KCMiller's Outpost: January 2012

GONE FISHING

My New Life in the Last Best Place

Kathleen Clary Miller Word Count: 63,436
PO Box 460358
20945 Spotted Fawn Rd.
Huson, MT 59846

I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection but with Montana it is love, and it's difficult to analyze love when you're in it.

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

For my father, the adventurer in me.

~1~

There were many reasons why I should move to Montana, not the least of which was that my hair looked fabulous there. In the dry air I washed, rinsed, and by the time I’d reached the kitchen to brew another cup of coffee, had dried—silky smooth and as flat as if I’d used one of those movie-star salon irons.
We weren’t there yet, but we were on our way. Three weeks after spending a summer vacation on Rock Creek—the first time I’d ever laid eyes on the state, we were pulling out of the asphalt driveway of my entire life to head for dirt roads and who knows what in those hills near Missoula.
Don’t look back, I whispered into my own ears. There is nothing ahead for you in what you leave behind. It was true. What had been my father’s and my bustling household for the last twelve years was now empty; not even a single stick of all the furniture he’d built remained. To stay would have been unbearable.
I’d fallen hook, line, and sinker with the speed of an overhead cast for the man sitting next to me behind the steering wheel, who just happened to hold the deed to 21 acres of forested property 30 miles west of Missoula in the Ninemile Valley and whose library included two dozen books on the daily habits of trout. Despite the fact that since birth I’d been that Southern California girl about whom the Beach Boys crooned, I’d always wished I could be a Montana Girl. Or at least one somewhere like Montana. Or at least I thought I did, having seen enough on “Bonanza” to confirm that the hole in my perfect happiness where spurs and stagecoaches belonged could only be filled in a place like the last best one. Every afternoon after glee club practice, I’d drive the Pasadena sleepy side streets, belting out the lyrics to my cassette of John Denver’s “Montana Skies” until my mother complained to the nuns that so much practice made my throat raw. I knelt in Mayfield Catholic School’s chapel and promised God that if I could ever set foot in a rut made by the wheel of a covered wagon, I would die a fulfilled woman. My prayers had been answered. Brad had the land, I had the spirit; we both had the heart.
“We’re off, like a herd of turtles!” he announced with a boyish grin as we turned from Cook Lane and headed down the hill into downtown San Juan Capistrano. No one ever left San Juan Capistrano. As for any deep thoughts about leaving the only place I’d ever lived, I squashed them and only allowed myself to consider what size coffee I would order from the window at Starbuck’s.
As Brad pushed pedal to the metal on the onramp of the 405 Freeway North, I clutched my paper cup. He dialed in The Highway, the country music station on Satellite Radio. We listened to Keith Urban sing “Let’s take that spin that never ends that we’ve been talkin’ about/We can chase these dreams down the interstate.” Brad took a long sip of his vanilla latte and merged with the light traffic that at any other time of day would have been gridlock.
“Are we crazy to do this before we’re sixty-five?” Brad posed his question, a rhetorical one at this point since we’d been over and over the pros and cons of such a sudden move and shunned any con as if it were a contagious disease. He had retired from his Orange County law firm and I from teaching high school oops!—ten years before our time. “Money will be tight until we get social security,” he reminded me of what we both already knew. I could do that.
“But what exactly will we spend it on when we’re living such a simple lifestyle out in the woods? We have enough jeans and jackets to last a lifetime.” The latter was a particular closet filler of mine and another reason to move to a climate where I could actually wear them. I repeated our familiar rationale for plunging ahead despite the criticism of our friends, who thought we were reckless and irresponsible. Only an idiot would retire from Capistrano to Montana; it was usually the other way around.
“Have you thought about the winters?” was always their last-resort argument for our staying. Brad had done the research, so they had nothing on us there. He’d logged on to the downtown Missoula webcam daily for the last year. I’d hovered over his desk chair to ogle the worst days of January, and quite frankly, I was worried there wouldn’t be enough snow. We were moving to the “banana belt” of Montana, since Missoula is west of the Continental Divide.
“It’s not like you have to shovel your way out the front door,” Brad told them. Darn. But with any white on the ground at all, we’d have real seasons—no more of this namby pamby year-round 75 and sunny! Couldn’t they see? We were diving head first into a dream come true, the prince and princess of our very own Western Fairy Tale. Nothing they said could stop us now.
Were we delusional about the White Christmas I’d envied on the “Andy Williams Show?” Was early exit from the blue Pacific to the border of Canada an act of inspiration or insanity? At four o’clock in the morning, in the dark, SUV loaded to the gills with lock, stock, and barrel (massive moving van to arrive the following day) and two 115-pound German shepherds sprawled across the back seat, who could say?
Too late. In seventeen hours, I’d be living on the Ponderosa—well, as soon as the house was built. There was the me that could hardly contain my excitement. Trust me, there is nothing more freeing than the total escape from those awkward friendships you can’t figure out how to slide away from discreetly, let alone noise, crowds, plastic surgery, perfect outfits, perfect complexions, perfect bodies, perfect shoes, purses, and hair color. Bye- bye baggage! I was riding shotgun in the Conestoga Wagon!
Then there was the me who looked out the window at the yellow lights just coming on behind the curtains of the Alzheimer’s facility where my father now resided. Did he know where he was? Did he remember where I was going? Although his sister, Lily, would step in where I left off and bring him cookies and an occasional dose of memory, was his nurse’s reassurance true? Could he be all right without me when the last time I’d left him for two minutes he’d had to be administered anxiety medication?
If the man who as a boy had ridden horseback in the hills of his father’s Pomona ranchland could hold on to what I’d told him about our time of departure or remember that we’d taken him to our destination just a month ago, he would likewise recall that he hadn’t been at all surprised. Even though he’d needed some help in order to step over underbrush and fallen logs, throughout the tour he’d been lucid. The look in his eyes was clearer than I’d seen it for some time. When we’d completed our hike around the perimeter, he had been more than pleased to know I would someday be somewhere so beautiful.
“It’s perfect for you, as long as you don’t feel too isolated,” he’d said, in 89 years his boldest escape from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles having been Newport Beach. Isolation was not a consideration when I could round the corner of Higgins and Broadway in downtown Missoula after a mere twenty-five minute drive. There were times when isolation was exactly what I wanted and now I would have the best of both worlds. He agreed.
“You’ve always wanted to be a cowboy,” he said. That would be girl, but I wasn’t quibbling. While other little girls were being Barbie, I strutted around the house wearing a fringed cowgirl skirt, hat, holster, and pistol. No doubt he recollected the poster scotch-taped to my USC dorm room window: “Wanted: Brave Cowboy.” He knew I was merely acting out my destiny, even if I was a bit too old now to be Barbara Stanwick.
“I think it’s wonderful,” he summed it up, a man of few words.
We’d already decided to drive straight through to Missoula rather than spend the night along the way. Kathleen and Brad don’t stop when there’s only another seven hours to go, even if that means it’s midnight when they get there! We’d pull over and nap if we had to rather than deprive ourselves of sort-of instant gratification.
Ten hours later (or however many) we were in Utah, which takes forever to drive through. As we drove that morning, we walked through each room of the log home that would break ground in another month in the Ninemile Valley, and placed every piece of furniture where it would go, having purchased most of it already at Montana Homefitters where it was now stored for us—right down to the bedding with leather fringe. Everything would be western; it would be a fishing cabin, a mountain lodge with a massive fireplace. We revisited our choices: In the Great Room, where we’d be most of the time we picked a “gathering table” in front of the window and instead of a formal dining affair—nothing formal here. We’d chosen leather sofas and a gnarly tree-trunk floor lamp. Each of the two small guest rooms would have its own “theme”—one with beds and dresser made of logs and decorated a la fly-fishing. The other would be ranch-style, tailor made for a cowhand. The towels in the bathrooms would hang from rod iron decorated with elk and grizzly bears. I squealed. I was going to live there!
“I want to call the house something,” Brad’s voice erupted after we’d rested from our home furnishings conversation and another hour of dazed driving had passed. It was countdown now—we’d stopped for dinner, so only four hours to go. “You know, like a wood sign over the driveway like a ranch has, only ours isn’t a ranch. What do you think?” We tossed around several ideas and then one came to me.
“Miller’s Outpost!” Even though it was also the name of a jeans store chain, we were The Millers and this was The Outpost.
“Or maybe just The Outpost,” he mused, and we drifted off into comfortable silence again, each of us spinning ranchy slogans in our heads.
“Did we pack our rods in the car?” I asked when there were three hours ahead of us. When I tired of listing the mental pros and cons for doing this wild thing, I ran through the “what have I forgotten” list. We hadn’t been able to fit much in the car, what with Gus and Cody hogging all the space. I reiterated my plan to head straight to Target to buy plastic plates, cups, and bowls. We’d given all the Portmerion china to family and had ordered the perfect pottery for The Outpost.
“We won’t be fishing the first few days,” he pointed out. “We have to organize our storage unit and get settled in the rental. But my goal is to catch a trout every month of the year.” Brad loves goals.
“Is that hard?” I couldn’t help but wonder, seeing as how, as a neophyte I’d nabbed eight and he had netted twelve in one afternoon on Rock Creek.
“It is in the winter months.” That’s right! Intuition clouded by my car coma, I’d momentarily forgotten that our new winter would not be just like summer. I jumped in to contribute to the goal list.
“I think you should do a book of photographs of the Ninemile Valley.” For the last two years, Brad had exchanged golf for wildlife and landscape photography. We’d visited Yosemite, Yellowstone and Jackson Hole to shoot at dawn and dusk. He’d produced an impressive portfolio, and would add to it once we lived in the Ninemile Valley, which is famous for its varied wildlife population.
“I’ll hang some of my photographs on the walls,” he skipped over my idea and into his. Can you believe this is really happening?” That was the question of the day—repeated nearly every hour on the hour.
Yes and no. Based entirely on one vacation, a vision, and a very whirlwind midlife romance, I was committed now. We crossed the state line into Montana at which point Brad leaned over, gave me a quick, sweet kiss, and whispered, “We’re here,” then pulled off the road so he could take a power nap rather than offer me a turn at the wheel. I’d abandoned everything familiar, and at an age where making friends would not be automatic; I wouldn’t be meeting my children’s mothers or hanging out at recess with the other teachers. Brad would have no colleagues or co-counsels. We had absolutely no history here. As my father—who’d watched me gad about town with girlfriends my entire life—had aptly asked, “Who will your friends be?”
Brad raised his car seat back into the upright position and snapped to at 1:00 in the morning. “Here’s the deal, squeal.” My husband always introduces a plan he has analyzed in all directions this way. “We probably won’t make one single friend for a year. I think that’s reasonable. Do you think that’s reasonable?”
I did. And I could swing it. He could be my only friend for a year. Everyone said we were still on our honeymoon.
“I’m adding something to that,” I responded. “We never say no to anything; we go to everything in town and we say yes to everyone, even if we don’t feel like it!” He agreed. The deal was sealed. We clinked plastic water bottles and chugged the last sip. Brad pushed a button on his steering wheel and then John Denver’s voice sang out, “Oh, Montana, give this child a home…give him a fires in his heart; give him a light in his eye; give him the wild wind for a brother and the wide Montana skies.”

~2~

I leaned forward and tilted my head to gaze up at what should have been a billion stars, but this sky was not wide. It was—cloudy? As we rounded a bend on Interstate 90 and passed Rock Creek Road with 20 miles to go, I pointed to some bushes burning on the hillside. The lights of Missoula Valley were invisible, hidden under a thick, brown blanket of—was that smoke? The date was July 31. We had pulled into the first day of what would later be known as Montana Firestorm, Summer 2007.
We exited the highway at Airway Boulevard and turned left on Expressway, a four-lane road that runs parallel to the Missoula International Airport. Here was our temporary neighborhood, which I’d nicknamed Potterville since most of the streets carried names like Hermione Lane, Muggles Way, and Potter Place. The entrance sign to an area about the size of a football field read CANYON CREEK. There were about a hundred little wooden houses in it, neither canyon nor creek anywhere in the vicinity. When we’d driven through in June, on the front porch of every pale green, brown, yellow, or blue love nest sat a couple in their twenties either pushing a baby swing or swigging a beer, or both. No cowboys here. Behind picket fences, puppies romped with toddlers and garage doors opened to tidy alleys where sweaty studs sprawled under cars with radios blasting. We’d fit right in.
“Here come the grandparents!” I announced when we turned down Hogwarts Ave. to number 4558 and drove through a college block party in full swing at nearly 2:00 A.M. I wanted to roll down the window to breathe in fresh air, but the at the moment, the air resembled Pasadena summers’ worst smog alerts.
“I don’t see any flames. I wonder where the fire is exactly? I mean, that little brush fire we saw back there can’t be the cause of all this smoke.” I tried to sound nonchalant so as not to put the slightest damper on the dream when what I wanted to do was yell, “WHERE’S THE FIRE?” But attorneys don’t overreact; they prefer to collect and assess all the evidence before attaching any emotion to the facts. Brad was cool.
“There is obviously some fire activity up in the mountains, but we are perfectly safe here in the valley,” he said as he parked the car at the curb in front of the brown house that looked a lot more compact than I’d remembered. Maybe it was just the darkness, not to mention bone-weary fatigue. Changing your life and driving all day and night while eating only peanut M&Ms and guzzling caffeine doesn’t lend itself to clear- sightedness.
We’d planned ahead for how we’d feel right now. Without having to speak a word, we both knew to leave the rest until tomorrow. We reached through the hatchback to grab the queen-sized Aerobed and our duffel bags. Brad strode three giant steps from curb to front door, unlocked it, tossed bed, pillows, and bags inside, and came back to set Gus and Cody free. He opened one door while I opened the other. We each took a leash, and then ran them through the front door, down the 8-foot long hallway, and straight out the back door into a sandbox-sized grass patch surrounded by a picket fence and backed by a one-car garage. They sniffed, performed bodily functions, and returned to the fold—a foreign land they too would be forced to call home until they could romp in the woods and chase deer to their hearts’ content. We and the dogs mounted the very narrow stairs single file and rounded the tight corner that was a few steps below the second story landing. Up here was our very small bedroom and bath. In an adjacent even smaller room we would put Brad’s office furniture, computer, and the exercise machine.
I felt hotter and hotter as Brad pumped air into the inflatable mattress but when I opened the window smoke drifted in.
“That can’t be good,” I commented about the fact that I could taste it. Are we going to die in our sleep? is what I didn’t say. The boys settled down in opposite corners and fell instantly into their forty-seventh straight hour of deep slumber. I wished I could be canine. Brad arranged the mattress in the only place it could possibly fit—right under the window. I threw on some bedding, not that we needed much in this heat. Was it 107 degrees or was I having a hot flash? Either way, getting horizontal in a hurry was all I cared about after sitting in the car for so long. I wriggled into position. Not bad!
Brad snored almost before his head touched the pillow. I, on the other hand, lay stiff, wide-awake and seriously exhausted. I couldn’t breathe, for one, without thinking it would be my last inhale. I needed a steak and baked potato to counteract all the sugar I’d swallowed. I made a grocery list in my head. I repeated the “Our Father” seven times—a successful substitution for the entire rosary I’d mumbled post-divorce whenever I couldn’t get to sleep.
I thought about my mother, Catherine. She would have loved Brad, until he “swooped me off and to the Hinterlands,” as she would have described it. She’d been raised in the shadow of the Hollywood sign and as a wife and mother, dug her spike heels into her rose beds in Pasadena. “Why does everyone have to do all this moving around?” she would snort whenever she heard of an empty nest couple selling their home and retiring to Palm Springs. The Roberts girls had never moved any farther than thirty minutes from their mother. Aside from a few road trips and summers at the shore, my father suppressed his wanderlust and only cautiously suggested any outing that required carrying the suitcases up from the basement. What would she think of me now? Not only had I left the sacred place of my birth and hers before me, but I’d left Daddy, although he’d insisted I do so after his doctor had sent him to the facility. She’d scoffed the summer we’d driven from California to Maine and I’d pointed to country houses in open fields in the middle of nowhere and whined that I wished I lived there. “Whose daughter are you?” My father had winked at me in the rear view mirror. She’d written all those sorority recommendation letters to USC so that I would meet the “nice fraternity boy” I’d finally married after really blowing it the first time around. But instead of that landing me in a respectable manicured home in Pasadena as she’d intended, here I lay on a rubber raft in Missoula, in air quality far more poisonous than the smog I’d complained to her about throughout my entire childhood.
Sleep must have come, because the next thing I knew, subdued smoky sunlight filtered through the curtainless window and the boys whimpered to be let out. My watch read 9:00, and I rolled over to see that Brad was already up. I noticed cardboard boxes in the corner. Had he already unloaded the car? We’d decided that I take the bedroom closet and he would use the coat closet at the foot of the stairs, opposite the front door. Under the stairs was an endless cavern where once you put things you can’t reach them without breaking your back. We’d tuck all sorts of things we didn’t trust to storage in there.
I stumbled into the bathroom and looked out the tiny square of glass to the only hill in sight, across the Interstate. If I reached out the window I could touch the house next door. I’d have to wait for those wide-open spaces. Two horses I could barely make out through the haze grazed on what little green grew during the dry summer months. Not exactly what I’d come to Montana for, but at least I could see horses, even if I couldn’t hear them over the big rigs accelerating to make the grade.
The box labeled “upstairs bath” was on the floor, next to the shower/tub. Had these walls been neon green in June? Were these big toads painted on them then? I blinked and turned on the light, hoping that would help. Nope.
Brad chivalrously gave me the upstairs bathroom while he claimed the even smaller powder room downstairs—the one with electric blue walls—right next to the kitchen. At six feet two inches with broad shoulders, when he stepped into the shower stall, he couldn’t lift both arms to shampoo his hair. He’d live out of his bathroom box, since there were no cupboards or shelves in there. We would, for the most part, manage out of cardboard until The Outpost was finished. But we had a roof over our heads and all that we needed. This too was part of the adventure. Hmmm.
“The movers aren’t due ‘til this afternoon,” Brad wheezed and huffed and puffed while hauling in the last box. “Wanna go get some breakfast?”
I agreed. Nothing cures like dark roast coffee and a farmhand breakfast. We left the boys and hopped back in the car. My body automatically folded into car-ride position. After we’d driven about a mile, Brad pointed to our left.
“That’s Don’s office. Pretty nice, huh?” I agreed that it was. In another block we stopped at the signal. “You’re so quiet,” he said.
“I’m paying attention to where you’re going so I can find my way around.” He’d bought maps of Missoula and had studied them. He knew exactly what direction to go and was the equivalent of a human compass. I had to drive somewhere fifty times before I could remember how to get there.
“Just go east on Broadway,” he started to say and then stopped when he saw me shaking my head. If I can see the Pacific Ocean, I know east from west. I couldn’t even hear a seagull here!
“Don’t tell me east. Tell me right or left!” I pleaded. And even then, I might need to reenact reaching with my right hand after curtseying to Reverend Mother to accept my weekly cachet (a fancy French word for “progress report”).
“So you come out of Potterville, turn left, which is east toward the university. Then just go straight for two miles until you come to Higgins—the main street of downtown.” Got it. “I am going to turn here, on Orange Street, to get to the breakfast place, but you will keep going straight if you want to get to Higgins.” Bingo.
East is the University I chanted to myself as Brad turned right on Orange about six minutes after we’d left Potterville. We came to a signal light at Orange and Front when he pointed out the Clark Fork River, on our right and up ahead a half block.
“The Clark Fork drains into the Columbia.” Brad loved to offer me geography lessons. I nodded, even though I didn’t really care. I wanted scenery where I bipped around doing my daily errands; I didn’t care where the river came from or went to! He told that it joins with the Bitterroot and the Blackfoot Rivers, but I’d stopped listening after he’d rounded the corner onto Front Street. Live pansies grew in little baskets hanging from the lampposts. I spotted shops up ahead! Brad turned left and around to Main Street while my eyes darted and my head spun to take in all the quaint boutiques and cafes. Downtown was so cute! I’d only been to the fly shop and Albertson’s grocery store on the outskirts of town during our vacation. I had no idea all this was here. Loopy—a yarn shop! Joseph’s Coat—another one! Laurel Creek—lovelies! Old brick buildings and lampposts lined the one-way streets. I promised myself I’d come back on the first day I had to myself. I’d park the car and walk in and out of every single door.
We parked diagonally in front of The Shack on Main Street. We’d read about it in The Missoulian, the chronicle carrying a daily front-page photo of an animal—any animal—that accompanied headlines about bears, wolves, and bison and whose obituary pages took up more space than the national news. I’d read one over coffee on Rock Creek that said, “She was never very nice to anyone, but we loved her anyway.” They’d rated The Shack one of the best breakfasts in Missoula. In second place was Hob Nob Café, but I’d have to try that one on my own—black bean burgers and sweet potato fries were too healthy for Brad’s taste. Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but notice that the pedestrians strolling the historical downtown sidewalks were wearing not dude ranch bandanas, but surgical masks. We picked up a complimentary paper on the entryway table. The front page today was all about particles per million and inhaling and levels of danger. What good would it do me to read such doom and gloom? I took the “Montana” section and scanned for a good local story. This fire couldn’t last forever.
“There’s no mention of the Ninemile Valley,” Brad reassured me.
Over eggs, huckleberry pancakes, and piles of crispy bacon, we kept right on planning in our cozy booth in the safety of the air conditioning. The restaurant had a bar that had traveled up the Missouri by steamboat in 1881, antique maps and clocks, and 1890’s brass chandeliers, not to mention other bits and pieces of Montana history. EGAD! Cowboy sighting! I froze halfway to a bite of bacon. There was an authentic one, right over there sipping coffee from a mug and smoothing his moustache between his fingers. Brad rolled his eyes as I stared at him like he was Sam Elliot.
“Here’s the deal, Squeal.” I squared my shoulders at attention and focused. Despite the serious need for quality sleep, I was rapt and eager to embrace the next fabulous final decision. I do love it when someone else does all the thinking that I agree with. “Tomorrow. Right after the meeting with Don. We’ll get our Montana driver’s licenses,” he said for the tenth time since yesterday. “I can’t wait to have Montana license plates!” I said. He mentioned that first we had to buy my car, the Toyota 4-Runner in the lot at Bitterroot Motors that would replace the Lexus SUV we’d sold before leaving California. Driving a Lexus would have been tantamount to flying a banner from the antenna that screamed in capital letters I AM FROM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA! We’d agreed that it might not behoove us to advertise our point of origin. We desperately wanted to blend. “Then how about we go out to the property in the afternoon? We’ll take a picnic, sit on camp chairs, and walk the perimeter with the boys.”
The waitress refilled our coffee cups while Brad took a pen from his pocket, slid a paper napkin to the center of the table, and began to diagram the best arrangement for our furniture in our tiny rental. He is what you might call spatially gifted. I, on the other hand, couldn’t picture where to put the cereal boxes.
After breakfast, Brad wanted to go over to the university bookstore, just a few blocks from where we sat, to buy Griz Wear. In a town of 50,000 with a football stadium that holds around 30,000 and is always sold out—well, you do the math. Anyone who is ambulatory attends the Grizzly football games. We paid the bill and decided to drive rather than walk since the movers were due soon. We circled the forest-like campus before pulling into the bookstore parking lot. All was quiet with only the summer program in session. A few students lounged on the grass outside an ancient brick building. A fountain centered a lovely garden. The buildings were vine covered, the classic college look. Brad parked the car and we followed the signs to where we entered and picked out Griz colors—maroon and grey sweatshirts, tee shirts, and caps. Back in the car, Brad pulled at his chin.
“I’m thinking of growing a full beard,” he said apologetically. “Would that be all right with you?” All right? I would love it, I told him—the future Jeremiah Johnson.
Caffeinated and emotionally amped, I called the kids from the car. “We MADE it!” I yelled to Clary, who giggled with me from her New York office. “We’re HERE!” I screeched to Kate in Scottsdale, who was still not entirely secure with the notion of her mother moving to a place she’d seen once. Brad called his sons, Ryan and Mark. Predictably, boys being boys and girls being girls, his greeting was equally enthusiastic, but just slightly more subdued. We told them all that we were ready to direct the movers as to which paraphernalia belonged in the garage, the rooms, and the purple-door storage unit a few blocks away on Dumbledore Drive. An hour after we got back, while I was putting away the plastic dishes we’d picked up at Target, the truck pulled into the alley. Brad stood sentry at the garage door while I manned the interior. “That goes here. This goes there. Storage unit.” Ever the hostess, I issued commands in between offering Cokes and Famous Amos cookies I’d backhanded into the shopping cart.
It soon became clear that nothing could go up the stairs—not Brad’s office furniture, not the exercise machine, not even our mattress. The corner was too tight and the passage too narrow. The napkin blueprint was discarded in the alley dumpster, but the man with the floor plan rose to the occasion and had it figured out in nothing flat—and flat is what we’d have to get in order to wedge ourselves between everything that had been going to go upstairs but was now in one very small living room. Plus the table, chairs, and two sofas Montana Homefitters had just delivered.
Brad called our builder, Don, asked if he could borrow one of his company trucks (you could do this?) and drove to Missoula Mattress. There he purchased a queen, brought it home, and we carried it out of the truck. He shoved, he pushed, he kicked. He grunted and cussed and nearly cried, but with one final frontal attack in which he sprinted up the stairs to the corner where it was stuck and hurled his body at it while emitting a wild animal growl, it broke free and sprung upward like one of those snakes in a can. We’d still sleep on the floor—no frame would ever fit into the room—but now we had a guest bed for The Outpost. In the meantime, we’d be just like the other college kids in Potterville—except it would take us a bit longer to get up and down. Eventually, the trucks pulled away. We fell onto our new bed.
“Crack me a Moose Drool,” Brad said.
“I’ll get some beer tomorrow,” I answered right before I drifted into the late afternoon nap that would have lasted until morning had my growling stomach not awakened me. Time for the best pizza in Missoula.

~3~

From the moment I met Don I liked him. He and his staff were warm and welcoming. In a conference room, table replete with pastries and pots of dark coffee, and in his charming British accent, he went over the blueprints and the timetable with us. It would be ten months before we could move in. I remembered how long my two pregnancies had felt.
Don had traveled from England to a wedding in Missoula some forty years ago, met Mary, who was born here, and they were soon married. They lived up Grant Creek, just north of town.
“Come to our house for dinner tomorrow night,” Don insisted. “Mary and I are getting together with a couple of our neighbors who are also relatively new to Missoula. We think you’d like them.”
Brad’s and my eyes met in shock. We had already received an invitation, even if it was to the home of a man we were paying to be our friend.
“What can I bring?” I asked. He told me to call his wife and gave me their number. “Mary will tell you. In Montana we always do potluck. That way even the hostess has a good time.” We’d never had potluck in Orange County. In Orange County friends ate together exclusively in restaurants. There might have been real housewives, but there were no real hostesses.
Brad asked if the “barn” garage that included the shop could be finished first. His plan was to be able to go out there and fiddle around while the house was in progress. I would escape Potterville and come and take long walks. Who needed that stupid machine for exercise? That was yesterday; this was today, in Montana! I would never need another trainer again! After my hike I’d nap on a log or bring a chair to sit on, a novel to read, and a spiral notebook to write. The boys would run around and get exercise.
Brad, the visionary who I was convinced had missed his calling as an architect, tweaked a few feet here and there in the Great Room. Don told us there would be “endless lists of tasks you’ll need to perform: selecting tile, flooring, countertops, bathroom fixtures, all that goes into the interior.” Little did he know we’d already chosen most everything from magazines and Web sites. All that remained was to run around town to local suppliers to find our picks. Shopping for the first house that would really be mine—and in MONTANA—would be a pleasure.
Everyone stood to shake hands. Bob, the project manager, thanked us for coming and told us he would be on site every day. Richard, the nuts and bolts guy who would determine costs and accounting, smiled and saw himself out. When Don took my hand to bid me adieu, I was seized with shyness, most likely because I hadn’t been in a business meeting for a billion years. I was out of practice. Like some really bad dream in which you are overcome with awkwardness and do the most embarrassing and inappropriate thing ever, I tilted forward in my cowboy boots, slightly lost my footing, and—God forbid—kissed him on the earlobe! I was instantly horrified, and while he was entirely nonplussed (was it a custom to nibble earlobes in Montana?) and simply moved on to shake Brad’s hand, I was mortified. My face burned. If I apologized, I would only bring attention to it. I hurried to escape, dashing down the hallway to the ladies’ room. There, I saw in the mirror that my complexion was the color of a ripe Flathead Lake cherry.
“I kissed Don’s earlobe!” I confessed as soon as we’d gotten into the car. I bent over and covered my face with my hands in shame. “How could I have done that?”
“Great,” Brad moaned, and then after a moment added, “Maybe he just thinks you’re being European.”
“They kiss both cheeks in Europe, dear, not one earlobe!”
We started fresh at the car lot, where I promised not to kiss anyone. It took under an hour to purchase my new, practical car and trade in Brad’s SUV for a Ford, King Ranch, F-350 pick-up truck that looked like an assault vehicle. Half of that hour was spent chatting with the manager of the dealership about fishing and hunting and the glory of the Ninemile Valley. We endured only five pages of paperwork instead of the usual forty-five, drove over to Potterville to leave my car, picked up the boys, hopped into the pick-up, and headed to the DMV for our licenses. Brad had already scanned the options for plate décor and had chosen one that pictured very wide and deep blue sky over majestic mountains. MONTANA, it read across the top in script, and under that BIG SKY COUNTRY. He had the frame ready to screw on right now: MONTANA (across the top). THE LAST BEST PLACE (on the bottom). He’d joined The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation online before we’d left California. He’d paste their decal on the rear window just as soon as we got back to Potterville.
“I love my truck!” Brad said over and over again. “Have I told you that I love my truck?”
When we walked into the DMV, there was no “take a number” sign; there were only two other people waiting. A woman poked her head around the corner and called us all in to where we were handled at three windows staffed with smiling faces. The clerk who assisted me took four pictures until she captured the one she thought was “my best expression.” In it, I’m smiling so hard I look like a marionette. Gripping our temporary papers in hand we were slightly frustrated that we had to wait two weeks for our new plates. By noon I was ready to get our picnic and drive west on I-90 to step on the ground that had sprouted a fantasy. Now it was real.
“Do you mind if I duck into the hardware store? We need a couple of light bulbs.” I hate the hardware store.
“Fine,” I forced a smile when I really wanted to say, “Can’t you do that tomorrow?” I decided to go in with him rather than bake in the car. Quality Supply was what I expected, but with a twist. In a warehouse a quarter of the size of any Home Depot, instead of suburban supplies, they carried cement-sized sacks of livestock feed, tractor parts, Carhartt overalls, and…what was this? An entire department of adorable women’s western wear? Cowboy hats? Cowboy boots? In the amount of time it took Brad to locate a light bulb, I was in and out of the dressing room, with a fetching pair of Wranglers with a price tag of $29.99 and a $5.49 Toby Keith straw cowgirl hat in hand. My $139 David Kahn designer denims and Adidas visor would have to go!
A few weeks later at church I was admiring the sterling silver and gemstone cross the woman behind me was wearing. Just before the service began I charitably shared my astonishing shopping discovery, which, of course, was no news to her since, as she put it, “Everyone shops at Quality Supply!” She fingered her necklace and finally took the same high road I had to tell me where she got it, information a woman is not inclined to divulge to the competition. She leaned forward from behind me right after the Lord’s Prayer and whispered in my ear, “Conoco.” I turned around as the congregation moved to sit and asked incredulously, “The gas station?” Brad gave me a little kick on the foot so I faced front. “It’s the best place to buy religious bling,” I heard in my ear.
I was glad I had my Toby Keith hat in hand because the August afternoon was hot—very hot, and even hotter when we passed one fire after another in the mountains a mile or so on both sides of the highway.
“This is really scary,” I admitted. I’d lived through earthquakes, hillside erosion, and some fires, but the ones I’d been exposed to had never been so close! As we watched balls of flame roll over each other and cascade down the face of the mountain range by the side of the road, I wondered about the houses and farms at the foot of them, right next to us. I read the signs on a gathering of small businesses as we passed by them. There appeared to be a grocery store, a hair salon, and a cafe in this community of Frenchtown, and a yellow wooden church that looked exactly like “Little House on the Prairie.” To my right lay Frenchtown Pond, a small lake where families usually gathered to swim and fish. Someone had told us that in the winter, when it froze, people went ice fishing and played ice hockey. Today it was deserted as flames moved at the speed of a freight train straight down the draw in the mountains right behind it. Suddenly Brad yelled, “Look!”
Behind the village, the Bitterroot Mountains, which separate Montana and Idaho, were on fire. The range up ahead toward Washington was burning. The mountains behind us in the Rock Creek area were ablaze. What did he mean, “Look?” I turned my head in the only remaining direction where Ponderosa Pines exploded like bombs and larch trees shot skyward like rockets. Then, across an open field, flames raced at an angle toward us so that Brad had to step on the gas to outpace them.
“You should stop!” was my bright idea.
“No way!” Brad floored it. Before I could take another breath, a wall of wind and fire fifteen feet high hit my window like a blast furnace as we narrowly escaped as it leapt across the highway and traveled on.
Brad pulled over for a few moments so we could catch our breaths. My window was searing hot, way too hot to touch. The right side of my face looked like I’d just undergone a chemical peel. I showed Brad. “Maybe we should drive back through so I could get the other side.”
“I think we’ll just move on,” Brad said.
After Frenchtown we passed a few farms and a small ranch house or two. I knew that once this smoke cleared, the view before me as we exited I-90 to the sign that reads “Huson,” our future address in the Ninemile Valley, would be quintessential Montana because I’d seen it—dramatic mountain cliffs, forests, the river, and ranchland where elk often grazed. We’d left Missoula and Potterville behind us, emerged from a fire unscathed and were about to pull into possibly one of the smallest towns in Montana. Our land was five miles up and into the woods from here.
“Before we go to the property, let’s buy our post office box! Then we can gradually start having our mail sent here instead of the rental.” Brad exited the highway and turned left back across it to the dead end of the road. Here were the two buildings that identified the town of Huson: Larry’s Six-Mile Café & Tavern and the Mercantile. “I would tell people you live in the Ninemile Valley even though technically our address will be Huson,” Brad explained. “If you say ‘Huson,’ this is where they’ll think you are.” I looked around at nothing but railroad tracks and swirling dust—lots of it.
Outside the Merc—as I learned to call it two seconds after I walked past the cowboy boots full of plastic flowers and stepped through the rickety screen door to overhear its moniker in the conversations of live bait buyers—there were a few pick-up trucks with fishing rods hanging out the back. A couple of cattle dogs circled us, wagged their tails, and made a beeline for our boys, who had slept through our near-death experience. Brad arranged for the post office box we’d long ago decided was better than risking our mail. When we’d been here in June, our closest neighbor, Nate, assisted us with a flat tire. Brad had barreled through brush to get my father and the kids as close to the home site as possible, but hit a sharp rock that had punctured a tire. He’d been missing a jack handle to replace it with the spare.
“I’ll go ask for help,” I’d volunteered. Clary and Kate and I skipped over to the only house we could see while Brad, Ryan, Mark, and Daddy agreed that we should because they wouldn’t—not ever. Nate not only had what we needed, but lots of local information as well. He told us that a few of our neighbors had mailboxes. They were nailed to a wooden post on Ninemile Road, where teenagers out to howl on Saturday night toppled them with baseball bats. Brad told Nate he thought we’d opt for a post office box and they went about the business of fixing the tire.
As Brad and I waited at the window of the small room that acted as a post office, the woman in the back beckoned to me. “Would you like some fresh zucchini and some cherry tomatoes from my garden?” I introduced myself and gladly accepted, incredulous. Her co-worker slid a single sheet of paper through the opening in the window for Brad to sign, followed by a key. “It’s all yours,” she told him and he took the key and started browsing the one aisle of canned goods and candy bars. My vegetable supplier had more to tell me. “I’m Jeannine, by the way. We keep books over here as a sort of lending library. Feel free to take one and then bring it back or contribute another one. If you can’t bring one that’s okay.” I know my mouth was hanging open because Brad glared at me from the potato chip rack and snapped his closed. There I went again, betraying my point of origin.
“We like to read around here, especially in the winter…and knit.” I’d knitted a little as a teenager. Perhaps during our first winter out here I’d try my hand at it again. As I told Jeannie all of this she volunteered, “I’ll be happy to teach you. Just bring on down the yarn and needles and we’ll get ‘er done!”
By this time, Brad was holding open the screen door and gesturing with his free hand that it was time to go. Jeannie called, “I’ll give you a jingle if you ever get a package!” I grabbed a cold bottle of water, then took the two steps to the Merc counter, where I fished in my purse for money. I pulled out one dollar and fingered some change. “One dollar,” the man behind the counter pointed a finger my water bottle. I’d forgotten twice that day what it took me two years to get used to: there is no sales tax in Montana. If the socks are $3.49, they are $3.49. I put the bill on the counter, but Jeannie hollered from the back room, “For pity’s sake, just give it to her, Earl!” And so, without a word, he did. I walked out the door, head over heels about Huson.

~4~

Ninemile Road runs alongside Ninemile Creek, which was resplendent with cottonwood and willow trees. On either side are rugged forested mountains. Fortunately, neither the range on the left of us nor the one on the right, which becomes the Continental Divide just past our property, was on fire. I could breathe again.
Just before the paved road turns to dirt was a house I had longed to see again. I’d found it last summer. It is a cottage whose front lawn is embellished with a miniature, carefully crafted and hand-painted wooden village. Along its country roads is a church with a steeple, a little red schoolhouse, and a country store. I admired the saloon, the boardinghouse, and the little farmer astride his tractor. “Will’s Hill—population 3” read the wooden sign just outside the pristine white picket fence.
“I may need to bake cookies and walk up to Will’s door, whoever he is. I need to tell him how much I adore this village!” Brad wasn’t convinced this was such a brilliant idea.
“I would hold off on this impulse if I were you,” he admonished. True, true. He could be crazier than a loon. Still, I made him slow down so I could really take it in.
“I would have loved to play here as a little girl,” I mused.
“Maybe you’re the crazy one,” Brad teased, and on we drove, noticing that the drivers of the few vehicles that approached us lifted their hand in greeting.
“I like that,” I said as I returned the hellos. “We’re so used to people either staring straight ahead or honking and looking like they might kill you.” Brad thought about this for a moment.
“The irony is that everyone here probably actually has a gun in their car. No wonder there’s no road rage—if you get mad, the other guy might really shoot you!”
We passed a woman hanging clothes out to dry and a man clearing his land, his sheepdog nipping at his heels. Great round bales of hay rested against his fence. “Look at that!” I shrieked and pointed to an astonishing shock of lavender blossoms adorning a fence on the corner of Conifer and Ninemile Road.
Another mile of dirt road and we arrived at the mailbox corner—Whitetail Ridge Road. The mail and The Missoulian was left here for those who risked it. I would walk down here everyday, I vowed, to collect the paper. I would eagerly drive the five miles to the Merc to pick up the mail and get the local gossip from Jeannie.
“We’ll have to bring our trash all the way down here to be picked up, you know.” Brad was warning me that life would not be as cushy here as what I’d always known.
“No big deal,” I dismissed his dose of reality as if it were as inconvenient as eating. I didn’t want this to be the Life of Riley—I wanted hardship! The women on the covered wagons had probably been forced to refashion meals from trash and feed it to their children! Of course, I wouldn’t be the one actually lugging and lifting our bags, since I’d married the big strong man with the truck.
We turned right and continued up the hill to Spotted Fawn Road. Up and down a few more hills, past the cattle ranch where bulls and cows mooed and swished their tails, and at last we were at the crest. On our left was the most expansive vista of gorgeous valley backed by mountains thick with pines.
“Okay,” I said spreading my arms wide as if, were I out of the car, I might spin in circles like Maria and sing the hills are alive, “This…is my favorite valley.” Elk raised their antlers and looked up lazily at our passing. Deer leaped in front of us, their long white tails standing erect right before they cleared a corral fence. Horses frolicked in a pasture. Then we were at the road’s end—the future site of The Outpost.
“Pretend this is the driveway,” Brad said, since we hadn’t decided exactly where that would be. He steered a narrow game trail for a hundred yards as pine branches whipped against the windows and he maneuvered so that the new paint would not be scratched.
Finally we arrived. We hopped out of the truck and I carried the small sack with sandwiches we’d bought at a café called Dolce that we’d passed in town.
Brad said, “From right here you can’t see any of our neighbors, but you can see the mountains through the trees.” Behind us towered Cha-paa-qn Peak (Salish for treeless or shining peak)—formerly Squaw Peak but recently renamed to be politically correct. This was one of the few months when it wasn’t capped with snow. We walked to what would someday be the covered back patio and faced the forest.
“We’ll sit here on rockers in the summer,” I sighed. There was that unmistakable sound of silence. We were over a mile away from Ninemile Road, a less traveled one at that. Not a single car would pass by.
“Years ago I spent the night up here in a sleeping bag,” Brad said while he set up the camp chairs and I plopped down, picnic basket in hand, to listen to the story he’d already told me about this 21-acre parcel he’d bought in 1990 for a song. “If I’ve told you this before, stop me,” he interjected. I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted to hear it again. “After a few hours, there was this sound I couldn’t identify and I have to admit, it kind of alarmed me. I wondered if it was some animal or something and it was dark, so I turned on the flashlight and started looking around. That’s when I realized it was the sound of the grass lifting back up where I’d walked on it.”
In June we’d buried Brad’s beloved dog Jake’s ashes beneath a tall Ponderosa Pine. He read a poem he’d composed in Jake’s honor and had placed a small stone there that read, “This man’s best friend.” Brad walked me a good distance over to the stone. “I wish Jakey could have been here. He would have loved it.” His throat closed over the last words and he wiped his eyes with the back of his hands.
We sat on a fallen tree trunk and bit into our sandwiches. The boys had disappeared, and I closed my eyes to listen to the wind through the trees. I felt like I’d died and gone directly to heaven to finally be the bride of Little Joe Cartwright. After lunch, Brad picked up a stick and drew a life-size floor plan in the dirt and through the dry brush. We walked through our imaginary front door, into the Great Room, and went down the short hallway to our office and bedroom. To the right of the Great Room, we wandered into one guest room, then the other.
“Can a bed fit in here? Is this the real size of it?” I asked, suddenly a bit horrified that we’d planned a playhouse. Mr. Spatial reassured me.
“This is 2,400 square feet!” he said. “It’s deceiving when there are no walls to separate the rooms.” I listened and nodded. I would make it work even if he’d had a brain cramp and had agreed with Don to build a one-room cabin. I was a pioneer!
We walked out the front door then hiked around our woods. Several wild turkeys ran ahead of us, turning their necks in a frenzy of fear that we’d catch up to them. They darted through a gap in the fence that separated us from a 3,500-acre cattle ranch. Brad talked about the tractor he needed and the shed where he’d park it.
“Will you teach me how to drive the tractor?” I asked as I looked over the fence to the continuing forest beyond.
“Sure, if you want to.” Want to? Shivers shot down my spine at the mere notion of it.
“I’m going to get a chainsaw and a log splitter so that when we start coming out here while the house is being built, I can cut wood for our fireplace.” I was really happy I’d been born.
When we came around to the small stream that passes by what would be one of the guest room windows, Brad told me what he’d discovered when he’d set up his computer the night before and accessed a GPS map of some sort. Our very own bubbling brook is named “Rock Creek.”
“Let’s take the boys over to that trail I told you about—Grand Menard. They’ll love it. Then we’ll go back to town.” We reluctantly left and drove up to the Historic Ninemile Ranger Station, a picturesque collection of original wooden structures with wide front porches and surrounded by towering maple trees. There hung a huge brass bell they used to ring to signal fire, and I noticed a large stable of mules that Brad said were just like the ones the early 1900 firefighters had packed to go into the woods to fight fires. A little farther up a long hill and we were at Grand Menard, where we hiked the short loop to ogle even more of the astonishing beauty of our valley.
It had been a long and glorious day. Our hearts were full to brimming. It was time to rest and let it all sink in. I called Clary and Kate from the highway to check in. I’d put off calling Daddy, feeling awkward and knowing it would be hard for him to communicate over the phone now that the ability to speak had virtually left him. It had to be done though. I felt guilty about the passing of even a couple of days. When we got back to Potterville, I lifted the receiver while Brad hopped on his computer to order some tools for his collection. The nurse brought my father to the telephone.
“Hi Daddy, it’s Kathleen.” Silence. “We’re here!” He mumbled something. The nurse came on the phone.
“He’s confused,” she said. He thinks you are here, as in where he is.”
“Hand him the phone again,” I said. “We are in MONTANA, Daddy.” More silence. “Brad and I are living in MONTANA now and we met with our builder and we are about to start building the house!” There was a muffled, shuffling sound as if he was trying to hang up the phone.
“I love you!” I called out to what turned out to be the nurse again. Daddy had given love immeasurably and unconditionally, but had been too shy to speak the word and, in response to such reticence, so had I. At last, now, I’d said it—to the nurse. I heard her mumble softly something to him.
“He’s smiling,” she told me.
“Tell him I’ll send him pictures,” I spoke too loudly still, as if she were deaf, and felt myself choking. After we exchanged goodbyes I hung up and cried. And cried. And cried. I reassured Brad that yes, this is exactly where I want to be—right here, with him, in Montana. I just wanted everyone else here with us. I missed my little girls; I missed my father; I missed what I could never have again—our all being together, and young enough to think we’d live forever.

~5~

“I’ve got a bunch of work to do to finish up the case,” Brad said the next morning. He was referring to the last piece of law practice he would ever need to perform. “I’ll be busy with Steve all day.” Steve was co-counsel on a large lawsuit that had taken ten years to resolve.
He’d called last evening as I was throwing dinner together. At 6:00 he was still stuck in a downtown L.A. high-rise, strangling in a suit and tie. He heard children playing in the background and asked Brad, “Where are you?”
“I’m sitting on the front porch with the dogs, smoking a cigar and having a Montana beer called Moose Drool. It stays light here in summer until 10:00.”
“Wow, that sounds nice,” Steve sighed. “You’re my hero.”
“Wait ‘til next summer when you come visit us in the new house. Then you’ll see what Montana is really about!”
As Brad settled in for the long haul, I finished reading the crime report in The Missoulian. There’d been two bicycle locks stolen on Russell Street and a woman had reported a strange noise on Kent Ave. I turned to the story of a nearby donut shop—the business had gone back to the early 1900’s and the family was still carrying it on. “I want to find this place,” I said. “This is my kind of newspaper,” I added.
We were due for dinner at Don’s house at 5:30. I grabbed my purse. This would be my day to explore downtown. “I’ll be back in plenty of time.”
Reserve Street is the five-mile stretch of stores like Costco, Home Depot, and Target. If you wanted the Cinemaplex with six theatres or the mall with J.C. Penney and Dillard’s, you went thataway. I wanted nothing to do with any such thing—not today; not ever, if I could help it. I was going to the colorful part of town, where horses had pulled carriages over dirt roads. I wanted to find the library steps where Brad Pitt and his buddies gathered to shoot the bull in A River Runs Through It and the church where Norman Maclean’s father had preached. I drove to the University district.
I parked the car outside Missoula’s historic railway station, a beautiful and well-preserved landmark. Large pillars supported an earth-toned stone structure. Its red tile roof topped several large windows that overlooked downtown on one side and the northern hills on the other. I could picture women dressed in bustles and carrying parasols, as they must have waited to greet husbands returning home from either work or war. Worden’s deli was on the corner, and I’d start there with a cup of coffee to go. In 1860 Worden and Higgins had loaded up six-dozen mules with supplies and brought them to the Missoula Valley and built a trading post. There was history here.
This was a busy place. There was a coffee bar, an extensive delicatessen, and four or five high tables with stools where businessmen, fishermen, and cattlemen alike sat reading newspapers or magazines from the rack beyond. Women chatted over coffee and sweet rolls. Everyone looked up when the bell over the door tinkled and in walked a stranger.
“What can I do for you?” asked a cheerful bald man. I asked for coffee and he pointed to the corner.
“That would be Ellen’s department,” he said. Ellen called across the room, “I’m on it! Black?” Two seconds later, she was at my side with cup in one hand and lid in the other.
“Are you on vacation?” the man asked. I told him we’d moved here only a few days ago.
“Where from?” I gritted my teeth so he could see it, then leaned over the counter to whisper, “That place I’m not supposed to mention.”
“Ah,” he smiled. “The ‘SC’ words?” I nodded. I’d been spared of uttering Southern California. “Which part?” he asked. Dare I say it? I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
“Orange County.” Adding my childhood in Pasadena would ice yet another layer of snooty to the already suspiciously elitist background cake.
“Me too!” he beamed. “Huntington Beach!” I was startled when he then turned to the patrons and bellowed, like a circus barker.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” He gestured dramatically to where I stood, frozen in apprehension. “Another escapee from behind the Orange Curtain!” Applause rang out. I bowed.
“Welcome to paradise! Name’s George,” he said. “Isn’t it great here? But, oops…you got here just in time for the record-breaking fire,” he looked out the expansive east-facing front window to the smoke that hovered above the hills behind the university. I acknowledged I couldn’t wait to see that incredibly blue sky again. He wondered what had brought me here and where I was living. I told him how Brad had come here on business twenty years ago, had seen a fly fisherman on the river, and had fallen in love. The next day, he’d hired a realtor.
He’d suggested a “subdivision” in the Ninemile Valley. “Not interested,” Brad had told him. “I don’t want a subdivision when I come to Montana!”
George laughed out loud, understanding what the ugly word “subdivision” meant to someone from Southern California—an endless maze of identical tract homes in a “planned community.” Brad had reluctantly agreed to look at it and discovered that Montana’s definition of subdivision was a scattering of 21-acre parcels in the middle of the pine forest wilderness. He’d bought it, and here we were.
“Life is slower here,” George said. “You’ll never be sorry you came.”
“I can’t wait!” I replied.
As I pulled into town that day, the driver in front of me chatted with the driver on the other side of the road with never a thought of moving, as if we all had all day. After they’d finished their exchange, they drove on. “That’s what it’s all about,” George explained to me, “the conversation not the destination.”
George and I talked about Southern California when we were children—the orange groves, the deserted, clean beaches, and free-flowing freeway when there was only one.
“No more three-hour 405 commute!” he stretched his arms wide. “I gave it all up,” he sang out like the televangelist my ex-mother-in-law had watched every Sunday, “to ride my bike to work and give praise each day for what it brings me. It’s all about perspective, and here, I’m tellin’ ya, the view is all good!”
“Alleluia!” shouted an older man in the back.
“That’s Sammy,” said George. “He’ll fix you up with our local wine any time you want it. You come in to chat or for anything you need. We’ll take care of you—WON’T WE, FELLOW MELLOWS?” This last part carried across the establishment Donovan-style.
I was still smiling when I pushed open the door to Hide n’ Sole, the shoe store. I tried on a pair of leather boots and chatted with the girl who helped me. She wanted my story too. Would I make it to the end of the street before dark?
There was Butterfly Herbs, which sold herbs and spices in bulk. In the back was a little coffee corner, so I had another cup while paging through The Independent in search of ads for shops I didn’t want to miss. Next door was Fact and Fiction, where I picked up a bag of books including Ninemile Wolves, Big Sky, and The Next Rodeo. Summer students and tourists passed me on the sidewalk wearing shorts and sandals. I looked down at my cowboy boots. Let ‘em wear flip-flops—I wasn’t taking these off for anything other than sleep!
I window-shopped several art galleries and browsed through Shakespeare & Co. and The Used Book Store. I crossed the bridge over the Clark Fork River, whose waters danced over boulders and shimmered in the sunlight. I stopped to see what a small crowd was ogling. “It’s Brennan’s Wave,” one of them told me and pointed to a surfer on a board sliding over a small bump in the water—their version of the infamous Newport Beach Wedge that breaks after rising to fifteen feet, then spits surfers straight up in the air where they’re left hanging while mumbling the Act of Contrition. Below was a wooden sign that read CARAS PARK. A lush green lawn spread up to a knoll that overlooked the riverbank, where bathing-suited teenagers boarded large inner tubes and others picnicked on the grass. The colorfully handpainted horses of a bejeweled carousel entertained children. I felt like a ten-year-old at Disneyland who expected Jiminy Cricket to come around the corner crooning, “When you wish upon a star your dreams come true.”
I rested at a sidewalk table at the Hob Nob Café and nibbled on sweet potato fries. The Missoulian office, a small, one-story brick affair was just across the street. Maybe I would send them a few of my stories, I thought. Behind it rose Mount Sentinel with a painted white “M” upon its face. When the very young waitress with impressive cornrows came out I asked her, “What is the ‘M’” for? Missoula?”
“Montana,” she corrected, “The University of Montana is there.”
“Is that a trail leading up to it?”
“Yup. People run it but not in this smoke! The view is amazing from up there.” I made a mental note of it as a future endeavor—but walking, not running. I couldn’t cross a tennis court without knee replacement surgery, but I could walk farther than Lewis and Clark. Flower Child brought me the check just as a cowboy sauntered past and tipped his hat, “Afternoon, Ma’am.”
“It’s an interesting combination,” I told Brad later when he asked me how was town. “Sort of a Berkeley ‘Bonanza’.”
I finished my lunch then strolled down an intriguing side street with houses nestled among large trees. I happened upon the First Presbyterian Church, which looked exactly as I had pictured it. Outside was a plaque dedicating the structure to Pastor Maclean. I tried the door. It was unlocked (of course), so I went in and fell to my knees and thanked God for delivering me to Missoula. Floor to ceiling stained glass windows adorned both sides of the sanctuary and behind the altar, organ pipes rose to the ceiling. The choir was practicing behind closed doors. I heard them sing “And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.” Amen. I’d switched from Catholic to Episcopalian when I’d taught school at St. Margaret’s. I could go Presbyterian in the name of the celebrity preacher!
Eventually I meandered back across the bridge to the Wilma Theatre. It had a plaque too. Built in 1921, it said, the interior was decorated in ornate Louis XIV style. The main auditorium seated about a thousand in plush red velvet seats, and the walls, balconies, lobby, and stairwells were trimmed rather elaborately. The tribute informed me that the ceiling was the largest hand-painted one in the state. It was open, so I wandered in. Beautiful. This was the place to see a movie!
A jewelry store that featured locally handcrafted pieces tempted me. My eye was drawn to a necklace with a large turquoise stone in an unusual setting.
“Would you like to see it?” asked the saleswoman. I lifted my right hand and with the tips of my fingers lightly and apologetically tapped my throat.
“I don’t wear big jewelry,” I said sheepishly.
“Really?” she responded, as if I had never really seen myself in the mirror.
“I’ve just never felt comfortable in it,” I added.
Her voice grew stern as she said, “Honey, this is Missoula. Go big or go home!” I bought it.
I spent almost an hour in Joseph’s Coat fingering yarn and looking at patterns. The proprietress talked to me about upcoming classes. Of course, she wanted to hear my history too. I checked out all the bakeries: Le Petit Outre for bread and scones, Bernice’s for cake, cookies and sandwiches, Posh Chocolate for—well, chocolate! I got a double scoop homemade ice cream cone at The Big Dipper, ducked into Loopy and Laurel Creek where I divulged my original whereabouts and in-process life change two more times, then came to Coco’s, a boutique.
While I looked through the racks in the very small shop, an attractive woman with reddish brown shoulder-length hair and freckles on an otherwise flawless face addressed me then came around the counter to my side. After five minutes we were seated on a bench in the only dressing room chatting like old friends.
Maggie and her husband, David, lived in Frenchtown, up in the hills at the foot of the mountains. They were our age, had met in a Minnesota high school, married and moved to Montana where David worked for the forest service. We exchanged stories about our children, our aging fathers, and our husbands’ hunting rifles, camouflage, and chippers. I admired her hair and she told me the name of the only place to get your hair done in Missoula. She put her hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes.
“I’m going to do something I never do,” she said. Uh-oh. Was I ready for this?
“My husband would love your husband. Why don’t you both come to our house for dinner? We’ll barbeque bison burgers.” Bison burgers? The anxiety must have shown on my face, since every emotion always does. “It’s better than ground beef, very lean and good for you. All of us here love it!” She looked trustworthy… and healthy…and very young for our age. “How about, like, tonight? I can call David and tell him to get ready!” I chuckled.
“What?” she smiled.
“You’ll never believe this,” I said, “but we already have dinner plans for tonight!” Two invitations in three days. You couldn’t call them “friends” yet, but Brad and I were better off than I thought we’d be. I explained to Maggie that our builder was having us to dinner that night.
“Would tomorrow night work?”
“Yes,” I said. Say yes to everything. She gave me her phone number and directions to her house.
I set off on my last agenda item: the library. I tossed my bookstore bag in the back seat, touched my necklace, and headed down another side street lined with charming houses. The sky above me was a ceiling of mature maple trees that reached across the avenue and promised to turn a billion shades of gold and orange and red in another month. I’d seen pictures of Missoula in autumn and felt impatient for September to come. I sat down on the library steps trying to remember the famous line from the movie. It came to me: “The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula, Montana.” I was living in Missoula—bastard free!
I looked at my watch and decided I had time to stop in at the fly shop where I’d bought a fishing license in June. A few more blocks and I was there, hoping for a new fishing jacket.
Back in Fullerton, after I’d graduated knot tying and casting class, Brad had encouraged my enthusiasm by picking out waders, shirts, and a vest for me at that fly shop.
“Try these on,” he’d said. He soon heard me laughing from inside the dressing room. “What’s so funny?” he called out.
“Bring on the biscuits and gravy!” I yelled. You could hide a world of transgressions under these things. We’d bought everything but a jacket. He knew me well enough to know I had no intention of standing waist high in the river when it was cold enough to wear one.
Today I was alone, and felt free to be the angling shopper I was born to be.
I was dismayed to find a lot less women’s wear than men’s. I had a choice of black, a pale pink, or lavender embellished with glittery bling. I refused to dress like Britney Spears to fly fish. The sage green color that matches my eyes was regrettably absent.
“Are there any other women’s jackets?” I asked the young mountain man behind the counter.
“Everything we have is out,” he said.
“Can you order me a green one?”
“I’ll talk to our supplier,” he said then added, “I wish my wife would shop in a fly shop!”
I asked him about Fish Creek (I tried to say ‘crik,’ truly I did).
“What are they biting on?” I knew that would get him. Sure enough, he was impressed, and enumerated a list of dry flies with names like wooly bugger and royal wulff—some of which I’d used and others I’d only seen on personalized license plates. Brad had decided on “REEL 1 IN” for his pick-up truck. I’d had SKLBUS on my submarine-length station wagon I’d driven when the girls were young followed by BLARNEE on my lime-green turbo Beetle. Here, I opted for no vanity plate because I no longer wanted to be vain.

~6~

It was time to go home. I walked back to the car and drove the short distance, stopping on Third Street when I saw a market that sold organic produce. I needed to fix a salad for dinner at Don’s. From the moment I walked in, I knew that The Good Food Store was going to be my primary place to grocery shop. Filled with local fruits, vegetables, and Montana farm-raised meats, not to mention a delicatessen and a bakery, this would be a daily destination. I bought spinach, lettuce and all the trimmings.
After I threw together the salad and fed the boys, we headed out to dinner.
“We’re driving EAST,” I said to Brad.
“Very good,” he noted, handing me the written directions to the Grant Creek area. We crossed a small bridge over the creek, my neck craning and my eyes bulging to witness deer nibbling on front lawns in a regular neighborhood.
When we got to their house, I retrieved my salad bowl, a plastic ribbed one the size of a flying saucer, tailor made for easy tossing. Every woman wanted this bowl.
Don and Mary waved us inside and offered light embraces. I would not kiss! Another couple emerged from deeper inside the house and introduced themselves as Randy and Carol. “I want that salad bowl!” both women said to me then repeated to their husbands when I told them it could be purchased online. Randy was an avid fly fisherman. Brad chimed in about his love of the sport and how it had brought him here.
“Kathleen loves fly fishing too!” My very proud husband boasted and then reported how I’d caught more than the men last June. HA!
“So how did you two meet?” Carol asked when we were all seated at the patio table sipping wine.
Brad and I bumped shoulders and smiled. “I sat next to Kathleen’s best friend on an airplane to Dallas,” he began and then told how Sherie had chatted with him amiably like passengers do on a plane. As the wheels touched down in Dallas, he had mentioned an ex-girlfriend’s dog. Sherie had sprung to life to tell him about me and how we should meet.
I had been divorced for six years from one of those much older men who leads a double life and I don’t mean with the CIA. To add insult to injury, by the time I found out he wasn’t just taking long walks at the seashore, I’d been shaking off the temper of a mafia don—for fourteen years. The difference between Brad and me was that Brad acted like any other new single, and dated. I, on the other hand, eased gratefully and gracefully into the courtship habits of a nun. In fact, if there had been a convent that accepted a middle-aged divorcee whose daily prayer had been that her spouse would see God—in person—I would have made my vows before you could say “Hail Mary.”
That being said, when Sherie suggested she get us together, I turned her down flat. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to choose a sane mate, let alone a date. Who wanted to date at the age of fifty anyway? The only thing I could think about when I was out with girlfriends was how good it would be to get back home and change into my pajamas—at 4:00 in the afternoon.
“The bar was set really low for me,” Brad told everyone. Quite the opposite. By the time Sherie birthed this bright idea, it would have taken Super-Normal Man to get me to ever again surrender half my closet or sleeping right in the middle of my bed.
Brad wrote me an e-mail, I hesitated, then found myself corresponding like an eight-year-old pen-pal. What’s your favorite color? Send me a list of your top ten movie faves! Such nuggets were vital since Pete had been colorless and only allowed us to watch Mickey Rooney. When in one of his letters he mentioned that he had property in Western Montana where he hoped to build a log home someday, every nerve in my body tingled. So much for Sister Mary Kathleen. Okay, okay, so I’ll meet him.
“He’s so handsome,” Clary said after he’d come to dinner at our house for the first time, as if she were shocked that there could exist a fifty-one year old male who didn’t resemble her A.P. Physics teacher.
“Dishy,” Kate agreed. No kidding. When he’d crossed the restaurant parking lot with his long legs, salt-and-pepper hair, work-out shoulders, and a long-stemmed red rose clenched between his white, straight front teeth to identify himself (we’d exchanged no pictures) I seriously considered restarting my Turbo Beetle engine and peeling out of the lot. He was way out of my league, not that I even had a league. Strapping sons Ryan and Mark came with him to our house on Christmas Eve. Clary and Kate highly approved. Three months later, we were married.
“It’s a great way to get to know each other—writing letters,” Brad concluded the story. Especially when one of them describes your property in Montana.
Carol’s steely blue eyes narrowed when she looked across the table and into Brad’s innocent hazel ones. “ Did you drag her up here to live in the middle of nowhere?”
“NO!” We both screamed at the same time. “I wanted to come!” I defended, and hence the table was submitted to the details of my lifelong ardent desire—everything from kindergarten cowgirl clothes to “Lonesome Dove” being my latest favorite novel. Carol was either satisfied or sated, so we changed subjects.
The men started to talk about hunting—would Brad like to learn? I turned to the women. Mary asked me if I’d like to go hiking with her on the Rattlesnake Wilderness Trail. “Come to the Symphony Guild Ladies’ Luncheon,” urged Carol. “You should join my Rotary club,” Randy interrupted the banter to encourage Brad. Yes, yes, and yes. Then the men talked more sports, tools, and trades while I asked Carol and Mary what had been on my mind since the day we’d decided to move here.
“What doctor do you go to?” I whipped out the pen and miniature spiral tablet I always carry in my purse.
They tossed names out as fast as I could write them, Carol being an expert about the medical community since she had broken both legs when they first came here, during what Randy had promised would be a romantic dog-sled outing. I flipped to the page in my handy dandy spiral headed “Montana Bright Ideas” and drew a line through “Train Gus and Cody to be Sled Dogs.” By the time we were chatting as a group again, I knew the very best Internist, Dermatologist, Gynecologist, Dentist, and Veterinarian in town. My mother, who taught me that if you had a good doctor you would never die, was smiling down on me from heaven even though I’d chosen a place where she would have rather died than lived. I’d make appointments the very next day whether we needed them or not. We’d already ducked into Verizon Wireless to swap our cell phone numbers for area code 406. With medical history mailed, there’d be no paper trail. No one would ever know we’d torn through that curtain in our car to get here.
When we gathered on the front porch to leave, Randy squinted through the darkness to see Brad’s shiny jet-black assault vehicle with a temporary registration sticker taped to the windshield.
“You’ve got a good vehicle for living way out there,” he said. “You’ll need it in the winter.” Why was everyone so worried about the winter? Way out there? It was only a twenty-five minute drive on a four-lane highway with three other cars on it. “We just got that pick-up truck today!” I responded like a sixteen year old with her first set of wheels.
As we drove away, I enthused from the passenger seat, a wee bit tipsy, “That was quite possibly the most fun I’ve ever had in my entire life.”
“I know!” Brad concurred, equally as stunned as I that we already had friends. “By the way,” he gently informed me, “you keep saying ‘pick-up truck.’ It’s either ‘pick-up’ or ‘truck’—one or the other but not both.”
I still had a lot to learn.

~7~

The next morning over cereal while enjoying our view of the elliptical trainer, Brad’s photography printer, and the backside of the garage, Brad expressed his intention to purchase a drift boat. “They make wooden ones over in Livingston, and if I place the order now we can pick it up next summer right after we move into The Outpost.” Perfect.
“I still can’t get over how much fun I had last night,” I said for the umpteenth time while working The Missoulian daily crossword puzzle that took me about five minutes to complete. I felt so much smarter here! “Everyone in Missoula is so nice, and here I was wondering if they’d all be like Chester.”
Chester was the first person I met in Montana and could have been my redneck summer fling. The Rock Creek leasing agent told us that he and his wife Wilma, age about ninety, lived next door in the main house and rented out their guest cabin. We were side-by-side right on the creek and about fifty yards apart. “They’re really nice folks,” she’d reassured.
Not even an hour after we’d unpacked, while Brad was outside assembling his camouflage photography blind—a pup tent with a zipper window from which protruded his Monday Night Football-sized camera lens—the phone rang. Who would be calling us on Rock Creek?
“THIS IS CHESTER. I AM DEAF AND JUST OVER HERE FEELING BORED. I NEED SOMEONE TO CLEAN MY HOUSE!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. What did a deaf man expect to hear in response? Where was Wilma?
“I am one of your renters,” I said very slowly and distinctly, my voice quite a bit louder than normal. “I am just here on vacation.” Click. He hung up before I had the chance to say another word.
As I was inventorying the kitchen and keeping my eye on Brad to be sure he wasn’t cooking out there since the temperature was about 105 and as far as I could see that tent had no ventilation, I heard a motorized machine. I stepped out onto the front porch to see what had to be Chester, wearing glasses with lenses thicker than an ashtray and bee-lining it in some sort of gardening tractor straight for the small pond in the grass. With seconds to spare, he two-wheeled to avert disaster and carried on with his…mowing? Grass flew in every direction until he spun around and back onto the gravel towards home base. Brad, of course, was oblivious as he perched on his autumn camo camp chair in his autumn camo blind, dressed from head to toe in autumn camo—on a summery green lawn. True he was only practicing, but he had hoped to capture some birds for his portfolio. Apparently birds don’t see in seasons.
I heard the phone ring again when I was on the back porch readying my fishing rod with the thought that I might fish awhile as long as Brad was still breathing. Again?
“CHESTER.” Period. “I AM BLIND AND NEED HELP CLEANING MY HOUSE.” I thought that was deaf. “I COULD SHOW YOU THE BEST PLACES TO FISH WHILE YOU ARE HERE.” How did a blind man show me where to fish?
“That’s very kind of you, but I’m fine,” I told him. Click. While I worked on my fishing gear I could hear the roar of Chester’s motor as it passed back and forth and back and forth, no doubt interrupting Brad’s birding.
Before I sashayed into my waders, I thought I’d better take another peek at the lawn to be sure air was passing through the pup-tent window when Chester sailed by for the fifth time that afternoon. He had shaved the grass to balding. As I opened the front door, he tipped his hat and nearly collided with a pine tree. A moose that was leisurely bathing in the pond took off running. “Frick!” came from inside the tent indicating that Brad had just managed to focus on Bullwinkle when my paramour botched it. Chester carried on with his courting as if he’d never seen the beast, which he probably hadn’t. Which made me wonder: How could he see me?
Perhaps with impaired eyesight he thought I was some Orange County blonde bimbo ready for a romp on his lawn mower. It might have been the airport gift shop boxer shorts I was wearing that read NICE BASS across the back—if he could read, that is. Whatever the attraction, my hero husband was certainly no help. A grizzly bear could have manhandled me on the front steps and he wouldn’t have noticed, sequestered in his sporty sauna.
Throughout our vacation Chester had pursued me, cruising by on a regular basis. When we moved to Montana, I’d wondered, would everyone be like him? “Obviously not,” Brad commented while guzzling the last of his orange juice.
“Talking about Rock Creek makes me want to go fishing,” he said. “We should check out Fish Creek near The Outpost. I hear it’s the best-kept secret. We’ll take another picnic and… wanna go today? Then afterwards we can swing by The Outpost. They’ll have finished putting in the septic system by the end of the day.” In San Juan Capistrano one of my neighbors had been “on septic.” I’d thought there must be something wrong with them—poor backwards people! Here, I thought, Groovy! I was as exuberant as a cheerleader to have it go in. Brad asked me if I knew how a septic worked. Who cared? I could still flush, couldn’t I? He told me all about the drain field and the filter as I distractedly flipped The Missoulian pages in search of an ad for any assisted living facility where I might volunteer. Community service might ease my guilt over my father. Brookside—the picture showed a lobby that looked like a lodge. I jotted it down in my spiral.
I made tuna sandwiches while Brad ducked into the cave under the stairs to find our fly rods and fishing paraphernalia.
“Frick!” he yelled. I looked over to see that he’d hit the back of his head for the third time since we’d unpacked. The doorframe was exactly the wrong height for his height and every time he backed out, he whacked it. “You’d think I could figure this out by now,” he said disgustedly as he held his hand to his head and winced. As soon as his eyes stopped watering he loaded up the truck.
The boys were not good companions while fly-fishing. They either disappeared into the woods to chase deer or decided to go for a swim upstream right where I wanted my line to go. We locked Gus and Cody inside the house and hurried off in order to get back in time to go to Maggie’s house for dinner.
The wind blew in some direction other than ours that day, so for the first time since we’d arrived the sky was miraculously clear. “It really is bigger here—the sky,” I said as I turned my head in every direction on the drive. “And such a deep blue!” Brad pulled off the highway and onto a rough and narrow dirt road that bordered a creek nearly as wide and every bit as spectacular as Rock. Glittering water, lush green cottonwood trees, and not a single car. In summer. Brad stopped in a small turnout right alongside the riverbank.
“You know,” he said wistfully, “right before we came here I confess I was a little bit concerned. I’d wanted this so much and for so long that I was worried once I got here, I might be disappointed—that I wanted it too much. Well, so far, it has exceeded my wildest expectations—and I expected it to be wonderful, ya know?” I did. I’d known I’d love our land and places like where I stood right now but Missoula had surprised me, as it had him. To our astonishment, we had the best of both worlds—country and town—and we lived here! Before I’d left, a friend who was wary of the move had reiterated the old adage: “Life is still just life, no matter where you live it.”
Yeah, but there are some places where when you tilt your head back to look at the sky, you’re reminded why it’s worth living.
We dressed, waders over shorts for me. Brad was “wading wet” as they say when you choose not to add the neoprene overalls. The water would be cold, but he never fell whereas I usually took a bath, so he didn’t need the extra protection. The air was still and perfect for casting. The sun was warm as it twinkled and played on the surface of the water between the shadows cast by cottonwoods. There was absolute silence.
“I’m going upstream a bit. I’ll be out of your way,” Brad said. A fisherperson’s space is sacrosanct; one must never encroach on another angler’s cast. One late morning on Rock Creek two yee-haws tromped into the water eight feet in front of me as if I were nothing but some female out here filing her fingernails. I promptly reeled in, walked straight to shore and along the bank until I was far enough upstream from them to be out of their way but not so far that they couldn’t still see me. I waded back out, commenced casting, and caught a nice little rainbow. Atta girl.
After a few minutes Brad was out of sight. I tied on the dry fly and nymph I thought might work (with me it’s a guessing game, although I do try to mimic whatever bug I observe buzzing around me). I stepped out into the creek and was amazed at the flat, sandy bottom. It was so much easier to wade here than it had been on Rock Creek, that body of water having been christened because of its rocky floor. There I had slipped on moss many times, and while floating on my back had watched fly boxes, sunglasses, hats, and even a walkie talkie Brad had given me in case I needed to reach him disappear. Once, I even discovered a fish on the line after I’d retrieved my rod from the formidable current. I was that good.
My cast was much improved now. I lifted my rod and felt the tension of the line, then brought my arm down to hear it whip past me and watch the dry fly land perfectly. I caught trout fairly regularly now, after a first day on Rock Creek that had not held much promise. I hadn’t minded. The scenery had been enough to sell me on the sport, even if I didn’t boast of great bounty at the end of the day.
I’d learned how to cast in that class in Fullerton after a morning of fly-tying instruction and lectures about browns, rainbows, types of tippet, and bugs—the drop, the hatch, the nymph, the float (yawn)—while I drank gallons of coffee to stay awake. At the casting pond, the instructor had lauded my every move. Then he suggested I “loosen up a little.” Not easy for me. He told me it was important to present the fly naturally. I needed to realize the intellect of these trout. They would detect my presence, even just my shadow. They would recognize a false cast or a slap landing. They would reject any bug that was not on the river on that day, at that hour. Swim right by it. Not even try it. Like passing up apple pie cause the last time you were here they’d served brownies. I was amazed. The only fresh-water fish I’d ever known were at the dentist’s office. In between catching up on the competition between Goofus and Galant in Highlights I’d look up at the aquarium to see stupid looking creatures popping fish mouths and blowing bubbles against the glass. They hadn’t looked like geniuses to me.
When we’d arrived at Rock Creek, as soon as I waved adieu to Chester and decided Brad would not expire while snapping pictures, I raced down to the river, tripping over fallen branches, to test my skills. Nothing was the same as in the classroom. Like the kindergartener who is secure with finger painting until someone hands her crayons and tells her to draw between the lines, where were my boundaries? Everything was so open, so wild, and in such a strong current that it took the grip of a lobster for me to hold my ground. While I stood thigh-deep in the ice-cold rushing river, the wind tore at my line making knots that I had to simply sever with weensy scissors attached to my vest rather than try to unloose. I was sweating while at the same time my teeth chattered like that plastic set from the toy store. It was clear to me that I would not resemble Brad Pitt’s piscatorial ballet.
I’d nearly thrown into the drink the fishing hat whose stampede string strained against the sudden gusts, when all at once I stopped, looked around me, and saw that where I was—well, it was staggering. Rocky Mountain Sheep dotted the high cliffs to my right. Tall trees whispered and then, as the breeze rose, rustled in a great roar on my left. Crystal clear water cascaded over boulders and eagles with the wingspan of a small plane soared overhead. This is the way life should be, I thought. That’s when I heard my Fullerton instructor. “Let it go.” I did.
I hadn’t caught a single fish that afternoon. “It doesn’t matter,” I said to Brad when I stomped in my big boots onto the wooden porch that was a peanut-shell’s toss from the creek, “There’ll be other fish; this day was perfect.” Now that I’d relaxed, from then on I fished every day for hours and netted trout like crazy.
Fish Creek resembled Rock Creek except for the easier wade. After nabbing a few rainbow and one fat brown and releasing them back to their environs, I sauntered over to shore and sat to wait for Brad. If my friends could see me now! The quiet was intoxicating. I thought about Daddy and how much he would enjoy this. I snapped a picture to send to him. Just then Brad approached, backlit by the sun like some river god, hale and handsome. And miraculously mine.
On the drive back to Missoula we were quietly contemplative until Brad broke the spell.
“Here’s the deal, Squeal. When we get the drift boat, we can float the rivers. I want to float all the rivers around here. We’ll hire a guide to show us where to go. It’s called a MacKenzie drift boat. I’ve been looking at them online for years.” Surprise, surprise. “I’ll show you pictures.” Brad had taken me on a float trip during the second day at Rock Creek. There, I’d officially landed my very first fish by fly.
“Kiss it,” ordered our guide, an otherwise benevolent mild-mannered young man who had directed us to cast here, and there, and everywhere. Do what? I looked to Brad for rescue.
“It’s traditional in Montana. You have to kiss your first trout—on the lips!” my husband said. He was no help. Respectful of tradition, and in all cases obedient, I grasped the slippery rainbow in both hands, brought its lips to mine, and puckered. Yechhh! After a backhanded wipe and a swig from my water bottle, I felt initiated. “I kissed a lot of toads in my life,” I told them, “but never a trout!”
In the end, despite my success and although I could see the advantage to “the float” for comfort and increased river coverage, I preferred wading. There is something about standing in the middle of the river while the water swirls and twirls around you. In areas without rocks, both water surface and wader are motionless and the world lies still. All cares vanish. I must need hydrotherapy.
“I’d miss wading if we always float,” I told Brad.
“Oh, but we’ll wade! We can drop the anchor anywhere we want and wade wherever we want to!” he reassured.
He described the sides, the seats, and the particular oars used on this craft as we were traveling up the hill to see the septic. We rounded Spotted Fawn, came to the crest and I pointed. “Did I tell you this is my favorite valley?” Brad moaned. When we got to The Outpost, the workmen were just leaving. Brad led the way and we exchanged greetings with them as they thanked us for the work. “They’re thanking us for work?” I asked.
Still stunned by their attitude, I followed him to a level patch of ground. “This is the drain field,” he said. He’d traded his fishing hat for a cowboy one and, unshaven and rugged from the river, I admit that while he provided additional information as to pumping and disposal, I was a bit distracted by his appearance to the degree that I wondered how me might properly celebrate the addition of said tank. Seeing, however, that the only spot of flat ground cleared of sticks, stones, and pinecones was a septic drain field, I figured any romantic interlude would have to wait. Besides, we had to hurry to get back to the boys and on to dinner.
I’d mentioned to Maggie that day at the store that I’d be happy to bring dessert, but here I was with neither time nor inclination to bake in this kitchen where the oven looked like an Easy-Bake. We locked the back gate (as if anyone would try to get past a dog that looked like Rin Tin Tin?), and dashed over to The Big Dipper for homemade ice cream. I called Kate and Clary to bring them up to date on the day’s activities.
“You’re going where?” Kate asked. And when I told her she reacted. “You don’t even know these people! You talked to her for how long? What if she is an axe-murderer? What if you are going up into the woods and will never be seen again?” I laughed, the new cavalier mother who just says yes to everything. “We’ll be fine.”
We were more than that. We were welcomed and wined and dined on the best burgers I’d ever bitten into (my new religion is bison). David informed us of everything we needed to know about potential fire—how to clear a large enough area around the house for safety.
“Next they’ll pour the foundation—tomorrow or the next day.” Brad said for the third time since yesterday when we were headed home, our minds spinning with the future.

~8~

The day they poured the foundation we rose at dawn and brought boxes of donuts to the workers so we could shamelessly gawk and giggle like five-year olds. That evening after they left, we stood there and looked at it resting in its wood frame. We’d already circled it a thousand times and talked about every future nook and cranny. There was nothing to do now but let it dry before stepping onto its surface. Finally we tore ourselves away with the promise of tomorrow, when of course we returned and walked on it until our legs ached. The logs had been assembled in the log company’s yard. We’d already driven there, topped our heads with hard hats, and stood back while enormous tree trunks were fashioned into what would become the walls of our new home. When we weren’t watching the foundation dry we were talking about the log delivery.
Meanwhile in town Carol escorted me to the Missoula Symphony Guild luncheon where I sat around a table with seven native Montana women. Their life stories about living on Flathead Lake in the winter and grizzly bear encounters made me wonder, could I be so courageous? These nearly seventy-year-old and widowed ladies were for lengths of time cut off from communication, and sometimes, even heat! They handled hardships heroically just like Barbara in her Big Valley.
Within a few days I was invited to a board meeting. Carol had mentioned to the president that I was a writer, so…would I like to compose the monthly newsletter? Two days later, I volunteered to work behind the refreshment table at a Symphony fundraiser held in an art gallery downtown. As I poured wine for guests, I overheard Carol introduce the young woman on her right to one of the attendees. “This is Kelly, the fly fishing guide I told you about,” she said, and I rapidly toppled five wine bottles like bowling pins (fortunately they were corked) to reach across the table and touch her arm so I too could make her acquaintance. Brad had mentioned that it might be fun to find someone to take us down the Blackfoot. Imagine getting to be guided by a girl? Needless to say I garnered her attention and she gave me her business card. “October is a great time on the river!” she effused.
The minute I saw the lobby, I offered my assistance at Brookside. When I met Shirley, the Activities Director, she recognized me from church and the library. Based on this criteria, she deemed me qualified and before you could say “senior” I was the official facilitator of the monthly Book Club, the weekly Bible Study, and the Thursday morning News and Views discussion group, not that I gave a whit about world news. I’d come to Montana to avoid it. When I confessed that to the residents in attendance, most of them said, “Me too!” As for views, I abhor politics and am so non-confrontational that I encouraged elaboration on the view ninety-year old Loretta brought to the group. She’d just seen a flock of geese fly by in a perfect “V” outside her window—“a view I was most grateful for,” she shared.
As soon as I mentioned to Shirley that my father was in an Alzheimer’s facility, I was scurried off to call bingo for the memory care patients. I’d been in the habit of ministering to my father and so I admit my motives were not altogether altruistic. I wanted to slip back into my familiar role. What I really liked best was to work the jigsaw puzzle with Marsha and Lottie in front of the fireplace that resembled Yosemite’s Ahwanee Hotel. I don’t think that counts as serving outside of your comfort zone.
Randy introduced Brad to everyone in his Rotary club, where he was welcomed and encouraged to join and did. He was now volunteering at a school where members of the club tutored kids in math. He helped raise money all over town for the fight against polio. We’d never been such community servants! Agreeing to participate in everything was definitely the secret for passing the time, itchy as we were to get that house built. Randy told Brad about the Outdoor Symphony in Caras Park at the end of August—Missoula’s sort of summer’s last hurrah—so we paid $10 a piece for tickets and could hardly wait to go to a musical concert the likes of which we’d never attended.
The night was warm and smoke still clung to the mountaintops that surround the valley. We sat on folding chairs in the park under a white tent as the crowd gathered on beach and lawn chairs (the free seats) on the slope of green grass right next to The Clark Fork. The orchestra tuned up. When the new young European conductor to greet the audience his manner was boyish and charming. They aptly opened with “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” then proceeded to play music from my father’s era—all the famous Big Band numbers. I knew them by heart. In Pasadena, Daddy had remodeled an old Wurlitzer jukebox and filled it with Tommy Dorsey and tunes like “Begin the Beguine” and “Chatanooga Choo-Choo.” I’d danced to every one of them on the tips of his toes.
Two older and very attractive women behind me began to whisper. “He’s dreeeeamy, isn’t he?” one said. “I’m going to dream about him tonight,” said the other.
The night was splendid. Brad rested the palm of his hand on my knee and when I thought about how we’d come here, I decided to write the story of how the familiar music of my childhood home had welcomed me to my new one. I furiously took notes in my little spiral, the words coming faster than the musical notes. The next day I wrote it and e-mailed it to Terry, the editor of The Missoulian. It was published the day after that as the “Guest Column.” I began to chronicle the experiences of a new arrival to Missoula and submitted them in a steady stream. Enough of them were accepted that when I suggested I might write a column of my own, Terry took the idea into the weekly editorial meeting. They agreed that I could have a column every other Friday on the op-ed page. I’d always wanted my own little corner of newsprint and where I’d come from that was impossible unless you were Woodward or Bernstein. You gotta love a small town.
“Saw your article in the paper,” Bob, the project manager at The Outpost said when we’d gone out to meander around the foundation again. He turned from his discussion with an electrician and shook my hand in congratulations. “You gotta get more controversial, though.” He grinned. There was my little symphony story, nestled between the debates and diatribes over grey wolf de-listing and local political scandals.
While Brad was working with Steve one day I climbed to the “M” and nearly experienced heart failure. I thought at the bottom that it didn’t look so bad. Halfway to the top I broke down and pleaded to college coeds who were jogging it, for God’s sake (that Hob Nob waitress wasn’t kidding). “How much farther to the top?” I wheezed. The face of the mountain was so steep I could no longer see the top. Triumphant when I finally reached it, I would have gloried in the sweeping vista of the entire Missoula Valley at my feet, had I not been doubled over hacking like a cat with a hairball. I wrote a column about that.
Brad and I got tickets to a Griz game where we cheered, “Touchdown MONTANA!” as one. Since he was a UCLA graduate and I a cross-town rival USC alum, this was the first time we could cheer for the same college team. When that story appeared in print a reader contacted the paper and offered us his seats to the very next game since he would be out of town.
Brad and I stumbled into Missoula’s Saturday market one morning after eating omelets at The Shack. We wandered over to Higgins just for fun and happened upon an area by the train station dedicated to tables laden with colorful locally produced fruits, vegetables, and flowers. A lettuce grower sent us down to the Clark Fork Market, an array under the bridge of meats, fish, breads, handmade clothing, and jewelry.
Lenore reached out from behind a booth’s side curtain and pulled me over to where she sat spinning yarn that she shore from her own llamas, carded, wove and then knitted into sweaters, hats, and socks. “Here,” she said as she held out a circular needle and stuffed a ball of ivory-colored wool into my hand while dismissing Brad to go check out the cinnamon rolls across the way. “I’m going to get you going and then we will work on a scarf pattern at my house later, after you move out to Ninemile.”
We’d met Lenore at the Ninemile Wilderness Watch meeting, a monthly event held at the Ninemile Ranger Station intended to further the education about wildlife in our valley. Brad and I had sat rapt through the first lecture over information about black bears, deer, elk, and mountain lions. The goal of the group was to promote the coexistence of man and beast. How best to avert disaster for both on the road, when wild animals cross it willy nilly? How did one secure one’s trashcan from a hungry bear before it grew domesticated and had to be relocated or killed? Maps of game trails and detailed handouts were provided. We collected everything we could and after the meeting was adjourned, we lingered to meet new Ninemile neighbors.
As we ambled out to the car, Brad took hold of my arm and told me to stay still. Don’t move. A great-horned owl swivel its head to eye us approaching. Lenore stepped up to join us in our nature watch and introduced herself. In no time we’d determined that we would be close neighbors. She and her husband Robert lived up Sixmile Road, just west of Will’s Hill. They’d come from Long Island and had relocated up at the top of the mountain, their house backed by forest service land. “Isn’t it just amazing here?” she said. “You must come hike behind my house with me!” When I told her yes and that I enjoyed hiking, she jumped all over it.
“In fact, I belong to a group of woman who hike regularly. They’re called the WOWs—Women on Wednesdays. They’re a rather crusty bunch. Their motto is ‘No men, no dogs, no whining!’ They’re all older than either one of us and incredibly fit! They hike all over Montana and cross-country ski in the winter. I go with them to discover great hiking trails and then I take my husband back later. You should come with me next Wednesday!” I explained to her that we were forced to live in town until The Outpost was finished, but that I was more than ready to spend time out here—or anywhere—exploring. “Then I’ll call you about the Wows and… on the Saturday after that Robert and I are going to hike up Bass Creek in the Bitterroot Mountains—you should join us.” Yes.
The following week I met Lenore at the corner on the south end of Missoula where we drove thirty miles from town to the Bitterroots. There I experienced the WOWs—a strident group of women with walking sticks and no-nonsense attitudes. We joined them late on the trail at Kootenai Creek, since they’d all been up and hot to trek at dawn whereas we’d stopped at Starbuck’s and taken our time. We met up with the others as they were heading back down from the top. Lenore introduced me to five women clad in ski pants and windbreakers and holding cans of bear spray. In the brief conversation we had about the trail up ahead I gleaned that these were not the prim and proper elders I’d met at my mother’s bridge club. These wiry old-timers meant business, and that business was some serious sport. “I want to be like them when I grow up,” I told Lenore as we continued up the trail and admired the burgeoning fall colors that would soon be at their fullest.
On Saturday Brad and I accompanied Robert and Lenore on an all-day outing to Bass Creek, one draw closer to Missoula than Kootenai. When Lenore introduced us to her husband she let him know what we had in common. “They are as starry-eyed as we are to be living here.”
Robert held his PhD in Botany and was associated with the university science department. Throughout the hearty three-mile hike alongside the creek and up and to a spectacular waterfall where we picnicked before heading down again, we were granted knowledge about flora and fauna. Brad was laden with camera body, lens, and tripod and occasionally stopped and stripped down to either catch a breath or a shot. Ever the scientist, Robert collected four backpacks full of Boletes, or Porcini mushrooms. “If we were looking for Cremini,” he pointed out, “we’d be battling with half of Missoula to pick them.” This was news to one who thought gourmet was the small box of white button ones with the cellophane on top.
Mary and I hiked the rustic Rattlesnake Wilderness and Pattee Creek trails that emanated from Missoula. Autumn colors were deepening as the month wore on and I wanted to immerse myself in this marvelous season. Twice we met in Caras Park for “Lunch on Wednesday”—a weekly smorgasbord of local offerings for anyone in town. At one such outdoor albondanza she introduced me to Karyn, a friend of hers who had also lived in Montana all her life. “Kathleen’s the one who writes the column in The Missoulian.”
“You’re the one who wrote about me!” Karyn lifted her hand to her mouth and gasped. “At the outdoor symphony! My friend and I were those ladies behind you whispering those things about Markus!” I grinned and then she teased, “You almost got me in trouble!” We chatted for a while, our tête-à-tête ending with the exchange of phone numbers and the promise of dinner at Pearl’s Café so our husbands could meet. “He’s in Rotary. Is your husband?” When I said that he was she responded with what I was discovering was true about the people who lived here. “They probably already know each other.”
That evening, my Orange County friend Nina called me. By this time, I was writing the Ninemile Wilderness Watch newsletter and was collecting articles from various biologists and environmentalists regarding nature conservancy, my only connection to nature having been to my mother’s front porch daffodil pots and the Abalone shells I’d scooped out of beach tide pools to sell for ashtrays. Water tables? What the heck were those? I was working on deadline for the Symphony Guild newsletter. I was gathering my wits and words for my Missoulian column about the chocolate shop I’d discovered. We were due to meet Carol and Randy for dinner.
“Tell me the truth now. Don’t you feel isolated?” she challenged. Isolated? After only a month, I had so many plans I had to buy a Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation calendar with bigger squares on it.

~9~

Fortunately, there was little housework in Potterville to dissuade me from engaging in a steady stream of society and philanthropy. It took ten minutes to vacuum the dog hair. Two paper towels cleaned both bathroom and kitchen counters.
By this time we’d flown down to visit my father for an afternoon. Although seeing him deteriorate was heartbreaking to say the least, I was consoled by the fact that he thought I’d been to see him yesterday. Back in Potterville over the phone, Nina helped me establish a solution to long-distance communication with Daddy. She offered to visit him once a week. She would take pictures I sent to her and describe them to him. She would bake his favorite lemon cake. She would use her cell phone to call me when he was sitting with her then hand it to him and help us interpret. She was my saving grace! In person I’d enlightened him as to every construction detail I could remember about the foundation and the septic system. I hadn’t been exactly attentive, nor did I have a head for such things, but Brad was with me to fill in the gaps. I grieved for my daddy who was swiftly and silently slipping away.
Church was both a comfort and another source of relationship. Brad joined a small group of congregational men who met on Thursday mornings for breakfast. Through them he was meeting others—men who fished, hunted, and had come from all areas in Montana. I met their wives who I liked immediately and immensely.
On one particular Sunday, a conservatively dressed couple approached us. I guessed them to be somewhere around sixty, although the wife was unwrinkled and had thick wavy blonde hair that feel below her shoulders and still looked good that way.
“You look like you’re new,” the man said in a jolly voice, “so we thought we’d come over and ask you if you’d like to join us for lunch at the Mexican place around the corner.” Sure.
Sarah leaned across the booth and literally begged me to help Brad become Bill’s friend. She laid her arm on the table, cupped her hand, and softly growled, “He’s retired now and home all the time and I need time to myself!”
It didn’t take long for the banter to turn to bullets. Bill was quite the gun collector. Brad wanted to be, now that we were in the state that embraced them. “You can carry one concealed in your purse!” Sarah informed me. “See?” she whispered as she unlatched her handbag and lifted it across the table then tilted it for me to look inside. “Bill bought me one for protection from bears when I take walks!” Really?
Brad had a few to his name, but nothing near this guy’s inventory. Sarah, ever intent on forming a lasting bond between Brad and her around-the-house husband, suggested in a flash of brilliance that we come with them to the shooting range. She was a dead give-away, but I was utterly compliant. I would have traded my diamond earrings to learn to shoot. Our date was set for Tuesday at the shooting range just east of town.
I tore sweatshirts and turtlenecks from the bowels of a large box kept in the spare upper room at Potterville. What to wear? In late September, the air measurably cools and in case we were to be in the shade, I needed to layer. I decided on my Wranglers—here everyone wore Wranglers—an off-white ribbed turtleneck sweater, and my new Griz hooded sweatshirt. I added my Grizzly cap, black ski gloves, and brown tennis shoes since I might need to move freely in the dirt. I looked in the mirror. Very Missoula.
“Frick!” I heard from the downstairs cave where Brad hung his windbreaker on a hook. He walked upstairs dressed in jeans and a western shirt and rubbing the back of his head, grabbed gloves and said we were ready to go. His three guns were behind the purple doors in storage, so Bill had told him he would provide the weapons and ammunition.
We crossed a small bridge over the confluence of the Clark Fork and the Blackfoot to come to a woodsy setting I would have called a park before I’d labeled it a shooting range. Serenity! You could host an outdoor party here, I thought, until a shot rang out and nearly rendered me deaf. Up ahead and through the trees I spotted Sarah, standing by Bill’s truck. Bill was arranging an arsenal on the wooden table beside her.
I am one of those people who cannot layer effectively. Sarah could. Encased in thick cotton ribbing and fleece-lined sweatshirt, I looked like an overstuffed sausage standing next to her, even though she too was wearing a turtleneck, a wool scarf, and gloves. Some people are born to wear clothing. She’d been born already wearing it. The rest of us struggle and wrestle and twist and tug. I looked like a ten-year-old boy in my baseball cap while her Cabela’s hunting one was outdoor-chic. But I hadn’t come here for Town and Country fashion sense. I was here to learn to shoot! I willed myself not to look at her as Bill began to commence firing and talked a blue streak about technique. She reached into the car and grabbed her piece of outerwear and out of the corner of my eye I saw it. Me being the girl that I am, as hard as I tried to deny it, I could from that moment forward devote attention to one thing and one thing only: her jacket.
It was my color! A muted olive green and made of the supplest suede, I wanted to reach over and stroke it, but wisely controlled myself. Collar upturned and cuffs folded back, it blended seamlessly with the rest of her outfit and moved gracefully with her arm as she lifted a rather hefty handgun and fired off six accurate shots—bang, bang, bang! In her .44 caliber couture, she was exquisite, the female form of the Sundance Kid. To add insult to injury, Brad, who only complimented women’s clothing if it should be modeled in a Ralph Lauren Polo ad glanced at her and said, “Nice jacket!”
I couldn’t focus, let alone aim, worth beans. I had to have that jacket! Where had she gotten it? Saks Fifth Avenue? Nordstrom? Was it a Lauren? I also complimented her but instead of that eliciting a retail store’s identity, as it always did when someone complimented me, she was shooting blanks. “Thank you,” she said with no information.
My rifle shots cracked but no bullet holes could be located in the wood target, no matter how close Bill brought it.
“Are you closing one eye when you aim?” Brad asked. Of course I wasn’t because while I was lining up the sight I was also looking at her. Instead of “Dances with Wolves,” from that moment on Brad nicknamed me “Shoots with Two Eyes.”
When it wasn’t my turn, I nearly crossed my eyes permanently trying to glance down the back of Sarah’s collar in search of a label. She would twist, turn, and lift and drop her hair that cascaded practically down to her waist. She was not cooperating. I thought I might faint under the strain. I fingered my scrawny ponytail that stuck out the hole in my cap and considered curling it again, a ritual I’d abandoned when we’d left that all behind. Get a grip, I told myself. You came to Montana to get away from people like you!
Finally, after three hours of this psychological, not to mention spiritual torture since I was experiencing the level of envy that would necessitate confession, Sarah suggested we call it quits and go get some soup for lunch at Wheat Montana. When we all sat at the table, everyone removed outwear except her. My hope of getting a glimpse of the designer label vanished.
After ample bowls of chicken and white bean chili, everyone politely refused a chocolate chip cookie from the plate set to share in the center of the table. I promptly devoured all four of them, something I am prone to do when feeling unfulfilled. When I pushed my chair back to go to the rest room Sarah stood to join me, as women mysteriously do.
We were side by side at the sink. I couldn’t stand it a minute longer. I dispensed the soap and looked at her reflection while she reapplied lipstick. I did my best to sound casual. “May I ask where you got that jacket?” I asked then coolly added, “I’ve been admiring it all day.”
“Certainly!’ she beamed. Every woman appreciates a compliment from another woman. When she wasn’t shooting she was sweet—and far more forthcoming. “This?” she stretched one lapel and laughed. Don’t toy with me now, I thought. She leaned toward me as if to impart top-secret information behind enemy lines. “I got this at Wal-Mart.” Waaallll-Maaarrrttt?
After I recovered from the shock, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. It would be cheap! There was a Wal-Mart right down Reserve! “Three or four years ago,” she added. Dadburn it!
My face dropped. “Oh well,” I said. “It’s a lovely jacket.”
“Thanks.” She looked up after she tossed a paper towel into the wastebasket. “But my aunt who just passed away has one too and it’s size small. You can have it!” What? Had I misapplied the earplugs at the range and damaged my eardrums? “Consider it yours!” she said. Could I take a jacket from a dead woman? And one I’d never even met? There was something morally wrong with that. Wasn’t there?
“Oh, I couldn’t!” I falsely argued. “I can’t take your aunt’s jacket!” What had she died of? No matter, I’d get it dry-cleaned.
“Don’t be silly! If she’d known you she would want you to have it!” I swore to begin immediately to atone for the evil thoughts I’d harbored for Sarah such as her mascara is a bit clumpy, that eyeliner is a little thick, and the hair—“Really, she needs to get it cut!” I’d said the last one out loud to Brad on the way to Wheat Montana.
“When we’re in Colorado burying her ashes, I’ll check her closet and if it’s still there, I’ll bring it back for you,” she offered as if she were copying a recipe or giving me her extra box of Kleenex. You’ll take it out of your dead aunt’s closet and bring it to me?
“Well,” I murmured as I suddenly noticed the faucet was still running and reached over to turn it off. I looked down and assumed my humblest posture—the one the nuns so ably taught me, “If you insist.”
Bull’s-eye.

~10~

“I was cold the whole time we were shooting,” Brad said after we left Wheat Montana. “And the forecast is for temperatures to start dropping.” I nodded. “Since we both need a good warm winter jacket, wanna go check out the sale at Ward’s?” he asked. As if anyone needs permission from me to go to a sale? “Sure!” I said, still high from the ladies’ room miracle.
Once inside Ward’s Sporting Good’s Store I could see that the sale rack had been rifled through. There were few jackets left in size small. I found a brown down one that resembled one I’d seen in the Cabela’s catalog. It would do the trick. I lugged it to the nearest mirror and wrestled with it until it covered my sweatshirt. I zipped it from below my knees up to my neck. Despite my five-foot-seven-inches and light frame I looked like I’d been blown up into the middle of a hot air balloon. When I lifted the hood over my head and snapped it closed at my throat, thick bushes of faux fur diminished my already small face. I was a pinhead on top of a brown beach ball.
Brad stepped out from behind a rack of men’s jackets. He looked rugged in a navy blue long parka that enhanced his tanned complexion and with his now nearly full beard completed the look. Very Jeremiah. I voiced my approval and congratulated myself once again for having landed this fine specimen of a man.
His gaze measured me from head to toe, but not with the eye of a man about to amorously advance. I frankly admit that although I realized this was neither the time nor the place, I was disappointed. I could have used some randy reassurance in the wake of my competitive morning up against the Smith & Wesson centerfold.
“Little Woo!” He used the nickname he’d coined for me that is short for Little Woman. “You look like a 300-pound Eskimo wrapped in a down comforter with two raccoons strapped around your head!” What happened to “Nice jacket?”
“But you’ll be warm and that’s what counts,” he quickly added when he saw the forlorn expression on my teeny weeny beeny face. Warm is right. I was having such a hot flash that I ripped and tore at snaps and zippers to get free of this animal. “It’ll have to be -17 for me to ever wear it,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead. Little did I know then that I would reach for it on more than one occasion.
“Let’s get it,” Brad said and headed to the checkout counter. I decided to think that he was more concerned for my comfort than my appearance—that appearance didn’t matter—rather than think he didn’t give a hoot what the heck I looked like and was in a hurry to get out before I saw more sale items.
“These coats won’t fit in our closets,” Brad said and I’d already figured out, since sprawled across the back seat they were as long and large as sleeping teenagers on a road trip.
“We’ll have to sorta stuff them into the cave,” I suggested. “I’ll handle it,” Brad said. At home I went straight upstairs to shower when I heard the phone ring.
“Frick!” Jackets are in. I answered it just as Brad picked up. “The logs will arrive tomorrow,” Don crooned in that soothing British accent. We were ready.

We drove out the next morning at dawn, knowing we’d be hours early but who could sleep? I considered spending the night before in the camo pup tent but under those circumstances we’d actually be camouflaged and I worried the wildlife might be a bit too wild in the pitch dark. By this time Brad had rigged a collapsible and portable fence so the boys could come with us but be contained if necessary. The King of Competence, his resourcefulness never ceased to amaze me.
When Bob arrived with crew soon to follow, we drank from thermoses of coffee and discussed electricity and plumbing. Where were they? There is no cell phone reception in the Ninemile Valley. Right about Will’s Hill I’d lose any call I’d taken on the highway. I was usually ready to lose it. Half the time I’d owned a cell phone I wanted to hurl it into the nearest body of water and walk away. After an hour, Bob went down to the highway to place the call.
He was back in a flash with good tidings: They were about ten miles out. When the longest truck I’ve ever seen made its way up the narrow driveway, I tried to remain calm in the face of company. I whipped out my camera and took pictures of its approach. I didn’t care who thought I was a dweebette. These were the logs for my very own log home, gosh dern it!
I won’t bore the reader with every detail about each log. Suffice to say that the crane that had accompanied the truck lifted each ten-foot diameter log, moved it very slowly across the yard, and then lowered it. He-men stood waiting, then eased each log into its proper place. There was lots of whistling and waving and thumbs-up signaling. Securing the first course of logs was crucial, we were told. It had to be perfect or the entire house would be off kilter. The process took forever. At this rate, we would need to add a wheelchair ramp before we moved in.
“You have to be patient,” Bob explained when much to my horror he saw me snapping my fingers. Right about then the log job foreman beckoned to Brad.
“Would you like to jump up here and help?” he asked from where he stood atop the towering stack of logs. Brad nearly burst into song as he bounded over to the truck. His nostrils flared in unbridled thrill.
I repositioned myself in order to snap pictures as if I were working a magazine photo shoot, except I held a pathetic little point-and-shoot camera. Here’s Brad getting onto the truck. Here’s Brad touching his first log. Now see Brad putting the palm of his hand on the first log. Look at Brad putting one of those giant hooks around the first log! Meanwhile Paul Brad Bunyan was giving me the subtle slice-your-head-off “cut” signal. I didn’t care if I was embarrassing him and myself. He was so gorgeous up there! I was glad he’d worn his flannel work shirt and cowboy hat. “I’m his wife,” I said to a young, studly worker by way of explanation for my behavior. I have to confess, however, I was also bragging.
My camera ran out of batteries long before the workday ended. The loggers left the truck and crane for tomorrow, Bob packed up his truck, and after everyone had gone Brad wrapped his arm around my shoulder. We both sort of squealed (I can’t say that Brad actually squealed if I expect to stay married to him), having subjugated excitement (at least he had) in front of the professionals.
“Well Woo, your little log home is underway!” he announced. Little was the operative word here—it certainly looked little. And after all that lifting and craning and setting aside, three courses had been placed. But we were further than we’d been yesterday, I told myself. One day closer to the day we wouldn’t have to leave. “Come on,” he took my hand and urged me, “let’s walk around it.” Would any furniture fit in here?
We freed the boys from their temporary barrier to join us in circling. After the third round Brad kissed me on the cheek and suggested we celebrate at the Ninemile House, a watering hole out Remount Road in the direction of the Ranger Station. We drove across a little bridge over Ninemile Creek to what was originally a stagecoach stop. We stepped up on the wooden porch, bellied up on the barstools to the expansive bar that rested on a wood plank floor, and ordered a glass of wine. On the walls around us there hung photographs of the old days—a dusty and mustached stagecoach driver standing next to the stagecoach, two smiling men holding fish horizontally for the camera, a proud hunter kneeling on one knee next to his kill. The locals clustered in groups around a few of the tables. All heads swiveled to watch us sit. Without exception they offered us friendly nods.
We toasted and talked. Brad was bursting and still thrilled to his socks over having assisted with the work, even though his bad back ached. “When we’re living out here, let’s come here once a week for a drink,” he said. “So we can be locals,” I added. When we stopped going over every detail of the day long enough to inhale a breath, we listened to the conversations around us. Three men boasted of hunting success, two women laughed boisterously, and a couple of old-timers were saying something about a “bar” in the woods. We finished our wine and drove back to Missoula. Brad threw back four Advil with a swig of water from a water bottle.
In the middle of the night I sat bolt upright, nauseated. I sprung from under the covers feeling certain it was a matter of seconds before I would lose the contents of my stomach. Brad was snoring peacefully (as in knocked out cold) so I dashed down the stairs to his bathroom stall so as not to disturb his slumber. Besides, we hadn’t been married long enough for him to hear me get violently ill.
I snuggled up to the commode. I’m too old for this, I thought, as my knees creaked and my neck hurt. Once in position, I couldn’t stay there for long without aching all over. Did I have the flu? No fever. No chills. What had I eaten? We’d enjoyed the same dinner. What had I consumed that Brad had not? Nothing…except…the spinach. His aversion to anything green other than lime Spice Drops was a well-established fact. Spinach was indeed a suspect.
There’s no need to dwell on the boring details. Let me just say that for six hours I felt sick and for six hours I could get no relief. As soon as I would rise from the bathroom floor, a wave of nausea would break and back down I’d be. At 6:00 in the morning, Brad awoke and came downstairs to see me curled on the linoleum floor in agony.
When I stood to try to elaborate on my condition, my right leg went numb. Numbness traveled up my arm to my neck. Over to my chin. Across my cheek. I looked at him in horror. “Am I having a stroke?” My mouth moved as if I’d overdosed on Novocain.
“Should I call somebody?” he asked. I wailed, “Yes!” Men can be so infuriatingly composed! I could feel a tear make its way down the left side of my face. What was wrong with me? The Curse of the Dead Aunt’s Jacket? I didn’t even have it in my hot little hands yet!
In minutes paramedics young enough to be my stepsons whooshed through the front door and up the stairs. One told me to say my name. I got it! “Lift your right arm,” another adorable one instructed. Up it went. “Smile,” ordered the one who looked like Rowdy Yates with a blood pressure cuff, as he wryly grinned at me. If I’d been capable of smiling, it would have been at him. Instead, when I tried I blew little bubbles that dribbled from the bad corner of my mouth down my chin.
“Where do you live?” asked the one who’d wanted my name. I froze, suspended in some sort of longing limbo between where I’d always been and where I wanted to be. Where did I live? All I could come up with was a gurgling giggle and a gesture toward Brad. “With him.” At least this time I didn’t drool.
In the time it would have taken me to say to Rowdy,” Do you take my oldest daughter’s hand in marriage?” (In Montana, anyone can legally perform the ceremony) my body elevated as if on air, covered in nothing but a flimsy nightie (and not my best one at that). Six tanned hands on the end of six muscular arms whisked me onto a gurney. I was floating down the stairs, flying out the door, and then sliding effortlessly into the back of an ambulance. Brad called out right before the doors closed, “I’m right behind you!” With my bathrobe, I hope?
My veins were too constricted to lodge an intravenous needle in them. The blue-eyed cowboy paramedic who put forth valiant effort soon surrendered. “I don’t want to cause you any pain,” that sweet boy said, oozing empathy. You couldn’t, I wanted to tell him but held my tongue and instead asked the logical question under the circumstances. “What’s the matter with me? Can E coli cause paralysis?”
“You’ll be fine,” he assured. Looking at that bright, young face I would have believed him if he’d told me I had contracted a disease that causes the inflicted to morph into a buffalo. “We aren’t even using lights and sirens.” He patted my bony wrist that suddenly looked as scrawny as Great Grandma Lorettos’s when she was lying in her open casket. “See? You can feel that, can’t you?” You betcha. If I’d had my wallet I would have broken out a picture of Clary. Under more favorable conditions I would have enticed him to lure her to my bedside by saying she looks a lot like me, but I realized that might not be such a turn-on at the moment. Kate was already spoken for, but if I could just get her sister out of New York and in love in Montana…it wouldn’t be torture to sit across the Sunday dinner table from this dude. I must not have brain damage, I thought, if I can still scheme like a Yenta.
St. Patrick’s emergency room was empty except for Doctor Kildare and a few nurses. My hunk husband who’d been hot on my trail appeared out of nowhere and at my side. Quite honestly, I was sorta sorry to have the gurney ride end— being carried as if I were on a cloud was a lovely feeling, I must say. Doctor Kildare asked me what I’d eaten and before I could answer, my limbs stopped tingling and I lost everything I’d eaten since last Christmas—in very public.
“You hyperventilated when you took in short quick breaths because you felt so sick to your stomach,” he explained in layman’s terms after informing me that the spinach could well have been the culprit. Hyperventilated? I don’t hyperventilate! “You were right to come in,” he added sympathetically as Brad simultaneously looked at me askance and shook his head. I knew he was thinking, Brother! I could feel his joke in my near future—the one about putting a paper bag over my head—while Dr. Kildare offered me a shot to calm the nausea for which there seemed to be no end. I accepted it gladly despite his warning to me that the drug’s side effect would be extreme sleepiness. Wonderful. At 8:00 A.M. I was free to go. Miraculously, Brad brought forth my bathrobe like David Cooperfield pulling an infinity scarf from within his sleeve.
“There’s one small problem.” As I drifted into pleasant drowsiness, I heard Brad’s voice. My last conscious sight was of his little-boy smile I knew only too well meant he’d goofed (a rare occurrence). “In my haste to follow the ambulance, I locked the door with the house key still inside.” Brad doesn’t carry a key ring. No matter how unnerved I become over this habit, he leaves keys by the door and picks up the one and only one he needs. In my old life I’d hauled a jailer’s set in my purse. In my new life, I left it up to him and shouldered a lighter load—key free! I’d predicted something like this would happen, but he had not acknowledged my anxiety. Right now, however, I was incapable of saying “I told you so.” I cared about spousal superiority as much as I cared about sitting down to another bowl of spinach. Whatever this medication was, I wanted authorization for a refill.
At 8:03 I was comatose, slouched against Brad’s shoulder while he semi-dragged me to the truck (I only know this because he later told me).
I woke up. How had Brad gotten me in here? “Are we going to The Outpost?” I called down to Brad. “We’re late for the second day of logs!” I said while brushing my hair and noticing the clock read 10:00 A.M. I’d never felt or looked younger. That medication had granted me a really good two-hour nap!
“It’s the third day, Woo!” he returned my outcry as he bounded up the stairs. “You slept for twenty-five hours!” It was as if I’d parachuted out of the Twilight Zone. I remembered nothing after the injection and had not even risen once to go to the bathroom during the day-night-now-day again. Had Brad carried me over the threshold like a blushing bride?
“How did I get in here?” I blinked, still shocked at the passage of time. “You walked, if you can call that walking. I held onto you.” That’s when I vaguely recalled hearing something about the key. “The key…” he interrupted me before I could go any further to tell me that he’d left me slumped like a sack of laundry against the car window while he squeezed, all six-foot-two-inches of him, through the peephole-sized kitchen window and into the cereal-bowl-sized sink. After taking several minutes to unfold his lanky limbs he unlocked the front door and hobbled out to fetch me.
“Did you go to The Outpost?” I asked.
“I was afraid to leave you,” he said as he took me tenderly in his arms. “Wow, you look rested!” he added as he stepped back to get a better look at me in my rumpled bathrobe. I knew this was true love. Not only did he admire me in what I’d slept in for twenty-six hours straight, but also he’d sacrificed a day of logging to stay by my side.
“Now that you’re up, get dressed and let’s go!” That’s my man, I thought. “And in the future,” he called up from halfway down the stairs in his usual playful manner, “before we call 911, get a paper bag…” That’s my man, too.
We spent the next two weeks between The Outpost and Don’s office. Every construction meeting inevitably led to the next to-do list, each item of which Brad and I checked off in record time. He had great taste and I always agreed with him. We bustled from lighting stores to marble showrooms to fireplace stone yards. We selected wood flooring that would accommodate radiant heating. We choose kitchen and laundry appliances. And when the budget meeting was called and the bottom line determined we bought a lottery ticket. When that didn’t work out, back we went to whittle our magazine-picture fantasy to a more rugged reality. Rugged was a good thing at The Outpost! We still managed to find the lodge look we wanted without having to be bank robbers to do it.
Kate and her boyfriend Chris flew up from Scottsdale for the weekend. He’d clued me in, after asking Brad for her hand on the telephone that he would propose on what would be the front steps of her family home. The secret was safe with me, but not without taking its toll. I was on pins and needles as we drove them straight from the airport to The Outpost on the ruse that they had to see the progress. We all strolled the property and Brad gave the educational tour about how a log home is constructed. When Chris winked at me that the moment was nigh, I grabbed Brad and we disappeared into the woods. When we heard Kate shriek, we knew the deed was done. There’d be an anniversary at The Outpost!
The logs were rising. Course after course was laid until the first truck had driven down the driveway empty. Load number two, the final load before the trusses would be added and the Adirondack green steel roof installed, would arrive in a few weeks. The garage and shop were well underway. Brad ordered a wood stove for the shop to keep warm every winter. After the weather turned cold, when the outside of the house was finished and work on the inside began, we could come up from Missoula and stay warm while we watched.
A week after she returned to Arizona to teach first grade, Kate narrowed down her choices for the Seattle wedding and arranged appointments for the following week, her Fall Break. I would drive to Seattle and meet her and Chris’ mother, Nancy. We would hammer out five appointments with photographers and florists. Brad would stay in Potterville with the boys. I’d be back in two days.
In my first marriage, I’d never left home for more than an hour to go grocery shopping. The one time I tried—when I went to a baby shower on a Saturday—The Master of Manipulation stood at the end of the driveway with one daughter on each side. Hand-in-hand all three of them cried (he was a natural crocodile) as they waved goodbye. That was Pete. This was Brad. “Go!” he encouraged me and nearly shoved me out the door. “I’ll take the boys to The Outpost and eat cinnamon rolls and French fries! We’ll be fine!” Little did I know there would, in fact, be a price to pay for the euphoria I felt when I pulled out of Potterville secure in the notion that my husband was not trying to trick me.

~11~

It was a seven-hour drive from our door to the waterfront door of Nancy and Paul’s Lake Union houseboat, my luxury digs for the next two nights. Kate flew in and we three girls went out for a fresh seafood dinner. I called Brad to confirm that all was well (which of course it was). “Bill called and wanted to know if I wanted to meet him at the shooting range tomorrow,” he said. “I figure since the logs are on hold for a two more days, that would be fun!”
“Ask him when they’re going to the funeral,” I said, pleased that I had a source for new information. His silence spoke volumes, as if I’d slipped strychnine into the old lady’s well to get her jacket. Obviously he wasn’t cooperating even though at the shooting range he was the one who hadn’t hesitated to fire off that garment compliment.
After a good night’s sleep, we started off early the next day. First on the list were the photographers. On the second interview we found the one we wanted, I paid the deposit, and instantly suggested we reward ourselves for such swift success with a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cone. I’m big on culinary celebrations. Riding shotgun next to Nancy at the wheel, I had taken two licks to avert imminent dripping from the side of my Jamoca Almond Fudge when my cell phone rang.
Brad couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I launched into a minute-by-minute description of our morning right down to the moment we bought the ice cream cones. When I’d run out, I heard his voice, crisp and clear. “I’ve had a stroke,” he said with characteristic calm. My strategy with much of his constant teasing is simply to ignore such ridiculous remarks. He’d already teased me about Possessive Pete not coping well with separation and even though he’d urged me to go to Seattle alone, had threatened to stand on the sidewalk of Muggles Ave. flanked by Gus and Cody and cry a river when I drove away. I wasn’t playing this game.
“Nice try, Pete!” I quipped. “Put a paper bag over your head before you call 911!”
“Seriously,” I had to admit he sounded awfully subdued. Man, he was good, “I am St. Pat’s, I’m in ICU, and I can only stay on the phone for another minute. I’ve had a stroke. I waited until I could talk somewhat normally before I called you rather than have someone at the hospital call you and scare you to death. Don is here and I’ve given him the key so he will go let the dogs back in. I put them out after I called the paramedics, but I’ll tell you about that later. After you get on the road, you need to call him and see if maybe he can feed them.”
I held the phone in one hand as I allowed my ice cream to begin dripping onto the other hand and down my wrist, a sure indication of shock. I turned around to face Kate in the back seat. “Brad’s had a stroke! I said, not believing the words myself. “I have to…go…home?” Seven hours from now—4:00—and it would be more like 5:00 by the time Nancy, who by this time had altered her route to point us in the direction of the houseboat, could get me to my car.
“Are you all right?” I asked Brad.
“They tell me I’m okay…for now anyway,” his voice sounded weaker, no doubt the toll of too much conversation.
“I’m coming!” I told him.
“I’m sorry,” he nearly whispered. “Be careful on the road.” I hung up and turned to Kate again. I knew she was thinking about her grandmother.
“Sweetie.” The name my girls had called my mother was the only word she spoke. It was all she had to say since we both knew intimately what havoc a stroke could wreak. All three of us had watched my brilliant mother, her body and face that had looked like Grace Kelly suddenly slack in a wheelchair, crabby and confused. She finally gave up on physical therapy. For six years she vacillated between bouts of anger and the depths of despair. She thought of herself as a hopeless, helpless burden. Would this be Brad?
Nancy reached over and took my ice cream cone. “Give me this,” she said and then dumped it head first into the tidy automotive disposal sack attached to the center console. She handed me a Kleenex to wipe the trail of Jamoca Almond Fudge that by this time was down to my elbow. “What can I do to help?” she asked.
I pulled my checkbook from my purse, signed a blank check for the floral deposit, and ripped it from the stack. I handed it toward the back seat as I said to Nancy, “What you can do is keep on going. If you would take Kate to the florist without me…”
“No, Mom!” Kate interrupted, “I’m coming with you!” I explained to her that there was nothing to be served by her driving back with me and having to get on a plane back to Arizona and her classroom a few hours later. Much better to stay put and get the wedding business accomplished. I would be fine.
“We’ll get it all done,” Nancy said. “Let’s get you back to your car and on the road before it gets any later. That’s a long drive.”
“I don’t like this,” Kate complained. Neither did I. “It’s the only thing that makes sense, so it’s just what we have to do,” I insisted.
In the time it took me to pack up my things, Nancy had packed me enough food to feed the homeless between Seattle and Missoula. A large grocery bag was filled with cookies, a sandwich, boxes of crackers, and water bottles. Before she handed it to me, she tossed in some bite-sized Snicker’s bars. “The chocolate will keep you awake!” she said. I quickly hugged Kate, told her to “carry on,” and broke free of her grip in order to keep from crying. As I was speed walking up the dock to the street she called after me, “I love you, Mama! Call me every hour!” At hearing the word “Mama” I broke down and wept the rest of the way up the ramp and to my car. Mama—would Brad be like Mama? I unlocked the door, threw the bags in the back seat, and sat down. I shook my head and told myself to stop it, started the engine, and pulled away.
The seven-hour drive back to Missoula was not at all like the one from it. For one thing, I wasn’t singing along with Brad Paisley. Before I’d left downtown Seattle, I was on the phone to the other three kids. First in line to receive the news were Ryan and Mark. I felt I’d better prepare them in case the next call they got from me was even worse. Naturally they were stunned and scared. I was calm and as informative as I could be considering at this point I knew next to nothing.
Whenever there is an emergency (that is not about me) I whip into shape and efficiently and unemotionally deal with the details like a four-star general behind the battle line. Clary is like me. She offered to make phone calls. I could hear the pitter patter of the computer keyboard when she started researching different types of strokes, even though I told her I’d learned a lot when Sweetie had endured one and I had yet to learn anything about an easy one. Still she argued that times had changed since then. She told me she would call every thirty minutes to be sure I was okay. She was my rock on the road.
Before I could call him, Don called. “I’ve been at the hospital,” he said. “He looks good!” Brad always looks good. “ He’s still in ICU and they are checking everything out—seeing if there’s any chance he’ll have another one. I’ve got the key and Mary and I have already been over to let the dogs back in. Where are you? What can we do?”
I responded as best I could. Don had verbalized my greatest fear—that Brad might have another stroke before I could get there. Or even after I got there. I gathered my wits about me and asked if they would mind going back over to the house in an hour, feeding the boys, and then coming back again later to let them out again. I looked at the clock. “I won’t be there until about 1:00 tomorrow morning,” I said. It was getting dark now. I was still in the state of Washington and would be for several hours.
“Listen to me,” Don said slowly. “You are not used to this sort of driving. When it gets dark, it’s really, really dark. There may be wildlife on the road or darting onto the road suddenly. You won’t be able to see an animal if it runs in front of you. If that happens, DO NOT SWERVE!” Okay. I listened and nodded while he lectured. “Just hit it! You may do damage to the car and the animal, but if you swerve, you will roll and do damage to yourself!” Got it. Just hit it. Could I do that?
I asked him if he knew what had happened to Brad. “He canceled meeting with some friend at the shooting range cause he had a terrible headache.” No word on the funeral, then. I snapped back to the cause at hand. “The next thing he knew, his whole side went numb so he managed to get to his office chair that he says is on wheels? Yes, I thought. “He misdialed 911 three times then got the paramedics and was able to wheel himself to the back door to let the dogs out before they arrived.” In the midst of picturing my poor, dear husband, the man I love, struggling to reach help and remaining resourceful in spite of his crippled condition, I couldn’t help but wonder. What had the only paramedics in a small town thought when they were given the street and house number? I could hear their conversation now.
Beautiful Blue Eyes to Cowboy: “STROKE. STAT. BRAD MILLER. 4558 HOGWARTS!
Cowboy to Beautiful Blue Eyes: TELL HIM TO PUT A PAPER BAG OVER HIS HEAD.”
Don was happy to accommodate and when I thanked him and told him I would drive carefully (neglecting to mention that I was doing eighty), he urged me to call every so often. “I don’t care what time it is when you call. If you are frightened or concerned or just need to keep alert, call us!” I expressed undying gratitude to a new friend in a new town where I’d met so many kind people but would still hesitate to impose. “Anyone would do the same,” he said.
When he hung up, I thought about who to call next. Suddenly I realized that whereas I act with aplomb in another person’s emergency, this, in fact, was about me! I’d been administering to others and at the same time reassuring myself. This would be small; there is such a thing as a “small stroke,” isn’t there? Now, alone in the car that tore through the night, I was very aware that what I needed was to talk to someone about my fears and who would know what I was thinking—really. I punched in June’s home number.
June was my friend who I called whenever I needed to talk nitty gritty. She would not appease or sugarcoat. She lived in New Jersey and cared for her aging parents. A person of empathy, she possessed the ability to tell it like it is, but in such a way that you felt you were not alone because somewhere, deep down, you’d known all along the truth she told.
“What if he DIES?” were the first words out of her mouth after I filled her in. Exactly my question. Had I finally found the right man just to have him taken from me? We’d nearly emptied our savings account in order to pay for half a house. What would I do? Stop halfway? I’d lose all that money. It’s not as if you can return a load of logs for a refund and check the box on the form “Changed my mind.” Would I abandon the project, forget the money, and flee to live with one of my girls? But I didn’t want to live in Arizona or New York. I wanted to live in Montana!
“What would the Pioneer women have done?” June asked. Fed up with urban sprawl, she shared my dream for wide-open spaces under the big sky. “Many of them were left alone when their husbands died.” True. I’d lived alone for ten years before I’d married the first time and several more after Pete. Surrounded by family and friends when I wanted them, I’d enjoyed the solitude when I didn’t. I was fine. I’d be fine. Except here I didn’t know anything about septics (why hadn’t I listened?) and propane tanks and radiant floor heating and power outages and snowplowing.
“But you can learn,” June said firmly. “You are capable of learning.” She was right! I could do this! I would be Barbara after all! It’s true, she had those sweaty hired hands living on her land—I’d need at least one of those. But I could tell Don to make the workshop into a bunkhouse and exchange room and board for ranch work. I’d be heartbroken without Brad, but I would carry on with my usual determination.
“I could move in with you!” June erupted into a burst of enthusiasm so bright and bold that I thought she might explode. I’ll come live with you if he dies!” She quickly added, “God forbid.”
“Perfect!” I said, knowing that June and I could effortlessly co-exist, unlike most women. We would sit on the porch and knit while we watched the ranch hand clear the land. Of course we didn’t want any harm to come to Brad…but if it did…
“Don’t ever tell him I said that.” She’d experienced a sudden twinge of guilt, having grown up Catholic too. I thanked her for the inspiration peppered with humor—just what I’d needed—and let her go since it was very late in New Jersey.
Emboldened, I forged ahead. I had another three hours to go and I needed to make a bathroom stop. This was not easy when there are no buildings in sight. At last I saw a cluster of well-lit establishments that included a café and a gas station. I stopped to empty my bladder and refill my tank.
Sheer adrenalin carried me the rest of the way. I’d never needed adrenalin before. In sleepy suburbia, the most chutzpah I’d ever had to muster was enough to wrangle with another load of laundry or ferry the kids to another outrageously opulent birthday party. The only real emergency in my life had been Sweetie’s, and the hour it had taken me to drive to her had not been enough time for the surge I experienced now, torpedoing down I-90, at hour number six. I popped another Snicker’s and the phone rang to begin another series of check-up calls.
As I soared over Lookout Pass warning signs flashed: DANGER! BLACK ICE AHEAD!! I vaguely recalled hearing sometime in my lifetime that black ice was invisible, so I clutched the steering wheel for dear life and slowed to a crawl. If I slid, was I supposed to put my foot on or take my foot off the brake? I hadn’t seen another vehicle for hours. What if I had car trouble? I willed the thought away. I was a woman on a mission, facing all obstacles with undaunted courage in order to get to my man. What if I was too late?
Sure I’d lived alone before but who was I kidding? My ability to be independent had only been while safe in the shadow of Pasadena’s old oak trees, ancient and protective. Now I was two thousand miles away. My mother was gone, my father getting there, my children grown, and my husband lying in a hospital bed. I had crossed to the other side of life’s river, had stepped away from the accumulated wisdom of my younger years and waded over to wilderness. What lay in wait on this uncharted shore? That’s when it hit me: I’d been drawn to Montana by its beauty, and who wouldn’t be—majestic mountains, sparkling rivers, and that never-ending sky? But now it wasn’t just about physical attraction; there was something deeper. Character. Montana was teaching me what my pretty Southern California cocoon never could have—to be brave. The Orange Curtain had veiled all unwelcome but necessary truths, and for most of its inhabitants the only unpleasant reality faced head-on was another Botox treatment. Montana’s raw and rugged landscape did not pretend. Like an honest friend who brings out the best in me, this place I had come to would not always tell me what I wanted to hear. But when you are brave, you ride the bumps in the road. You do not let difficulty deter you from your destination. Ours had been a whirlwind romance, but I was in it for the long haul, come what may. I had fallen in love with Montana.

When I crossed the state line I thought I might cry. I’d done it! From there it was familiar territory—Alberton, Huson (throw The Outpost a kiss!), Frenchtown (Je t’aime!), and at last Missoula. My shoulders relaxed, and my fingers unclenched. I bypassed Potterville (even it looked good to me), its few lighted windows blessed beacons to welcome me. After hours alone and frightened on a long dark highway it felt like home. I thanked God for small favors and then asked him for one big one: Please let Brad live.
I went straight to St. Pat’s. Like an Olympic walker (heel toe, heel toe) I raced down the hospital corridor in the direction I was told at the front desk. I whipped around the corner and stood in the doorway. There was Brad, looking exactly like I’d left him, propped up on pillows and watching a program about wolves on PBS television. He smiled (left side only) and reached for me. His eyes filled. “All I prayed for was that you get here safely,” he sighed and I sat down on the bed where we held each other.
He filled me in, repeating much of what Don had already told me.
“They gave me all the tests and I failed miserably,” he said. “So they told me, ‘Mr. Miller, we’re treating this as a stroke so we’ll go lights and sirens.’” I hadn’t gotten lights and sirens! “That’s because mine was a real stroke!” Brad is a merciless jester.
He added that they had checked him out thoroughly and this was not related to his health as near as they could tell. Mysteriously, every artery was plaque-free, even the carotid one that had shot the clot. He could walk now, but he was wobbly. His right arm just hung there, as limp as a rubber doll’s. They said he would probably recover completely but it would take time, maybe a year or more for the last of it, which would be his hand and fingers. Percentage of recovery and its speed would depend on his dedication to therapy. His blood pressure was the immediate concern so they would keep him in the hospital until they could get that under control. A vascular surgeon would be seeing him tomorrow.
“You know, Woo…”
“What, Man?” (I generally responded to “Woo” with “Man.”)
“I told myself that as long as I could tie a fly and click the shutter, that was all I’d ever need.” A few weeks back Ryan had flown in and he and his father had taken a quick run over to West Yellowstone, where they’d taken some awe-inspiring photographs. The outing had reaffirmed to Brad that nature photography was in his blood. “There is a spiritual component in it for me,” he’d said upon returning.
“They say in time I will be able to do both,” he said, “so I am grateful.”
The next morning I called June, after I’d brought the kids up to date of course.
“He’s fine,” I told her.
“Darn! I mean thank God!” she said.
“But they are having trouble lowering his blood pressure,” I added.
“Really? Should I start packing?” What a saint! It was so heartening to have such an unselfish friend.

~12~

The good news was that the vascular surgeon reported that Brad had experienced a spontaneous dissection of the carotid artery, which is an injury to the artery that could befall you or me as much as anyone else. The artery would hopefully remain completely occluded or mend itself. If it only partially mended after three months, it might require surgery. This was bad news because most such patients died on the operating table—the repair was a very tricky procedure. The other bad news was that Brad’s blood pressure would not stabilize.
During the five days he remained hospitalized while doctors tried different medications to bring his numbers back to normal, all my newfound friends were either with me at the hospital or feeding me meals. One morning Karyn and Don were heading down the hospital corridor to visit Brad. Lorena, Mary, Maggie, Carol—you name them, they were taking good care of me, and their husbands were stopping in to see mine. It was as if we’d lived here for twenty years. Bob was busy at The Outpost managing the second delivery of logs, but he called Brad every day to discuss the progress. His wife, Judy, brought me dinner one evening.
The day Brad came home I was nervous. Armed with medications, his blood pressure was lower than it had been, but still not within the range it really should be. The likelihood of another stroke was slim and next to none, but if it were to occur, it would happen in the next thirty to sixty days. For two months every time he got a headache I would worry—something in which I excel.
The first week he was asleep more than he was awake, which is very common whenever there has been an injury to the brain. One afternoon I drove us to The Outpost (I was chauffeur until he was given clearance to drive) to see that logs were piling up to resemble a house! All the workers stopped to come hear the story from the horse’s mouth. A few of them had feared that his leaping onto the log truck and doing manual labor had caused the stroke. They were relieved to know that was not the case.
Mobility of his right arm was gradual and unless he supported it, the doctor said, gravity would pull it right out of the shoulder socket. But by a few weeks into recovery when he started occupational therapy for his hand, the arm was in full swing. As it was, however, he could still do nothing with that hand. He worked hard at accomplishing the minute goals set by the therapist. For the most part he was patient, but occasionally he became frustrated. This was harder than Sudoku.
“I won’t be using that compound bow anytime soon,” he said one afternoon when he was feeling a bit down in the dumps. He’d bought the weapon at a local outdoor sports store, where he had been coached by one of the expert salesmen how to use it. I looked forward to learning too, although I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to arm the bow with an arrow. That, and my only experience with a bow and arrow had been during Mayfield High School’s archery hour. My first time up, I’d sent an arrow sailing over the fifteen-foot-high shrub that separated the gym class participants from a four-lane Boulevard that was highly trafficked —except when they blocked it off to start the Rose Parade. Such my Diana-goddess-of-the-hunt potential had abruptly ended. I hadn’t told Brad this story, and I didn’t think I would. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him…or in this case, I suppose could.
I knew I’d never be a huntress to the point where I could pull the trigger on or shoot the arrow at a live animal. It was just too easy to buy meat at the store! The sport was something Brad was considering, and I’m one of those women who could go for a ten-point-antlered elk head on the great room wall to replace the inflatable one I bought Brad at a gag store in town. But in the end, he admitted, he might prefer to take a picture of game rather than puncture it. Neither one of us had been raised in a hunting culture, unless you call my father shooting skunks in the driveway with a BB gun hunting. In the short time we’d been in Montana, however, we’d begun to recognize its validity for both man and beast. We were conditioned to passing elk and deer carcasses with glazed eyes and gaping mouths hanging over the backsides of tailgates, where before we’d only seen Christmas trees. Maybe…in time…
By Thanksgiving, Brad was still barking orders at his hand. All four kids came to us for the long weekend out of concern for their dad, and since there was no room on Hogwarts we rented a three-bedroom house on Rock Creek (the rates being much more reasonable when the noontime temperature is -7). As each kid emerged through the one gate at our airport emotions were high. Dad looked so good! Except for his helpless hand and the beard they had not yet seen he looked every bit himself! And Mom? I was wearing my brown papa-bear jacket, which was easier to leave on indoors than to carry.
“Mom! You look like you’re about to pop!” Kate observed after she hugged me hello.
“What is that?” Clary asked, stepping back to get a better angle on it. With the hood down the husky fur thicket circled my shoulders instead of my face.
“Whoa, Kathleen! You’re…large!” Thanks, Mark. Ryan said he didn’t know what they were talking about—a scary comment that could have catapulted me into anorexia.
After the automatic doors slid open and the blast of cold air hit us, Kate hugged her sweatshirt tighter. “I wish I had Mom’s coat,” she said.
“There was only one other one left,” I told her as I unzipped mine and drew her inside it, “in pink—if you want to look like a Bazooka Gum bubble.”
It was close to midnight, so we drove two cars—I behind the wheel of one and Ryan the other—straight to Rock Creek in sleet and snow. I was thrilled out of my Smartwool socks to be in real weather! For four days the air was frigid. While the boys sprawled across the sofas to watch football, we girls tried to take a walk and build a snowman, but below zero temperatures quickly drove us back inside the cozy house. Clary and I baked gingerbread men. We worked a jigsaw puzzle of sleighs and ice skaters. All three males were snoring. When I commented on the racket, Brad sat up.
“I am not asleep!” he defended. “I need to work on my hand.” The girls were in the kitchen and the boys were snoozing when suddenly Brad called out, “Look! I can move it!” He’d successfully elevated his middle finger until it pointed straight to the ceiling, an appropriate gesture to sum up his situation. I pulled the turkey out of the oven and uncorked a bottle of wine to mark the occasion. The white elephant in the room was the fear that he would have to undergo that life-threatening surgery.
Since we were an hour’s drive from The Outpost and the weather was indeed frightful while the fire was so delightful, we opted not to drive two cars out to see the house-in-progress. Kate had seen only the very beginning stage, and a diamond ring had diverted her attention. Everyone would be surprised next spring when they saw the finished product.
Before Christmas, the logs were in place and the trusses set. The roofers raced to get the job completed before winter storms. So far, in Huson, the temperatures had dropped but unlike Rock Creek the snowfall had been light. Once the roof was on, large heaters were brought inside so work on the interior could continue. Bob had warned us that it would be slow going when it came to finishing the inside.
Meanwhile Brad’s hand and finger movement made great strides. He was able to drive and so took himself out to the shop, which together with the garage was ready. Every other day I would accompany him. After we spent a couple of hours there, we would bundle up and walk the dogs at the Grand Menard Trail. By spring thaw his dexterity would have improved to the degree that he would be able to chop wood for the stove. For now he plugged in a space heater and began the arduous task of toting boxes marked “SHOP” from behind the purple doors to his “manly-man cave,” as he called it. The lovely wood-sided garage that looked just like a barn was being used to contain wood flooring, ten-foot interior doors, and construction tools.
“Now you can get a better sense of the space,” Brad said on the first day we walked inside after the logs were all in place. There were no windows. Those would come later, when the weather warmed a bit and they could be carved out with a chainsaw. As we stepped over electrical cords that snaked across the cement foundation I was agape at the height of the ceiling. Three trusses—one crowning the front porch, one atop the back porch, and one in the middle of the great room—reminded me of every mountain lodge I’d wished I could live in. Brad stood in each spot that would be covered with a piece of furniture and gestured with his hands (both of them!) to indicate its size and placement. I believed him, but I just couldn’t see it. It still looked like I’d have to turn sideways to get through the kitchen. How could a bed ever fit in this room? You’re telling me the tub goes here? But trust is my middle name.
We came back out on a night of full moon. “Let’s go see how bright it is out there,” Brad said. We waited until 11:00 at night to leave Potterville. When we got to our driveway, there was no need for headlights. We never switched on our flashlights. The moon was as large and as round and as bright as I’d ever seen it, like a searchlight that didn’t move. We didn’t linger; it was cold out. But what we saw was enough to heighten our anticipation of many moonlit nights to come.
Mark and Ryan spent Christmas with their mother and Clary’s flight was canceled due to East Coast weather. It was the first Christmas I would be without my father and both daughters. Hearing Nat King Cole sing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire plunged me deep into a vale of tears. Kate came out for a couple of days and then traveled on to join Chris in Seattle. We talked to Clary on the phone (she didn’t have a computer that could “Skype” like her sister and I did) and did our best to make merry. I did my best to disregard what wasn’t the way it had always been and instead focus on what it was that it had never been. It was my very first white Christmas! Kate and I took walks along the snowy streets and listened to Dickens carolers who milled about on Higgins crooning “The First Noel.” Fresh pine wreaths with bright red ribbons adorned the streetlamps. White twinkle lights blinked in the doorways and around the windows of every shop. We went to the Christmas Symphony one afternoon and listened to classic holiday music then afterwards walked out into the night where light, fat snowflakes tickled our noses.
Kate flew to Seattle a couple of days after Christmas. At the entrance to the security queue, we clutched each other like lovers and sobbed. What was our problem? She’d gone to college (an hour from home) and had lived in Arizona for six months (I’d been very busy acting out my fantasy). But now the reality slapped me in the face. My entire family had spread apart like dandelion seeds blown to the wind. A daughter was getting married. Was I having an empty nester seizure? Did I feel extra vulnerable because I thought I still might lose my husband on the surgical table? She wasn’t handling it any better than I was. Her I-want-my-mama attack made my ability to withdraw even harder. But I did. “We can do this,” I told her. “We are big girls.” (In my case, wearing my jacket, very, very big). I dashed out the airport doors while fighting the urge to look over my shoulder. My face was splotchy and my eyes as puffy as my outerwear when I sank down onto the low wall that surrounds the Missoula airport entrance. I could go no further. Bent over with my head in my gloved hands, I let loose as if I had just lost Brad. I felt a hand on my shoulder and froze. The airport sidewalk had been deserted, as usual, which had allowed me to come undone. Who had seen me?
It was Maggie, dressed from head to toe in TSA security uniform.
“What are you doing here?” I hiccupped, snorted, and sniffed.
“I work here now,” she said and took a quick moment to explain that she had left Coco’s since I’d last seen her, when she and David had met us at The Outpost with a large thermos of coffee and a Tupperware container full of homemade cinnamon rolls. They’d wanted to see the house in progress, so we all bundled up and partook of a mid-morning snack. David took us a step further in fire safety instruction and pointed out the less obvious danger of some of the lower brush on the property. Such “ladder fuel,” if on fire, could cause flames to climb to the taller trees. With a quick phone call the Frenchtown Fire Department would come out and clear it for us. Since that day, Maggie had obviously changed careers.
“I’m in training for TSA. Are you okay?” I looked about as okay as an airplane passenger who just walked away from a crash.
“Never mind,” I tried to convince her, “I just put Kate on a plane and I’ll get a grip in a minute.” Anyone in her right mind could see it would take more than a minute.
“How long ‘til you see her again?” she asked sympathetically. She was thinking it must be years.
“A month or so,” I barely whispered and then the dam burst on another lachrymal flood. She handed me Kleenex—a little disposable pack from her pocket. “Please, go back inside,” I begged, feeling embarrassed now to no end—a good sign that I must be coming around. “You need to get back to work.”
“It’s okay. I’m on sidewalk duty,” she said. “And there’s nothing the matter with you that a good bison burger and bottle of wine can’t cure. Come up to dinner tonight.” Not exactly my experience at LAX. I nodded my head, opened my mouth and took two deep breaths like I do for the doctor when I’m perched on the edge of the examining table and he has the stethoscope on my back. I shuddered. I stood, told her we’d be there, and walked to my car. I sat still before turning the key, shook my head rapidly back and forth and chastised out loud, “I’m being stupid! In the midst of giving myself a serious self-help time-out I hadn’t noticed the cowboy stepping out of his truck parked next to me. “Pardon me, Ma’am.” Who now? This airport was getting way too crowded. His clear eyes met my bleary ones. He tipped his hat. I sure did like all this hat tipping. “Sorry for interfering. Are you all right? Is there anything I can do?” You just did, I thought.

~13~

New Year’s Eve Brad and I splurged. We dined at Pearl’s on elk backstrap then indulged in a divine chocolate almond torte. We ordered a bottle of Merlot and toasted the old year, the New Year, The Outpost, and each other. Thank God we still had each other. The CAT scan to determine the condition of the damaged artery was in another two weeks.
Clary flew in for a belated Christmas and when I took her to the airport my behavior was no more mature. I did manage to bypass the wailing wall and make it to the car, but instead of another self-inflicted, head-shaking time-out, I drove straight to Brookside. There I pulled a chair up to the jigsaw puzzle table, where Marsha and Dottie offered me sage adages. Good old country comfort. They listened to me blabber and blubber about my children and my father and reminded me of all I’d been through while quenching my thirst for a better life. “You’re doing the right thing, Honey. They’re all moving on with their lives. So must you.” They said they’d pray for me. Who was ministering to whom?
I’d been talking to my father every week when Nina would hand him her cell phone. I’d decided not to mention Brad’s stroke. What would be the point? A late bloomer in many ways, this marked the first time I’d spared Daddy rather than turned to him in a crisis. I kept postponing for a better time seeing him in person. For sixty days I’d worried Brad might have another dissection. Those days of vigilance had passed and we were both relieved. But I still had to wait to see if he would need the surgery. Even then, I would be reticent to leave him. Look what happened the last time I did!
“You never should have left him,” Mary teased. She knew enough about my first husband to go along with the joke. “It’s your fault for going out of town!”
Meanwhile Daddy was pleased to have pictures of the construction. Nina would explain them to him as best she could and then tell him I wanted to say hello. In all our connections, the only words he spoke were, “I wish I could come there. Then I’d be finished.” I told him that when the house was built I would see what I could do. Then of course, I’d hang up and cry. For being so happy, I was certainly getting good at crying.
Brad’s good news removed one giant fear off my anxiety checklist. He insisted on going to the CAT scan appointment alone, but afterwards I went with him to see the vascular surgeon who informed us that the artery had completely healed. He was the picture of health and would suffer no consequences, except possibly a lingering problem with a few of his fingers. Even that, in time, would be a non-issue. I phoned June, who no doubt had been praying her rosary, to ease her mind and let her know he did require blood pressure medication and probably always would.
Now we could really turn full attention to the house. “At least we met our deductible,” Brad wryly remarked as we left St. Pat’s and headed straight to The Outpost, boys in tow. Freezing temperatures were no deterrence. The drive was stunning in snow. Every view from Ninemile Road was a Christmas card scene. Wisps of wood-fired smoke drifted from cabin chimneys. Children sledded down hills trailing billowy clouds. Single pine braches were laced in white, together a silvery landscape. Mountains on the far end of my favorite valley took on an even mightier appearance—icy giants.
We made winter trips to watch the radiant heat tubes go in, the flooring go down, and the stone fireplace go up. Then came the cabinets, the lighting, and of course somewhere in there were the windows. As soon as it wasn’t below zero, the window boys arrived and with a chainsaw and following very careful measurement carved openings in the logs for picture windows that rose to the ceiling. Every new installation gave us the stamina to survive until spring. Both of us are really bad about waiting.
In March, Brad and Ryan met in San Antonio for the Final Four Basketball Tournament. Brad’s beloved UCLA was playing, he felt up to traveling for the first time, and I wanted him to go. He deserved it. The boys and I would be fine for three days. I’d fallen behind in my Brookside Book Club assignment and needed to get started on my newsletters. “I’ll watch Lonesome Dove for the twelfth time,” I told him, “and eat nothing but chicken chili, biscuits, and dark chocolate.” He grimaced at my version of a junk food splurge. “But right after you get there I’m calling to tell you I had a stroke!”
“And I’m not coming home!” Wasn’t he clever? The pre-trip teasing ramped up from there, all about paper bags and 911 calls. “You’ll go out to see if there’s any more progress on the house, right?” He asked the night before the flight while he was packing.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll take you to the airport, do the grocery shopping, clean the house, take the boys to the dog wash, and then go out there to let them run around and dry off. I’ll see if anything’s new.” Kitchen tile and chinking were among the upcoming attractions, not to mention the massive oven hood that was soon to be suspended on chains from the ceiling to just above the cook top.
“It takes awhile to get a time slot with the chinker,” Bob had explained. “He’s the only one in Western Montana.”
“Does his license plate say CHINKER?” I’d seen the truck a few times on I-90.
“Yup, that’s Harry!”
I saw Brad off, did the errands and chores, and was zooming out the highway, admiring the view of open fields that surround the village in Frenchtown. As I sailed alongside the pond I turned to see if anyone was fishing it yet when WHOMP! I thought a buck had crashed into my front end. I careened to the shoulder of the highway and braked to a stop. Blood and body parts and…feathers? It took me several moments to identify the remains on my windshield, an adult whooping crane that had soared across the highway, but not quite. It had slammed into the glass with the force of a jet plane. Turning on the windshield wipers wasn’t going to cut it. I had to get out, pry away legs, torso, and wings from my line of vision. I’d get Bob to help me clean it.
When I pulled in at The Outpost, Bob squinted at my car.
“I see you nailed something.” He pointed to the windshield as he walked over, rag at the ready.
“A whopping whooping crane,” I said.
“Over by the Frenchtown pond?” he asked while wiping the blood and guts like a pro. “It happens.” His mouth spread to a wide grin.
“It was terrifying!” I said. “I’m amazed it didn’t break the windshield!”
“Now you’re almost a real Montanan,” he said, unable to wipe that smile from his face. “All you gotta do now is run off the road into a snow bank and live to tell the tale. Then you’ll be authentic,” he said without portentous intention. We walked into the house where I checked on what he and his crew were up to. Nothing new to report to Brad, except I’d committed a country hit and run.
Initially I thought I would let Gus and Cody race around our woods, but after I got there I decided a short hike up Grand Menard might be less disruptive to all the workers. As I drove out Ninemile Road and turned right at the Ranger Station, I noticed patches of ice that stubbornly lingered even though spring had sprung just about everywhere else in the valley. I hadn’t brought Yak Traks. They were like tire chains for your shoes that Maggie had recommended I buy when I’d been ice-skating without skates all over Missoula. I decided that if the trail looked icy or if there was even one other car parked at the trailhead, I would abort my mission to dry the wet dogs. It was not worth my slipping or encountering another canine on the trail. Gus had an alpha habit of chest blocking the competition like a wrestler on RAW, and the victim’s owner often had to be resuscitated from the shock. I’d play it safe. What’s that they say about the best-laid plans?
Lucky me! Only one small bump of snow and not a car in sight! We were go for launch, and so I opened the hatchback. The boys cannonballed out of the opening before the door had fully risen. Vroom! Away they ran to somewhere back behind the car. I was busy reaching through the open door to retrieve my gloves having determined it was still a bit nippy for bare hands. My booted feet sunk into the mucky mud and as I brought my head through the doorway and straightened up—BAM! I was down. How? And in some serious pain. Why? Both dogs, tousling with each other and not paying attention to where they were heading, had hit me from behind with a total of 230 pounds and at a full clip. My body and my left foot had twisted appropriately upon impact, but my right foot had stayed inappropriately and solidly in place, anchored in the quicksand-like mire.
If it had been autumn when the elk are in the rut, a herd of cows would have instinctively responded to my bullish keening. The eerie high-pitched squeal that emitted from my mouth would have startled even me on any other day. Today I was pre-occupied with fending off a fainting spell. The excruciating stab was swift and sure. I rocked with it. I rolled with it. I crawled with it over to the little hill of snow, where I exhibited marvelous outdoor survival skill by unlacing my boot, peeling off my sock as if it were a bruised grape, and slapping a snowball against the already outrageously bulbous swelling. “Man!” I was speaking to the dogs and any benevolent spirit looking down on me from hiking heaven. “I really did a number on my ankle!” I pressed the snow until it melted and my hand went numb. A wave of nausea washed over me. My shoulders started to shake even though I was wearing warm clothes.
I took several short breaths before I remembered that I was on dangerous ground for hyperventilation, so I eased up on the inhales. At the pain’s peak I thought I might perish. Then it ebbed, like a labor contraction. I hee-hee breathed in case another jolt was coming. I gathered my wits about me. I needed to get back over to my car. Once there, I would think. While the boys frolicked near the trailhead, I crawled back to the running board and sat down. I should call somebody. Woopsy daisy, wilderness! No cell phone reception and the nearest sign of life (the human variety) was about a mile down the road. That’s a long way to crawl… with two dogs.
Luckily the pain had stopped. There was no need for emergency here! I gingerly eased on my sock from toe to heel and then up and over the ankle. Next came the boot, an over-the-ankle, laced-high hiking affair that took some manipulating, but I got it on and laced it tight. Ahhhh…that was better. I felt put back together again and much less vulnerable. Except I was still shaking and thought I might throw up. I just sat there. Breathing. Thinking. I might go by Walgreen’s on the way home and buy an ace bandage so I could wrap it. I’d elevate and ice it while I watched Lonesome Dove. It would be fine. Now, time to get the boys back in the car. We’d walk tomorrow.
Try telling them that. Brad and I had trained these dogs well, but there was no command in our repertoire for “Game over!” The back of the car was still open. I tried, “Come!” I tried, “Up!” They just looked at me, and then back down to the mud that was tailor-made for sniffing. They ran over to the trailhead, ready to go. My intention was to walk to the hatchback where I would command them and whisk them in, but the second I touched my right toes to the ground I knew that was a bad idea. I hopped while holding onto the side of the car.
At the back I felt overwhelmingly sick again. I was dizzy. I sat on the edge of the tailgate and put my head between my knees. Rin Tin Tin was not instinctively responding. I lifted my head and in desperation began a dog whisperer routine. “Gus!” I called and he looked up. Good dog. “Look at me!” This is when I made that SWAT team motion—the one where you point two fingers at your own eyes, then the same two at his, then back at yours. Gus stared at me while Cody continued to nosh on deer scat as if it were caviar. “Mommy’s hurt!” Would “Timmy has fallen into the well” work better? Gus blinked but his gaze did not wander. I patted the inside of the car. “Come! Into the car! Get IN!” And in an Olympic runner’s dash he went from zero to ninety. Whoosh! He was in. His brother was far too insecure not to follow. Just one more mouthful of what I couldn’t think about for fear of barfing, and then Cody was in too. I slammed the back door, hopped to the driver’s door, and eased in.
Driving did not hurt! There was no point in going by The Outpost to seek Bob’s assistance. First of all, Friday at 3:00 would be quitting time or close to it. Secondly, I’d just been there asking for a clean-up after the whooping crane crash. Now I’d be back for a silly little twisted ankle? I was better off going home, via Walgreen’s. I’d get the injury up and rest. The swelling would be down in no time.
Right about then one quick pulse of that heart-stopping pain shot through my ankle like a bullet—an “in-and-out.” Instantly, I felt my stomach churn. My ears rang. Maybe I should go to the emergency room?
But I couldn’t go the emergency room! How could I after all the teasing and the jokes not only from Brad but also from all our new friends? Nope! ER was out of the question. Walgreen’s it was. I had to keep this secret.
I started to sweat. I am not one to perspire unless I have to deliver a speech in front of an audience of three hundred—or three. Maybe I did need to go to Emergency. It was Friday. If I didn’t go, what if I woke up in the middle of the night in some kind of otherworldly agony? At least if I went in and got it checked, I would know it was nothing. Then I wouldn’t worry if the pain came back or the swelling didn’t go down by Saturday, when it’s always harder to see a doctor. And on Sunday, everything in Missoula would be closed. I should go.
No one would ever have to know! Since this would be merely a reassurance visit, who would I have to tell? Instead of exiting at Airway, I went on to Orange. From there it was just a couple of blocks to St. Pat’s. At least I hadn’t called 911.
I surreptitiously parked at the curb parallel to the ER entrance. I scanned the street. Everybody saw everybody in Missoula so I had to be careful. The coast was clear. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, except in this case the straight line between me and the double doors involved a small incline of what in summer is green grass. In spring it was mud. Even though this would be messy, it was easier than crawling a mile at Grand Menard. I hopped around the car and went down on all fours. Deprived of their hike and now imprisoned in the car, the boys were howling and screaming behind me, “Not fair!” Halfway up the rise a nurse approached the doors and peered out, no doubt due to the racket that sounded like wolves circling for the kill. She slammed open the doors and ran over, told me to stay put, and then came back in a flash with a wheelchair. “What happened to you, you poor dear?” I looked like I’d been dipped in chocolate at Willy Wonka’s factory. I would need a bath before X-rays could possibly penetrate what was drying into adobe.
The emergency room was empty once again. Did nothing ever happen to anyone else in Missoula? The nurse asked me for my name so she could type it into the computer. No forms to fill out, no signature required. When I said, “Kathleen Miller” I wondered if a red lightning-bolt icon would pop up next to it. She didn’t point and laugh or mention anything about a paper bag, so I turned my attention to the matter at hand. Might the doctor be able to give me an ace bandage and verify that elevating and ice and Lonesome Dove were excellent ideas?
“What happened?” the doctor asked after the nurse had scraped me clean enough to examine the ankle. He turned it. He rotated it. No pain. I told him about the dogs and he wheeled in an X-ray machine. After pictures were taken, he disappeared for a few moments. Maybe I’d even sprained it!
“You need to get a cat,” he mocked as he swhooshed back the curtain around my bed and reappeared.
“Tell me about it!” I chuckled, ready to receive my icing instructions.
“It’s broken,” he said…just like that. I was stunned into silence, and then all I could say was, “No!”
“Yes,” he argued, “as in very broken. And you’ve pulled some muscles and tendons. It’s a real mess.” He slapped the film onto the light box and proceeded to show me the lit up line that cracked the shadowed bone from top to bottom. “We’ll cast it and give you crutches, then you need to see an orthopedist in a week.” I started to cry. Then I couldn’t stop crying. “Do you need a prescription for painkillers?” he asked. No, but I sure could use some hormones.
I sniffled and refused his offer since my ankle no longer hurt. I’d be fine with Advil. Big, giant mistake. I kept right on boo-hooing in front of this boy-became doctor until I guess he thought he’d throw the old lady a bone by telling me I could possibly get by with a boot. “But I have to watch you on crutches first. Have you ever had them?” I held Kleenex to my nose and shook my head no, that I hadn’t. “Cause if you so much as touch your toes to the floor, you’ll be in surgery!” What did I care if I had a cast or a boot? Nothing would make me feel better. I wasn’t being very Barbara. “With a boot, at least you can take a shower.” Okay, I cared.
He fitted me into a black boot that strapped from my thigh to my toes. I did have to admit it felt good. The crutches didn’t, however. But I practiced up and down the hall, hell bent on keeping those toes off the floor, until he pronounced me capable. There remained one eensty problem.
“My husband is out of town and I have two very humungous dogs in the back of my car. Can I drive them home?” My jeans were caked in dried mud, and from all the crying not to mention the strain, my face looked like it had been beaten to a pulp and run over—probably like that whooping crane’s. I was so shell-shocked that it never occurred to me to call Mary or Carol. But I didn’t want anyone telling Brad, and deep in my subconscious, I feared one of them might. No matter how much I insisted they not, they might tell him to get his keyster home when really, what purpose would that serve? I’d gone to the market. I’d cleaned the house. Heck, I’d even scoured the boys! I would hobble around for a couple of days and be fine. He didn’t need to come home. If I told him but urged him to stay, he’d just feel guilty. He’d been through the ringer already. He needed this getaway with Ryan. I had martyrdom down to a science after thirteen years in Catholic school. On top of all that, how would I tell him? He’d never believe me.
I’d crawled into Emergency at 3:30. I hobbled out at 4:30. I got into the car easily enough but crept out Broadway like I was 110 years old and legally blind. I couldn’t feel the gas pedal or the brake through the Frankenstein boot heel. I mainly coasted and used my left foot. It was only two miles to Potterville and of course there was a place to park right outside my front door. Now for the boys. I sat and developed my strategy.
Thank goodness Brad had taught them how to sit still in the back, even with the door gaping open. They would only jump down if he said, “Break!” and then would run right into the open front door. First, I would open the front door. I crutched up, I crutched back, I opened the back door of the car while issuing the “stay” command, I stepped aside, and I said, “Break!” hoping it wouldn’t be another of my bones that did. Like a shot they were in the kitchen and lapping at their water bowl. I crutched back in and closed the door.
Before I settled down on the sofa, I arranged the kitchen counter so I wouldn’t have to reach into a cupboard. Coffee beans here, coffee cup there, cereal box here, tuna can there. I had it all in place for easy access. I fed the dogs. It took some doing to manage everything without setting my foot down but all I had to do was contemplate surgery. That threat was motivational.
I was finishing my chicken chili when the phone rang. Brad. I braced myself. The Brookside Wii bowling tournament had superseded Bible Study for this Friday afternoon, so I wouldn’t have to lie about not having facilitated it. Although I’d often bowled with the residents, a few of them had blackballed me because they said I was too young. Wasn’t that profiling? In any case, Brad knew I was not going. But surely he would ask me about my day.
I am a terrible liar. If I fib it’s written all over my face. If you can’t see my face, it’s stuck in my throat. I cannot deceive without hearing the priest preaching about the perils of purgatory. Brad had lived his life deposing witnesses. He’d made a living flushing falsehoods. He could smell an inconsistency a mile away. A partial truth was my best bet.
I could report on The Outpost visit today. I told him about the whooping crane. I just omitted the remainder of the afternoon. He told me all about the game. I hung up the phone and took the stairs, one at a time. Dogs first, not that I was looking at them or speaking to them.
In the middle of the night I rued the moment I’d turned down the offer for painkillers. I woke up in the same kind of pain I’d had when the break had first occurred, only this time it just kept on going. I crutched to the other bedroom and opened a cardboard box labeled “bathroom” to discover that Brad had taken with him the only bottle of Advil. I swallowed four Tylenol with my own saliva. It hurt so bad that I took the boot off and looked for something to explain this pain. I contemplated the crucifixion—it had to have hurt worse! I prayed to the Patron Saint of Broken Bones for a modicum of Valium to miraculously appear on the bathroom counter, which I could reach with my crutch from here. It took all my powers of concentration to get through the night and by sunrise the sheer agony vanished. I struggled with the crutches to get down the stairs until I hurled them to where they hit bottom then bump, bump, bumped on my own bottom until I landed next to them. Much better.
When Brad called that evening, I told him casually that I’d tweaked my foot while walking the dogs and so decided not to go to The Outpost but to elevate it instead. The third day was tougher. It was still sore, I told him. Tomorrow he’d be home and I was sure it would be better.
“You broke it, didn’t you?” Guilty. Since he was unlikely to cut his trip short by a few hours, I told the truth. With eight weeks to go before we moved in to our dream home, I had eight weeks to go before I’d be able to take the boot off.
“Here’s the deal, Squeal,” Brad said after he walked to Potterville from the airport rather than risk even letting me drive as far as the parking lot. “No more medical emergencies for the Millers!”

~14~

Once the word was out, everyone was furious at me for not telling them. My daughters were hurt. Mary and Carol made me promise to call them if I needed anything. Maggie invited us for bison just as soon as I was up to it. Karyn and Dan made dinner reservations for the following Thursday at Pearl. “We’ll sit at our table (we had a favorite corner upstairs in the loft) and drink our bottle of Cabernet.” Dan’s remedy promoted healing—at least, emotionally.
Whenever we ate at Pearl in the company of Karyn and Dan, we met new people. They knew everyone in town. This night was no exception and the longer we lived here, the more people we knew. Lori, the owner of Laurel Creek came up to our table to say hello to Karyn. One closer look at me and she recognized me from the shop. I’d been made.
“I know you too!” Brad said. Here I was afraid he’d caught me shopping and he’d been in there shopping for me! That darling man! “I’ve got it,” he then said after puzzling a moment on the matter. “I met you when I first came to Missoula on business. You were working at the gift shop in the Doubletree, where I was staying.”
“I owned that shop!” she said.
“You were one of the reasons I bought property in Montana,” Brad effused in his innate charm he’d no doubt evidenced to his mother from the cradle. Lori was a very attractive woman. I looked a bit askance I fear, although I did my best to remain politely pleased. “You had such an effect on me!” Enough already. “You were so friendly. I walked out of there thinking people in Montana are the friendliest people!” I could handle that, especially since after Lori walked away, Karyn told us she was happily married. And she was, I had to admit, the nicest person on the planet.
“What happened to you?” every woman from the Symphony Guild stopped by our table when they saw my crutches propped against the wall and my leg sticking out into the center of the room and elevated on a chair to prevent the throbbing. John and his wife came over to ask if we’d been up to Lolo Pass yet. They’d recommended it as a great place to learn cross-country skiing.
“Guess not,” John said as he nodded his head in the direction of the crutches. “Did one of your readers beat you up?” The response to my column had been overwhelmingly positive. Missoula was a melting pot and most everyone welcomed my arrival. Even one of the university deans wrote me a sympathy letter after she’d read what I wrote about Brad’s stroke. “Your arrival in Missoula is a blessing to us all,” she concluded after thanking me for being so candid in my column. After I mentioned my new favorite local Ten Spoon Wines, Prairie Thunder, Range Rider, Flathead Cherry Dry, and Big Sky Raspberry, the owner invited me out to their vineyard in the Rattlesnake Valley for more tastes (one of my all-time favorite summer afternoons). I received supportive emails from local fans with addresses like Babeshootsbullets and Troutslayer@ whatever.com. But not everyone was open-minded enough to entertain the notion that a Southern Californian could move here because it was different and not in order to turn it into a littered beach lined with condos.
John, a state judge, had written me an apology note when he’d read a letter to the editor from a reader who had accused me of being “a trespasser who eats sushi and wears new Nikes.” I had the hiking boots to prove I didn’t and had longed to rebut that I loathe sushi and there are three sushi restaurants in Missoula. “Do we have to read about her tripping around town eating chocolates?”
“Congratulations! You’re controversial after all!” Bob said the next time I saw him. It was indeed astonishing considering the everyday minutiae I chose for topics.
“Ignore the nasty letter from that man,” John had passionately written. “Long term anger management counseling (and more chocolate) may be his only hope for achieving a sense of civility. Be assured he does not represent the real Montana. Your Friday column is always thoughtful and carefully crafted. We have watched you become nicely integrated into Montana and look forward to your continued discovery of the joys of living here. Although born and raised in Montana, I have lived overseas and on both our coasts. There is no better place to live than right here in the Missoula Valley.”
John’s letters were so encouraging to this budding columnist that I referred to them whenever I wondered why I ever thought I could put two words together. Shortly after he wrote them to me, Brad and I had met him and his wife Deb for dinner and had become fast friends.

My ankle was one more reason not to visit Daddy. There was no camouflaging that boot. I was not only too weary to travel, but as well worried that he would become anxious at the slightest hint of trouble in paradise, if he even understood that’s where I was. We continued to talk on the phone, a routine now well established and successful.
I’d been Brad’s driver, now he became mine. When not ferrying me to the grocery store because I’d go anywhere to escape the ever-increasing confines of Potterville, he drove us to The Outpost. By this time he’d moved most of his shop and garage equipment. Now, without my help, every run out there included the stop at the purple doors where he would lift and load boxes to take with us.
Once there, I crutched over electrical cords to watch the hollow of our house become whole. The weather was warming and before we knew it, May had arrived. I could hear our own little Rock Creek spilling spring melt over rocks whenever Brad took a break from wielding his newly purchased chainsaw and log splitter. There he was in his flannel shirt, ranch hat, boots, Wrangler’s, and work gloves, his skin already bronzing in the bright, unfiltered sun. He looked like one of those covers of a cheesy romance novel.
“I’ll lay up three cords for the winter,” he told me when he caught me staring, “then stoke it for you all winter long!” Be still my heart. Who cared about below freezing? I didn’t have to deliver children to school. I didn’t have to commute to work. Just fix me another hot chocolate and throw another log on the fire. If we ran out of money I’d go to work at the Merc and get the neighborhood dirt.
About this time, Don and Mary invited us to dinner at their Flathead Lake cabin. “We need to calm down the Millers and talk some sense into them,” Don had told his wife. I’d arranged for Kate and Clary to come help me set up housekeeping over Memorial Day weekend. I was due to get my boot removed the day before we moved in, so I would still be on crutches and about to begin physical therapy. I’d be in no condition to unpack and shelve everything in the kitchen and the closets. As it was, Brad had moved every single thing out here while I’d stood (or leaned) and watched.
“We’d like another week,” Don said with a hint of pleading in his voice, “so we can really clean up the place for you.” Poor Don. They could clean around us, we insisted. Was he kidding? Calm the Millers? We’d passed up sense the moment we’d pulled out of our San Jan Capistrano driveway.
When May 30 dawned all we had left to pack at Potterville were our toothbrushes and the dog dishes. We drove through Frenchtown as if I’d never seen it before. “I want to go to that country church now that we are living in the country,” I told Brad while pointing to the Little House on the Prairie one we’d passed a billion times. “Next Sunday, let’s try it!”
“Here’s the deal, Squeal.” Brad’s mind was working overtime as we sped toward the life we’d coveted since the day we’d watched “Bonanza” in color for the first time. “I’m going to need that tractor.” Duh, darling. “I’ve been pricing them and I’ve found what I want, so with your permission… I really need it to clear the property and move things around the place.” He didn’t need to rationalize the purchase. I reminded him that he told me he’d teach me how to drive it—a fact I felt had conveniently slipped his mind.
As we turned on to Spotted Fawn, I saw them—spotted fawns, several of them! “Did I tell you this is my fav—“ and he interrupted before I could finish.
“The does dropped them recently,” Brad said as if he’d lived here all his life and hadn’t heard me speak. Where had he picked up this wildlife lingo? “You don’t want to let the dogs out while the does are dropping. They’ll eat the fawns that can’t get to their feet yet.” Eat them? “It’s a delicacy,” Brad said sensing my distaste for such behavior from my well-mannered boys. And under any other circumstance my horror would have lingered. Not today. Today I was all about the circle of life. Survival of the fittest. I lived on the land. “The same way they like deer scat,” I casually threw back at Brad. I knew a thing or two, too.
Before Brad came to a full stop I had my seat belt unbuckled and my door open. We had pre-arranged for Montana Homefitters to come that afternoon, so shortly after we stepped (I hobbled) over the threshold into our real home, their truck pulled up and furniture began to appear. Bill had offered to bring his trailer. A few days before, he and Brad had loaded up the larger pieces from Potterville. On this day, he hauled it up. Sarah was strangely absent (no doubt thrilled to have her husband away for the day) and when I inquired of Bill as to how the funeral had gone, his eyes watered and he wiped one with the back of his hand. “Never mind,” I said, and patted him on the shoulder.
As sofas and beds and tables and chairs were moved with the speed of a team of horses racing towards the barn at feeding time, I stood aside and directed. It was like watching a blank sheet of paper become an artwork. Everything fit! Ten-foot doors leading to every room made each room seem larger. You really could put a bed in here and still walk around it! The kitchen did have a refrigerator, Don grunting and groaning as he heaved it into place. He was working feverishly on the finishing touches when he wasn’t semi-glaring at me while sweat dripped into his eyelashes. Enormous vacuums cleaned the floors and ceilings and tops of cupboards. People were everywhere, slaving away like Cinderella.
After the sun had set and the crowd was gone Brad and I repaired to the back patio and sat in our wooden rockers, facing nothing but forest. “Is that where Tom and Janice live?” I asked, able now to see through the trees to what looked like a corner of a roof.
I’d met Tom when we’d been checking on the house one day. We’d walked in on him. He was embarrassed to be caught snooping in someone else’s new house, but we reassured him that we too loved to walk through houses under construction. He’d introduced himself and urged us to call anytime we needed something. “I can just come running!” he added, pointing to the trees out back. I’d looked, but at the time hadn’t seen anything other than endless pines.
“That’s their house,” Brad answered. “That’s Whitetail Ridge up there.” We looked at each other. Our eyes said it all. There was absolutely and divinely not a sound. Only the gurgling of Rock Creek. Now and then a bird. Tonight—maybe right now—we would sleep in our log bed in our log home.
“Before we collapse,” Brad said, “I want to do one thing. We’ll hang all my photographs tomorrow, but tonight I want this to go up.” He went out into the shop and returned through the mud room (we actually had a mud room!) with a hammer, a nail, and a small wooden plaque. He pulled over a stepladder, took two steps, and reached high to the bottom of the log arch just inside the front door. At the sound of the hammer hitting its mark, I used one crutch to limp around behind him and look up. He stepped down and stood back as I read the words painted on it.
“A fisherman lives here with the catch of his life.”

~15~

Bright and early I heard the hammer again. Brad was hanging another wooden sign, this one carved with pine trees and trimmed in the same green as the roof: THE OUTPOST. After spending the morning putting things in place—Brad doing, me watching—we picked up Clary and Kate at the airport. When they walked in, Clary’s hand went up to her mouth. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed. Kate burst into tears. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me!” she cried. I did. They both recognized their mother’s yearning in three dimensions. They knew what I’d been through while married to their father and what I’d longed for but had never thought I’d ever have.
“And you even have gravel, Mom,” Clary noted. I love the sound of tires on gravel.
I gave the tour and the dried the tears, then they promptly saved me from operating out of chaos. Closets and cupboards transformed to wardrobes and pantries. They attacked the guest rooms. They made beds. They hung towels. They emptied box after box while ordering me to sit and direct. In a matter of two days, all was in order. That’s when we sat back on the rockers in the company of deer nibbling on grass all around us. By the end of the weekend when they left, we had settled in.
A month later, after Kate’s wedding, the exercise prescription to re-establish mobility was to walk as much as I could up and down the roads and hills in the Ninemile (nobody said “valley”). It didn’t take long to meet the neighbors. While Brad chopped, I walked up Whitetail Ridge to the dead end and Tom and Janice’s cozy log home. Most of the houses along the road were hidden deep in the woods. A driveway and a house number were the only indications that anyone lived there. Occasionally I would see a house tucked back under the trees, and it always looked woodsy. Horses ambled over to their corral fences to watch me pass by. I would often stop to stroke their muzzles. A crik ran alongside the road. Of course, I was surrounded by forested land and so pine trees were everywhere, their scent filling my nostrils like no artificial one can. Up ahead stood Cha-paa-qn still covered in snow. The sun filtered through the trees and the only sound was of the wind that would rise from nowhere to blow a gust and then move on. If this didn’t heal me, nothing could.
It was a five-mile loop up and around and home again. I did it everyday I could, and in time grew annoyed if any other plan got in my way. Sometimes I went down to Ninemile Road and walked all the way to the Ranger Station and back—seven miles. I was a walking fool!
One morning I saw a pick-up loaded with German shepherds. The driver waved as he passed me, then stopped at his mailbox as I approached. I asked him about his beautiful dogs, told him about ours and within minutes had an invitation to his house for what he referred to as his “Happy Hour.”
“I’m Peter. I work from my home and my wife, Jackie, is an artist. Her studio is above our garage. At 4:30 every afternoon, whatever we are doing we call it quits and meet on the back patio for Happy Hour. Bring your husband and come!” He proceeded to give me the address, but didn’t bother with the phone number. “Just walk up. Don’t bother to call!”
When we took them up on it, they introduced us to Michael and Elaine who lived next door to them. We hosted the next get-together, a potluck dinner with the four of them and we invited Lenore and Rob to join us. From then on, we eight met every Saturday night, rotating houses. I kept right on walking with the fortitude of Forest Gump, and before long I knew every neighbor on our roads. Janice (aka Tinkerbell who she claimed not only as her favorite Disney character but also as her alter-ego) ran every day, the same route that I walked. We often stopped for a breather to chat. Peter walked his dogs. Jackie trained for the Missoula marathon when she wasn’t painting. Folks who drove by began to recognize me. “You’re so faithful,” Harold Green commented when I ran into him in town.
On Spotted Fawn the same thing happened. I was walking home when Tom and Elizabeth who live at our corner were out tending the horses and llamas. She handed me a dozen fresh eggs from their hens. “Here,” she said, “I have dozens and we can’t possibly eat them all!” Ruby, down the road towards our place, lived alone. She worked her land. I often saw her riding in the woods as I walked by. I’d met Nate when he’d helped us with the flat tire, but one afternoon he and his wife Amy wandered up our drive with a platter of cookies. They admitted they were dying of curiosity to see the house “with all its insides,” as Amy put it. Turned out Amy and I had both worked at the Los Angeles Times at the same time, a zillion years ago. She’d escaped the madness of L.A. too.
One evening when all that remained of the sun was a streak of pink and orange I could see through our trees, I came up the driveway carrying an elk antler I’d found and thought I might set on the game table. Brad was bumping over our gravel front yard on his tractor. As I approached, he passed me, tipped his cowboy hat, and winked. Whoa there, Chester! I threw him a kiss and walked inside. As I set the antler on the table, I glanced up to see Tom striding quickly towards our back patio from his house. His arms spread, he swatted at tree limbs in order to pass more efficiently through the thick grove between us as he glanced back over his shoulder. He cupped his hands to his mouth at the same moment I pulled open the sliding glass door.
“Bears!” His voice was an exaggerated whisper. Brad had apparently just walked in, because when he registered commotion out of the ordinary he was at my side. “There are two black bears between us—having sex!” Like a shot, Brad was back inside and grabbing his camera. He hadn’t had time to properly organize his photography equipment, but this was too good an opportunity to miss. In seconds he had disappeared into the woods. Did we really need to see this? The lectures we’d attended had talked about trashcans. They’d warned about bird feeders, dog food, and other attractants. What did we do about attraction!
“Janice was on our back deck and I was inside,” he went on to tell me while I surreptitiously scanned the trees for sign of life from my husband. I really didn’t want to get June’s hopes up again. Tom related how Tinkerbell, in an effort not to disrupt the bears but to entice her husband to come out and see what they were doing, had tapped on the window. He had looked over to where she stood. She thrust her hips forward in an effort to mimic bears doin’ the rumpty, and felt the need to duplicate her motions right here on our patio so I would get the picture. He clenched both fists, stretched his arms out straight, and stirred the pot in an admittedly impressive exotic dance move that captured my attention despite my aversion and would have snapped both my hipbones had I attempted it. I tried hard to erase the indelible image of his demure wife pole dancing the patio post. Tinkerbell, my nice bass! Throughout Tom’s x-rated performance I managed to avert my eyes long enough to comb the country and not come up with Brad. Great. No sooner had we gotten here than my husband would be mauled in the name of capturing a shot for what? A bear-porn calendar? Tom just kept a’comin’, oblivious to my spousal concern. “When she kept doing that and waving at me to come to her, I didn’t know if there was something out there or if I was about to get lucky!” Was I really having this conversation?
When I could get a word in edgewise a small croak came out of my throat. “Do you think Brad’s all right out there?”
“Oh sure,” Tom flapped a hand as if I were crazy to give it a thought. And sure enough, Brad appeared, breathless and anxious to get inside and bring up the shots he’d taken while I was only anxious for him to witness Tom’s panotmime. He plopped down at his computer and in a few minutes discovered what had happened when I’d vacuumed the day before and thought I might have tapped that camera in the process…my bumping it had altered the focal setting. What popped up on the screen was a male black bear that had risen eight feet to its two hind feet. Yogi had spun in the direction of the photographer who he considered possible competition for his bride. He was leaning to get a better look. His face and its entire expression was the same indistinguishable bubble-blur they use on 60 Minutes to shield the interviewee from identification.
The intrigue I felt about bears (as long as I could watch them from the comfort of my great room window) was evidence of my growing adoration for the animal life that was a regular occurrence around our house.
“How scary!” Nina said on the phone when I told her there’d been a mountain lion in the front yard one night and our big boys refused to put one toe off the front porch to do their business.
“Actually, I think it’s romantic,” I confessed. But then I was the one who’d labeled Brad’s wedding gift to me, a new set of golf clubs, as “romantic,” much to the shock of his sons whose girlfriends would have beaten them with the five-iron if they’d been the recipients. “But this means I will learn and then Brad and I will play together!” What could be more romantic? The howling of wolves in the dark of night from down in our valley. The sight of our very own elk herd when they gathered to feed right down at the end of our road. The buck that was my buddy and hung out by the back door, turning his glorious rack so his lovely brown eyes met mine whenever I walked out. The agile fox darting through our trees. The immense black bear lumbering across our patio, her cub on her heels. I swooned over every living thing because at last I was living alongside them.

~16~

Frenchtown‘s church was just as I’d imagined it. Small and simple, the pews were made of plain wood. The congregation consisted of fifty folks who had been baptized there, married there, and whose funerals would someday be held there, just as their parents’ and grandparents’ had. Gussie played the piano. Evie adorned the altar with fresh flowers from her garden. They sang the old hymns.
The first Sunday we walked in and up the stairs to the sanctuary, a dapperly dressed gentleman who looked wiry and weathered and was wearing a bolo tie held out one hand to shake mine and in the other a bulletin for me to take.
“Good morning and welcome!” he said, “You’re a visitor!” I introduced myself and told him we had recently moved here. “Where from?” he inquired.
“We don’t like to say,” I smiled.
“Wait a minute! Are you the Kathleen Miller who made my town famous?” I was struck dumb. I couldn’t come up with any connection. Should I simply go along with it, nod my head, and chuckle? What was he talking about? I didn’t recall a column about Frenchtown. Then I read his name tag: WILL HARRIS…Will?
“Are you… Will’s Hill?” My voice elevated like an orchestra tuning up.
“I have your article framed in my house,” he said proudly. “But I never ever thought I’d meet you!” I, the unintentional celebrity who was scouring her brain to remember if she’d written anything that might offend. Racing through the text while he talked, I thought I was in the clear. I’d omitted mentioning that I didn’t care for the recent addition to his sign: “and used car lot.”
“Come over and play any time!” the man somewhere in his seventies effused. I had written the part about always wanting to play in a village like his—as a child. “And bring those cookies!” Yes, I’d mentioned the magnetic pull I felt to take cookies up to his front door. Had I said that Brad had advised against it and I’d responded that he could be a lunatic? I vowed in the future to keep my three-ring binder filled with columns in the car for ready reference.
We were introduced to the congregation who gathered around us after the service. I’d never met a friendlier group of down-to-earth country folks. By the following Sunday our nametags had been carved from wood into small oval-shaped pins. Evie asked if I would edit and assemble the newsletter. Did the wrinkles on my forehead spell “newsletter?” Gussie wondered if I would be their representative to Missoula Homeless, an organization in town. I wanted to befriend the locals. Of course the answer was “yes.”
Not an hour after getting back home a truck pulled up the dirt drive and onto the gravel. I peered out the front window to recognize Evie riding shotgun next to her husband, Ralph. I stepped outside just as Ralph cranked down his window and handed me a jam jar full of what looked like little yellow…worms?
“They’re raisins…for your wrist,” he said. I’d worn a brace at church to help heal some sort of tendinitis attack and everyone had shown concern. Here they were, medicinally addressing the issue. Evie leaned over so that she was nearly lying across Ralph’s lap to whisper, “They’re soaked in gin!” An age-old remedy, she told me. I was to eat six per day. She’d also brought me the first sack of clothing she had collected for the homeless, “to get you started.”
Two weeks later I dropped by Will’s on the way to town to the Missoula Homeless thrift shop where I was to deliver twenty-four sacks of shoes and clothing I’d continued to collect. Mayor Will was out painting his picket fence so I pulled over to chat—and to offer my assistance. “Sure,” he smiled and tipped his hat. “Come help polish her up anytime!” His wife Doris further encouraged me. “Come paint with me and I’ll pour you somethin’ good!” Goodie!
When I arrived at the shop in town I was greeted by Beth, a petite woman who had devoted her adult years ministering to Missosula’s needy. We unloaded the big black trash bags one by one then began the seeming insurmountable task of sorting through them. One of the first things I extricated was a brand new pair of shoes—Danskos, to be exact. Mind you, I’d only seen them once before, when my cousin from Oregon had visited me in California. At the time, I thought they were exceedingly unattractive, bulky and utterly unfeminine. Since I’d come to Missoula, however, I’d noticed everyone wearing them and when in Missoula…well, I’d bought a pair at Hide N’ Sole to discover they were the most comfortable shoes I’d ever worn. Now, here I was holding up a chic leather pair in popular burgundy. Before I could remember the context within which I was working long enough to censor myself, I blurted it out.
“Look at these! They’re brand new! Danskos! And they’re my size!” Beth looked up, her eyes wide.
“Take them!” she said. That’s when I sobered up long enough to remember myself.
“Oh no, I can’t,” I said. “It wouldn’t be right.”
“Yes you can! I am giving them to you as a reward for all your hard work,” Beth insisted.
“But there is someone out there with no shoes at all and I already have a brown pair, after all. I can’t do it.” I argued.
“Yes you can!” she repeated sternly.
“Every time I wore them, would I think of some helpless homeless person walking barefoot in the snow and cold?” I asked. When I got to heaven would the Lord say instead of ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,’ “Where did you get those shoes?’”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Beth scoffed. “We have fifty pairs of shoes here. Take them!” So I did. That’s what they got for putting me in charge of a clothing drive.
The following Sunday Evie stood up to thank everyone who had contributed and delivered a brief inspirational message about putting your feet into the shoes of those less fortunate. Even though I was doing just that, I surreptitiously tucked mine under the pew.
To atone, I joined Brad in organizing a weeklong vacation school for the Frenchtown Church kids. The theme was western. Brad and I had bought Old West wear when we’d joined The Cowboy Action Shooting club a few years before. We’d signed up for the Rodeo weekend in Las Vegas. When we were watching a video about the organization that showed participants dressed like Wyatt Earp and Calamity Jane our kids walked in. “And you think this is actually normal?” Ryan asked.
When the Frenchtown pastor had announced the theme, we’d lifted our heads from the bulletin and looked at each other like we’d just struck the mother lode. The minute we got home we whipped them out of the guest room closet for this serendipitous occasion. When the week finally came, while the other Frenchtown church volunteers showed up each morning dressed at most in Wrangler’s and a cowboy hat, here came the Millers looking like Marshall Dillon and Kitty. Brad had a change of shirt and matching silk scarf for each of the four days. He had chaps. He had spurs. He even sat astride his saddle on the altar to welcome the kids each morning. I pulled on long petticoats and satin skirts. I dressed in two different Annie Oakley split riding skirts and puffed-sleeve floral-print blouses. My pardner for the week, Will’s wife Doris, who understatedly and tastefully donned basic jeans and checkered shirt, stood in awe at the front door each day to view my latest outfit. The kids thought they’d been beamed to the Hollywood set of Gunsmoke. Was it a sin to assist at church just so you could wear the clothes?
When Friday arrived, we were plum tired. We hung up our outfits and took stock of our lives. We’d acquired so many friends between town, neighborhood, and now Frenchtown that we were spinning circles trying to remember where to go when. I was living in the wilderness but barely had time these days to walk in it. I wanted to touch up Will’s village! “I think I’m ready to start saying a few no’s now,” I told Brad to test out the revised theory.
“Ditto,” he said as he unstrapped his gun belt after putting away his Bible. “I need time off. I want to go get the wagon.”
The buckboard wagon had been his ingenious idea for thematically shielding the propane tank from view through our front window. He’d located one that had been restored and could be disassembled and placed in the bed of his truck. He would drive overnight to fetch it while I stayed home with the dogs. If wolves had been de-listed and mercilessly murdered in order to fashion vests from their fur the fiasco would not have caused as much uproar among the citizens of Missoula, Frenchtown, and Huson as did Brad’s going away overnight.
“You MAY NOT separate from each other!” The phone line rang, the e-mails flooded our inboxes, and when either of us was in town and a cell phone worked it beeped unrelentingly with the message. I’d only told one person he was going. “Whenever one of you leaves, something terrible happens to the other!”
I’d never had so much attention, let alone during a twenty-four hour period. Everyone checked on me. Then they checked on Brad. Even June dropped her work and went out of her way to call him long distance, then called me to thoughtfully remind me it was healthy for married couples to spend a day or two apart. A good wife lets him go, she encouraged. It was impossible to respond to all the e-mails—except for the one from Judge John who felt I might need entertaining while Brad was away so, a prolific e-mailer, he wrote to me describing among other things his annual “Redneck Easter-Egg Hunt.” Every year he placed raw eggs in trees branches and bushes, handed a rifle to his grown kids and grandkids—one at a time while the others stood back—and they took turns shooting the eggs that exploded, sending eggshell shrapnel in all direction. All “Bonanza,” no Berkeley.
Brad went and came home with a restored buckboard that looked like it was made for the spot where he reassembled it. I planted a small bed of indigenous lavender and some weedy tall plants around it. Now we were ready for the Summer Solstice Barbeque we’d planned to thank everyone who had been so kind to us.
Added to our guest list were the couples from Frenchtown Church who had lately invited us to their homes. Bert and Sally and Cindy and Martin were among them. Bert, a third generation Montana rancher, was loaded with local lore that we listened to long into the night. When Cindy and Martin talked about where they would travel during the summer, Bert said, “I kinda like to stay close to home. Isn’t nothin’ the matter with home.” My kinda man. He and Sally knew everything about the area and gave us tips on easy country etiquette and rural rubric.
“Around here you say ‘supper’ instead of ‘dinner,’ Sally said when we’d gathered at their house for that particular meal. Even the sound of the word was lighter on the tongue than complex cosmopolitan cuisine. “Say crik like you have one in your neck,” she advised me when I told her I still couldn’t say it. That would be a cinch since I often had one there.
“And by the way, Kathleen,” Bert called from across their living room where the men were talking trucks, “You call it a rig, not pick-up, and not truck.” Ah.
But Sally and Cindy didn’t know about Mountain Colors, the famous yarn shop I’d practically moved to Missoula for! Neither one of them knitted, but they both quilted and were both up for an outing so the following afternoon we drove to the Corvallis wholesale headquarters, dye studio, and retail shop. Both owners were there that day to take us on a tour. I’d wanted to be standing here more than I’d wanted to stand at the altar next to Brad—well, almost more.
In the dye “kitchen” we were able to watch how they produce the warm combination of exquisite colors for which the company is so well known. “There is nothing quite like Mountain Colors,” I said to my friends whose jaws had dropped and looked like panting dogs that until they’d crossed this threshold had only seen in black and white. Although neither one so much as owned a pair of knitting needles, both bought skeins of yarn and begged me to teach them how to stitch. I promised I would get them started and we would meet regularly for tea and training—right after the Summer Solstice Party.
Now that our wagon was in place and we’d sent out invitations, the RSVPs came rollin’ in. Fifty-three yeses. No regrets. The First Annual Miller Summer Solstice Barbeque was on!
I’d been preparing the house for the party when I stepped out onto the back patio to see Brad on his tractor. He was putting the finishing touches on the fire pit he’d dug and circled with rocks that were in plentiful supply all around the property. He hopped off the tractor to minister to the slash pile (another vocabulary tidbit from Sally) he’d been burning. Although I am the first to get up and leave a room where anyone is smoking because I think I’m dying of cancer, I love the aroma of slash piles on fire—the smoking pine and wood scent. I tossed a stick on the stack, just to feel a part of it, then stepped back and breathed a deep inhale. Let it kill me!
Soon rigs lumbered up the drive. Brad had nailed a gnarly address sign to one of the massive tree trunks at the foot of the drive. I opened the front door and in they poured, some bearing platters of food while others brought gifts. One of the Symphony ladies handed me a doormat that read, “Gone Fishin’.” I plopped it right down on the front porch and left it there for good. If we weren’t at The Outpost, chances are we’d be down at the river. There were home-canned jellies, jams, and compotes. People gave us colorful dry flies, books about Montana and fly fishing, and hiking trail maps. Somewhere in the fray I found a bag of local huckleberries frozen from last summer’s crop, thawing on the kitchen counter. Under a quilted apron, I discovered an envelope with a gift certificate for supper at Pearl’s Café compliments of Karyn and Dan.
Most everyone knew everyone else. Those who hadn’t met before made new friends and the company blended well. Folks gathered around Don and Bob to ask questions about the log construction while Brad barbequed bison burgers at the speed of a fast food flipper. The sky had been growing darker as clouds moved in rapidly. I joined a group of women out on the front porch and we watched the storm move in across the valley. Just as the fiftieth guest was served, lightning struck and the lights went out. “Welcome to Montana!” Don hollered over his shoulder on his way out the door with Mary.
The crowd was thinning and most of the food had disappeared. Brad had filled the outside cooler with beer and soda and by the time the last partier stepped over the threshold, careful to avoid our brand new doormat, there were only a few cans left. I lit a few candles, brewed some hot tea with cinnamon, and we sat on the front porch and sipped it while watching the rain. We noted how pretty the water looked as it spun in circles around and then down the rain chains on either side of the front porch. It grew dark. After the storm passed and the lights came on, Brad told me to go inside and turn them off. The clouds had cleared and it was a moonless night. “Now come back out here, Woo, and look at the stars,” he coaxed wiggling his fingers for me to join him again. There were a bazillion katrillion of them—more stars than sky. I oohed and aahed to see four of them shoot through the Milky Way at the same time.
In the middle of the night I heard a big sound. Had something fallen off the wall in the great room? The boys didn’t even bother to budge from their beds at the foot of ours, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. Brad was snoring. In the morning, he called to me with some urgency while I was brushing my teeth. I came a’runnin.
“Somebody was thirsty!” he said, standing at the glass side door that leads out to the barbeque. He had left the red cooler on legs with wheels outside, neglecting to empty its contents in favor of after-party star-gazing. The cooler was tipped over, beer and Coke cans scattered all over the patio. “Must have been bears,” Brad surmised. One Coke can had popped its top and liquid had spilled in a pool around it. I picked up the can to carry it to the trash.
“Come look at this!” I yelled to Brad. Our 110-pound bear resistant trashcan had been dragged thirty feet into the woods. It was covered with half-inch deep claw marks. Tooth indentations were around the lid. Despite the obvious assault on it, the container had held tight.
A few days later I opened my e-mail to see a string of messages with subject lines “Was that you?” and “Are you the bear woman?” I read the first one, from an editor at the Los Angeles Times who wrote that she’d heard about a woman wishing to remain anonymous in Huson, Montana who at her own back door, while emptying her kitchen trash, had fended off a bear attack …with a zucchini. “I figured it had to be you,” she remarked.
“Are you all right?” I could almost hear the panic in Sherie’s typewritten voice. The other e-mails were based on the same deduction. Of course, I reasoned, Californians heard “Huson” and because they’d never heard of it assumed I was the only resident (which I practically was), but when I had an e-mail from Lenore and phone calls from Carol, Mary, and Maggie I realized that even locally I must have developed a certain reputation for, well, woodland mishaps. The last message was from June. She’d heard a radio report in New Jersey! “For goodness’ sake, send that man outside to empty the trash!” she wrote, always looking out for my safety. Anticipating my perfect column topic Judge John wrote, “I thought it must be you until I read that she wanted to remain anonymous.”
“I don’t know why everyone automatically thinks it was me,” I said to Brad on my way out to take a walk.
“Go figure,” he said drolely.
These days instead of Trendy camo like Brad, to walk I dressed in hiking pants draped with disco-orange cotton chaps, a neon-orange vest, and a glow-in-the-dark orange hat. I carried a trusty Shambok (A sort of cattle prod Brad ordered for my self-protection) and a can of bear spray.
I knew the blinding color of road cones was not my most flattering color and I hated to wear it in lieu of all the sage in my closet, but I hated taking a bullet more. I’d been hearing errant shots, noting that target practice was in session even if hunting season was not, so why take chances? I stuck to the roads instead of wandering in the woods.
“Hunting season hasn’t even opened yet,” Brad said when he first saw me head out the door dressed like a radioactive pumpkin. If my “Before and After” photo was still on display in the John Robert Powers Charm School on Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard, it had crashed to the floor in the face of this new image.
On this particular morning, however, in the confusion of the previous night’s bear visitation, I dressed, but didn’t think, brightly. I plum forgot the bear spray and the Shambok. When I realized my mental slip halfway down Spotted Fawn I figured it was overkill anyway. In all the walks I’d taken, I’d never needed it and had felt annoyed that I couldn’t walk hands free.
I enjoyed the scenery, gorgeous as always, as long as I didn’t look down at the unnatural hue of my outfit. If by chance I did, I had to blink rapidly several times like when you’ve looked right into a flashbulb. At the corner of Spotted Fawn the UPS truck passed me coming from our place. The driver had just delivered another big box of ammo and Brad’s winter camo. When Brad opened the Cabela’s carton, out popped a camouflage baseball cap he’d added to his order.
“Check this out!” he said as he depressed his thumb on the inside edge of the bill and made miniature lights turn on from its underside—one, two, or three depending on how many times he pressed his thumb. “It’s for hunting, in case you need to look down to read or see something on your gun. Isn’t it cool?” I frowned. How come he got all the good stuff?
“I need one of those to wear to bed!” I whined. Without the illumination of a full moon I am unable to see one-half inch in front of me in our bedroom. He laughed.
“But I have night camo, so you still wouldn’t be able to see me,” he teased. I’d noticed a jet-black suit hanging in the guest room closet where we keep our period western pieces and wondered if he’d also saved a favorite Halloween Zorro costume. I didn’t have the heart to inform him that, at my age, if I awakened in the middle of the night I would not be looking for him, but for the bathroom.
As I rounded the bend on Whitetail Ridge, ten feet in front of me in the middle of the road sat a bear, his head down and one foot up, chewing on his toenails. I froze. He wasn’t large enough to be Mama or Papa. He wasn’t small enough to be Baby. I was probably lookin’ at the teenage perp who’d been poaching beer!
Everything I’d learned in wildlife lectures flew right out of my head. Was I supposed to get large and growl? Did I turn tail and run for it? Lie down on the road and curl into a ball? Why hadn’t I brought that bear-b-gone? So far he hadn’t seen me. He was far too focused on the pedicure. I looked right. I looked left. No Mama in sight. That was a good sign. But no sticks either, and not a zucchini anywhere in sight. Before I could begin to back up discreetly and surreptitiously slip into the woods, he looked up, right at me, standing there like a statue and a rather colorful one at that. I certainly couldn’t count on camouflage. We stared at each other for what seemed like ten minutes but was more likely five seconds. His eyes were beautiful! His face was adorable! I was mesmerized. He softly grumbled and the spell broke. I was not in the San Diego Zoo.
Suddenly seized with the basic instinct that every second counted, with a gesture of sheer madness I raised my arms and screamed, “GET OUTA HERE! GO!” He dropped his toes, jumped to his feet, lifted his arms high, and took off running like a terrified rabbit. When I told Brad, he informed me I’d sure enough boo-booed with Boo Boo.
“You get large face-to-face with a mountain lion! With a bear you back out slowly, head down and humble.”
“ ‘L’ is for ‘Lion’ is for ‘Large’,” Lenore reinforced at our next potluck when I was telling the story. Humility is a large virtue I needed to remember.

~17~

We honed our trips to town so that we weren’t both running back and forth on the same day. I’d go in on my Brookside and Symphony Guild days and Brad made the drive alternately for Rotary and his men’s group breakfast. They ate every Thursday at a café where their waitress was named Ruby and had worked there for forty years. All eight of them ordered “the usual.”
“Don’t you love being able to say ‘I’m going to town’?” Brad asked one morning when I told him I was going in. I sure did. My only problem was that since we’d moved out here from crammed little Potterville into wide open spaces I’d been a wee bit too anxious to get back after my errands were over. Don’t fence me in! The first speeding ticket I got was when I was exiting at Reserve and wanted to tick off a few items on my list in record time. While singing along with Carrie Underwood about digging her key into the side of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive, I forgot to slow down and was doing sixty in a forty-five.
When the policeman pulled me over and walked up to my window he tipped his hat and asked if everything was all right. “Yes,” I said, not understanding there could be any deeper meaning here. He asked again. Was I feeling all right? Was I anxious or nervous about anything? Were these trick questions?
“Were you going to visit someone sick or dying?” he finally asked. Was this some form of Montana sarcasm?
“No, I was just going to Walgreen’s,” I answered honestly. He sighed. He appeared to be exasperated at something that I could not pinpoint and reluctantly said that in that case, he’d have to write me up.
“He was handing you legitimate excuses and you didn’t bite!” Mary told me when I met her for coffee at Hob Nob one afternoon after Brookside Book Club and told her the story…and then the rest of the story.
The second speeding ticket I warranted was only a few days later. I was hightailing it back to The Outpost after a long day in town—at eighty. The speed limit on I-90 was seventy-five. What’s five miles over? I premeditated to cap it at eighty and not long after I did, I noticed a police car in the rearview mirror along with the most vivid double rainbow I’d ever seen. I admired the uber-bright colors as I pulled over and he shut down the lights and siren.
“I had you pegged for a chase and was about to radio you in! Did you not see my lights and hear my siren?” He was rather offended and, I felt, overreacting. “You’re from California, aren’t you?” How did he know, and just when I thought I’d blended?
My license said Montana, my plates read Montana and I wasn’t tan anymore. I nodded yes and kept saying, “I’m sorry” over and over again until I thought I might start crying. Please, not that again.
“In California you may be able to go over the speed limit but you’re in Montana now. Here, there is no grace.” I disagreed, but felt this might not be a good time for a spiritual discussion. I took the ticket and went home to hang my head in shame. I’d thought I could hide one moving violation, but two would surely affect our insurance rate.
“Time for traffic school,” Brad said when I confessed my crimes—both of them. There had to be an alternative solution. I would rather have a root canal than attend traffic school.
“I’m just paying them,” I stood firm. He was frustrated with this easy way out that had its price beyond the obvious, but even an expert mediator could see that in this case there would be no persuasion.
“A high speed chase?” Mary asked with surprise written all over her face. “How hilarious!” I told her the most perplexing part was yet to come. “Shoot!” she said, taking a sip of coffee and leaning forward.
I’d taken both tickets to the Missoula courthouse, ready to pay the penalty for my lead foot. I walked up the steps and into the foyer of the classic looking courthouse that was built in 1910. From there it was an easy trot up the stairs to the room I was looking for. No one was waiting. I was the only fine-paying customer for the moment, and as I learned later, maybe for that month. The young woman behind the counter looked up. “May I help you?” She smiled and set down her pen. I slid my tickets across the counter.
“I’d like to pay these,” I said penitently.
She looked at them and typed something on the computer keyboard, then looked at the monitor. “Do you want to see the judge about them?” she asked.
“No thank you,” I said, “I was speeding. I just need to pay the tickets.” She looked down for a moment and then raised her eyes to me.
“Would you like to talk to the judge about these?” she said a bit more pointedly this time. Had she heard me?
“No, thank you. I’ll just pay.” I reached into my purse for my checkbook and set it on the counter. She looked around the room. The one other employee was on the telephone embroiled in some conversation about some county election. She looked back at me. She pulled her chair in and leaned over the counter so that our noses almost touched. I started to take a step back but she curved her finger and beckoned me to move in even closer.
“Do…you…want…to…talk…to…the…judge?” She spoke slowly and enunciated each word as if I were learning to speak English or deaf and relying on lip reading. I opened my mouth and it stayed that way, unable to form words in response to such a directive disguised as an offer. Was this code?
In a flash of higher IQ, I realized she was telling me that I should see the judge because I might be able to convince him I was innocent. I closed my mouth. I would get nowhere trying to pay so I put my checkbook back in my purse.
“I…guess…I…want…to…see…the…judge,” I stammered. But I really didn’t! She resumed her former clerical posture and clicked her pen.
“Perfect! Go down the hall to the end and it’s the door on your left,” she said very matter-of-factly. Fine. But in fact, this was very imperfect.
As I walked down the hall my heart began to pound and I felt tingly. I was guilty! What was I going to say to this man? As I’ve indicated, I am incapable of cunning. I stopped and turned around. But I couldn’t go back to that woman! She would think me a coward. She would not let me pay, and I had to get this resolved so Brad could not keep presenting arguments for traffic school. I stopped again and did another about-face. Good thing I was the only one in the hallway.
I pushed open the door to a mini-courtroom. As I slid into the back row of seats, I noticed that four other criminals awaited judgment. It would be forever before it was my turn! There was a woman on the witness stand and an attorney who held a pointer and stabbed it at a diagram of a complicated Missoula intersection. The judge was elderly and wearing black robes. His expression was serious as he intently looked and listened. What was I doing here? I didn’t have visuals!
I ran through the possible defenses I might manufacture. I started to sweat. I had no lawyer! Was I going to have to walk up to that witness stand and say…what? I’m guilty, Your Honor! It was me! He’d look at me like the blonde I am and tell me to go down the hall and turn right to pay for my tickets. It would be humiliating and horrendous. Just like that, I stood up and slipped out.
This time I marched down the hall, a woman on a mission. No one was going to tell me I couldn’t pay for my tickets. Nobody could make me plead innocent. I pushed open the door to see that my inferring friend had apparently taken her lunch break—or been fired. The worker who’d been on the phone was now sitting at the counter.
“I need to pay for these,” I said confidently. She fingered the keyboard after she looked at my tickets.
“$25.00 each,” she said flatly.

Mary titled her cup back and swallowed the last of her coffee. “That was ‘Let ‘em off Leroy’!” she exclaimed and laughed loudly enough for heads to turn. “Everyone knows if you go see him about a ticket, he erases it or lowers the fee, even if you did it!”
“Even if you tell him flat-out that you were guilty?” I asked in disbelief.
“Especially if,” she continued. “”Let ‘em off’ loves an honest woman.”

~18~

July was the best time for all the kids to come. They could hardly wait to get out of the city to fish, hike, and sit around the fire pit drinking Moose Drool and roasting marshmallows. They left their jobs behind and boarded planes in separate states, then met in Denver to fly on to Missoula.
We went right from the airport to the shooting range, where everyone took advantage of Brad’s every-increasing arsenal. From the truck bed he pulled out handguns, shotguns, and rifles and enough ammunition to equip a small country’s civil war.
“I love my truck,” he told Mark and Ryan when they were complimenting its capacity. After target practice we drove back into town for burgers, then walked across the bridge for ice cream. Mark and Ryan ducked into a fly shop to get fishing licenses and came back with a belated Father’s Day gift: A wooden hand-painted sign with a rudimentary rendering of a shotgun and the words “We Don’t Dial 911.” The record proved we, in fact, did, but we would have to remember next time we did to remove this sign before we did. I wondered if perchance they’d picked it up at Sign Pro, the store that was wedged between the Christian bookstore and an adult fantasy video store and advertises their location as being “on Brooks Street, right between heaven and hell.”
I took Clary, Kate, and Ashley, Mark’s fiancée, into Laurel Creek to look around. Lori asked if she could help us and while Clary tried on a top, she filled me in on all the downtown news—not much.
“Kathleen, I was sure it was you when I read about that woman fighting off the bear with her zucchini,” she said as we started out the door. The girls all looked at me. “It’s a long story,” I said.
Mark and Ryan hadn’t seen the house yet and just about flipped when they did. “You guys actually did it,” Mark said with a big smile on his face. “Yeah,” agreed Ryan, “Everybody else just talks about doing it.” Brad beamed with fatherly pride to show them every inch of the house, share details about the construction, and point out decisions he’d made that were right.
The strapping sons stripped off their shirts and got to work under the hot sun. They shoveled gravel, chopped wood, and moved boulders. At one point Clary and I admired them from the gathering table where we were sorting through Montana recipes for my new collection.
“It’s like something out of a Bret Harte novel,” Clary mused while watching her stepbrothers’ wielding shovels and wearing cowboy hats, their muscles gleaming with sweat against the backdrop of ten-story tall Ponderosa Pines.
After a day of dripping-wet labor, it was time to fish. Brad had picked up the MacKenzie drift boat before they’d come and it was outfitted and ready to go. I’d given him Kelly’s number and he’d arranged for her to take us out on the Blackfoot so he would know exactly what to do. We’d enjoyed a splendid afternoon on the spectacular river, and I especially appreciated the female point of view on the predominantly male sport.
With all the kids here at the same time and the boat seating a maximum of four, we had to take turns. First out were Mark and his fiancée Ashley. Brad took the oars, Mark sat astern, and Ashley and I perched on the two smaller seats at the bow. It was a gorgeous day, with virtually no one else on the river. Brad’s rowing displayed only one of his many natural talents that I’d come to appreciate now that they were allowed free rein in the wild. He weaved through the rocks despite a very strong current, threading tight spaces with heart-stopping accuracy. I watched his shoulders pull at the oars and felt a swoon coming on.
The current rushed us along as if floating on air, sparkling water lapping at the sides of the boat, until...the boat thudded to a sudden stop. Ashley and I were thrown forward but held on. We were not moving—as in at all. Lodged firmly against a boulder, we were stuck, the current pushing hard so we could not budge.
“Move back!” Brad yelled to me over the roar of the river. Ashley and I scooched back as far as we could, then Brad wedged one oar between us and the boulder and pried with all his might. Nothing.
Mark stood and followed his dad’s directions. He took the other oar and together they tried a variety of possible solutions they must have learned in the physics classes that were an option when I enrolled in Education for Marriage. Nope. Thirty minutes later, still nothing.
“Frick!” Brad exclaimed in frustration as he tried to straighten up after using his bad back to the best of its ability but with no luck. Ashley suggested to me that we take a picture of our men in peril on the sea, so I surreptitiously reached into my tackle bag for the camera when Brad shot me a look that made me think better of such an addition to our family photo album.
As I looked away from him and thirty feet downriver, I saw what no one ever should. There, on what Kelly had pointed out as the Blackfoot’s “nude beach” (no one had been on it that day) stood two exceedingly elderly male sunbathers…stark naked. Facing front. Hands on their hips. Talking to each other and obviously assessing our situation but doing nothing about it, thank God.
Ashley still had her back to them. Brad and Mark were pre-occupied to say the least. I alone faced the ticklish situation. Would this be our only help? We were miles from nowhere with no cell phone reception, we’d eaten our only meal, and the sun was sinking fast. The current was too strong to swim. Not one of us could have even stepped into it without being flattened, bumped against boulders like a marble in a pinball machine, and washed downstream. On one side of us was what appeared to be a bottomless hole and the other side was the peaked protrusion that pinned us. We were caught between a rock and a nude beach. Only these au naturel elderly knew we were here. How could they help us? They didn’t even have tool belts!
“Could we throw the anchor as far as it goes in the opposite direction from the rock and then pull on the rope?” When I posed this question, Brad, whose hat had long ago been blown by a gust and swept into the current and whose lovely, thick hair had fallen fetchingly across his drenched forehead, looked at me as if I had grown another head with antlers sticking out of it. Guess not.
Still no one noticed we had an audience—or they chose not to.
I didn’t know how to advise Ashley. If I told her to turn around, when she screamed it would be obvious that we didn’t take nudity in stride. I whispered to her that two naked men were on a beach up ahead and that what she was about to see was actually comforting. Older men sagged too! Poor dear was only twenty-four, however, so was as yet unacquainted with the effects of anatomical gravity. She nodded and collected herself before she casually twisted in her seat. Her eyes enlarged to the size of poker chips. She looked back to me with the expression of someone who has just seen aliens emerging from a spacecraft. All the while, Brad and Mark were busy planning their next strategy.
“It’s not going to break free,” Brad finally announced in surrender, which is a difficult thing for him to do. “So here’s what we’re going to do.” We were all ears, eyes having been assaulted. It was easy to zero in and focus on Brad when you didn’t dare look elsewhere. Much to our horror, in a move June would have defined chivalrous but I called suicidal, Brad stepped gingerly out of the boat and onto the tip of the problematic rock. The scene reminded me of that caricature of a Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep balancing on all fours atop one of the Alps with a look of fear lacing his otherwise confident expression.
“Kathleen, you take the oars. Mark, step out next to me, here.” He pointed to a one-inch square patch of rock by his side and just above the water’s surface.
“Frick!” Mark yelled (like father, like son). “On that?” Ashley shifted in her seat to tell her intended that she loved him, one last time. The boat dipped and took on two gallons of water before the yelling stopped and Ashley was back in her place, sitting as straight as a ruler.
“Mark and I are going to push,” our fearless leader was yelling at the volume necessary to verbally communicate during a Jimi Hendricks concert. “When the boat breaks free, row like there is no tomorrow!” Which there might not be. “We’ll meet you downstream—over there.” At least he’d seen enough to point to the opposite shore from where full-body tanning was underway. “You’ll really have to row hard!” he directed like a tough-love drill sergeant inspiring his troops. My head was nodding “certainly” while my mind was screaming “insanity!”
“Do you see where I want you to go?” Brad double-checked, which was always a good idea when directing me, especially while operating under pressure.
“Yes!” I bellowed above the current.
“We’ll meet you there,” he reinforced the plan. Or somewhere in Idaho, I thought…if that was even the direction of Idaho. Who could keep track of all these rivers and their confluences and currents? How our men were going to meet us was definitely a mystery. In body bags? And how Ashley and I were ever going to survive the class-five rapids that no doubt awaited us between here and wherever “there” was would require a more impressive escape than Harry Houdini could have performed.
In a Barbara burst I took hold of the oars and wrapped my hands around them until all the blood left my fingers. I set myself ready, determined to replace panic with power, like those women who lift cars with their bare hands to save a trapped child. Brad teetered, on the verge of losing his balance. I nodded to Mark, the signal that he should disembark. As he lifted one foot and moved it over the raging water and next to Brad’s, the boat lifted. It began to shift. Mark quickly brought his foot back on board, Brad jumped in, and the boat took off as quickly as it had stopped. Within seconds we were drifting peacefully past the senior sun worshippers. I shifted my body and gaze forward and happily let Brad man the oars.
When we arrived at the take-out, while Brad was moving his gear from the boat to the truck, I caught Mark out of the corner of my eye. He was hurling the anchor as far as he could.
By the time we saw the kids off, we’d taken the others on a float trip as well, although far less harrowingly. Ryan had had his moment of panic when we became wedged between a pair of rocks in a spot where this time Brad and I were able to get out of the boat in shallow enough water. He sent his eldest son down river to meet us at the shore and as the boat sprung free, cupped his hands and yelled over the deafening roar of the water, “Pull back!” Ryan heard “Come back!” That was like telling someone who had just plummeted over Niagara Falls in a barrel to “come back.”
“I thought I’d lost you guys,” he said in near collapse from the effort of trying to row upstream.
We decided to wait for higher water on the Blackfoot and took the others on a much tamer Clark Fork trip, where I hopped out and walked through the brush to a friend Margaret’s kitchen window that overlooked the water. A former New Yorker, Margaret, like I, was still basking in the laid-back that translated to no house alarms, no need to calendar stopping by, and finding doors unlocked when you did. I framed my face with my hands and peered through the glass. There sat Margaret, eating soup with her husband, their backs to me.
“Woo hoo!” I crooned in my best soprano. She whipped around, her mouth formed an O the size of a frying pan, and she leapt up to open the back door. They both came out to ogle the Mackenize drift boat. After we got home I opened an e-mail from her. “It is a true Montana friend who can just wander up to your kitchen window and sing ‘Woo hoo!’” she wrote.
On the heels of the kids’ visit, Brad’s co-counsel Steve, his wife Eileen, and their twin five-year-old sons flew in from Los Angeles to spend a week. We took them swimming and fishing at Frenchtown Pond, feeling the river might be too long a day for little ones. We drove into town to the Caras Park Carousel and ate ice cream cones. When we showed them Fish Creek, Brad took them over to the water’s edge and picked up a small smooth stone.
“Find a rock you like,” Brad instructed. “Then take it home with you and put it on your desk or your bedside table. Every time you look at it, it will remind you of Montana. It will be your own special ‘Montana Rock’.” He had sent the girls and me to do the same thing when we’d come to Rock Creek that summer. He’d kept his in his law office for years. I’d put mine on my writing desk in San Juan Capistrano. I used it as a paperweight at The Outpost, to remind me of a time when I’d wondered if I’d really ever get here.
On Monday, Phillip and Timmy had been glued to their hand-held Game Boys, lifting their heads only to eat a sandwich. By Sunday when it came time to go the airport, they’d forgotten where they’d put them.
“Guess what was my favorite part!” Timmy challenged “Uncle Brad” who had stooped down to give him a hug goodbye at the security line.
“The carousel?” Brad asked. Timmy shook his head. “Fishing at the pond?’ Another negative. “I give up!” Brad played along.
“Finding my Montana Rock,” Timmy said.

~19~

Our last guest of the summer was Frank, another attorney with whom Brad had worked who came up from the San Francisco area to see Glacier National Park. They picked the day I was hosting a baby shower for one of the young women who went to Frenchtown Church. I’d posted the invitation on the church bulletin board and added it to the weekly bulletin. Thirty women RSVP’d “yes!” Brad and Frank thought it best to escape that day. They’d eat at a lodge up that way and be back after supper.
The women poured in holding packages wrapped in paper depicting baby rattles and bows. We squeezed together, all thirty of us, to circle around the coffee table area of the great room so everyone could view the mother-to-be opening her gifts. There was oodles of goo-gooing about how cute, how cute…when all at once the power went out. No biggie. By this time, I was unfazed by a temporary outage. It was the middle of the afternoon, sunlight flooded the room, and the refreshments were already out on the counter. Who needed power?
Except I’d forgotten that the water is pumped and a pump is run by electricity and you need water, why? For the toilet.
“I’ll just go in the woods!” most everyone agreed. The about-to-pop pregnant guest of honor, Jenny, looked a bit horrified even though she’d normally be the first to take care of business as nature intended. Maneuvering through the underbrush and ladder fuel might be a bit precarious, I realized while watching her face as she tried to conceal her concern.
Suddenly there was Evie and Sally and Cindy—hauling big buckets they’d found in the workshop, now full of water. As they toted them into the guest bathroom, Sally called out over her shoulder, “We just went over to the crik and filled these up! Pour water into the toilet if you need to use it.” Jenny put one hand on the coffee table and pushed herself to her feet then made a determined move towards the powder room.
“Looks like Brad can leave after all!” Cindy commented. “We solved this crisis without calling for help!”
By the time Brad and Frank pulled in, the power was on and the party guests had long gone. Frank enjoyed the rest of his days with us lounging on the patio with a good book. “I love the feel of the air starting to change,” he noted. Our first autumn at The Outpost was just around the corner.
It was a sight to be seen, too. Yellow and orange cottonwoods and bright red maples embellished the banks of Ninemile Creek and on every surrounding mountainside the larch trees were bright yellow-gold. Scattered among the evergreens, they looked like strands of 18-karat necklaces draping the décolletage of the hillsides. One afternoon Lenore called to say,” We have to go drive out the Ninemile and up into the mountains to see it all up close before it’s too late!” So we did. For a little over an hour we made a loop of the valley and went up the twisting mountain road. Around every corner we saw yet another blast of bright foliage.
Rob wanted to hike Kootenai to see the colors, so we four trekked that trail with cameras at the ready. Unreal. I’d never seen such a splendid autumnal array, not even in travel ads for “Fall Colors.” Halfway up the three-mile long gradual ascent, Brad, who was in the lead, stopped. “I need to rest,” he said, a bit breathless I felt considering the cool, crisp air and gradual ascent.
“I don’t like your color, Brad!” Lenore said bluntly. He was redder than the reddest leaves around us. He was panting. “Do you have a headache?” Lenore asked him.
“A little one,” Brad answered. “It could be blood pressure, I suppose.” I felt my new old-familiar panic rising. We rested and in a short while, the burning red lightened and he said we should keep on going.
After we got home Brad took his blood pressure, something he was supposed to be doing regularly, but hadn’t. It was a bit high, but not alarmingly so. He took a couple of Advil for his headache and we sat down to supper where we talked about how we could bring my father here, now that summer company had gone and winter was still a couple months away.
Aunt Lily and I had been over it a million times. How could we get him up to Montana for a visit before it was too late? I’d talked to the nurses, who informed me that he had reached the point where he couldn’t even walk to the front door let alone leave for a vacation. He frequently fell. He was taking morphine for the pain from his liver that the doctor diagnosed as cancer. Lily said he’d told her during a surprising verbal moment, “I can’t get there.” She said for me not to worry about it. But worry I did.
I concocted various kidnapping schemes—how I would get him out of there and whisk him up here to die on the front porch the way he would have wanted to. I’d borrow one of Nate’s horses and saddle him up, then slap it on the rear and send it running into the woods. But no matter how many bold scenarios I birthed, ultimately I did nothing. Instead of swooping in and saving him like Wonder Woman, I picked up the phone and try to talk to him.
“I love you,” I said. “He winked!” his nurse got on the line to tell me.
At 3:30 A.M. one morning the phone rang. I knew. Daddy was gone, his nurse said. She was sorry—all the usual consoling words. Lily had been with him earlier that evening, she told me, and she had been there when he died. “He was not alone,” she said. As if I could believe that.
My father had contracted with the Neptune Society to take care of the cremation. The facility handled the removal of the body, as they termed it. I was as numb as a tree stump when I listened to the clinical references to what had been the living, breathing love of my life. Your father is the one man who exists from beginning to end, no matter whether he’s a good one or a bad one. Mine had been the best one. He’d set me square in the saddle on horseback and told me to hold on tight, that if I did I could ride like the wind. He said that as long as I had heart and nerve, I would go wherever I wanted.
“Keep dreaming, Katha,” he told me. “Never stop dreaming.”
I would collect what they called his “cremains” in October, when we traveled to Southern California for Mark’s wedding. Meanwhile, life goes on. Only I didn’t know how it could. I took long walks, breathing in the smoky aroma from burning leaf piles and wood fires. Although I’d never been one to converse with my houseplants, I found myself talking to the trees. God was in there, somewhere, and He had taken my father and brought me to Montana for a reason.
We landed at John Wayne airport on a Friday in October, three days before “Black Monday, 2008.” The stock market was nose-diving like a plane certain to crash. All our retirement money was invested. We’d been nervous as cats about the situation all week long, paralyzed in fear. Do we sell everything? Ride it out? We had plunked our money in and trusted the experts, neither of us having had the time or inclination to learn how to wheel and deal in the market. Gordon Gekkos we are not.
At the baggage claim conveyor belt, Brad pulled his cell phone from his pocket and accepted a call. When he hung up he told me to call our bank while he called our brokerage firm.
“Liquidate!” both of us yelled impetuously into our mouthpieces at the same time as we lifted and twisted suitcases from the rounder. Sweat droplets beaded on my temples from the emotional strain. I peeled off my jacket and tossed it to the floor at my feet. Brokers and bankers tried to stop us. We argued. We insisted. We threatened. By the time we’d crossed the street to the rental car agency counter, we were liquid. With no income. I was about to retrieve my father’s ashes, the burned out flakes that had been the man who raised me and cared for me throughout my life. Just when I really needed to stand in the middle of Rock Creek, I was on a never-ending slab of concrete.
“Our house is paid for,” Brad reassured. “We own our vehicles. We don’t owe any money.” A far cry from former mortgage payments, car loans, and credit card balances. Brad could learn to hunt and I would grow a garden! Amidst this chaos there was peace in the thought that an uncomplicated life could still be lived.
“The cars are all so clean here!” I said, remembering my weekly trips to the car wash that had been as ritualistic as brushing teeth. In Huson the cars were always covered with mud and no one bothered about it. Often I could barely see out of my rear windshield and always my jeans sported the “Ninemile Brand” —a swipe of dried mud across the back of the shin, just above the ankle, from the 4-Runner’s mired running board. I already missed it.
We plunged nose first into the speedy and insane traffic that had once been routine, longing for our pot-holed dirt roads again. At the reception Mark’s mother-in-law, Deborah, sidled up to me, fanning a copy of the Orange County Register. “I loved this!” she said referring to one of my columns. “By the way, were you the woman who hit the bear with a zucchini?” While Brad stood in for the both of us at a brunch the next day Clary, Kate, Lily, and I sprinkled some of Daddy’s ashes into tiny wooden boats we’d bought at a toy store. He’d wanted no service, so we sent him off in the style he’d loved—under sail. I tucked some of the ashes in a little blue Tiffany box (Mama would like that) to take back to Montana, the place I was homesick for.

~20~

When you live in a place with four seasons, there are things to be done before winter sets in, things I’d only read about in novels. People were out cleaning roofs and windows. Whereas Elizabeth was always up for a walk, now she was clearing rocks and helping Tom get the barn ready. The men chopped wood in a final frenzy before it would be too cold to work outside. New to such preparation, all I could think of to do was line up my mittens, glove liners, glove warmers, coat, facemask, and hat in the mudroom, ready to grab whenever I needed it. Brad was the new owner of an extraordinary head accessory made of leather with sheepskin trim and ear flaps. When he tried it on, he looked like a furry animal had landed on his forehead. This went with battery-operated heater gloves he would need for plowing the driveway on bitter cold mornings.
When the first snow fell I acted like I had at five years old, when the sky had dropped something between hail and flurries onto our Pasadena dichondra. I was so excited my mother considered hospitalizing me. It had snowed in Potterville, obviously, and the Thanksgiving we’d been at Rock Creek, but now it was snowing at our house! Brad could not contain me. I layered in a mad rush to get out the door.
“Calm down, Honey! It’s not like it’s going to stop anytime soon!” Brad said. I paid not a flicker of attention. There was no raining on this parade. I strapped Yak Traks on my snow boots and twirled in circles all the way down the driveway. As the snow deepened beneath my feet, I could hear it softly crunch under my step.
On the mountain range at the far end of my favorite valley the powdered-sugar dusting of snow on the emerald evergreens gave them a silvery cast. Along Ninemile Crik the bare cottonwoods looked like the tips of their branches had been dipped in copper. I turned my face to the sky and hollered a “whoopee!” Only the horses looked at me. Thin trails of smoke spiraled from every cabin’s chimney. I walked and walked and finally came back two hours later. That night, when we went to bed, Brad sauntered over to the far wall of our bedroom and flicked on a surprise light switch. Soft light bathed the area just outside our window, where fat snowflakes fell to the ground and stuck to the tree branches.
“I thought we might like to lie in bed and watch the snow,” Brad said. Marvelous.
It had been the beginning of a blizzard. There were days when we couldn’t get to Spotted Fawn. Rather than risk the treacherous driveways all over our woods the UPS driver simply tacked delivery notices on tree trunks. Right out of a fairy tale! I learned new weather vocabulary from the Missoula television forecaster, words like frost heaves and groppel.
“What’s groppel?” I asked Brad while we were watching the man gesture across a map that showed great clouds of white moving ominously over the entire state of Montana.
“I have no idea,” he said. The next day when I dressed for the onset of another Ice Age and went for a walk in it I learned not only what groppel was, but also that it hurt. I took shelter under a tree while readjusting my outerwear that needed to be armor to better shield me fromthe rock-hard pellets of snow. They were perfect little balls, every single one of them, flawlessly rounded.
“Groppel is a little snow miracle!” I told Brad when I got back home. A little pain is just the price you pay for perfect.
While Brad and Nate revved up their rigs to help pull neighbors out of ditches along our roads, I risked the steep and slippery Sixmile Road to go to Lenore’s to knit. I’d made a mistake in the pattern Lenore had given me so I needed her help. God forbid I wait for the next get-together. By this time, Brad had purchased Blizzaks for my car. These tires that can navigate over ice and snow like the wheels of an army tank but you don’t get free beef with the purchase of them like Jackie told us happened to her at Les Schwab. “When I went in for snow tires,” she said, “they just handed me a big bag full of steaks. No splashing ads all over the television, no radio announcements, no nothing. Just handed it to me and said that today with tires came free Montana farm-raised meat.”
Thus began Lenore’s and my weekly knitting bee. I would bring something chocolate in exchange for her coaching me. We’d layer up and head out for a walk on the forest service roads behind her house, then after an hour come in to hot coffee and toes up by her fire. I knitted scarf after scarf using the yarn from her llamas. By December I had finished a scarf for every female in the family in her favorite color.
When the kids came for Christmas, we all hiked out back and picked out the best Christmas tree we could find. Dealing with several opinions took some time. Everyone felt the cold even though they were bundled from toes to brains. Kate bent her knees and pumped up and down. Ryan crossed his arms across his chest and rubbed his shoulders. Clary pulled her wool scarf up and around her face. Ashley marched around in little circles. “Let’s get ‘er done,” Ryan urged. “Yeah,” said Mark, “I’m freezing my butt off out here, Dad!” I stood there in a long-sleeved Henley. Montana was the menopause Garden of Eden. Having a hot flash? Step outside.
Brad hewed the tree with a handsaw and with Mark and Ryan’s help they brought it inside to where Brad had crafted the perfect stand from a tree stump. In went the tree, which once inside looked a bit Charlie Brownish, then the kids decorated it with pinecones, red ribbon, and whatever else they could find or make from materials around the house. The star on the top was shaped from a handful of Red Vines, which after one hour in place, sadly sagged to resemble a swastika.
For the rest of the vacation we played a heated Texas hold ‘em tournament. Competition was fierce, especially as players were eliminated, one by one. I supplied a steady stream of nutrition in the form of nachos and beer. In the end, long after midnight some three days into the play, it was Mark and Brad, head to head. Soon after that, Brad was named “King Poker.”
When the holiday was over, we took two cars to get everyone to the airport. I held up much better this time. I knew Kate would be back for another visit in February, so that helped. Still, as I wiped a tear after hugging them all goodbye at the curb, I glanced in every direction to see who might see (or hear) me.
When Kate came again just after Valentine’s Day, she wanted to try cross-country skiing. Ever since I’d broken my ankle, I was more aware of brittle bones that come with age. I was a bit more skittish than I’d been when I’d downhill skied primarily on the beginner “green” slopes. The one time I’d pushed myself to go a little higher to an intermediate “blue” hill, I’d knocked flat a queue of intercollegiate racers waiting at the top gate of a slalom run, just like dominoes. Unless on the Interstate, speed was not my thing. With my ankle in mind, now it really wasn’t. I’d watched cross-country skiers in the Olympics on television. They slid gracefully and effortlessly and didn’t fly downhill as if any moment a parachute should open up behind them. How hard could it be?
Brad and I had snapped up skis and boots at REI’s post-season sale while we were living in Potterville. When we had enough snow at I’d played around on my skis out back of The Outpost’s. Before the snowplow got to us, I’d glided down Spotted Fawn to the corner and back. Easy!
I checked the snow report at Lolo Pass, remembering that Judge John had told me it was much higher and snow conditions were often good there later in the season. Sure enough, they still had plenty of snow. While Brad stirred up sawdust in the manly-man cave, Kate and I dressed in long johns, stretchy pants, and fleece, then went to town and rented her the proper equipment.
“These pants are flattering!” Kate said in surprise as she admired her form in the three-way dressing room mirror while I waited at the counter for assistance. I didn’t want to look.
The temperature on the outside of the Missoula ski rental shop read 4 degrees and who knows what it would be at elevated Lolo Pass with a possible wind chill, so I suggested we swing by Ward’s and buy her that pink jacket. “I’d have to be standing in a deep freeze to wear this,” she commented while trying it on and quickly removing it in the warmth of the store.
“You will be,” I replied. We stuffed into the back seat with my brown one and we were off!
It was a beautiful mountain drive. I’d checked with both Lenore and John, who had given me directions and told me I couldn’t miss it. Kate and I chatted away and admired the scenery as higher and higher we climbed. Shortly after we passed Lolo Hot Springs, we started to go downhill. At first I thought nothing of it, a temporary dip in the overall rise, but the longer I drove, the more aware I was that we were not going back up. My car had come equipped with GPS, but of course I’d never activated it.
“I think a pass is at the top of the mountain,” I said. “Isn’t a pass at the top?” I asked. She’d been the more recent geography student! What was the definition of a pass? The term always held a rather daunting association for me what with local news reports galore about black ice and impassible road conditions. The most adventurous driving I’d ever encountered was the cloverleaf interchange on the 405 freeway. I consoled myself, however, by remembering that whereas other drivers were intimidated by such a maze, man, I could do loop de loops on that thing blindfolded!
“I’m turning around,” I said, getting no help from Kate regarding the definition.
Thirty minutes later, we were back to the border between Idaho and Montana. On our right was a building with a sign, “Visitor Information Center.” I’d seen that on the left coming up the hill but had flown by it in search of some notation of “Lolo Pass” and “Ski Trails.” I should have known better by now. We were in Montana, where things aren’t labeled. Everyplace is just a place. People just know.
I pulled into the absolutely empty parking lot. By now it was 3:30 in the afternoon and in winter darkness would set in at 4:30. Not a sign of life came from the building. It looked very locked.
I pulled up to the curb and Kate read the information posted near the door. Winter hours indicated we’d just missed the rush (probably three skiers at most) but she saw signs pointing to ski runs, and there was certainly plenty of snow. We’d come all this way. Why not try it for an hour?
It took another ten minutes to add the final touches to our outfits. We laced up boots and pulled on mittens with Little Hotties Hand Warmers zipped inside. We yanked black facemasks from around our necks and up over our mouths, then from the back tightly over our skulls. Only our eyes were left uncovered. We helped each other into our jackets and lifted and snapped tight those Eskimo hoods. After we walked over to the visitor center and toe-clamped into our skis we turned to read the posted trail map and found ourselves reflected in the window of the vacant lodge. We looked like fur-trimmed Peanut M&Ms about to rob a bank.
The rather confusing system of trails didn’t seem to correlate with what we saw on the map, so we picked the one titled “3-Mile Loop” and started off in the direction we thought must be right. It would be perfect length outing for the amount of remaining daylight. In no time, we were gliding along a wide-open groomed trail, not another soul in sight.
Kate had never set foot on skis and except for a few impressive pretzel positions when I thought she might do the splits in the wrong direction so that she would never be able to have children, she did well! As we went along, I told her what I knew based on my own limited trial and what I’d watched on a u-tube video. We both grew more and more confident as the afternoon wore on. And on. And on.
The light was fading and so was I. I checked my watch. We’d been skiing on a straight path for more than half an hour. We hadn’t made a turn. Where was the “loop?” Kate saw a sign posted on a tree. We scooted over to it and stopped. My bad.
I discovered something about my aged center of gravity when, while standing still, my skis slipped right out from under me and not only did I bend both ankles sharply and swiftly, but to add injury to injury I whiplashed and hit the back of my puffy head so hard Kate could hear it crack like Humpty Dumpty’s. Guess there hadn’t been as much puff as I thought.
“Are you okay?” She screamed, snapped out of her skis, and bent to help me. I thought about asking her if the stars were out yet, but after blinking a few times, that question was answered. I sat up and very still. “Should I call someone?” Her subconscious was still in Scottsdale, where cell phones operate no matter where you are. I, on the contrary, was an old hand at falling flat where there is no reception.
She helped me to my feet and I felt fine. My ankles were a bit sore, but nothing alarming. Rather than then try to pursue a loop that I didn’t think existed, we turned around and picked up speed to get back to the car before dark. We needed headlights to see our way out to the highway.
We regaled our success over supper, bragging to Brad about our prowess, my fall merely a faint concern. As the night wore on, however, my left ankle swelled and pain set in. By bedtime, I was in tears as Brad semi carried me to bed and handed me four Advil.
“Never again!” I swore, enraged that such a fate had cut me down in the prime of my cross-country career. “You can hang those skis in the garage right next to my downhill ones. It’s not worth the risk.” Sob, sob.
The next morning I awoke to no pain and not a sign of swelling. Whatever it was, it was miraculously gone. Perhaps that Patron Saint of Broken Bones had just picked up his messages! At breakfast I noticed an ad in the paper for snowshoes. “If you can walk, you can snowshoe!” the advertisement enticed. We all knew I could walk.
“This would be perfect for you, Mom!” Kate was no dummy.
“I’ll wait for the sale,” I said, “then make that my new winter sport.”

~21~

In March, I sometimes heard geese fly overhead. I walked out to watch them one morning just as Brad was coming out of the tractor shed. “They’re beautiful to photograph,” he said, joining me in a long look at the sky, “if you can catch them. It’s hard to do when there are just one or two.”
That evening we hosted the neighborhood potluck. Somewhere in the conversation I mentioned the geese. Rob and Lenore, our resident scientists, suggested we all make a road trip to Freezeout Lake, a few hours away from Missoula. There, on a certain weekend that Rob would predetermine, a bazillion geese take an annual rest from the flyway to Canada.
“It’s the most amazing sight you’ll ever see,” he promised. I didn’t want to tell him that aside from looking up at them occasionally from my own back patio, I didn’t really give a hoot about birds. Brad was excited to get avian photographs without hiding out in a camo blind and I was always up for seeing another area of Montana.
Jackie wanted to amass photographic material for wildlife painting so she and Peter drove their truck. Michael and Elaine just wanted to see it, since they’d read about it in magazines and newspapers. Apparently it was quite famous, a topic even among non-birders.
Three cars caravanned north for about an hour, then stopped for gas and handfuls of Rob’s chocolate chip cookies before beating it back to our vehicles to drive east another two hours to Fairfield. This was a very different landscape, the more desolate one I’d read about in In Open Spaces, where the main characters go kinda insane looking at nothing but space everyday. Although nothing taller than grass grew here that I could see, no stately pines or mountain foliage, the stark contrast was awesome. Just like in the book, this would have been harsher land, less forgiving and more desolate, and yet somehow captivating. Prairies lay absolutely flat, straight out to the horizon. Golden grass gave way in the chilly wind. Anyone living here would be wedded to this country because it would be all they had.
Rob had arranged for us to stay in a bed and breakfast in the very small town. With four bedrooms and four couples we owned the place, and our host was very chatty, this obviously being his most lucrative weekend of the year. After we settled in and before we walked out the door to go find something to eat at the only supper house on the main street of town, he told us all about the spectacle we were about to see and the best way to view them.
“You’ll need to be up at o’dark thirty,” he said several times when no one reacted to the remark.
I’m not a huge fan of o’dark. Our host made coffee the night before and put it in one of those pump carafes. By o’dark thirty it was room temperature. And weak. I’d noted a coffee house called The Twisted Sisters when we’d driven into town, but avid photographers were not about to give up seeing a single goose for a gulp of Joe. When we walked out the door the echo of snow geese chatting among themselves a couple of miles away was louder than 50,000 car horns blaring in the Rose Bowl parking lot. Clearly, there was a larger than average number of birds nearby. Yawn.
“How long do you think it will be before I can get strong coffee?” I asked Brad who totally ignored me.
When we got to the lake and attempted conversation it was like trying to talk during the last four seconds of a tied basketball game.
The typical Montana weekend crowd had gathered to watch what approached being one of the world’s wonders; there were eight or ten people setting up their tripods. Brad and Rob and Jackie went to work as quickly as they could before the 7:30 sunrise magic moment, when 300,000 snow geese and 10,000 tundra swans would rise from their resting place to cross over the road and feed in the open fields. I stood among them, ready to assist. The geese and swans were body-to-body, jammed into what little space they had available for such an enormous gaggle.
“Aren’t you going to take a picture?” Michael asked me. I told him my small camera would look ridiculous in this company. He pulled from his parka pocket a point-and-shoot just like mine. “Don’t let all these guys with their honker bonkers intimidate you! Whip that out and I’ll betcha we can get pictures just as good as theirs!” I obliged rather than discuss zoom lens differences and the fact that our swans would look like pin pricks.
At precisely 7:30—not 7:29, not 7:31—every single living breathing goose and swan lifted from the crowded surface of the water. Not ten at a time. Not ten thousand at a time. All of them. At the very same second. I never moved my camera. As honker bonkers around me fired off like automatic weapons, I supported my neck, my face upturned to the sky and my mouth gaping open. Fortunately, one of the birds didn’t drop something into it. Their cries were deafening. As they rose higher, the rising sun lighted their bodies so they shone like strands of pearls bending and swaying. 300,000 precious stones adorning that big, big sky.
It was over in thirty seconds. They had flown across the road behind us and were feeding on golden grass in the flat expanse of fields. We loaded our gear into the cars and met at The Twisted Sisters Café, where the sisters proved to be, well, twisted—and very entertaining. In a trance, I ordered a double shot of espresso (now you’re talkin’) and drank it down like someone who had just walked away from a close encounter of the third kind.
“You look shell-shocked,” Martin commented when he turned to proudly show me the pinprick images he’d captured on his camera and I was still staring out the window, watching an errant goose join his gaggle.
“Bird shock,” I said.
After we got home from that weekend, every day I looked for geese in flight. If I thought I heard one honking I ran for the door and scanned the sky as if my life depended on it. After the night our group all shared successful pictures on screen, I looked at Brad’s over and over again. The trouble was, even the best honker bonker couldn’t recreate the sound of that lift, the cacophony of that call, the roar of 600,000 wings like a hurricane right over my head. Zoologist Lenore was quite pleased with my feathered-friend conversion.
One Friday I was over at her house knitting while Rob’s photos were displayed on the television above the fireplace. I finished the row I was on before I looked up to compliment her on her haircut.
“I go to Marianne, right over on Conifer. She’s great!” I’d been considering letting nature, since I was thriving in it, take its course. Instead of trying to stay blonde against the force of aging, why didn’t I just go gray? I’d been toying with it for several months and had even asked Carol with her stunning ash-white coif, what she thought of the idea.
“Go for it!” she said. “I was blonde too, so you will probably look like me!” Fat chance. I’d give anything for my hair to turn out like hers, but when I inspected the roots now, I feared mine would be a dishwater, dull, and lifeless gray. Throughout my life, no matter what else had befallen me, be it pimples or pudginess, until I turned forty-five, I’d always had that long, thick, incredible naturally blonde hair. Up until now I’d never given the slightest thought to changing that. Golden hair had been my identity. Who would I be if not Farah Fawcett?
Brad approved of the plan. “Here’s the deal, Squeal,” I told him while he was planting wildflower seeds in an old barrel by the front door. “I’m thinking I should let my hair go gray. Whadda ya think?”
“I think it would be a good thing,” he said. “It will look better with your coloring.” I didn’t really want to know what that meant. I asked my daughters. Kate’s sum total response was, “Hmmm…” while Clary was a bit more opinionated.
“I don’t know, Mom. What’s the matter with your pretty blonde? (pretty dyed, you mean.) Aren’t you afraid you’ll look like ‘The Portrait of Dorian Gray’?” They were too young to get it.
Gray hair was a style in Montana, and especially in the country. I would save us money, which we were skimping and scraping to find as it was, and by going to Marianne I wouldn’t have to make an appointment in town. Lately, trips to town for anything other than a social gathering were beginning to feel like a chore. I called Marianne who told me to just come on over—how about right now?
Conifer was a bumpy dirt road that led deeper into the woods than where we lived. I wove slowly around the curves and kept my eye peeled for the house number, since those are often invisible if even in existence. At last I saw a large boulder with her sign, “Backwoods Hair Design.”
Marianne’s salon had been modeled from the former garage attached to her house. Her husband was out bumping around on the tractor, naturally. The one-sink affair was cozy and she was as hospitable as they come. She agreed with gray for me, washed and trimmed my hair, and warned me that growing out the natural color would take time. In the meantime, I’d be an obviously unnatural half and half. I was living in the woods, so what difference did that make? In fact, I would grow it long again and wear a French braid down to my shoulders. I was up to the challenge. I felt liberated from the slavery of foils and dyes and blow dryers!
With only one foot in the door, I phoned my Missoula stylist, Tanya, to break up. I don’t like things to hang over my head, and I knew this severance would be somewhat awkward since, of course, I’d made certain I was more than a client. I’d made her my friend. When I broke it to her gently, she was confused. She pointed out that she too could babysit my hair while it was growing longer and going gray. Helpless to explain my motivation for total metamorphosis, I left her with my perplexing announcement that I simply wanted to do everything in the woods now, an admission that, once spoken, I realized was becoming true. After I hung up, I decided to take a long walk and think about this.
I never got tired of my walk. Instead of the usual suburban view where the most exciting change was a new Porsche in someone’s driveway, here the road might be the same, but what happened beside it was different every day. Would the horses be out so I could feed them a carrot? Would I see a fawn? Our elk herd? Had the calves been born yet? And of course…might I meet a bear? Here the country culture had nothing to do with man and his machinations. Here, nature provided the day-to-day variety that turned an ordinary stroll into a splendid sightseeing trip.
Along my route, I stopped at Elizabeth and Tom’s to care for their animals while they were away on vacation. My reward for such daily sacrifice was all the eggs I could collect from their prolifically productive hens. I’d saved old egg cartons for months.
I could smell spring in the air. Newborn calves romped on the hillside opposite Tom and Elizabeth’s spread, their spindly legs still a bit wobbly. I walked into the barn, slipped off my shoes, and slid my feet into Elizabeth’s mucking boots, just like a rancher. I fed the llamas from a container of pellets and climbed the ladder into the loft to pull down a bushel of hay. I wrapped my arms around half the bushel and plopped it into the horse trough. The other half I hurled over the wooden slats and into the cattle bin. Exhilarating! I gathered my eggs and headed back home (all the while wondering if hens lay eggs out of the same hole that was responsible for what was all over my fingers), anticipating the quarter of their slaughtered cow Tom had promised us—enough cuts of beef to last until we lost all our teeth.
Just before I got to our driveway, a family of deer was standing off to the side, waiting to cross the road. The buck had seen me. He hesitated, and then both doe and fawn froze behind him like statues. I, too, stopped in my tracks. I gestured for them to cross in front of me and spoke gently. “Go ahead, my friends. You may cross.” They calmly pranced across the road.
“I’m a deer whisperer!” I emoted to Brad when I walked into the shop and inhaled the aroma of fresh sawdust, one of my favorites because it reminds me of my father. “I’m like Jungle Book! I talk to the animals!” He glanced up but was clearly distracted with some cutting tool that could decapitate an entire bison herd in under three seconds.
“That’s nice, Honey,” he mumbled. So far I’d whispered to my dog when I was in trouble, a bear on the road (Actually, that had been more like a yell) and now a deer family. I hadn’t spoken to the geese, but they had reached me and I had responded.
I’d been thinking about what I’d said to Tanya. What necessarily followed from my growing attachment to nature was the desire to stay home, since that home was smack dab in the middle of nature. There was the growing sense within me that calendar commitment or expectation of any sort was getting in my way. Whereas saying yes to everything had wrought untold blessings, now that I’d been here long enough to feel established I didn’t need the trimmings—the meetings, the newsletters, and the book club reading assignments. I didn’t have to try so hard. This epiphany required more thought, but in the meantime, at least my new feeling affirmed that I was content with cabin life. All was right with my little wild world.

~22~

Brad woke me up in the middle of the night. It was late June, and I’d been dreaming that I’d found a camo scrunchie that looked fabulous wrapped around my side ponytail—that was completely gray. I was riding horseback and was just about to go from trot to gallop when my shoulder shook.
“I am not all right,” Brad said as I struggled to focus with nothing but darkness all around me. He switched on the light. I could see him sitting on the edge of the bed next to me, one hand pressed to his forehead. He was slumping.
“What is it?” I tried not to sound overly alarmed. Another random stroke?
“My head is absolutely killing me,” he said flatly. “I’ve been researching online and I’ve taken my blood pressure but I need you to help me take it again. It hurts so bad I can’t see straight to do it.” I rose swiftly from under the covers and threw on my robe. I looked at the clock. It was 2:10 A.M.
We used the home monitor he’d been told to buy right after his stroke—the one he was supposed to be using regularly but had neglected lately when everything had been going along so well. He’d been taking medication, but the doctor had just changed it. I helped him strap the contraption to his upper arm and we waited. The numbers were through the roof.
“Let’s get in the car,” he said. “I’m sorry.” I threw on some clothes while reassuring him that there was nothing to be sorry about. I felt panicky, but not panicky enough to forget my knitting.
Wow, it was dark driving in the middle of the night! “Why can’t I see?” I asked my poor husband who was gripping both sides of his head to keep it from exploding. He closed his eyes and tried to absorb what I’d asked him, then competent even in the face of collapse said, “Because you don’t have your headlights on!” Oh.
Whenever I hit a bump in the road, which was a frequent occurrence until we got to the highway, he’d grimace and ask me to please slow down. Soon I was crawling, wondering silently where he’d put the important papers when we’d moved in. What was the name of that nice man who advised us about money? It would sound rather negative to ask such questions right now and besides, I knew if it came to that, June would throw away her cats (I’m allergic) and jump on a plane to help me find the files.
What made me think we should move, at this age, out into the middle of nowhere? I’d always wanted to live this way, but I’d always been younger, and so had Brad. Now that we qualified in some cases for the senior discount, were we crazy to be miles from anywhere? Most people really did retire the other way around—moved from the country to the city near their children and the hospital. (“You left Southern California to come here?” winter-weary Montanans asked us.) Maybe in an effort to lasso the future and rope it in and hog-tie it to the present we’d acted on a lifelong dream at the wrong end of life, and in haste. Perhaps we should have leased an apartment at Brookside Assisted Living. I knew they read good books there.
The drive to Emergency was the longest I’d ever taken—well, second to the longest. I wondered what would I do if he died right here beside me? Where was the pump for the well? The fuse box? The cover for the septic filter? What exactly is propane? I still didn’t know which light switch turned on which light in the kitchen and had to flick all of them every time to find the right one. Just keep driving, I chanted. No matter what, the Emergency is your middle name and the life-threatening, your game.
Once there, the receptionist whisked him through in a nano-second, considering his symptoms. His blood pressure was dangerously high so they gave him another one of his prescription pills and after thirty minutes it began to drop. A couple of hours later, he was free to go. His doctor would address the medication issue in the morning. The next morning, that is. When he saw his doctor the next day, sure enough the simple addition of another tablet did the trick. We’d managed our first Outpost medical crisis, and when I was telling our neighbors the story, Michael piped up with the perfect solution for why we should stay in the woods forever. “I’m a certified EMT for the Frenchtown fire department. In an emergency, call me first and then 911. I can get to you in two minutes!” At the rate we were going, he would be better off selling his house and moving into our guest room.
The kids were alarmed by the event, no matter what I told them about Michael, and so soon after that episode they all came out for a week. It was a month before Brad’s sixtieth birthday, so we would celebrate early. This time Ryan brought his new fiancée, Tiffany, for whom I was already knitting a scarf in what Ashley had tipped me off was her color preference.
Ryan and Mark fished with their dad for three days straight without mishap. I took the four girls into town, where we shopped and ate lunch at a different café each day. In the warm evening, everyone repaired to the back patio to drink red wine while Brad barbequed. When it cooled, we gathered around the fire pit in our usual family style to tell stories until way past my bedtime.
On the fourth day, Ryan and Tiffany wanted to see Glacier National Park. Brad offered to drive anyone else who wanted to go. There was much discussion about the long drive versus lounging in the sun, and seeing as there were no other takers, Brad played tour guide for only the betrothed couple. They’d eat supper on the road as well, and be back late.
The rest of us showered after we got back from a long, hot power walk through the woods. When the shower was finally free, Mark took his turn. I went outside with Gus and Cody to oversee their business in the woods. Suddenly I heard Ashley screaming something. Clary threw open the front door and yelled for me to hurry. She was bellowing something about water. I let the dogs torment squirrels and bolted for the door.
Inside, I was standing in an inch of water. It was everywhere. I looked to the right to see it pulsing in small waves from under the door to the utility room. As I slogged over to the source, I passed the guest bathroom where Mark was turning the handle to the water valve behind the toilet.
“It was my shower!” he defended. “I promise it wasn’t the toilet!”
With one hand I threw open the utility room door and with the other reached for the linen closet. I nearly knocked over Clary and Ashley with towels as my eyes honed in on the gap in the floor through which water was pumping with the force of a fire hose. I turned around to see Clary on all fours sniffing the liquid. “Smells like Irish Spring!” she said in relief. Mark’s closing of the valve did nothing. I scanned the utility room but saw no handle to turn. Then the flooding stopped.
“What the heck?” Mark lifted three waterlogged and very heavy oversized beach towels. He looked at me for direction. “Just hang ‘em over the porch railing,” I said while I wondered what in the heck I was going to do.
My first reaction to any crisis is to call Brad, whether or not he has cell phone reception, which, of course, he didn’t. I left a message he’d love to get about water and flooding and…and…then I got a hold of myself and wracked my brain to try to recall the name of the company that had installed our septic system. It had to be backing up, even though they’d just been here to clean out the filter. The checkbook! I rifled through Brad’s checkbook until I found the entry: Sweet Pea Septic Service. I called them, and although it was 3:00 on Saturday, they would come.
The repairman got to work looking for the filter cover. Until this day, of course, I hadn’t bothered to note where it was. Now I was scouring the woods, pushing aside tall grass everywhere near the drain field (at least I knew where that was!). Mark came out to help. “What are we looking for?” he asked and the serviceman described the metal plate. After twenty minutes under the searing hot sun, Mark spotted it. The man asked if I would like to learn how to do this myself and I responded “Yes!” as hungrily as when Brad had proposed marriage.
“Here are the screws you need to take off first,” he said as he used a screwdriver, the size of which I carefully filed away in my brain’s when-things-go-wrong-and-Brad-is-gone compartment. “Then you pull off the lid.” And when he did, Mark reeled back from the sudden odor. To me, it was just another diaper, so I moved in to get a closer look. Fairly yucky, but no big deal.
“You pull out this filter basket and carry it over to the hose,” he said as he walked to the hose and I nearly gave his shoes a flat tire while following on his heels. He turned on the faucet and rinsed the “material,” as he called it, from the basket. Very doable. The basket back in place, then, he asked me to watch the water level go down. It did.
Now that I’d experienced septic overflow hands-on (so to speak) I could tick that off my list of things to learn about living in the wilderness, but I made sure Mark was paying attention, even if from a distance, in case I lost my memory and needed to call him in California the next time Brad was out of cell range.
Once the clean up was complete, Clary and Kate wanted to practice their casting so I took them down to a spot on Fish Creek that was easy wading.
“By the way, Mom,” Clary said in the car, “I’m liking your hair.” I’d wondered if we were ever going to get to that subject.
“I do too!” Kate added. “It looks really pretty with your eyes.”
“And movie stars are starting to go gray now, did you know?” Clary asked. Movie stars? I didn’t give a bobby pin about movie stars! I’d been the star of my very own movie the minute we peeled out of the driveway of my entire life to come to Montana and pull into the one that was nothing but a game trail.
They were borrowing my equipment so for the first time I was forced to sit back on the shore and surprisingly found that I was content just to watch. Late in the afternoon, the sun’s light was soft and sparkling as it played on their long, blonde hair that they’d each tied into a haphazard knot at the neck’s nape before putting on an angling hat. Here they were, stripped of make-up, wearing waders and my fishing shirts, yet they’d never looked lovelier—not in eighth-grade cotillion dresses, not in wedding gowns, not in career clothes. The money I’d spent on hair appointments, make-up consultations, and shopping trips to Nordstrom had all been a waste in the face of the natural beauty I now beheld. Their delicate fingers wrapped around the fishing rods before they gracefully brought them back then forward again in tandem as the sun winked and blinked more brilliantly than the twinkle lights in an elegant ballroom. What a glorious dance! I suddenly saw my little girls for the young women that they had become, on their own.
As I observed the transformation from cosmetically enhanced beauty to what nature had intended, I thought about how this always happens. Whenever we had visitors, they walked off the plane and instinctively breathed out the bad air and breathed in the good. By day two of their visit, women stopped applying blush and mascara. They unplugged the hair dryer and stashed styling products under the sink. The men didn’t shave. By the time the vacation was over and we were seeing them off at the airport, guests truly looked better. As trite as it sounds, they’d become naturally more attractive because nature hadn’t required anything unnatural to embellish them. Put simply, everyone looked better in Montana.

~23~

By fall, bear alert messages flooded my e-mail inbox warning that before they hibernate, bears search the valley and stuff themselves even more than I do before a colonoscopy-prep fast. Anything remotely related to food, even to bird feeders, was fair game. Bear spray was in my tight grip once again as I took my daily walks, although Brad commented that a recent addition to my wardrobe—a new and improved bright orange hat with an extensive visor and a long back flap to prevent sunburn—would have dissuaded any human or animal approach. He was busy activating his remote-control coyote bait, a squirrel tail perched on a stick that when cued, emitted sounds of a dying kitten or an injured fawn. Tom had suggested they might go coyote hunting and Brad wanted to be ready for the call.
“Groovy!” I applauded his every-ready resourcefulness, while flipping my back flap. “Only don’t have it out when Helen gets here.”
We’d had good friends from California stay with us who had just left refreshed and renewed. Both Ken and Lindsay walked the walk. They had plopped cowboy hats on their heads and loaded Brad’s rifles at the shooting range to enjoy an afternoon a la Old West. The same had held true for Gene and Gretchen. Texas-raised Gene was an avid hunter who spent a few days target practicing at The Outpost with Brad’s compound bow.
My college friend Helen, however, was an animal rights activist. She was not at all concerned about crossing paths with a bear, and would have walked right to a wolf with a Dog Bone dog biscuit. Our acclimation to hunting for sport would not sit well with her. She wanted to come in October to see the colors and go for mountain trail hikes in cooler temperatures, even if that might mean arming ourselves, as long as it was harmless bear spray and not a gun. Needless to say, we would not be taking her to the shooting range to brandish the ever-burgeoning armory housed in Brad’s new Browning gun safe.
“Take her to Burnt Fork Pinnacle,” Pearl suggested one early afternoon when I rang the doorbell of her café to pick up a sourdough boule (a round loaf of bread the size of a bowling ball) fresh from her oven. “It’s a three-mile-in, three-mile-out and in spectacular fall colors!” Just the ticket and to add to the draw, the trail was near us in the Ninemile.. “It kicks butt!” she added.
Once Helen was here and had relaxed for a couple of days until, as she put it, “I’m so de-stressed I don’t think I can bring myself to stand up let alone go for a kicking-butt hike,” we organized our backpacks with water bottles and snacks. Brad decided he’d like to join us. Helen was appalled at the blinding orange vest I forced upon her. She was where I’d been three years ago—clueless.
“I don’t see any NO HUNTING signs,” I explained and elaborated on the need for easy identification as person instead of prey.
“I’ll personally strangle any hunter I see!” she said, her rage evidenced by the clutch of her fingers in a choking position.
“But he’ll be the one with the gun,” I reminded her. She shrugged, grabbed the garment out of my hand, and in a huff put her arms through the armholes.
After we started up the trail, we were overcome by autumn color that flourished beneath us and in every direction. Then the path narrowed considerably and began to steepen. Brad was in the lead and after we rounded a bend, he handed me the Bear-Raid canister, and sat on a large rock in the sun. “You two go on ahead. It looks like it’s straight uphill from here—no fun for me. I’ll wait for you here.” Probably better in light of his little blood pressure problem.
I took the Monster Mace and turning it first in one direction then the other, examined the top. “Do you remember how to use this?” he asked. I figured it would be just like using Windex. When I didn’t answer, he showed me. A good marriage partner needs no answer to know the answer. I carried these things all the time, but on our roads I didn’t expect to really have to use it, until the one time I might have but then didn’t have it. The outcome of that one bear sighting had been so speedy that the bear had never gotten close enough for me to draw and take aim. And if it had, with my luck the breeze would have blown the spray right back in my face so I’d have been the one lying flat. This was a different story. Here we were on a very wooded trail (no driveways to dash into) that was as thin as a ruler, and in unfamiliar territory. There were lots of berry bushes—didn’t bears eat berries? This was fall, when they’d be filling up for winter. We just might run into one.
“Make lots of noise,” I urged Helen. That wasn’t too difficult since we hadn’t seen each other for years and still had a lot of catching up to do. She was telling me how much she liked my hair and how the white streaks just made it look blonder. I wanted to hear more on this topic but as we climbed, the straight dirt path gave way to switchbacks and the going got even steeper, lack of oxygen not lending itself to conversation. Most of the time I wondered if we were even still on the official trail.
“This is like climbing the ‘M’ three times!” I said at one point after I’d huffed and puffed and wheezed to the extent that I wondered if I could have asthma when I’d never before suffered a single symptom. I hadn’t really paid close attention to the fact that the word “pinnacle” was part of the title of this excursion—a word that certainly portended elevation. Helen was too busy breathing to respond. After we used one of our many rest stops, she finally spit out a few words.
“What’s the ‘M’?” she asked, wiping the sweat from her brow although the afternoon air was growing a bit chilly. She’d clearly forgotten all about my hair.
“Never mind,” I said. “If I tell you, you might want to do it.” I suddenly remembered receiving in one of the weekly invitation e-mails from the WOW’s the announcement that they were hiking Burnt Fork Pinnacle that Wednesday. Wow. I suddenly felt really old.
“You mean if we live that long,” she responded. And up we started again. I was our fearless leader as real fear began to creep into the edges of my consciousness. I looked at my watch. It was 3:00. Why hadn’t we picked a time to be back so Brad would not worry? What time did it get dark in October? Why did I leap before I looked and always learn lessons the hard way? I could feel a major whine coming on. We hadn’t passed a single solitary soul on the trail and every time I rounded the tip of a switchback, all I could see ahead were more of them.
“Are we kicking butt yet?” Helen asked from too far behind me. “I keep expecting you to yell ‘Eureka’ any minute!” I stopped so as not to lose sight of her.
“I can’t feel my butt,” I said, gagging and choking. “But I’m starting to feel afraid and I think we should turn around.” Before I break another ankle or meet Mama Bear.
“We’ve come this far,” Helen pleaded. “The top has to be right up there!” She pointed to what did, in fact, look like the top of the trail. It was either that or the Reservation Divide, which meant we had gone way too far.
“Okay, we’ll just go there,” I acquiesced, “but if that’s not it we turn around!” We practically crawled to the spot we’d seen. The last few feet were so steep we crab-walked it. Clawing our way through the dry dirt, we finally clung to a rock and hoisted ourselves over it. We stood, gasped for air, and looked around. To another switchback. “Forget it!” I barked, “I see no pinnacle! We’re done!” What a tease.
We about-faced and descended, which was at times harder than ascending had been. By the time we made it back to Brad it was 5:00. He was sitting calmly on the very same rock where we’d left him. He had whittled a thick stick into a spear “in case I might need it,” he told us. Such prowess together with the desire to protect and defend his women warranted a peck on the cheek from me. Such a man!
“I thought you’d be worried about us,” I told him after he showed us how he’d planned and executed the design for his wizardly weapon.
“I took a nice long nap in the sun on this rock,” he commented casually, obviously not at all fretful. “I told myself if it got to 5:30 and you weren’t back, I’d come up after you.” Whew, he was still my hero. Once again, I’d gotten in a little over my head and was out of my league, but I was learning. I’d confirmed it from firsthand experience: Don’t mess with Mother Nature. This time I’d listened to the little voice that whispered, “You don’t really know what you’re doing!” This time I remembered that I was only human and in Montana, where there are living creatures walking around that are a lot larger than life. This time, I was no dummy. I brought backup.
After we got home we looked up information about Burnt Fork Pinnacle on the Internet to discover that it rose to 6,624 feet above sea level. We’d climbed from 3,400 feet at the valley floor, and as near as we could tell, at some point we’d passed the pinnacle. Eureka! We’d been trekking along the Reservation Divide like Sacajawea out front and guiding the expedition. Now that we were safe, I could say with confidence that the view had been worth it.
An hour after we took Helen to the airport, we met Ryan’s plane coming in. He was making the trip to learn more about photography from his dad, and Brad was more than happy to oblige. We took him along the shores of Bass crik because the fall colors would photograph beautifully and there was icing on the cake—that waterfall at the top of the trail. Not far up, we met a couple coming down who told us that some hunter had dressed his carcass but had rudely left the remains by the side of the walkway. We’d best be bear aware, since such a tasty temptation would be alluring to any that were around.
Ryan had lived in Austin, Texas since college graduation and was accustomed to the city life. He loved to get away to the country but by the look on his face had never encountered this scenario. I took charge and realized that for the first time under such conditions I knew exactly what to do. I flipped off my pack, reached into an inside pocket, and retrieved an extra bear spray canister.
“Take this,” I told him and offered swift operating instructions. “Make noise!”
“Which will be easy to do with Kathleen on the trail!” Brad called back from up ahead. It’s truly amazing what that man can hear when he chooses to. I, on the other hand, chose to ignore that remark and proceeded with my tutorial.
“If you see a bear don’t get large, just back up slowly.” For some reason I felt the need to act this out as if Ryan were five years old. By this time, Brad had stopped in his tracks to wait for us. He nodded with approval and waved us on. Ryan took lots of pictures, we passed the gut pile going up and coming back, and although we were properly prepared, we saw neither hide nor hair of a bear.
By Thanksgiving night when we went to get Clary at the airport, a considerable amount of snow had fallen, but the highway had been plowed. Feeling secure but nevertheless cautious, Brad slowed from 75 to 65 mph for extra insurance. Cars zoomed past us in the left lane, their drivers impatient with our safety standard. I stared out the window at the buffalo that roamed the hillside.
I was thinking about the other kids and where they were traveling and how I would miss them when we rounded a bend just past Frenchtown. I should say that Brad intended to round the bend. Where the road curved and while Brad steered to follow that curve, the rig rolled purposefully straight. I glanced over at him, frozen in the driver’s seat, to see if he was spontaneously dissecting. This was not the time to administer the stroke quiz. Before I could blurt out, “What are you doing?” we were in the snow, spinning, twirling, and hurtling at high speed. We hit a ditch and all four tires left the ground as we sprung into the air. I hung on for dear life, certain we would flip. THUNK! We hit the ground running and started spinning again. Papers, magazines, bear-spray canisters, extra keys, and coffee cups flew through the air and hit the windshield. A pair of sunglasses dinged me in the forehead on its way to the back seat. Brad steered, then didn’t steer. I knew he’d taken his foot off the brake, the wise thing to do. We just had to slow down naturally. Why didn’t we?
I clung to the sides of my seat and emitted little gasps of horror that sounded like one of those nightmare screams that’s really a squeak until finally we bounced over another big bump and ground to a halt. After what seemed like ten minutes that was actually probably two, Brad’s rig had stopped. It purred as if nothing had happened, parallel to the highway and ready to merge right back on.
“Thank you, God!” I half bellowed, half sung, my voice warbling like a Baptist preacher’s. We sat in silence, unable to move a muscle. Minutes passed. We tried to breathe normally. Neither one of us thought to step out of the car and check for damage. “My legs wouldn’t have moved,” Brad said later when we commented to each other how odd it was that we hadn’t done so. “There was so much adrenalin coursing through me I couldn’t even feel my feet!” he said.
My arms did not rejoin my body until we got out of the rig at the airport, where we clung to each other until we determined our limbs were not made of Jello. We were otherwise unscathed, the rig unscratched.
“We must have hit a patch of black ice,” Brad said. “You absolutely cannot see it.” No kidding.
“Is the bar open?” inquired I, the lightweight who is soused after one glass of wine but who planned on throwing back a stiff one even if Clary smelled it on my breath and deemed me alcoholic. On Thanksgiving night, of course, it was closed. Dadgum it.
“Now it’s really official!” Bob said when we met him and Judy for pizza just after the holiday. “You ran off the road and lived to tell it. From now on when anyone asks where you’re from, you answer, “Montana.’ ”
I felt the weight of those scarlet letters that spell Southern California peel and fall from my chest.

~24~

It was a record snowfall that Thanksgiving weekend. We’d bought snowshoes on sale and since there was feet and feet of snow right outside our door, Clary and I couldn’t wait to try them. Two degrees, schmoo degrees! How could anyone live here and not get outdoors into it? We layered and bundled, strapped on the shoes, and stomped bowl-legged into the powdery drifts that surrounded the house. Heavenly.
How sane! With our poles we could scale small hills and navigate through the trees. This was lovely! We crossed our property and in one giant step forded frozen Rock crik. Up another hill we were in the densely wooded twenty-some acres between our house and Elizabeth’s.
“Let’s shoe up to their back door so I can show off my new winter sport,” I suggested. After sitting behind a desk in Manhattan, Clary was so enthralled by the scenery she didn’t care where we went.
The beauty of snowshoeing was that I could look around and enjoy my surroundings rather than feel anxious about falling. I drank in the winter wonderland. It was great to be alive! There is nothing more invigorating than comfortably moving about in the bracing air.
“Remember last summer when we hiked through the woods and Ashley was worried that I might not know where I was going?” I asked in the middle of our conversation about how awesome it was to be able to walk out your own back door to such a beautiful place.
“I remember that,” she said. “She pretended she didn’t really care but I think she was actually concerned.”
“As if I would lead us out into the woods and not know where I was going!” I chuckled. “I would never do such a thing!”
I started to heat up so stripped off my parka and tied it to my waist. Clary agreed this was quite a workout! Slowly but surely, our breathing quickened and our leg muscles felt the exercise. This was even more strenuous than we’d imagined. We kept stopping to suck in air as if we’d just surfaced from deep under water. After some time had elapsed I unzipped my pocket and pulled out a small water bottle that we shared. I looked around me. Why couldn’t I see Tom’s llamas that were always out and about no matter what the temperature?
In fact, I could no longer see Spotted Fawn Road. Where was Whitetail Ridge? I spun around in a circle, careful to lift each foot and march it so as not to cross my tails.
“What are you doing, Mom?” Clary asked.
“Just looking,” I answered, trying to sound casual but knowing she knew better. I do casual about as well as I do cunning. I saw nothing but trees. Not a single landmark. “Everything looks so different in the snow, doesn’t it?” I tried to sound enchanted. She wasn’t buying it.
“Do you know where we are, Mom?” Accentuated by her facemask, those dark eyes glared at me.
Somewhere along the straight line between my house and my next-door neighbors’ house, I’d gotten us lost. Guess I wasn’t an expert at this—yet.
It started to snow, harder and harder. I pretended to be gazing into the treetops. “You don’t have the slightest idea where we are, do you?” Clary challenged as she turned and one of her snowshoes came off. When I pulled down my facemask to speak more clearly to her a six-inch long strand of mucus clung to the end of my nostril then let go and plummeted to the forest floor. That’s when I started to laugh. I couldn’t stop. I was doubled over and –woops! I wet my pants a little! I jogged in a crouched position as I called to my exasperated daughter, “I need to go have a talk with this tree over here!”
“I can’t believe you are going to the bathroom at time like this!” she screamed, nearly crying now. Trust me, I wanted to tell her, it was precisely at this time that I desperately needed to. When I emerged, much relieved but still laughing, she lost it.
“It’s not funny, Mom!” Now she was enraged. Clary is only five-foot-one and weighs ninety-five pounds. We’d stopped long enough that she was shivering. Unlike me in my formidable ski boots, she was wearing lightweight après-ski faux suede booties and was now strapped into only one snowshoe. I’d forgotten all about gators, so ice-cold snow had worked its way into her shoes and her socks were wet. The snowshoe-less foot dangled as she braced herself against a tree trunk.
“I’m coming! I’ll put your snowshoe back on!” I called, while laughing so hard I coughed, then got a severe case of hiccups.
“This is not funny!” Now she was whimpering. “None of this is funny!”
Oh, but it was.
Here I was, a former beach bunny, whose walks had been along a stretch of open sand where you could see to China and whose most desperate disorientation had been when in error she’d sat under someone else’s identical colorful Costco umbrella in someone else’s identical colorful Costco beach chair. I only realized the mistake when I reached for my margarita in the cup holder and it wasn’t there. Here we were, in the middle of a square of land whose four sides consisted of two parallel roads and two houses. Not only had we been out here for almost an hour and hadn’t reached any of those sides in the five minutes it should have taken us to do so, but on top of that I couldn’t even see any of them. The only thing I saw was Hansel and Gretel, walking around in circles and without any breadcrumbs.
“I can’t feel my feet at all!” Clary said in alarm. “And I think I might have pulled my Achilles tendon again!” Now she was crying. She’d suffered an injury to her tendon some months ago and against the numbness she now experienced felt uncertain about its current condition. I got a grip on myself, stopped laughing…well, almost, and told her to put one arm around my shoulder. She lifted the foot in question and attempted to hop on one snowshoe while I supported her as best I could.
The snowstorm was relentless. I kept trying to distract her by pointing out how beautiful the fat feathery flakes were when they fell on our faces—my clever use of consonance didn’t even steer her mind from fear.
“My face is too frozen to feel them,” she said and then sniffled. I handed her a Kleenex from my pocket and she batted it away with her mitten.
We lowered our heads against the storm that now pelted us. I looked up every few minutes. Visibility was hampered by the blizzard but then all at once I saw it, the trusty green roof that signaled home.
“There it is!” I cried as if I’d crossed the continent in a covered wagon and just reached the homestead. “We’re almost home!” Forget that I’d thought I was still headed in the direction of Elizabeth’s back door.
When we hobbled up to the back door and unstrapped the snowshoes Clary’s lips were blue and her teeth were slamming together like a jackhammer, while I was sweating like Kobe Bryant in the fourth quarter. I got her inside, brewed some hot tea while she took a piping hot shower, and when she came to the kitchen she reported that fortunately her tendon was fine. I’d dodged another bullet. Maybe that’s what learning how to live here was all about. When you are new to this place, if you are bold you make mistakes because it is bolder. But if you are afraid to risk, you’ll never really know Montana. The next time I went snowshoeing, I would know.
As luck had it, when Kate and Clary came for Christmas, I borrowed an extra set of snowshoes and took them both to Lolo Pass. There was so much snow by then that we practically could have skied from here to there. This time, I drove us right to the door of the warming hut that was open. This time, we went inside and picked up a trail map. This time, a nice young man pointed us in the direction of the right trail for us—snowshoers, this time. I’d learned that it’s best to stay on the trail. I remembered gators. We spent a flawless afternoon shoeing alongside a frozen crik. Atop the hill we scaled we twirled 360 degrees to see the entire Bitterroot Valley blanketed in white.
On the way down the mountain, I thought about how I felt secure here. I knew what I was doing. In coming to Montana I’d left the old familiar behind when it started shifting under my feet like an earthquake tremor. Why not, if nothing I’d known was staying the same and everything I’d relied on was changing? I’d jumped head first into utterly unfamiliar. Now after nearly four years, I’d found a new familiar.
When I’d been shopping for the Christmas feast at the Good Food Store the cashier had greeted me as always. She told me Mary had been there and had mentioned that I’d hiked Burnt Fork Pinnacle. Instead of asking me was I that Huson woman with the zucchini she asked what I would advise she do in preparation for such an athletic undertaking. I felt like I’d paid my dues and in the eyes of a native was a member.
“I feel like this is our home now, Mom,” Kate must have read my mind and said as I turned the car up Spotted Fawn.
“I do too,” I said, “I do too.”
One final test awaited me.

~25~

In February Brad got an invitation to Flathead Lake with his church buddies for a weekend of skiing.
“Will you be all right without me?” he sweetly asked Pfff! Why wouldn’t I be?
He left Friday afternoon and that evening I dedicated myself to the annual viewing of Lonesome Dove. Saturday after lunch I twisted my hair into a bun and put my facemask and earflap hat over it. After suiting up in enough winter armor to look like the Michelin Man I went out for a power walk, kicking up snow behind me with more speed than a snowplow. I stayed out for hours and was only driven inside because icicles had formed on my right eyelashes until my eye was frozen shut. Time for a nice hot bath followed by a no-cook supper.
I laid out my comfy sweats and turned on the tap as the ice crystals on my lashes began to melt. No water. Hmmm, that’s odd. I tried the sink. Nothing there. I went into the kitchen and lifted the handle, feeling a bit frantic to find it working somewhere. No water. I had no water!
Instinctively, I reached for the phone to call Brad. As it rang and rang and rang and then asked me to please hold while my party was being reached and music played I realized, of course, that he would be out of cell phone range. One or the other of us always was. I tried to calmly leave a message for him to call me if he had any idea as to why I would not have any water. We’d had two nights in a row of unseasonably below freezing temperatures…could the pipes be frozen or something like that? But no! It had been below freezing for days in December and we’d had water all along. Nothing made sense.
I asked myself if I really needed water for two days. I could go to the bathroom in the woods. There were six or eight small bottles of water in the garage. I would have enough for coffee, the key to my survival, and some left to drink. But what about the boys? They needed to drink water and lots of it. I felt that old familiar prickly panic when suddenly I willed it away and said out loud, “No!” Cody’s head turned and his ears went back until I reassured him I was not scolding him. I was no longer flirting with life in Montana. I was living The Montana Life. Get out there, Barbara, and learn the last thing you have to do to live it! I scolded myself. Stop being a wimp and cowboy up!
I re-bundled up against the cold and howling wind and marched purposefully out the back door and up the log steps to the well and the hand pump next to it. Every step I took I sunk to my knees in snow. I clamped my gloved hands around the icy metal handle and pumped up and down with all my might, over and over again. Nothing. I remembered Brad telling me that if you couldn’t get water by pumping there was none. Had it frozen?
I crawled under the house with a flashlight to where I recalled all the water “stuff” was located. There were two tanks that connected to a long pipe. I pulled off a glove and put my bare hand on the pipe. Very cold indeed. There were boxes with gadgets and dials.
I came back inside. When my mouth was able to move again, I phoned Tom and Elizabeth. Even a sheriff needs to call on the rest of the posse now and then. And Barbara had all that hired help! Tom answered and when I told him about my dilemma, he said he’d be right down. He and Elizabeth were at my door in five minutes, after slipping and sliding on the ice out front for four.
“Where’s the fuse box?” he asked. I walked straight to the utility room and showed him. I’d even already checked it to find the two switches labeled “well” were still “on.” I’d known where they were and how to do that. “Good for you,” he said. “Now we know that’s not the problem.”
I took him out to the pump. He pumped and nothing came. We folded our arms across our chests and buffeted against the wind to get around to the side of the house. There I pointed out the outside fuse box. He checked there. The house was getting power, which of course we already knew since the lights were blazing.
I escorted him under the house while Elizabeth manned the phone in case Brad called. I showed him the water system. He flipped open one of the small boxes attached to one of the tanks and showed me where something had frozen—a button-like thingee that kicked water on and off according to the level it had reached in the tank. Because it had frozen, water had not been signaled to fill.
“Was that door open when you first came down here?” he asked and pointed to the door we’d crawled through.
“Yes,” I told him. “But come to think of it, I don’t know why.”
“Maybe the wind blew it open, then it got too cold down here overnight. This area is insulated and you have your floor heat right above it. It should be fairly warm in here…definitely not this cold. This may be why the ‘intake thingee’ (my words) froze.” He pressed a pointer on the end of a Geiger-counter doodad that he said read whether or not the thingee was getting power. It was. That meant it had probably just frozen. He told me to go back inside and turn on the faucet. He would stay down there and work the thingee until it thawed and kicked in by itself. I did. He did. It did. Elizabeth and I cranked open the window and cheered in his direction as if he’d just scored the winning touchdown. He closed and secured the trapdoor after him. I was going to get my luxurious bath after all! I quickly called Brad’s cell phone number so he would get my second message right after he heard the first. “Never mind,” I told him. “Problem solved.”
Before they left, Tom carried in a five-gallon jug of water. “Keep this just in case,” he said as soon as his mouth worked. “And I checked for critters, but none had gotten in down there.” Yikes. I hadn’t considered critters.
“And remember,” Elizabeth said, “if you need it anytime, we have a nice guest room with its own bath right down the road!” When she offered the easy and sensible escape it occurred to me…the idea of going somewhere else until danger passed had never occurred to me. I would have stayed here and fended for myself, and I could! I now knew firsthand the logistics of the septic system, the fuse boxes, and the well water thingee. Even though we’d had so much snow this winter that it had zapped out Brad’s snow blower, Tex, who lived up Whitetail and snowplowed the roads used our end-of-the-road driveway to turn around while on his route, so our driveway was virtually always passable. If not, I had snowshoes. I could get the tractor in gear. There were cords and cords of firewood stacked right outside my door. Two giant guard dogs would protect me from an attacking army. I had Blizzak tires and Cabela clothes. UPS delivered.
After he got home, Brad checked the trapdoor and assumed the wind had knocked aside a piece of wood he’d propped there to hold it closed. I heard the whir of a drill and the pound of a hammer as he fixed it so such a scenario could not repeat itself. Then he asked me to show him the thingee so he would know what to do. Quick-draw Katha! He informed me that if I ever needed water, even in the freezing winter, the outflow from our French drain always flushed it. We’d installed one because during the first spring melt we discovered another Flathead Lake right under our house. If I had to, I could live forever off our land.
I’d asked Tom if I should buy myself one of those little Geiger-counter doodads he’d used to test the tank thingees.
“You could give yourself quite a jolt,” he’d warned. “If Brad’s not here and you’re in trouble, I’d rather you just call us.”
If I ever had to I could get by out here in the wilderness…with a little help from my new friends.
By the time spring blossomed into early summer, I felt like I wanted to free up more time to spend in the great outdoors. A much younger version of me had been assigned to assist on the Symphony Guild newsletter so when I spontaneously asked her during the June meeting would she like to take the entire project and run with it, she acted like I’d just announced her the winner on American Idol. That was my last meeting. I would still pay my dues and attend the delicious and entertaining fall and spring luncheons.
When a reactionary Save-The-Bark-Beetle graduate student expressed an interest in joining the Ninemile Wilderness Watch board, I handed her my baton and my newsletter file like a hot potato. I’d help slice cakes and pies at the annual cakewalk fundraiser.
Letting go, even off the river, felt so good that a week later I found myself at Brookside across the desk from Shirley.
“I think I need some time off,” I told her. “I hate to let you down, but I live out in the Ninemile now and I really want to spend more time there.”
Shirley looked at me and smiled. “Kathleen, she said, “when you first came here we all knew it was because of your father. You were new to Montana, didn’t know a living soul, and he was far away and dying.” I nodded as she continued in her soft consoling voice. “ There is a season for everything. This desire to take time for yourself is a sign that you are beginning to accept his floss.” I sighed and fought back the tears. It was true, only two weeks ago I’d finally been able to read “leg of lamb” on a supper menu without breaking down at the table to the degree that the waiter thought Brad was leaving me.
“Marsha would gladly run the Book Club, and Dottie told me if you ever didn’t want to, she wants to do the Bible Study.” As for News and Views discussion group, she wondered if I had any suggestions for a new leader. I thought Loretta with her window view of the geese would be perfect.
“So you see?” She reached across the desk and put her hand on mine. “They are ready to move on without you now, just as you are ready to move on with the good life you’ve made for yourself here in Montana.” She encouraged me to come visit the residents any time I wanted to. I assured her that on chilly afternoons she would find me in front of the downstairs hearth, working the jigsaw puzzle.
I’d just turned down an invitation for the first time, from Tinkerbell who’d seen me walking at the same speed she ran. She stopped me on the road and wondered if I’d like to enter the state capitol Helena’s marathon. I thanked her but told her I didn’t run (or walk) with crowds any more. Over the last four years, the only crowd I’d been in had consisted of snow geese.
One lazy summer afternoon, Brad was sitting on the front porch smoking his “occasional cigar.” He’d just resurrected the old wooden OK CORRAL sign we’d forgotten about and hung it on Gus and Cody’s fenced-in dog run.
I walked out to the front steps. Brad was rocking in his chair, his right hand on Gus’ head, his left resting on the pages of his book.
“I’m officially retired,” I told him, having just e-mailed all the church newsletter materials to Cindy who said she’d be happy to take a turn producing it. I’d turned loose my tasks but I’d keep the big-square calendar to jot down hikes with Mary on the Rattlesnake Trail, nature walks and knitting with Lenore, neighborhood potlucks, and “town friend” pizzas.
“Where’ya headed today, Woo?” Brad asked.
“I think I’ll mosey on down to Will’s Hill and watch some paint dry,” I said.
“After supper, ya wanna mosey over to the crik and do some fishin?” he asked.
“You bet!” I said. I wrapped a camo scrunchie around my gray ponytail, flipped on my cowboy hat, and tightened the stampede string.
“By the way,” Brad said, “The grayer your hair gets the more I’m liking it. It suits you!” I looked over to the husband I hopelessly adored and threw him a kiss. As I stepped down onto the gravel, I noticed the garden stone I’d placed under a small copse of aspen trees whose leaves shimmered in the sun. A California friend had given me the decorative rock for a wedding gift and it had rested under the Agapanthus in our San Juan Capistrano flowerbed. When we moved, at the last minute I remembered I hadn’t packed it. Hurriedly, in the pre-dawn darkness I’d pried it from the moist earth and put it in the car.
“I’ll be back soon,” I said to Brad, and just before heading out the driveway of my entire new life, I lifted my right foot and with my boot kicked off a small pile of gravel that had accumulated atop the simple flat stone that now covered a tiny blue Tiffany box buried beneath it. I looked down to read the etching. DREAM.

KCMiller's Outpost

Kathleen Clary Miller

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Monday, January 30, 2012

Frosting is better than vitamin D for the winter blues

Saturday, January 28, 2012

GONE FISHING--My New Life in the Last Best Place