Gates of the Mountains (Part 2)

At about 4:30 Saturday afternoon last I came to fully appreciate living out here at the edge of the Rocky Mountains and the fringe of civilization.  There we stood fishing from a boat—five of us warmed by an uncommon sun.

Denny, captain of our small boat, first moved to Helena in 1973 as a young man.  He befriended, of all people, my freshly retired grandfather.  Grandfather taught him how to fish these mountain-fed waters.  Now, come full circle, Denny carefully knit his boat back and forth amid the glinting waters just beyond the Gates of the Mountains.  Watching the cartoonish display of his fish finder, he strove to keep us balanced just above what is, essentially, a submerged mountaintop surrounded by much deeper water.  A school of perch were lazing there atop the mountain like shadows cast by a flock of sheep afield—all of them thirty feet under our boat.

We all caught perch.

That girl managed to land a walleye.

Better yet, as we floated there fishing, a couple dozen wild mountain sheep carefully threaded down the cliffs to water right beside us a mere stone-throw away. 

Thus ended a day of eagles gliding overhead, deer milling through honey-colored grass on the low hills, hiking to a long abandoned homestead halfway up mountain, and the blue-sky sun snapping through the gunsight notches in tall cliffs as we motored through the endless canyon turns.

Posted today is a photograph of that girl and a perch, the homestead we explored, the mountain sheep we saw, and an eagle’s nest.

Posted is an example of life as we should live it!

--Mitchell Hegman