spent a long period of time carefully scrutinizing the quadrangle maps (topographical maps) that they had carried with them. Once the sun came up, they successfully navigated back towards their point of origin. The amusing part of the story comes from their supposed rescue mission. Two guys from somewhere back east were spending the summer with Kit's parents, Chet and Joan, and got worried when my dad and Kit failed to reappear at the end of the first day. Nobody else was really worried because my dad and Kit were out on a backpacking expedition and were expected to be gone for a while--plus, it wasn't the first time they'd headed out into the mountains. So these two fellows set out to look for my dad and Kit, and brought a rifle along with them, which they fired into the air to try and make noise so that my dad and Kit could find them. I imagine their concerns were eventually alleviated.
My dad said that he turned this adventure into an essay for a class in school, entitled "The Beehive Bumble," which was surely a better and more amusing recounting than the one above. He eventually gave the story to Joan, Kit's mother, and by now it is most likely lost somewhere.
---
Our family has rarely, if ever, visited Montana in August. The snow is gone from almost all of the mountain peaks (except for one distinctive, persistent patch), but the typical summer weather patterns persist. Mornings are cool, and dawn either clear or cloudy. By mid-day, it is "hot," with temperatures approaching 90 degrees. Afternoons bring rain and cooling thunderstorms, surrounding the valley with dramatic clouds and lighting. These thunderstorms make it dangerous to linger on the mountaintops, if one is out rambling around.
On Friday, when my cousin A and I arrived and headed up towards the church, we witnessed a double rainbow off to the southeast. The press of the arriving relatives was somewhat overwhelming; there were probably over sixty people in the basement of the church that evening, and cameras flashed dazzlingly as everyone tried to record every instant the family gathering. It has been too many years since I have seen most members of the family, and I hardly recognized a few cousins who have shot up and turned into teenagers or adults. When my father and aunts and uncles reached the moment when they were expected to line up for a photo of The Siblings, though they are clearly expert at such line-ups, they found the experience difficult; for the first time, my aunts Trish and Mary had to line up next to each other, without Pam in-between. The death of a sibling, especially a younger one, is hard.
The funeral was Saturday morning; Saturday afternoon, Pam's ashes were buried at a special spot on the property out at Sheridan. My uncle Chris (or Grandpa Ugly, to which he responds, "I resemble them remarks") and my cousins Jesse, Jared, and Thyge support each other and must carry on.
On Friday, A and I drove up from Salt Lake City, the first time I've ever approached Ennis from the south. Utah had some nice-looking mountains (fairly reminiscent of Arizona mountains), Idaho was rather flat and featureless (though the buyhashbrowns.com sign was amusing), but almost as soon as we crossed the Montana border, the mountains--real mountains--started to spring up around us. We traveled up I-15 through Dillon, and then headed east through Sheridan, the town where my aunt Pam and uncle Chris had built their retirement home. Sheridan is spared from the winds that whip through the Madison Valley, and Pam and Chris's house is built next to one of the tree-lined creeks that runs down towards the Ruby River (as usual, correct me if I'm wrong, Dad). Uncle Chris told me that Pam had discovered morel mushrooms all over the property and had collected up over five gallons of them to eat and dry and store.
Past Sheridan, we drove through the ghost towns of Nevada City and Virginia City, favorite destinations on family visits to Ennis. It's hard to call Virginia City a real ghost town now, for it has profited enough from tourism to attract no small number of full-time residents. My parents' Roadside Geology book taught us about the gold-mining processes that have left behind enormous windrows of rock in the valley there. Leaving Virginia City, we crested up and over the Virginia City hill, and then traveled down, down, down to the Madison Valley and Ennis.
My family's traditional approach into Ennis has been from the north, traveling along I-90 through Butte and reaching the Madison Valley from the Norris Hill, heading past Ennis Lake towards Ennis. With this approach, one sees the mountain ranges that surround the valley creep up on the left and the right, the Gravelly Range to the west and the Madison Range and Spanish Peaks to the east.
Approaching from the west, in contrast, one is confronted with a direct and glorious view of the Madison Range, especially striking if one arrives in the evening in time to see the sun light up the peaks. Front and center is Fan Mountain, named for the beautiful alluvial fan below the true summit in the center.
Fan Mountain, 10,304 ft.
It took me four attempts across four separate summers before I was able to overcome agoraphobia and we successfully dodged thunderstorms to reach the top from the northern approach. I believe that was the last time I was back in Montana, the summer of 2002, the summer after Granddad died. This trip, I went for a jog out to the cemetery to visit Grandma and Granddad's graves, oriented so that they, too, face Fan.
The other peak that always stands out for me is actually two peaks that appear merged from a distance: a red-orange, domed pate when viewed from the western approach. The mountains are the Helmet (aptly named), and behind it, slightly to the south and east, Red Mountain, standing at 10,876 feet. That was the first mountain whose summit I reached, encouraged by my father and the coaching of my cousin-in-law, Jim.
---
This trip, we did not climb any mountains. As we sat on the front porch of our small cabin at the El Western lodge, the morning before we left town, my father told my mother and I about another adventure that he and his best friend Kit had out in those mountains [Incidentally, yesterday would have been Kit's birthday.]. Past Fan Mountain, out towards the north and east, is another distinctive peak, Beehive Mountain. My father and Kit had set out for an expedition up to the top one year, which they successfully reached. The real adventure began when they headed back down. Somehow or another (and this is starting to seem like a familiar pattern for adventures among these mountains), they ended up traveling down into an adjacent valley instead of back to the valley from which they had originated. I should note that many of these mountains either lack trails or possess too many trails (game trails or cowpaths), which add to the adventure when one is out hiking.
As night began to fall, they realized that they were lost, so they built a fire to stay warm, and spent a long period of time carefully scrutinizing the quadrangle maps (topographical maps) that they had carried with them. Once the sun came up, they successfully navigated back towards their point of origin. The amusing part of the story comes from their supposed rescue mission. Two guys from somewhere back east were spending the summer with Kit's parents, Chet and Joan, and got worried when my dad and Kit failed to reappear at the end of the first day. Nobody else was really worried because my dad and Kit were out on a backpacking expedition and were expected to be gone for a while--plus, it wasn't the first time they'd headed out into the mountains. So these two fellows set out to look for my dad and Kit, and brought a rifle along with them, which they fired into the air to try and make noise so that my dad and Kit could find them. I imagine their concerns were eventually alleviated.
My dad said that he turned this adventure into an essay for a class in school, entitled "The Beehive Bumble," which was surely a better and more amusing recounting than the one above. He eventually gave the story to Joan, Kit's mother, and by now it is most likely lost somewhere.
---
Our family has rarely, if ever, visited Montana in August. The snow is gone from almost all of the mountain peaks (except for one distinctive, persistent patch), but the typical summer weather patterns persist. Mornings are cool, and dawn either clear or cloudy. By mid-day, it is "hot," with temperatures approaching 90 degrees. Afternoons bring rain and cooling thunderstorms, surrounding the valley with dramatic clouds and lighting. These thunderstorms make it dangerous to linger on the mountaintops, if one is out rambling around.
On Friday, when my cousin A and I arrived and headed up towards the church, we witnessed a double rainbow off to the southeast. The press of the arriving relatives was somewhat overwhelming; there were probably over sixty people in the basement of the church that evening, and cameras flashed dazzlingly as everyone tried to record every instant the family gathering. It has been too many years since I have seen most members of the family, and I hardly recognized a few cousins who have shot up and turned into teenagers or adults. When my father and aunts and uncles reached the moment when they were expected to line up for a photo of The Siblings, though they are clearly expert at such line-ups, they found the experience difficult; for the first time, my aunts Trish and Mary had to line up next to each other, without Pam in-between. The death of a sibling, especially a younger one, is hard.
The funeral was Saturday morning; Saturday afternoon, Pam's ashes were buried at a special spot on the property out at Sheridan. My uncle Chris (or Grandpa Ugly, to which he responds, "I resemble them remarks") and my cousins Jesse, Jared, and Thyge support each other and must carry on.
