October 21-25, 2006
Staying at the Grouse Mountain Lodge, a rugged, woodsy owl kind of place, decorated in The Spoils of The Mighty Hunter, as if someone has just felled and dragged a mastadon through the lobby -- everything antlers, bear skins, eagles, and big horn sheep.
Everything is flavored with huckleberries here; Montana, and most of the Pacific Northwest, is dotted everywhere along its mountain ranges with huckleberries, a favorite of the same bears whose (fake?) skins are nailed to the walls in the lodge. You don't have to go snatch them right out of the bears' paws though -- they put them into everything. Huckleberry pie, huckleberry ice cream sauce, huckleberry jam, huckleberry barbecue sauce, huckleberry gummy bears, huckleberry jelly beans, huckleberry milkshakes, huckleberry candles, huckleberry lip gloss, huckleberry soap....
And everywhere, the slow, drawling pace of the cartoon Huckleberry Hound. The main street in Whitefish, Montana (your standard drag through town with churches, bars, and artisan shops) is a sleepy stretch with two traffic lights and no stop signs -- you just slow down in your 4-wheel drive and look both ways, strictly on the honor system (just imagine this and the chaos that would ensue in downtown DC). Every other store is hawking huckleberry crafts and foodstuffs, and leaning heavy on the bear motif -- everything from carved bears to bear claw earrings to beanie baby bears reclining in cloth canoes.
It's gorgeous countryside, with mountain peaks peeking at the end of every street. Had lunch with some colleagues at the Red Caboose (breakfast served all day, huge cheeseburgers, a burger made out of elk, and of course, a huckleberry martini on the menu). The sign at the door said: Hunters Welcome And Their Widows" and the sign for the rest room was a Railroad Crossing sign (RR = rest rooms).
Walking through town, I came across a playbill with a ringer for Dick Cheney on it -- nice to see that the Animatronic VP is branching out from just shooting people on outings in the woods (smile). The local gas station sold (what else?) huckleberry slushies.
A few of the downtown buildings had an interesting generational project displayed on them -- illustrated storytelling told by senior citizens to schoolkids. Someone in their nineties would would relate a story to a 9-year old, who would write out the story and illustrate it. Some good, timeless advice there on the walls, such as "Be Careful Who You Sit Next To On The Bus."
The townspeople look and act like regular folks, but I can't help wondering if one of them is secretly a Frank Zappa dental floss tycoon (wiki...youtube...)....
The morning was spent in a meeting of educators in the Media Arts (in a room with rugs on the walls and a portrait of dogs playing poker), and the evening in one of those faux cocktail parties that I didn't bother photographing because it would be the same stock characters you see at every one of those things: people dressed in Business Casual clustered around tall round tables with no chairs, spearing stuffed mushroom caps and tuna fish on white toast triangles and smoked salmon, and asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, exchanging their tickets at the bar for gin and tonics and Whitefish Beer, and making small talk, an enormous stuffed big horn sheep presiding over the festivities from a high shelf above us all. After awhile, JoAnn (a colleague from HCC I traveled with to Montana) and I went to the hotel restaurant (antler chandeliers, roaring fire in the stone fireplace, huckleberry cream soda on the menu) for steak and, inevitably, some huckleberry ice cream.
In spite of the town's name, I haven't seen any "whitefish" on any menus -- just salmon (more stuff swiped from the bears...maybe that old saw IS true about Sometimes You Get the Bear, Sometimes the Bear Gets You...and Sometimes You Get The Bear's Food...haha!)
Can't help thinking (and hearing in my head) of a song that my mother used to sing -- one of those corny cowboy songs that apparently appeared in "The Streets of Laredo":
My home's in Montana
I wear a bandana
My spurs are of silver my pony is gray
While riding the ranges my luck never changes
With foot in the stirrup I gallop away
Years later, I can still call up the tune and the lyrics at will, but somehow I still blank out on my PIN number when I'm standing in front of the ATM....
Wasn't slated for any more business activities until Tuesday, and you could rent a car at the hotel gift shop (huckleberry taffy, huckleberry pancake syrup, huckleberry tea, huckleberry vinaigrette...) and go out to Glacier National Park, so I packed up my camera and went.
A gorgeous drive on a gorgeous day, trees rusting in the autumn snap, like stiff paintbrushes set out to dry, although there was a point on the drive when I thought I was surrounded by fog, only to pop out -- POINK! -- and drive above the clouds instead. Giant bowls of rocks filled with foam, like God's cappuccino.
Public restrooms in the sky: a hole, a can, and a lid, and no running water, but it must have been drilled straight down for miles in metal pipes because it was still gurgling into the belly of the earth when I left (Purell dispenser by the door).
Not a lot of wildlife on view, and of course most of the birds have packed up and gone to Florida, leaving the bears to go sh** in the woods on their own -- you had to watch your step on the (what else would it be named?) Huckleberry Trail that jiggered off into the frosty woods, but there were some deer and one or two chipmunks who were willing to pose for pictures.
The deer seemed tame and off to the side of the road, but I watched for darting animals just in case -- there were too many strange-sounding place names like "Flathead Lake" and "Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump" and my plan was to return home with my head intact.
Kept driving up to Polebridge, still within the park perimeter, but drove through some (inexplicable...?) private property, which looked like someone's cattle ranch. Passed a place with a sign that said "Wurtz Cabin" but it didn't look *that* bad to me...signs for the Northern Lights Saloon (closed), signs, Burma-Shave style, exhorting you to slow down, and advertising a shop up ahead with coffee and internet access, but it was closed too :(
Polebridge itself was a little oasis in the woods, with an open general store (huckleberry lollipops, huckleberry brownies, huckleberry danish -- although they did also sell scones and tepid soft drinks along with the standard wire-n-turquoise jewelry, bear-motif greeting cards, and boxes of overpriced aspirin and Tampax). Out back, there was a "half moon house" (another hole in the ground, another Purell moment), with a poster inside detailing how to identify grizzly bears, and an entire library shelf over the can of raggedy paperback books. I looked at the spines, expecting to find Huckleberry Finn, but it was mostly Patricia Cornwall-style potboilers and mysteries. A dozen or so picnic tables outside and a giant rusty can of a barbecue pit indicating that the place probably does a lot of business in the warmer months.
(Excellent au gratin cheese and onion scone, by the way.)
Polebridge was just an hour or so from the Canadian border, so I went up to stand with one foot in each country -- one in British Columbia, the other in the good old U.S. of A. The "border," incidentally, is a rock-lined ditch zippering its way across a clearing, Canadian trees on this side, American trees over here, an ironic little Barbie-sized Washington Monument on the Canadian side, and signs forbidding you to take away any rocks.
Git along little dogies....