|

19 July ~ 2007

The circle of my year is almost complete. In a a week and a half it will be done, when I return to Montana.

I have settled on the first of my backpack trips - 8 miles up a valley, where I will turn and climb another 1000 feet to a lake above treeline, fed by two glaciers on the mountain above it.

I bought a bear canister for this trip, because I have yet to figure out how you can tie your food bag up between two trees to keep it from Grizzlies when there arent any trees. The one I got is called the Bearvault BV400. On their website Bearvault has posted a picture someone sent in of a Denali Grizzly trying to break the Bearvault apart, with no luck.

The only problem with a bear canister is that a bear can carry it away, with all your food inside. They recommend putting it between some logs, quite a ways from camp.

A couple of years ago the campground hosts at one of the FS campgrounds in the Shoshone valley west of Cody told me about a grizzly that tore the bear box off off the iron posts it was welded on to. In his attempts to get at the food inside, the grizzly dragged the three foot by two foot metal box into the river, finally abandoning it there. The woman who was camping there with her husband had left her purse and car keys inside the box. The ranger had to wade into the river to open the box and retrieve it for them. The campground hosts said that was a really big bear.

I will be backpacking north of there, just over the state line in the Beartooths.

My Montana trips are like a pilgrimage - celebrating that I have the strength to get up there again, honoring the beauty of the wilderness and the communion one feels with creation up there, alone.

Ben and Maggie have a simpler view of it all - they are going to the mountains with Dad, the ones where they smell Buffalo out the window, who stop on the road and have to be barked at. (When we go through the Hayden Valley in Yellowstone)

They love it the same as me - when I load the truck and we head off for weeks at a time - us three, bouncing around the Eden of the Mountain West in our little white pickup, with freedom and happiness in our hearts.

Here's a good traveling song, sung by Connie Dover and written by Bill Staines: (enter userid of 'music' and password of 'music')

Where Shall I Go, Connie Dover

(enter userid of 'music' and password of 'music')

(lyrics are below)

Where Shall I Go? (A Cowboy's Hard Times)

Oh I once was a cowboy and i used to run wild

And I rodeoed and wrangled and rambled in style

But I'm too old for horses, too old for the show

And I’m too young for heaven now where shall I go?

Chorus

Where shall I go? Where shall I go?

I am too young for heaven, now where shall I go?

Oh I once had a true love and I made her my wife,

And I swear I loved her near most of my life

But the cold of the winter and wind laid her low

And she's gone on before me, now where shall I go?

Oh, I never was a drunkard but this I will say

The taste of the whisky gets better each day

The bartender scowled you are drinking to slow

And we close in ten minutes, now where shall I go

Now it's out in the evening with the stars burning bright

Nothing but memories to share with the night

Chorus

(written by Bill Staines)

You have noticed that everything as Indian does is in a circle, and that

is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything

tries to be round.....

The Sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball,

and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds

make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours....

Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come

back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood

to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.


Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator