One Nation, Under God
One Nation, Under God
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While running the boat down the lake last week I spotted what looked like a bird of some sort on the water. Expecting it to fly as we passed, I was surprised when it didn’t. I slowed the boat, and turned around to investigate. As we got closer I could see it was a young gull. Grabbing the landing net I scooped up what turned out to be two birds hooked together on a fishing lure. Each gull was impaled on a treble hook through the beak. They were barely moving, but when I twisted the hook out o...
I always seem to be a step behind. Call me Johnny-come-lately. When everyone else was wearing Gore-Tex, I was still in leather and wool. When all my friends were listening to cassettes, I was rockin’ out to eight-tracks. While planning a trip last week to North Dakota to get a boat repaired, I sought directions online to the location of Swenson Marine in Bismarck. As I was reaching for a pen and notebook to copy the information from my laptop, a brilliant thought struck me; take a picture w...
I saw a picture online last week of a friend posing with a handsome brown trout he’d caught. “It’s hopper season!” read the caption. I hadn’t thought about “that” hopper season in years. Instead, the hopper season I’ve become familiar with has biblical plague connotations. The grasshoppers were so thick in north central Montana last summer that swarms of them in flight were picked up on radar. While that’s yet to happen this summer, there’s certainly no shortage. Hoppers at our cabin on Fort P...
I recently read a story about two young men who paddled their canoe from Butte to the Pacific Ocean, completing the 1,300-mile journey in 52 days. I read the initial story when they began the trip on Silver Bow Creek. I never expected to read a story about the conclusion. During my time working for both the Livingston Enterprise and the Bozeman Chronicle I wrote and edited a number of stories about such trips. Plenty of would-be adventurers have grand visions of starting a float trip near the...
The railroad bridge collapse last month that spilled tanker cars full of liquid asphalt and molten sulfur into the Yellowstone River was hardly the first indignity the river has suffered. A broken oil pipeline under the river near Billings a few years ago comes to mind. So does a broken sewer line over the river at Gardiner, to name a few. The longest free-flowing river in the lower 48 has taken some abuse. Before the rail line between Livingston and Gardiner was discontinued, trains used to del...
I quit gardening this year. For the second time. No more tilling, planting, weeding, watering, or harvesting for me. My family always grew a large vegetable garden, and I was required to work in it. Once I left home, I vowed to never garden again, a vow I kept until I began growing gardens of my own. I had a small garden in Livingston, and a bit larger one in Bozeman, but it was in Malta where I really cut loose. My first garden here was a 15 x 40-foot plot soon followed by another of the same...
On Father’s Day, I went fishing and thought about Dad. I don’t think about him every day. I’m not one to celebrate heavenly birthdays or lament his passing at the age of 90 nearly two decades ago. But I always think about him when I fish. He and I fished together often. We didn’t agree on a lot — religion and politics come to mind. Get us on the water, however, our differences vanished and we were best buds. Dad taught me to fly fish. It wasn’t something many folks did in southern Indiana, an...
Barb and I spent the morning at the lake catching up on chores. It was too windy to fish. By early afternoon, however, the wind began to lay. “Let’s go fishing,” Barb said. I was in the boat at the dock rigging a couple of rods watching her walk down the hill with an insulated bag of food and drinks when I noticed an ominous bank of clouds approaching. “Let’s wait this out,” I suggested, and we headed up the hill back to the house. By the time we got there big drops of rain had begun to fa...
They say money doesn’t buy happiness. Apparently it doesn’t buy fish either. I own a fishing boat with all the bells and whistles. It has three motors, sonar, and GPS. There are a dozen rods in the on-board locker, drawers filled with every lure on the market, and a live-well big enough to hold me. There’s even a retractable yard stick to measure all those fish I don’t catch. Before I could afford such a craft, however, I fished out of more modest boats and caught more fish. My most successful t...
It’s nearly June and I haven’t been in the water yet. There was a time I never would have let that happen. On the news yesterday I saw it was supposed to be 95 degrees in Paducah, Ky. I used to work at a marina near there, and when it was that hot I would start my day in the water, cooling off with a dip before opening the bait shop at first light. By now I would have been swimming for a month already. My friends and I also made it a point to start skiing in April, the water still cold eno...
In a state known for weather extremes, it’s the most dreary that I most dislike. While a week of sub-zero temperatures quickly grows old, and summer heat waves are hotter and last longer than ever before, both pale in comparison to the depressing downer of smoke season. Typically, we don’t have to deal with smoke in Montana until later in the summer when the forests dry and start to burn. It’s all preventable, we’re told, if only the forests were better maintained. One former president, in a st...
I’ve always been reluctant to jump on bandwagons. The latest this or that rarely appealed to me. Then I heard about No Mow May, a movement that encourages folks to let their lawns grow unfettered during the month of May in an effort to benefit bees and other pollinators. Without hesitation I clambered aboard that wagon and joined the band. In all honesty, however, it has little to do with my concern for bees, and a lot to do with my disdain for lawn mowing. I’d embrace any movement that get...
The water is back. Following years of drought that dried up much of the state, an exceptional winter snowpack appears to have turned the tide. Every stock tank and ox bow up here is brim full. I may even have a lake house once again. For two years the water in Fort Peck Lake has been dropping, so much so that the bay upon which my house sits began to more closely resemble a ditch. Since the first of March, however, the lake has been rising steadily, up nearly four feet already, and the snow in t...
I got out with the dogs last week for our first long walk of the year. A couple of us are showing our age. I limp a bit more than I used to, and although I didn’t think it possible, Ace has gotten even slower. Never a fast dog, Ace has paced himself his entire life. It’s served him well. With the exception of a slower gait and a graying muzzle, you’d never guess he’s almost 12. I think. He might be going on 11. A middle dog, he always slipped under the radar, hunting behind older, better-trained...
The drawing for special elk permits has come and gone, and for the first time in memory I didn’t care. Filling out an application for a special tag was something I used to do every spring without fail. It increased my odds of killing an elk, and guaranteed I‘d have an elk license in my pocket come fall, a general elk license being the prerequisite for the drawing. I loved to hunt elk. Over the years I managed to kill 20, evenly divided between cows and bulls. Whether I drew a special tag or not...
Technology baffles me. Most of my skills are archaic, involving hand tools and shovels. Like that old Hank Williams Jr. song, I can run a trot line and skin a buck deer, but my i-watch remains a mystery, the fish-finder in my boat is still a work in progress, and Siri haunts me. I’m even at the mercy of a trash can. About a year ago Barb decided it was time to replace our kitchen trash can. It sat tucked away out of sight under the counter where its decrepit condition went largely unnoticed u...
Be careful what you wish for. Following years of drought and rapidly declining water levels we finally got a real winter. Now it’s spring and the melt has begun. It looks like we’ll have plenty of water in our bay at Fort Peck Lake once again. Unfortunately, however, I can’t get there. Lat week the north fork of Rock Creek washed out a culvert on the only road leading to our cabin, taking a sizable chunk of road with it. Until the road is fixed or the ice melts there’s no way in or out. While th...
I must be out of touch. I had no idea that transsexuals, and concealed firearms were the most important issues facing me and my neighbors in rural Phillips County. I would have thought the closing of the local retirement home -- one of seven shut down last year across the state -- or perhaps rail safety, would top the list. Maybe a general lack of rural health care or failing infrastructure in Montana’s small towns might pique constituents’ interest. But no. Apparently we’re more conce...
From the first day that hunters were allowed to harvest bison that wandered out of Yellowstone National Park there have been protests. A bison advocate jabbed a hunter with a ski pole that first season. Others chained themselves to a gate, hoping to disrupt the hunt. Negative publicity eventually prompted state officials to limit the hunt to American Indians, with only a few permits issued to the general public. It appeared to be a wise move. Indians have hunted bison for thousands of years,...
Wow! Another accolade for Bozeman. Now, according to Time.com, it’s one of the greatest places on the planet. That information appeared on my facebook feed -- surprise, surprise -- compliments of a real estate agent. Bozeman, like most every other town in the state, had already been included on a plethora of lists: best mid-size city in the U. S., top ski town in the West, favorite spot for trust-funders to pretend to be locals, etc. And it is a swell place, but greatest on the planet? Why n...
Leaving Malta, a couple of weeks ago, headed south on vacation, we managed to slip between storms sweeping the country. Except for a stretch of snow-covered highway through Island Park, Idaho, we had dry pavement all the way to the desert. I doubt we’ll be so lucky on our return trip. The atmospheric river which I had been hearing so much about this winter is still raging. We’re on the edge of it and we’re nearly in Mexico. Somewhere between here and home, I suspect we’ll have to cross it, but...
Barb and I are enjoying a closeness while traveling we hadn’t experienced before. We’ll see how long it lasts. For the past 30 years we’ve fled Montana in March seeking warmer climes. It used to be Florida, a five-day road trip with a boat in tow. Now it’s the desert Southwest, a much shorter journey, with nothing in tow. We’d always driven a pickup or SUV on our escape from the frigid North. This year, however, we’re traveling in Barb’s Mini Cooper convertible, a cool car, but certainly mor...
I’ve got most of the gear on the list of required stuff to call yourself an outdoorsman in Montana. But like that line from an old Meatloaf song “I won’t do that.” “That” in this case being a customized grill guard for my pickup. My truck is already big enough without a cow-catcher hanging off the front like a locomotive. I carry a Leatherman on my belt, have a bone saw in my pack, and wear a neck rag when it’s cold. I’ve owned horses, drift boats, and a Honda Trail 90. I’ve never owned a grill...
Winter started early. The snow that fell in November is still here, hidden under all the snow that’s fallen since. Another storm is on the way, promising more snow and a third bout of sub-zero cold. I’m glad I got out last week. It was barely below freezing with only a slight breeze. Inside the spearing shack it was warm enough to take off the gloves. Spearing fish is much like deer hunting from a stand: long periods of inactivity abruptly interrupted. One minute it’s hard to stay awake and t...
The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks inform me regularly when lion hunting season closes in each district. I don’t hunt mountain lions, but I like living in a state where I could if I wanted. And I like knowing they’re there. I used to think lions in Montana were limited to the mountainous regions of the state, hence the name, but I’ve since discovered that’s not the case. Shortly after moving to Malta, I was hunting antelope on public land south of town while Barb waited in the...
