Mountain Men

Each time I get a few days off I head out to explore. I have a growing list of the camper’s favorite places they have shared with me. One of the first trips was to West Glacier where I spent the night parked along Lake McDonald in order to be there bright and early.  The freedom of leaving the trailer behind outweighed a comfortable nights sleep, considering I needed to be up at 4 a.m. From the truck I could see how dark and motionless the water was. I opened the window to see the stars against the black sky. The silence was a little scary but I slept off and on. Just before dawn, I awoke to the most beautiful view of the lake, a perfect reflection of the mountains surrounding the waters edge.

That morning I left for the town of Eureka to escape the crowds pouring into the park. I had been told this area of the Kootenai National Forest was wild and absent of tourist. At Murphy Lake, I stopped and talked to a man with a scraggly, red beard, sporting a plaid shirt with the sleeves torn off. He was fishing from the bank in his cowboy boots. Turns out he and his wife had moved to Montana from Georgia. We laughed as if we were old friends when I told him Chickamauga Battlefield was my old high school hang out.  This earned me the inside scoop of local trails and where I might get some good shots of wildlife.

He shared his own grizzly encounter beginning with him in the shower and his wife screaming, “Grizzly!” After jumping out and grabbing his shotgun, he ran out of the house soaking wet and naked. The bear was standing up within 25 feet of him. He fired a shot over the bear’s head as a warning and the bear dropped down and sauntered off but stopped at the goat pen. He stood up to check out whats for dinner, looking side to side, then back to the man of the house, then back to the goats. My friend fired a second shot just over the top of the bear’s head and that was enough to get him on his way.