Winter Can't Arrive Too Soon, or Can it?

I wonder what’s next?

First it was disease, then drought. Now we’re dealing with wildfires and an infestation of grasshoppers.

Winter can’t arrive too soon.

Or can it?

It snowed Sept. 9, 1970 in the Beartooth Mountains. Early snow isn’t unusual there, but this was a dump, more than a foot of wet, heavy snow.

We were in the process of setting up a hunting camp at Granite Lake and the string of horses we’d left there in a pole corral escaped and disappeared during the blizzard. The wrangler who had been left in camp to tend the horses stayed in his sleeping bag during the storm and didn’t see them leave.

I rode in with the outfitter the next day to find the camp a mess. A couple of the tents, including the one the wrangler was in, had collapsed under the weight of the snow. He sheepishly crawled out at our arrival, was read the riot act and promptly fired.

Hunting season was less than a week away. Half of our horses were missing. Camp was a mess.

And all of a sudden it was winter.

I’d never seen snow so early. It was a bit of a shock. Nevertheless, I was told to stay at camp, fix the tents, and look for the missing horses.

I hadn’t found them by the time the season opened on the 15th. The borrowed stock we used to pack the dudes into camp included two Shetland ponies, and half a dozen green-broke horses that had been used in the filming of the movie Little Big Man.

I rode a short, black mule into camp. A well-broken steed, his owner used him for polo.

I was riding that mule a few days later when I found tracks in the snow a mile above camp and found the missing horses grazing just off the trail.

By the end of that 10-day hunt most of the snow was gone around camp, but the high country remained blanketed in white.

I was new to Montana and the mountains, and had never seen such weather. Now I expect it, long for it. But it’s been a while since we’ve had an early snow. September, in recent years, has simply brought more summer.

This would be a good year for that to change.

Winter can’t arrive too soon, can it?

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]