Sept 13 to November 1
It seemed like a short time in some ways and a long time in others since I left Montana on 5 December 2007 to come to Qatar. With all the new experiences and travel and places to go it was short but in terms of missing family, friends, and Montana, it was long…..way long.
It also seemed somewhat unreal that I was to have over 50 days of paid holiday. In my entire career since the military, I have never had a paid holiday. In fact, while in practice, it usually continued to cost me about $400 per day in overhead expenses to take time off. I suppose that explains why this time off was so appreciated.
I was on pins and needles getting back home. I had to overnight in DC and that seemed like a real long night. I put in a hard workout at the hotel gym to burn off some of my angst and energy but still didn’t sleep well. I was fortunate that the weather in the Dulles area was beautiful early fall and when my insomnia was deemed terminal at 0330, I had a great walk in the area of the hotel.
After doing all of my many flights for the past 20 years, it seemed strange to be flying into Helena. As I contemplated that I realized that it was only the second time I had used that airport. During my Marine Corp days, flying into Butte was the best way home. I only flew in and out of Helena on my way to interview for medical school in Seattle.
Justin met me at the airport with my pickup and it was great to see him. Being away for so long, my memory of him kept him more of a boy. Seeing what a nice looking squared away man he was pulled at my heart strings. It was great to be back with family.
I dropped him off at his place in the Helena Valley and I headed for Clancy. Driving big wide highways without much traffic and with real pleasant vistas kept me from feeling like I needed to rush. And after not driving faster than 45 mph for most of the interim, pushing up past 70, made things seem to go by real fast. Justin had been doing some tuning on the diesel in my F350 and it certainly did have some punch that I wasn’t used to having. I had a short fantasy about how fun it would be to have that big rig in Doha. I suspect that the racers in their big land cruisers might not assume the right of way so much.
Coming back to the ranch as home was also a strange emotion. For the past 25 years, somewhere else has been home and when I packed up all our gear from Missoula and put it into that big 50ft trailer, Clancy was to be our new headquarters or home……but we never really got to get grounded there before we took off for the Middle East. So, it felt like when I came back on leave from the Military….a real emotional rush to be in such safe and comfortable surroundings and a warm thankfulness to have such a great family to come back to see. The hugs with Mom and Dad were longer and more emotional than in the past and I appreciated being able to call their house home base during my stay.
We spent the evening doing lots of catching up, talking politics a bit, comparing aches and pains and sleep disturbances before going to bed.
The 9 hour time change was with me at 0330 again and I was up and going. Dad was up early too and had a breakfast with a couple of local men at the Hardware Café in Montana City. I joined them and again was conscious of how good it feels to sit with people who speak the same language and not have to strain to understand what is being said. It was mostly a political conversation and most of the topics were issues that I hear about where ever in the world I am visiting…..taxes, governments that don’t/won’t listen, and the weather. It felt good pulling out a fresh $100 bill from Qatar to pick up the tab for breakfast. It seemed like it was dividends coming back to the USA for the investment in $4 per gallon gasoline.
I spent 3 or 4 days on the ranch catching up with the family there. I really enjoyed catching up with my brothers and being able to really have some time to spend with them instead of the usual rush I had for the past 20 years where I would be hurrying from Missoula and back. It made me realize how much we let our occupations and the rat race pull us away from those things that count the most.
While I was enjoying my visit, I was also chomping at the bit to get to Missoula to see Bridger. So I took off and went via Butte to Missoula. I had a visit with Clancy and then headed over to Britta’s apartment. It was really an emotional experience again to hold Bridger and see so much of my kid in him. He was big and bright and handsome and a charmer. It took about 5 minutes for us to buddy-up.
I took advantage of the opportunity to be Grandpa and sent Britta off to school in the mornings and Bridger and I were off on the Missoula social circuit. He was a remarkably good kid being very patient and interactive and not at all fussy about not being entertained at all times. He really enjoyed riding around in the Audi TT with the top down. The only downside on that was that I had to talk louder as I tried to get him to repeat “grandpa”…..he must have thought I had a small vocabulary. I would say “grandpa” and he would point at the dome light which he wanted me to push on or off.
Visiting “my nurse” Candi who was at home recovering from back surgery was a real nice time. While we spent more time with each other than we did our own spouses for over 11 years, we really never had many opportunities to just sit and talk…..and I was reminded again of how we let our jobs take us away from the important things. She had a real difficult and complicated recovery from her surgery but she is as tough as bull’s hide and more stubborn too, so she put on a good act of feeling good and perky. She filled me in on all the comings and goings of work and her family. I had to leave before we were done catching up because I had to make an appearance at my old office. The girls there were expecting me and Marie had baked a rhubarb custard pie and threatened that she would get my partner Eric to eat the rest if I didn’t make it.
That reunion was also a warm and fuzzy affair. I was amazed at how easy it was to slip back into the comfortable camaraderie that we had shared for so many years. Watching them all hustle and try to talk to me, answer phones, room patients, and call in prescriptions made me realize that I didn’t really miss the stress of all of that. Bridger helped me with the pie and since we really didn’t have time to really chit chat, we made plans for another reunion later during my stay. What a wonderful and devoted bunch. I left feeling a bit sad that the healthcare system that relies on them all so much treats them so badly.
Britta had her first real place of her own in a nice apartment but when I looked around I could see lots of things that they didn’t have. So for most of my stay, I was making a daily trip to Target to pick up something I thought they really needed.
Britta and I had a lot of time to get to know each other better. She is a lot like my boys in that she sits and engages in conversation about issues and problems and philosophy unlike so many of their generation. I was very impressed by her level of emotional maturity and insight. One of the most profound things she said to me was….that her generation thought the whole world was based on M-TV and she didn’t know how they were ever going to find reality. And I was so happy that she didn’t even turn the TV on. It seems like so many young mothers use the TV as the baby sitter and entertainer. She is a really good mother whose parenting techniques are remarkable. Seeing at how our relationship was started, I am amazed and feel lucky at how close we are so soon. Maybe every father in law feels that way about the mother of his grandson but I haven’t made note of it. When she would leave for school or I would take off, I had to remind myself that this woman was an “almost 20 year old”…..she has the wisdom that many women never get. And she is intelligent, beautiful and blonde, what more could you want for a daughter?
It was Griz home coming weekend and my friend David Bjornson had a ticket for me. We made plans to meet downtown before the game and this gave me an opportunity to just walk around Higgins and Broadway in a non-hurried way. I had opportunity for the first time to see things that were always there and it was great to run into former patients. Missoula is a really nice town. While it surely does have a cosmopolitan (not sure if all the earth muffins should be included in that term) mix of people and very liberal politics, it has kept the feel of a conservative hometown downtown.
The game was a hoot but for me, it was mostly a social affair. With 25 thousand people there, I was always running into people I knew who knew I was supposed to be 10,000 miles away. It gave me a real sense of friendship and of being valued when many of my former patients (many of whom became good friends too) told me that they missed me and again thanked me for all that I had done for them over the years. It was the absolute truth when I replied and told them that the memories and joy that I took from being part of their lives made me the one who should be saying “thanks”. Anyway, I didn’t make it back into my seat until the 3rd quarter and leaving the game likewise was lots of greetings to many acquaintances.
That evening, my good friend and colleague, Dave Guth was having his retirement party at the Caras Park Pavilion. As always, his wife Pamela organizes a great event. There was a “hat” theme that I was aware of prior to the event but it made me wish that I would have know so that I could have worn an Arab scarf. It was a bit schizophrenic because I saw so many of the doctors with whom I had worked for years and I tried to visit with all of them a bit. It was almost like it was my party. It didn’t take long for this to make me acknowledge that I had made the right choice by getting out. They were still fighting the same battles with insurance companies, hospitals, and the government. It almost gave me an anxiety attack listening to their stories. And I had thought for many years while I was kicking and screaming to make the system work that I could be effective…….The system is bigger than all of us and its going to have to crash into pieces before it can be handled. I just hope that when it happens, physicians and nurses will still remember what the “doctor-patient relationship” really is. It could have been a party that went late for me but I had Grandpa duty so got home so that Britta could take off and study.
Leaving the kids to return to the Ranch was hard but there were other things to get done. So, over the mountain I went and started to work getting all my gear together for a trip to the mountains. Since we had parked the big trailer just before we left, I hadn’t had time to get it organized. I had to un-do some of the packing that I had done to insure that all the gear would have a stable trip from Missoula. It took me most of a day to get things sorted and organized. As luck would have it, one of the first things I came across was a fifth of single barrel Jack Daniels that someone had given me just before I left. It really tasted good as I took a break from time to time. (That bottle was mostly gone by the time I had repacked all my gear when I left for Qatar).
When I had packed the trailer, there was a method to my madness. I put all the gear that I would need for hunting, camping, fishing and doing horse related work in the back and organized on shelves. So, getting my gear together for the pack trip wasn’t hard.
Steve and I took the big 4 wheeler up to Brown’s gulch to get my mules and horses. Fortunately, they weren’t easily found and we had a good trip around the lower part of the ranch. I was really astounded by the damage the bark beetles were doing to the pine and fir. Even the great old trees that had survived many forest fires were turning yellow. I suspect that in 10 years, the hills are going to look pretty bare. About the only thing that will stop this bug is a long spell of really cold weather so all we can do is hope for a really cold winter.
When we found the herd, the white arab mare that Lisa rides acted just like a horse of her sex and lineage would be expected. With a perked up tail and cocked up head she led the boys off up the mountain before we could get ropes on them. I made an early morning motorcycle ride the next AM and she seemed to know that she couldn’t escape and went down to the corral as she was supposed to.
I had to get shoes on her, my mule Jackson, and one other mule that I would be using a lot during my trip into the wood. I picked April as the selected pack mule to get shoes. What a job putting shoes on 3 animals who hadn’t been ridden in a year and by an old boy who hadn’t done that kind of work in a year. The barn floor would have been wet with my sweat if it had not been dried by the heat of my grunting and complaining.
The Rocky Mountain Front and the Sun River country has always been a favorite place for me. In the fall, the mountains of the front and the Rockies to the west catch some of the early snow and the aspens changing colors in the drainages on the east side provide some very pretty contrasting scenery. I was planning on heading into the North Fork of the Sun by going in and out over Headquarters pass since I hadn’t been that route before; however, when I got way up the South Fork of the Teton I realized that there were two trailheads there and I made a change of plans to go south through the mountains of the front to Deep Creek and then head over the front and down Biggs creek to the Sun. While I remember the gist of the trails in my mind, I didn’t remember all the contour lines. When that bit of the earth’s crust flipped over, it didn’t have a lot of organization when it came back down. So, while time and wind and water have made their mark, there isn’t a logical “plan” to the layout. The result was that it was a lot longer to Biggs creek that I had planned and it was about 29 miles later that I was unpacking at sundown. I had gotten back at that white Arab bitch and turned her into a packhorse….what a put down for her majesty…and she and the other two were pretty pooped. Fortunately they had been on the open range so were in pretty good shape and used to going up and down. This old boy was a bit tired too but surprisingly, more saddle weary, than saddle sore. I set up camp by lantern light and with the beautiful clear Indian Summer weather, I decided to just sleep under a mantie rather than putting up a tent (even though that is sure way to get it to rain). After, the camp was set and the horses picketed, I lay down in the sleeping bag looking at stars, the dark silhouette of the mountain peaks to the east and west, and just taking in the aura of the ambiance of all that nature…..not another person within 15 miles. The creek was bubbling, the trees and grass gave off the whisper of the wind, and the elk would occasionally give a distant bugle. Mix all that up with a sky full of stars and it made for a real peaceful time to think and give thanks. I recall thinking that I hoped my boys and grandkids would have a chance to experience it all just as I had.
I had planned on spending most of my time fishing since the fall cutthroat can really be fun. All of the undiscovered country was calling however and I spent most of my time riding and going up creeks that I hadn’t before crossed and to the tops of mountains for vistas I hadn’t before viewed. Looking east from the top of the mountains of the front and out onto the prairie is a view that is too big to completely grasp. There is so much abrupt vertical, there is so much sky and there is so much distance in every direction that its too much for the minds eye to handle. I have tried to photograph this experience and never caught it. Photographers much better than me has likewise tried and while we get some nice mountains, some nice sky and some nice vista, we don’t get it all in one frame. The whole experience is four dimensional in my memory. It was this experience that made me realize why Socrates and Plato had the philosophy that the universe was a matter of forms, that forms came before life, and that life took up a presence within an existing form. And as I recall, one of the primary forms was beauty. Those two boys must have spent some time on the top of a mountain in Montana.
On the way out, I did take the Headquarters pass route. While a fire had gone through the drainage 20 years ago or so, it was still pretty. As you moved higher, the mountains of the front suddenly took on that irregular, illogical asymmetry that I mentioned before. The trail would suddenly veer off and follow a different path than one would expect the drainage to follow and the mountains were suddenly more vertical than they appeared from down the trail 10 miles. The trail moved into a large cirque basin near the summit and there were 7 very large big horn sheep grazing there. Four of them were over a full curl and I got some great photos that should be on one of the web albums. The trail from the bowl was basicly carved out of the rock so that it followed the side of the cliff to the saddle of the pass. This is a place I could imagine a green horn getting into real trouble. Its an easy place to get to from the east side but a bad place to be with animals that are a bit snakey or when the trail is a bit slippery so a dude (or a sleepy cowboy) could find himself in a mess in a hurry.
The view from the top of the pass, to the east was looking right down the South Fork of the Teton to the prairie north of Choteau and towards Great Falls and to the west, right down the sharp valley of Headquarters Creek looking straight up Rock Creek where it heads west to top out at Larch Hill at the north end of the Chinese Wall about 22 or 24 trail miles away…..and I got that big 4 dimensional sensation again.
When ever I head down the trail to the trailhead after a great trip, I always feel a bit melancholy and have a bit of an inclination to head back and never come out.
I got all the gear back home and organized for the next trip which we would take after Lisa was back. In the meantime, I headed back to Missoula via Butte to spend time with the kids again. In Missoula, I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with Britta’s parents, Darrell and Julie Stolle. The arrangement was that I would bring the barbequed ribs and Julie would supply the carbohydrate portion of the meal. I had forgotten how those Norwegian women from the mid west can cook but she gave me a very pleasant reminder. Fresh baked bread!! Apparently, Norwegian etiquette stipulates that you don’t serve the heels of the bread…so; I was a sneak and took them for myself. After eating and watching Bridger enjoy making a mess with the BBQ’d ribs, we had no calorie deficit for the rest of that day. It was hard to stay awake for the football game. But I was awake enough when Julie asked if I wanted some rhubarb pie. She had baked both a regular and a custard rhubarb pie and when she asked which I wanted, I replied, “yes”. And also awake enough that when she asked which I liked best declared that it would take more testing to make that decision. I really enjoyed the afternoon and evening of family time.
Lisa was due back into Spokane on the night of the 5th so I headed over there on that PM. It seemed like it took forever for the plane to get into the gate and when she walked out of the gate area, it felt so good to get that flutter of the love bug. She looked tan, thin and relaxed. After a long hug, she quickly realized that it was cold in Spokane. It was about 38F which was quite a change from the boring steadiness of Indonesia where she was used to 80-90F. But this old boy has been around and realized that she would suffer temperature shock and brought her fleece jacket with me to the airport.
Since internet connections were so bad in Gili, we really didn’t have much communication during the time she was there. I would go several days without hearing from her and wondered if she had had an accident or ran into some dashing young diver. So, we had a lot of catching up to do….she telling me her Gili stories and me telling her about Bridger.
The next day we took off to see her parents in Leavenworth and I decided to take highway 2 across the rural part of eastern Washington. I thought I knew the way without looking at a map but somewhere around Grand Coulee Dam, I took a turn that added an extra 70 miles to the trip. The trip down the Columbia River valley was pretty in the fall with the orchards changing colors and the high elevations of the Cascades showing snow.
We spent four days with Robin and Jackie. We had bought them a new laptop as an early Christmas present and I thought I was going to have to give emergency heart care to Jackie as she went into shock realizing that she was to become digital. It was a scary few days for her as we went through the basics of turning the thing on and the layout of windows so that they could get onto the internet via WiFi, use the word processor and email, and store photos in Picasa. As we went through that process, I made a short cheat sheet that they could refer back to after we were gone. I know that there were still lots of doubt when we left. Jackie reminded me of a non swimmer jumping into the deep end of the pool…..but then she realized that it wasn’t that deep and she could just keep bouncing off the bottom to get air.
Lisa and I returned to Spokane where we stayed with our special friends, Dean and Diane Sorenson. Dean is a former jar head like myself who was a professor in Educational leadership (He and Darrell Stolle worked together) at UM before he retired. They had tickets for the Grizzly game with Eastern Washington in Cheney so we enjoyed the windy and cold north end-zone seats for that game. The Griz prevailed but didn’t show a lot of flair in the process. Nonetheless, it felt great to be in the middle of the Griz spirit again. The stadium was full and it was about eighty percent Griz fans. Montana helped the Washington economy that weekend.
The stadium in Missoula is known as the Washington Grizzly Stadium. In Cheney, the stadium is known as the Grizzly’s Washington Stadium since the locals are outnumbered by the loud, crazy, and loyal Montanan’s.
The game reminded Lisa and I of another away game in which the Montanans outnumbered the locals. That was the season opener in 2001 where we played Hawaii in Maui. That trip ended with the trauma of 9-11 getting most of us stranded there in Maui for an extra week.
On our return to Missoula, Lisa had several appointments with doctors, dentists and hairdressers. We had been invited to stay with more of our special friends, Bev and Clancy Cone. I had spent one night with them earlier so had done my catching up but with all four of us together, we really had a lot of “catching up” to do. As always we really appreciated the easy comfort that we have with them. We tried to coax them into making a visit to Qatar but Clancy thought that was beyond his limit.
Having Lisa declared fit and healthy and with glasses that enabled her to read, we returned to the Ranch where I wrapped up the details of getting the gear ready for the next trip into the Bob. Steve and Laura were joining us and since there were no “dudes” in the crowd, I could pack light and know that we would do well. It’s always great to have Steve along on a trip. Not only is he good company but he knows how to handle the stock, and do all the other stuff around camp so that I don’t have to do so much.
It was a beautiful Indian summer day when we left from the Monture Creek trailhead at shortly after daylight. They had had over 15 inches of snow there a couple weeks earlier but it was all gone and we had nice moist trails for our ride. It was a ride filled with splendor as we went up Monture Creek with the tamarack needles in full yellow and the sunshine coming in and out of the clouds to make it look like large flashes of light in the forest. After a lunch break after 8 miles at the Burnt Cabin (which isn’t burnt), we headed up and over Limestone Pass. It is a really pretty ride and the downfall that we had experienced in the bottom was gone too so we could stay on the horses and enjoy the view. The pass tops out at abut 7900 feet where there was still a bit of snow in the shade. There was also a bit of snow in the air and Lisa again had an appreciation of her recent change in climate. Looking back to the west into the bowl at the head of Burnt Cabin Creek was a beautiful sight with the steep canyon disappearing in and out of the clouds and blowing snow.
Dropping off the east side, there was snow until we lost about 1500 feet of elevation. While the clouds were generally blocking most of our view of the distant mountains, on one occasion, the sun broke through and shined on the cliffs of Big Apex Mountain. It looked like an apparition shining like that with all of the surroundings very dark or covered in clouds.
While it was downhill, it was still 14 miles and after twenty miles most of us start looking forward to camp; we were no exception. To Lisa’s credit, she only asked once as to, “how many more ridges before we are there”.
We camped at the mouth of Limestone Creek near where it enters Danaher Creek. It’s a great spot with good grass and a great view of the northwest slope of Danaher Mountain. After getting the stock unsaddled and out to pasture, we set about getting camp set up. That went according to plan….the first pack box opened had the Jack and also a couple large cans of Foster’s beer (I pack it because the aluminum is thicker and the cans don’t wear out and leak in my pack boxes….plus they are big cans). So, setting camp went well (mostly I am sure because by the time it was up, Steve and I were experts on most everything).
We had a beautiful four days there. While it was hunting season and we had brought our rifles, we didn’t do any real hunting; more accurately, we just took our weapons for some nice rides. The introduction of wolves into the wilderness has had a huge impact on the other wildlife. With the exception of the Grizzly bear and the wolves, most of the other species can roam out into the non-wilderness. With the wolves having had their “socially acceptable” territory artificially limited to areas where there are few people, they have effectively removed most of the coyotes, lions, deer and elk from the wilderness. We saw only 4 different elk tracks in our 100 miles of riding and only one of those was fresh. In fact the fresh Griz tracks outnumbered the elk in that we saw five different fresh Griz tracks during our travels. I still shake my head at how the proponents of re-introduction of the wolves think that this is OK. The US Fish and Wildlife service has no clue as to how many wolves there are yet they say we need more and resist taking them off the endangered list. They only have one means of getting controlled since they only have one predator themselves. And since they are wily, smart critters hunting season alone will never bring the numbers to where there is a balance. I predict that soon the wolf’s impact will really increase outside the wilderness to the point that a real scream starts about further protective status being given. As it stands now, the rancher’s mantra of “shoot, shovel, and shut-up” applies to many sportsmen. Only the federal government could spend that much to introduce wolves which in turn will kill off the elk which they spent so much time and money getting re-established 50 years ago.
The last week and a half of the “back home” trip was spent on the ranch and in Missoula where we continued to enjoy family and friends. I discovered that it took about 5 weeks of doing what I wanted without a schedule until I found myself looking for projects. Projects are easy to find on the ranch but all of them would take longer than the time I had left. So, I made myself busy visiting more friends, helping out on the ranch and spending a lot more time with family.
Leaving the US for Qatar was tougher this time than it was the first time. I guess not having the new and unknown ahead of me, made it less easy to say good-bye. Saying good-bye to Bridger and my folks was the hardest….but I immediately missed all the rest of them as well. I know now that my visits are going to be more frequent but of shorter length. I think that in 2009, we will make a mid-year trip and an end of year trip and catch the Christmas/ New Years season…..playing Santa Claus for a 2 ½ year old will be a lot of fun. 
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