saturday 22nd august: kalispell, montanawe went on a hike, we being me, robert, toby, and madi. robert and toby shared carrying madi in one of those rucksack things you carry small children in - she is 2 and a half so weighs a fair bit when you're carrying her on your back for a long way, apparently. we planned on doing a 4.5 mile hike, in the jewel basin area. we hiked up mount aeneas, and passed the place where bert used to launch with his hang gliders back in the days. this area is in the swan mountain range, and near swan lake. once you're on the peak you look over the back to 2 green blue little lakes, shimmering like jewels down there.
we came upon some mountain goats leaping around the place and generally being very good hikers. they are very quiet and kind of ethereal, they have funny faces too. madi spotted some sitting down on a patch of snow which was quite amazing as they were barely visible against the greyish snow. we figure she'll be a pro hunter one day. the hike ended up being 10.5 miles and took around 5 and a half hours. coming down we stopped at the jewelly lakes and ate our sandwiches and apples and exclaimed at how beautiful it all was. harlee the dog jumped around in the lake making nice ripples.
there were mountain meadows that were like the garden of eden, full of beautiful wild flowers - red ones called indian paintbrushes are my favourite - and beargrass, which is kind of tall fluffy grass stuff, and purple and yellow flowers, and lots of chipmunks.bert has seen lots of amazing places in montana, having grown up there, and has seen lots of places in the whole world, but on reaching the summit of mount aeneas, he exclaimed thus:
Hidden away by the Gods, like a necklace of pearls, among the crags and fastness of the [Swan] Mountains, lies the Jewel Basin, the enchanted land of this our Montana. Friends, I have seen the sun set on the minarets of Spain, and make splendid the dome of St. Sophia in Constantinople. I have watched the play of color upon the desert of Egypt, with the Sphinx and pyramids. I have made a trail through the hinterland of the Canadian Rockies, to where the Aurora Borealis from the polar skies make the northern night glorious … but for kaleidoscopic lights and shadows, for octaves of tone and color, for unending variety of the moods and forms of Nature, Jewel Basin is the most charmed and charming spot in all the world. *
we returned, tired and happy to jessica and toby's, and went up to their cabin on bitterroot lake, for the rest of the weekend. there are so many lakes around montana, all totally flat and glassy and just the cleanest purest water you've ever seen.
this lake is around 20 minutes from kalispell where jessica and toby live, so they go there most weekends to hang out. whilst there we canoed (i made bert do most of the paddling), looked at some of the amazing houses on the lake, took some underwater photos, tried to get madi to go canoing too but she started looking like she was going to cry so we didn't pursue the matter, had a campfire and roasted marshmallows and put them with chocolate between 2 little biscuits - this is called a smore and is very tasty. maybe it's called a smore because once you've tasted one, you want s'more. we also looked at some horses up the road, i went for a 20 minute run and realised i have lost whatever fitness i ever had in my life, ate some more food to get over this realisation, got a bit fatter, slept a bit to get over all of these things, looked at fish in the lake off the deck, and ate beetroot knowingly and willingly for the first time in my life - it was so much nicer than i had ever anticipated.
on sunday night around 1230am we were all fast asleep and suddenly harlee starts barking like a mad dog, all loud and mad, jessica gets up and is telling him to shut up, bert gets up and goes to see what's happening, all the while the tv is on for some mysterious reason, showing black and white fuzz and buzzing like in a horror film. there's 2 big raccoons outside on the deck and harlee is desperate to chase them up a tree, but can't get at them, thus the barking - bert goes out with the camera to get a picture of them, this is his always his first concern when faced with a dangerous/vaguely stressful situation that nobody else is enjoying (see bear story coming up). raccoons are actually very vicious and not to be taken lightly. anyway he gets a few pictures, then comes in and they run off, and harlee shuts up and the tv is switched off again, by us this time, not the ghost that originally switched it on - now that was spooky. it had done it the night before too as we'd all been sitting there. perhaps it's on a timer, but it seemed like a different time each time. so it must have been a ghost wanting to watch the news.
tuesday we took madi for a bike ride in a little trailer behind a bike - i rode that bike and bert rode a trailerless one. we did a little circuit of the neighbourhood, she liked it, she hadn't really wanted to go but after about 1 minute of it she said she was really liking it and didn't want to ever stop. we went on some vaguely gravelly road for a minute or so which she didn't like but we sang some songs at that point. the small hills we went up were pretty challenging with the trailer and only 3 gears, even after my 20 minute training run the day before...that night we went to depot park in kalispell to see some live music, it was rob quist, who used to be in a band called mission mountain wood band, all the other members of which had perished in a plane crash over flathead lake in the early eighties rather tragically. bert kind of knew them as he used to go listen to them back in the days, so he went and said hi and shook rob's hand and i got a photo. madi liked the girl playing guitar so i took her to say hello to her too, she was very cool, she was the daughter of rob quist. there was another boy on guitar too who was his son. madi danced around with some other kids and we watched with bated breath to see how long before she'd collide with one of them and it'd all end in tears. there was a collision but no tears which was good, she's pretty hardy like that. she was definitely the cutest kid around, and i'm not just saying that like people do sometimes just to be polite. me and bert went to moose's saloon after that, a real spit and sawdust kind of bar, you eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor, or at each other, or at other people. we got a pitcher of moose drool, a dark beer which you wouldn't want to drink too much of. bert used to have hang glider meetings there. the wooden walls are covered with people's carved initials and the lights are low and seedy, and there's a couple of old arcade machines there too. very authentic montana.
wednesday 26th was fairly uneventful. i pondered whether to go to canada for a year, as i can get a work visa for it as long as i get it sorted before i turn 31. in the end i decided not to, but it filled a good few days worth of pondering.
thursday we got a truck to borrow from jessica and toby which was cool. we drove around to look at some other trucks with a view on buying them, old ford 150s, gmc's etc - i learnt a fair bit about trucks and 4 wheel drives, and fuel injection versus carburetors, and intake manifolds (what the hell), and things like that - not really because i need to know these things, mainly just by a process of osmosis from listening to bert talk to various different truck sellers/mechanics about them. when men talk about cars and motorbikes and engines and mechanics etc, it literally is like listening to a different language for me, and also i wonder how did they acquire that language? i know bert knows about aeroplanes because that's been his life, but when did he acquire all that car language that he just lapses into when around a car and other men? it's mysterious.
we went to look at gardener's rv place, and looked at some used trailers/rvs (an rv is a recreational vehicle, ie what we would call a campervan or motorhome). i asked if we could please look in the biggest rv they had? he drove us on the little golf cart he uses to get around the parking lot full of rvs, to the biggest rv they currently had. it had a fireplace, a tv that popped up from above the fireplace, 4 leather swanky seats, a washer and dryer, a bath. it had more stuff than most people's houses have, i couldn't believe how swanky it was. he knew we couldn't possibly afford it as we had told him so, but it was fun to just look at it. we then went to the outlaw inn, where it was 2 for 1 on long island ice teas, so we ordered 2, i mean 1, which meant 2, then another 2, or one plus one as it was 2 for 1. in all we had 4, 2 each, and were a bit drunk after that as they were a bit strong. when bert had filmed his first of the 3 wrigleys chewing gum adverts he did, the whole film crew and him had stayed at the outlaw inn for the month, waiting for the perfect weather for filming and flying. in our drunken haze bert bought some cowboy boots, and i bought some socks - i suppose this isn't the most ridiculous thing you can do when drunk, but there you go, that is as crazy as we get at the moment.
in the parking lot we spotted a dog which i thought was a whippet and bert said was a grey ghost - we had an argument, then decided there was one way to settle this - we asked the owner, who was standing right by him. he's a grey ghost, he said. oh, i said, all deflated. the man was a bit fat, wearing a purple tshirt, and trying to use his iphone, all these things simultaneously. we asked him about himself, he was a dancer, and was coming from los angeles from a dance competition, he did these for fun and money and toured around the place, with the grey ghost. i wasn't sure if the long island ice teas were making all this surreal but i think it just basically was a bit surreal. i took some photos of the ghost, which as you would expect from a drunken photo of ghost, came out a bit blurry.
we went home to jessica and toby's and slept out in the garden in our new tent. the man in the shop said it's dead easy to put up - or rather he said it's real easy to put up, as they don't use 'dead' in an adverbial sense here in america - we were thinking what a liar, and cursing him, when after 10 minutes of sweating and swearing, i figured we were trying to put the outer up in place of the inner, and no wonder it didn't fit properly and was looking all wonky. this was funny and stressful at the same time, a bit like that time they nearly deported me in LA. i'd say this was probably a little bit funnier than that though.* actually this was not bert, but the reverend eugene cosgrove (not sure who he is), in 1919, - but you'd barely know the difference...
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