Mellow Missoula

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Morning arrived quickly in the log walls of the Westwood Inn. As Nancy showered, I traversed the Internet. On a lark, I landed on Ivan Doig’s web page. With less than 60 pages to go in The Bartender’s Tale, I wanted more information on Doig. I was not naïve enough to believe his signings and appearances would take him to Tennessee. He was a Northwest author and his tour route gradually moved toward …

When I saw that Doig would be signing in Missoula the same day as our visit, Nancy heard the above exclamation clearly through the bathroom door. Our weekend in Missoula had just gained another activity.

Well-rested and ready to shake off the cold, we took off on U. S. 191, the winding road back to Bozeman. Three blocks from the hotel, West Yellowstone vanished into the trees, broken only by the occasional campground closed till spring. 

As much as I hesitated at the fork toward Quake Lake and the preserved frontier towns of Virginia City and Nevada City, I wanted Nancy to see this land. Jon recommended 191 the first time I ventured to Yellowstone, winding through deep mountain valleys, its towering monoliths and ridges sprinkled with greenery. The road followed the Madison River all the way back to Three Forks, and those deep valleys where it meandered were uncommon places. Horse farms and guest ranches

Bad driving incidents were limited outside the national park. Along the Gallatin River, a pickup pulled out and failed to speed up. Even with the double yellow stripes, I had to cruise past him or risk an accident. A few overweight trucks slowed the column of cars past Big Sky and wisely, the truckers took a pullout and let its followers speed along. In a blink, the valleys receded into the farmland of the Gallatin Valley.

Skipping breakfast in West Yellowstone, I lobbied for an early lunch at the Pickle Barrel, an institution in Bozeman and Belgrade. The massive sandwiches and flavorful pickles quieted our empty stomachs. A half-sandwich for the price seemed a bit steep until we saw the sandwiches; a half from the Pickle Barrel exceeded a full sandwich at most restaurants. Before we proceeded, I took the short drive past Belgrade High School and showed Nancy the apartment where my friend Jonathan once lived. Showplace might not look like much, but I had spent some of the most relaxed moments in the past five years in that townhouse.

My moment of nostalgia wrapped, we headed west. Down a seven-mile gravel road, we came to the Madison Buffalo Jump, one of the first places I visited in September 2009. But Nancy needed to see a buffalo jump, and none would be as convenient as the one outside Bozeman. At one farm, a trio of beagles nipped at roadkill. More horses of varied stripes trotted through the cold afternoon.

The steep mesa illustrated perfectly how Indians, without the benefit of horses, would dress in animal skins to lure the bison herds over the steep inclines, where the tribe’s women waited to butcher and process the doomed animals. We did not repeat the mistake Jon and I made back in September 2009. Instead of climbing the impossibly steep bluffs below the buffalo jump, we took the meandering path that rounded the rock drop. After a while, the elevation and cold air conspired to slow me down.

Among the ranchlands, infinite cattle pastures and placid horses, it was easy to forget that not all Montana offered was picturesque scenery. In a quick blast of interstate, we rose and fell toward Butte, a town with an unenviable legacy. Downtown Butte rolled across hills that paled next to the Rockies, capped by a 90-foot statue of the Virgin Mary. The statue seems appropriate above the most Irish town in Montana.

At Butte’s eastern edge lies Montana’s greatest scar, the Berkley Pit, the remains of the open pit copper mine that swallowed many neighborhoods. When copper mining ended in the 1980s, industry left Butte saddled with an ecological disaster, a lake orange with heavy metals. Across the flatlands further west, we saw the giant smokestack, the remnants of Anaconda’s smelting past. One of the world’s largest free-standing brick structures, the stack paled next to the mountains behind it, but cast a long shadow over Anaconda, a company town from which the company fled when it tapped out the copper veins.

Soon the Clark Fork River joined the highway and we returned to the mountains. The interstate creased into an innocuous pass, then open into Missoula, the convergence of five valleys. We were set till Sunday morning with itinerary with just a few high-ticket items.

Dropping off our gear at the Campus Inn, we saw many motor courts along our short drive to downtown. All ran to capacity.

We walked the neighborhood east of downtown’s stately buildings, rich with character cities ten times as large did not possess. Streets bore a mix of old homes and brick apartment buildings. Missoula’s charm went beyond a simple college town. Montana’s second largest city had flourishes of the frontier and entrepreneurial spirit filled its storefronts. It had chains, but they were tucked far from the old commercial blocks. Cyclists owned the streets of Missoula; few roads lacked bike lanes.

We stopped was Fact or Fiction, a local bookstore whose shelves housed an impressive collection of Montana authors and who author events rivaled the big chains. The owner gave us the particulars of the Doig signing and he had no problem with me getting my previously purchased copy signed if I bought another for a friend (Jon, as it turned out). Down the block that night, Doig gave a reading at the Norma Theatre, part of the Montana Festival of the Book. We skipped to explore Missoula. Granted, my explorations only took us to a few breweries that would not appear at the Montana Brewers Festival. But in fairness, we had followed an intense schedule for a few days, so a looser night was in order.

On the Friday night, Missoula swarmed with families. I don’t know if childcare is prohibitively expensive in Missoula, but people took their kids everywhere. Perhaps it reflected upon Missoula’s sense of community. Not that everyone was gunning for parent of the year - Nancy almost stepped on a toddler crawling on the empanada joint’s carpet. But even at the beer festival, parents brought children and it wasn’t a problem. At the Kettlehouse taproom, a mother and a group of children came to the bar. We squirmed a bit, not wanting to sip our beers with a bunch of children talking over us.  But the kids knew the bartender and just wanted to say hello. So it goes in the Garden City.

We returned to the hotel and took advantage of the indoor pool. After days of the road, a splash in the heated waters reinvigorated us – or at least deepened our sleep. On Saturday morning, I insisted on a hike toward the m on Mount Sentinel, which towers above the University campus. It was a hike that should have been waited for afternoon. In early morning, the sun had not cleared the peak, and hillside temperatures mired in the 30s. Halfway to Sentinel’s M, we chose to descend and ran off to a nice breakfast at Café Dolce. Book signings and beer festivals would soon overtake the day.

Doig himself was the consummate gentleman, nice with every person seeking his signature. When I told him we had bought the tickets months before and happenstance brought me to his web site yesterday, with a chuckle he said he was glad the damned web page was good for something.

For lunch we found the Big Sky Inn, with delightful burgers and huckleberry shakes. A burger stand was just what we needed after the festival. Just like motor courts, the Big Sky Inn was a species long since extirpated among small towns outside the West.

At night we wandered the streets again as the violets and pale blues leeched out of the night sky. Burned out on beer, we had coffee drinks at Liquid Planet, a place that could not exist in Tennessee. In one storefront, Liquid Planet was a coffeehouse, bottle shop and wine store, with accessories for every beverage.

With a breakfast stop at Liquid Planet – it was too enjoyable to skip another visit - we bid goodbye to Missoula. The interstate beckoned. With a fruitless journey through Butte – the Berkley Pit viewing stand closed a week earlier – we rumbled into Bozeman, our final stop. Much of our day in Bozeman came from what had come before – a stroll through the Museum of the Rockies, bison burgers at The Garage, beers at the Pour House, a stop at Vargo’s Books and Jazz City. Only stops at a few shops and the Bacchus Pub in the former Hotel Bozeman, which has now gone condo, did our trip vary.

Soon enough Frontier called our flight, turbulence paved our way back to Denver and a pack of crass Tennesseans tried to wipe out the beauty of our trip. But the foreign territory of Montana and Wyoming had a dreamlike grasp upon. Months and years later, it still will.