Sunday morning. Coldest start yet, 50°F. Heeler fed. Hot coffee. Hot breakfast.
Not long after sunup, Smudge dashed to the north door, the only uncovered glass in the cabin, and started barking her head off. I followed, wondering if I could see what she heard.
I didn’t — until I did.
My view from the door is captured in today’s header image — no wonder it took me a minute. I zoomed-in on what apparently had alerted Smudge, by then 60 yards away:
Yeah, she’s back. She must’ve been right up next to the cabin.
I went outside and watched her for a long time. She didn’t seem to mind.
“We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.”
Thoreau
Sometime next week, by my calculations, this blog’s views for 2025 will move into second place, trailing only 2021, which undoubtedly it will surpass by year’s end.
Long-time readers will remember 2021 as the year of the motorhome odyssey.
It was four years ago today, shortly after noon Mountain Time, that I guided the 18-ton diesel rig down a long grade on US 2 eastbound, the final stretch before turning north toward Glacier Park. As I passed under the railroad overpass and entered West Glacier Village, I was realizing a decades-long dream to return to that place.
I got to pump gas at the filling station where I’d worked the summer of ’78. Before the sun set on that Wednesday, I visited the old bridge over the Middle Fork of the Flathead River and knelt on the bank next to its crystalline waters.
“I cupped a hand, reached into the moving river and splashed the icy Flathead onto my face,” I wrote that day. “It was, in no insignificant way, a baptism.”
On the 8th of September, 2021, I stood on the brink of completing my quest to retrieve my soul where I’d left it for 43 years — Kintla Lake. That would happen 48 hours later.
Those eight days in and around Glacier were intensely personal for me. I was changed by the experience.
The memories burn bright.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable