In our various pilgrimages to Montana much of the focus is fishing for trout under the expertise of our son, Sam, who’s been guiding these parts for more than a decade and appears to have at least a passing acquaintance with every rainbow, brown and cutthroat that make rivers like the Bitterroot and Blackfoot legendary — a fly-fishing mecca for anglers from around the world. As we load the drift boat in an early morning chill destined to become a blistering afternoon, my sights are set on a far more ambitious quarry than any of my Vermont river ventures where my strictly wade-fishing covers a lot less territory.
The boat is a transcendence from the dings of arthritis, exacerbated by swift flowing water, steep, muddy banks and slippery boulders populating river bottoms with an aging river geek’s obstacle course of painful possibility. I know for many others each of our floats would be a lifelong dream come true and I’m humbled I get to do this frequently enough to have the memories feed my soul throughout the off-season.
But even now, in the moment, the fishing and myriad other pursuits in and around Missoula deflect my attention in ways that seem impossible while I’m at home. I know more about a few unfamiliar things and a whole lot less about what I usually deem important. With my media monitoring reduced to mostly passing glances, I no longer have much beyond a superficial understanding of news events and the fragments of information I do retain offer an off-the-wall interpretation of the world and its insanity. I often end up with more questions than answers.
What, for instance, would an ex-president, who famously doesn’t read — or even skim according to former White House staffers who assess him as “semi-literate” — want with two dozen boxes of highly classified government documents, presumably way beyond “See Spot Run.” If I remember, this is the guy who wouldn’t even look at already dumbed-down security briefings, requiring instead “visuals and graphics,” in other words, pictures, so he wouldn’t get bored. And who made mishandling of such documents a felony with a penalty of up to five years in prison? Oh, right … him.
And is it my imagination or have celebrities been dying multiple times? It seems in their obsession to break the story first, Hollywood gossip rags are jumping the gun on celeb’s untimely departures. Actor Anne Heche was prematurely declared dead after an accident, subsequently determined alive and then “legally” dead but on life support and finally, no longer among the living. This barely a month after Tony Dow, who played older brother Wally Cleaver on the ‘50s sitcom “Leave It to Beaver,” was reported deceased a couple of days before he actually died. Are the rich and famous inching toward one more way to enhance their level of exclusivity? That of being pre-dead? In baseball parlance, “Going … going … gone.”
After a spirited fight with acrobatic, tumbling jumps and several runs that had my reel zinging like a surf guitar, the largest fish of the trip spits the hook upon arrival alongside the boat, dodging the net and dashing back to the cover of deeper water. In the moments as I silently expressed my gratitude at having been connected for a moment or two, I noticed for the first time how hot the sun was on my back. It was only about 10 a.m. but a cloudless Montana Big Sky was emitting big solar energy and based on long range predictions, way worse was yet to come.
According to the nonprofit “First Street Foundation,” more than 100 million Americans will live in an “extreme heat belt” three decades from now with temperatures soaring to 125° at least one day annually and triple digits would become almost routine in areas unaccustomed to such swelter. The outlook for already warm places is even more dire. Miami-Dade County Florida, which sees 100° readings infrequently, can expect 34 such days yearly by 2053.
Since we’ve been out here it’s hit 100° a couple of times and has seldom fallen below the mid-90s in the afternoon. With extremely low humidity, those temps feel tolerable but they’re also deceptive. At the end of the day, we’re withered by the heat, which I don’t realize until two weeks into the trip. Back at home, temperatures like these — coupled with humidity — would find people in fist fights over air conditioners.
The one saving grace is that, like forested Vermont, nights in Montana are cool with temperature swings of 50° not uncommon. One very early morning before the sun came over the mountains, I walked to the grocery store — about a half-mile — for a loaf of bread in shorts and a T-shirt, unaware it was 47°, one more blissfully ignorant moment that should contribute toward my reevaluating my priorities, but probably won’t.
One of the last nights we’re here we go back to the Western Montana Fairgrounds for an event that makes the earlier bull riding seem comparatively sane — flat-track motorcycle racing with some literally death-defying, X-Games aerial maneuvers thrown in just in case becoming entangled with 20 other speeding bikes wasn’t risky enough. The Lords of Dirt, known for their “badassery,” launched themselves high and far … 50 feet off the ground … doing flips, even letting go completely and flying above the bike, unattached and apparently unafraid as demented ravens dive-bombing a picnic.
Although I couldn’t say I really liked it, between the screaming crowd, the roar of motorcycles, the clouds of choking dust and the insane announcer, who should have never been allowed near a microphone, it was way too loud, extremely weird and borderline surrealistic.
But like a lot of other things out here, it made concentrating on anything else totally out of the question.
Walt Amses lives in North Calais.
