Of all the amazing places I’ve been, this is at the top of my list, and I was privileged to hike the Highline Trail in Glacier National Park again after eighteen years. It’s almost an 11-mile hike, but Jackie, Dayna and I were up for the challenge! The Park is still very crowded, and it took two shuttles with enough empty seats to get us to Logan Pass to start this hike, having left the car at the downhill finish of our hike. The weather was exquisite!

The crowds along the trail eventually spread out and thinned. We enjoyed plenty of heavenly moments entirely to ourselves. Hard to find words to describe the beauty, feeling like we were on top of the world. It seemed more springtime in the Rockies rather than mid-August. The flowers put on a show like I’ve never seen in the Park. Columbia ground squirrels mingled with the blossoms.

Paintbrush, gaillardia, twin berry, gentian, columbine, huckleberry, monkey flower

Waterfalls trickled and giggled and dampened the trail, smoothing rocks and watering the happy flowers.

Few places are this untouched. The mountain goats and one longhorn sheep we saw showed no concern for us at all. The promised thunderstorm moved in behind low clouds that changed the scenery and cooled our hike at about the midway point. We were prepared for rain and didn’t mind it much; it stayed calm and cooled down nicely.

By the time we were ready for a break, the weather cleared to show us our mountaintop destination. The Chalet perched above the tree line and we felt much as those 100 years ago must have felt after the long hike from the Pass. The Chalet, along with eight others, was built by the Great Northern Railroad between 1914 and 1915 to encourage tourism. The chalets were spaced to be a day’s hike or horseback ride apart. Three stone chalets are all that are left.
No better place to share lunch. Someday I’d love to stay at the chalet. It was painful to leave.

There was a bittersweet surprise in the main hall of the Chalet – on a chalkboard, a quote of Robin Williams. He’d been shooting What Dreams May Come and had toured the Park in 1998. “If it isn’t God’s backyard, he certainly lives nearby.” We couldn’t have summed it up better ourselves!

Cindy called two nights ago and said she’d picked three huge bags of broccoli, could she bring it over and preserve it at my house? She wanted company for the annual chore. I said sure, come on over! She arrived with pounds and pounds of broccoli, weapon-size zucchinis, green beans, and raspberries! And Buster, of course! The washing, trimming, and blanching began. With two big pots of boiling water it went pretty quickly. There’s a lot of water involved and with the distance from sink to stove the floor and cabinets had a good soaking and later both had baths; they probably needed it anyway 🙂 Cindy is a farmer’s wife, seeming to this city girl, from another era. I wonder if I fascinate her the same way? I also had to look up again why blanching is necessary – it’s to preserve color, texture, and flavor – something every good farm wife knows. City girls’ ignorance can be excused.

Lucky for me she left me with broccoli, the zucc’s, the green beans and the raspberries. For two mornings now I’ve had raspberry pancakes for breakfast – yum! Last night was battle of the zucchini. My 30-year-old food processor, the lid now held together with electrical tape, did a fine job of shredding and slicing and I diced one for later fall casseroles, then did the blanching thing again. I didn’t do a count but my freezer is bulging with bags and yogurt containers of green veggies waiting to treat me at some later date with their yumminess. I’m still cleaning up seeds and leaves and petals. I moved the coffee maker out this morning to fill it with water and there were broccoli petals hiding out under there. I expect I’ll find more in the coming days, maybe hanging out in drawers or cabinets.

And my kids and Buster helped, of course! Buster came over shaggy, went home with a summer do! All this in two hours. A fun night!

Not being my favorite time of year, there are a few perks to the hot, dry, shriveled up days of July and August. Like fruit and flowers! The prep, planting and watering finally start paying off. I had zero lettuce sprouts this year, no clue why, but I have sorrel coming out my ears, it’s a perennial that’s very happy where it’s planted; it’s like a very, VERY tart spinach. I have cilantro that I let reseed a few years ago that just happily keeps providing the prefect spice for my bean dip and Mexican dishes with no effort at all on my part! The sunflowers, the seeds still from Mom’s friend, Darlene, are matching the wall I painted this spring – bright and sunny – and more opening every day!

Several years ago I planted gooseberry bushes – silly me thinking the deer wouldn’t eat them because they have serious thorns. Usually by the end of summer, though, the deer are pretty desperate and have stripped them of their leaves. This year two of the bushes produced berries – enough to flavor exactly one bowl of oatmeal, and they did a fine job of making it pretty and tasty!

Fresh picked cherries – yum! I love summer fruit! It’s cherry season here in Lake County and there are cherries for sale EVERYWHERE! There are roadside stands and a downtown Cherry Festival, contests to spit the seeds, a craft fair and numerous activities all to celebrate the pretty and delicious cherry! Cherries are even better when you have the privilege of picking them yourself, organic and homegrown in an old orchard right in town. I was invited to picked Rainier cherries – the best! My friends bought an old orchard, complete with a canal that looks like a lovely creek that runs most of the summer. They’ll have pears and apples in the fall. And they love to share! I’m not going to do anything fancy with mine, no pie, no cobbler, just good snackin’!

I’m in love with anything from the 1800s, the clothes, the lifestyle, the customs…okay, maybe not the lack of proper plumbing, but everything else 🙂 Anyway…turns out my friend, Cindy, has a buggy!!! When she invited me for a ride I floated over to her house – thrilled, giddy, hardly believing I was going for a buggy ride!!!

Cindy had Ruger all harnessed up and ready when I arrived; it looked like quite the accomplishment! I held his head while Cindy hooked him to the buggy and we were ready. Buster came too, of course. There’s a little shelf on the back, maybe for a picnic basket ? and he was happy to ride back there. Such a good boy!

This buggy is actually called a phaeton. It has big yellow wheels and a fringed top and deeply tufted upholstery – a total marvel! Ruger had done this before and he seemed pretty happy about the planned adventure, so off we went! I loved everything about it, the crunch of the big wheels up the gravel road, Ruger’s mane blowing in his self-made breeze, the fringe dancing overhead. It was much smoother than I expected. On top of all that the weather was perfect. We headed down the main road and had a spectacular view of Flathead Lake and the mountains beyond. From this vantage point it was pretty easy to pretend it was really 100 years ago! Next time I’ll have to come up with a vintage dress to wear!

We circled through a couple of quiet streets and along some open ranch land. Cows came running to see us – bunching up at the fence and watching us go by. Hilarious! At one point we stopped so Buster could ride in front with us. He liked the wind in his face, his ears blowing – this was way more fun than hanging his head out a car window!

I’ve taken some great rides in my day, helicopters, biplanes, trains, and ferries, and now I can add a buggy ride – it rates right up there with the rest of them. Do I know how to pick friends or what? 🙂

The last two blogs I talked about fire wood. Finding, cutting, hauling, splitting. Now we talk about using, the final step! 🙂 Yep, it’s summer time. Lots to do and shouldn’t be thinking about firewood but summer means camping and camping means campfires! In the case of a recent two-night stay in Glacier Park, not only did we cook with it but we huddled around it and enjoyed its warmth, well, until it started raining too hard. Yep, it’s June in Montana!

So Jackie and I enjoyed the fruits of my labor. We hauled two crates of freshly cut wood for our two nights. It smelled good in the back of the Jeep. The first night I heated squash soup on the propane stove. What can I say? I’m a lazy camper. I did have damper, an easy camp bread that cooks in the coals of a fire, to have with our soup but we got the fire started too late so it was a good dessert. The second night we started the fire earlier and Jackie ambitiously made a game hen and veggies in the fire pit using both wood and briquettes to cook our feast. She needed both ’cause it was so damp – everything was damp – ground, wood, table, bedding, and, of course, dogs. Not long after dinner it rained so hard that second night it put our campfire out!

Did we have fun? Absolutely. We had a lovely, dry hike the first day. The woods were splattered with colored wildflowers in amongst the green…green everything! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it so lush. I’ve seen Lake McDonald in better light but it was still great, familiar and homey. And today, sitting here in a 93-degree afternoon at home a week later, though I cringe at the thought of lighting a fire, I sure wish I was back there getting one started to cook our dinner!

The winter prep continues. I have several piles of seasoned wood ready to split. While the wood I brought home last week dries in the summer sun, it’s time to split the dry stuff that was cut last year and get it stacked. And it’s June, which means it won’t be getting any cooler, best get it done before it’s too hot! Way better to do it now before it’s 20 degrees and there’s a foot of snow on the ground too! We had a lovely cool morning this week so I got the process started. First, I got everything all set up. Next, I lined up the supervisors by bribing them with chewies.

Next, sustenance – for myself and for my help. I get good help and try to treat them well. Warm blueberry muffins usually do the trick. Lois lives next door and between the two of us we’ve split cords and cords of wood. Not to mention the logs we’ve cut down to stove size, sawing and stacking and chatting all the while. Loading, unloading, wheelbarrowing. She laughs at my homemade sawhorse, but it’s held up well for several seasons and we’ll probably use it again next week to cut down the chunks I brought home last week. We make a good team, mountain women taking care of woodcutting chores all by ourselves, keeping our girlish figures.

I started writing this installment a couple of days ago, just a sentence or two, and didn’t realize how true this title would be. Wood collecting is an ongoing project but I’ve had a little break. I started again for the summer last week and BAM, it turned to winter! We had 42 for a high today! Luckily I brought home some dry wood, though after steady rain for hours I really had to fish through the pile to find some that wasn’t soaked. Today was walk day, so took the kids to the lake, and this was the winter scene there –

I was called twice last week for wood that was ready to be cut and hauled; for some reason wood calls seem to come in bunches. The best score was trees taken down along a new underground utility line going in on a quiet street over by the lake. The trees were right on the road and not that big. The first day I brought the wood home in lengths long enough to move myself and had a pretty good load. And no, I’m not that fat, my woodcutting/dog running pants are way too big but perfectly nice hand-me-downs. 🙂

The second day I cut the wood to length on the spot, much nicer to leave all the mess there and be done with it when I get home. My two supervisors kept a close eye on me. I cut and tossed and piled and drove along when I was all done and picked up the piles, all told I hauled maybe a third of a cord, and most of it won’t need split – yay! Good calorie burning now, good house warming later, or sooner, depending on the weather.

I only stopped a couple of times while I was working to take pictures. No sitting down or goofing off for me. That’s only for the supervisors…

At Sunday’s writing group, for one of our ten-minute free writes, we were given the phrase “my best pet…” So I wrote a quick essay about mine. I didn’t realize until this morning what a coincidence that was, having my little girl fresh on my mind, because today is Cassidy’s birthday! Here’s what I wrote:

My best pet was also my best friend and soul mate. Yes, just a dog, but really a little person inside a black cocker outfit. She and I survived a marriage and divorce, then took off on our own to see the West. She was my partner when I went to Alaska, providing comfort, companionship, and moral support. Not to mention a bed warmer and sharer of meals. She rode ferries with me to work, passed judgment on boyfriends, and kept me in shape.

When she was too old for our many jaunts, she was my backpack buddy. If I was riding my bike she kept an eye out the back. If we were hiking I wore my backpack across my chest so we could discuss trail conditions, where to best cross creeks, and when to break for lunch.

When she went to doggie heaven, the hole she left was immeasurable, barely smaller after fifteen years.

Many years ago, in a state far, far away, my dad was at the airport; he spent a lot of time there! The Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport maintenance crew was replacing the big tattered wind sock on the city hanger, and Dad thought I might want it. I did! I made us orange wind socks for our car antennas; they took a beating at city traffic speeds. My sock was stolen. I don’t remember how many I made. I think there’s one hanging on a stick in far away Danbury, Connecticut, and now there’s one way up north on a dog house in Polson, Montana 🙂
I don’t know if this is a second one I made for myself or if it’s Dad’s. It’s been laying on the work bench for what seems like years, and it was time to put it up – took a while to figure out how. It’s not as good a job as Dad would have done but it’s finally out there being my wind gauge and memory jogger. I doubt it ever expected to have snow on its head! I still have a chunk of the plasticky fabric stashed in a box, and I’m thinking I need to make a big sock for the top of the house. Regardless of size, the orange souvenir brings back lots of fun memories of all the time I spent at Sky Harbor, off to fly myself, waiting for a helicopter ride, and the hours I spent there with Dad and friends – that big sock was always up there waving! A similar sock gives wind direction at every airport, and I never see one without some fond memory popping up or maybe spilling a tear or two for those happy, long gone days.