Did that just happen?

Here I perch, at a smoking bar in my hometown. Virginia again. The last time I posted was from VA.

I have come back from a summer in Glacier Park.

How can such a season be summarized?

A too-close encounter with two galloping Grizzlies...
an adolescent moose crashing through the brush in front of me...
black bear with a cub on an afternoon stroll behind my cabin.

Bonfires, beers, a ride in the bed of someone's truck after midnight coming home from one of the only bars out in the plains on the eastern side of the Divide. 40 degrees, wrapped in a blanket.

First cliff-jumping experience while floating down the Middle Fork of the Flathead River. Sleeping in a snuggle-pile in the back of a friend's Jeep, crossing Going-to-the-Sun Road after midnight.

A mountain lion 50 feet away from me as I went to work in the eerie dark of 5AM.

Forcing myself to wade out and dip under the water of Iceberg Lake, the sense of my capillaries seizing and my lungs seemingly collapsing in the cold.

A couple good-hearted and easygoing love interests.

A few nights drunk and thumping down the hill in the darkness to my place on the bear trail. Such quiet nights - thickly quiet, like you could hear the wilderness watching you. I'd reach my door, place the key in to unlock it, and breathe a sigh of relief.

The Wind.

Twice in the middle of the night, the wind was wild enough to blow my locked door wide open and wake me up.

Granite Park Chalet.
Staying there overnight on a walk from Logan Pass to Swiftcurrent was the realization of a dream.


I arrived in MT too timid of the wild to go 15 yards into the woods.
I needed to fix that, and I did.

I learned a lot about the wilderness of the northern Rockies, and about the wilderness of my heart.

The people I met became my family, in an undefinable way.

"I'm going to Kalispell today, do you need anything?"

I became familiar with Single Shot and East Flat Top, knew their ways, and knew them to be coy on the days of low-flying clouds.

Tourists' comments: "We've been here five days and haven't seen ANY animals!"
"When do they let the goats out?"
"Is there a car wash around here?"

I am now 'home', in Virginia, and this past summer feels like a dream.

Rick Bass wrote in 'Winter' of north-western MT, that, It takes a long time to feel like you belong here.. but once you do, you don't really belong anywhere else.

I got a phone call last night from one of my best friends from this summer. He's a Montanan (lucky!) and mentioned that he was outside of a bar in Whitefish. From my place here in VA, I was melancholy to realize how far I am from that place. . .
. . . but I'll be back.

2013, I'll be back.