An Adventure

That girl and I are presently staying in small cabin at Lake Five Resort.  The resort is just outside the West Glacier entrance to Glacier National Park.  The resort is located in a forest of tall tamarack and pine near the waters of a clear lake.  Bear grass is in full bloom in the understory all around us.  Some of the white plumes reach as high as my chest.

Our cabin does not have a bathroom.  To use the restroom or take a shower you must go on something of an adventure.  You must wander outside, navigating either a long boardwalk or a gravel pathway to reach the common bathroom.  Last night, in total forest darkness, I crashed into a wrought iron bench on the boardwalk while trying to reach the facilities.  This morning it is raining hard enough that I am considering wetting the bed to avoid the adventure.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Melting Sky

We experienced another fantastic sunset last night.  The sky to our northwest remained clear and gradually fell into deeper shades of blue as the sun slipped away.  To the northeast, a voluminous rack of clouds blushed red and orange.  The clouds seemed as if melting above the lake as they gradually oozed toward darkness.

Posted are a couple photographs I captured from just behind my house.

--Mitchell Hegman

Crash Course

For some inexplicable reason, I awoke early this morning with this question on my mind: Why do we call a quick training session a crash course?

This question persisted in my mind as I fed my remaining 20 pounds of housecat and made my coffee.  As soon as I finished that, I fired up my computer and Googled for an answer.

Seems, oddly enough, that “getting a crash course” may have originated from a surprisingly literal meaning.  A thread at www.reddit.com/r/etymology quoted this excerpt from Knights of the Air, a 1929 history of aviation:

…to demonstrate how pilots might crash and still escape injury.  The crash course, as Sperry outlined it, would have three stages.  The student would first crash into swamps, primarily to overcome the fear of crashing…

--Mitchell Hegman

The Altered Forest

On Sunday, my daughter and I spent an hour or so wandering through Sculpture in the Wild.  Sculpture in the Wild is a park filled with outdoor sculptures located in the native forest near Lincoln, Montana.  Artists from all over the world have been creating sculptures, using a mix of natural and manufactured materials, in the forest there since 2014.  

Entrance to the park is free.

I particularly enjoy how you are both enabled and encouraged to interact with the sculptures as you stroll the pathways through the woodlands.  Some works, you walk through.  Others you feel a need to touch or circle about in order to change how the sunlight, shadow, and surrounding landscape plays with the features.  Near the sculptures, visitors to the park often create their own simple works.  Stone cairns.  Arrangements of sticks.  A mix of both.

Wild animals walk through and feed in the park.

Posted today are three photographs from our wanderings through the park.  The photographs by no means capture the immensity or sensations of visiting the park in person.

--Mitchell Hegman

It Takes a Thief (Yellowstone Trip, Part Two)

If there exists a definitive list of dos and don’ts for camping, one of the “don’ts” near the very top of the list should be this: Don’t slam the keys to your locked car inside the trunk of said car.

Camping is, to begin with, a celebration of minimalism.  You set out with as few resources as you possibly require for survival and then try to survive for a few days at some remote location.  Hopefully (or not) a location without cell service.  Your car in such case is definitely a required resource.

While camping alongside the cabins at Campfire Lodge Resort with us (during a seemingly never-ending rainstorm), a person we shall refer to as X slammed the keys to their locked car inside the trunk of said locked car.  As mentioned at the outset, I am proposing a kind rule against this sort of thing.  Access to your car is critical while you are at any such remote location.

Once the keys are locked in the trunk, you are left with few options.

One option is to abandon the car, all belongings inside, and flee to a small city where you can easily stretch a dollar.  Another option is to call a locksmith (not a valid option when camping at a location without cell service).  A third option is to panic wholesale and run off into the woods breaking low-hanging limbs off trees as you go.  A fourth option is to take the road less-traveled.  What I mean by this is: Find someone with experience in breaking into locked automobiles.  Possibly the nearest car thief.

Though option number one had sparking possibilities (everyone enjoys stretching a dollar), the fourth option was chosen by X in this case.  As luck would have it, the camp “handyman” thought he might be able to “access the vehicle.”  He immediately found in his workshed a length of wire with a hook on the end and a crowbar.

By prying open the door just a little and fishing the wire down to catch the door lock knob, the handyman  managed to pull it up to unlock the door.  He did this, and I am not kidding here, in less than two minutes.

Happy, curious campers once more!

Honestly, I wish to thank our local handyman.  He refused all offers for a gratuity in exchange for his services and simply suggested we have a great rest of the day.  Last we saw of him, he was zooming off through the woods on his four-wheeler, ghost-like, not breaking a single branch along the way.

So far as his skills at accessing locked vehicles—the phrase ignorance is bliss comes to mind.

--Mitchell Hegman

You Are in Bear Country (Yellowstone Trip, Part One)

Cabin 11 at Campfire Lodge Resort is located quite exactly where Cabin Creek flows into the Madison River.  This particular place is probably more interesting right now than normal.  For one thing, Cabin Creek is positively over-filled and violent with taupe-colored water.  By all appearances, a significant run-off is still at work within the steep mountains from which the creek originates.  I am also guessing a very recent storm of some intensity has also added rain water to the creek.

The creek is loud enough you cannot carry on a conversation while standing nearby.   The water flails at the banks and lashes at the bed of boulders along its chosen path.

The second interesting thing is that the Madison River is running clear.  Where the creek merges with the river, the beige water does not mix with the clear water of the river.   The river immediately below where the creek plows into the river has a clear half and a murky half.  The waters do not fully mix until reaching a bend further downstream.

Campfire Lodge Resort was established in 1922 and features several very rustic log cabins amid tall, riverside pines.  Cabin 11, for example, tilts considerably toward Cabin Creek.  To be fair, this may have resulted from the earthquake responsible for the formation of Quake Lake a few miles downstream.  That quake, in August of 1959, dropped some sections of land near Cabin Creek twenty feet as two gigantic tectonic plates within the Madison Range shifted at once.  The quake was responsible for the loss of 28 lives.  This cabin—as well as cabin 9 where I overnighted—offer a mix of technologies from every decade since 1922.

Posted everywhere you look around the resort are signs reminding you that “You Are in Bear Country.”  Food and garbage must not be readily accessible to bears.

I had to literally percolate coffee in the type of pot you set on the burner of a stove because our cabin does not have a modern coffee maker.

Here is a tip on percolating your coffee: just don’t do it.  At the very least, don’t walk away from the stove to tease your significant other while the “coffee” is “brewing.”   This kind of brewing process is something akin to catching Cabin Creek in a pot.  You know how creeks behave.  They are always splashing up and trying to get out.

Campfire Lodge Resort is, ultimately, a fun place to stay.  I am guessing most people would think this is exactly how Montana should look and feel.  In the end, you cannot ask for more than that.  

Posted is a photograph of one of the cabins at Campfire Lodge Resort and photograph of a fly fisherman at the place where Cabin Creek meets the Madison River.

--Mitchell Hegman

Run

A song by Snow Patrol.

NOTE:  I may not be able to post blogs for the next few days.  If not, I will see you again on Monday!

--Mitchell Hegman

Alternate Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOBs8dU4Pb8