Days 79-82 , August 7-10, Butte MT to Missoula MT

Moose were on my mind.  As I gingerly made my way down from a gravel road and through a marshy meadow to the Middle Fork of Rock Creek west of Anaconda, MT, I was thinking about the two bull moose I'd seen the past few days, including the one that casually sauntered by Bob and Julie's back door when I was at their house near Butte last week.  The meadow I now found myself walking in seemed like prime moose territory and I wondered if moose cousins were nearby.  I've been wanting to ask someone with expertise but I never remember to ask when the experts are available - how do moose react to bear spray?  Adversely, I hoped. Bear spray was all the protection I had besides my not-so-fleet feet and a flimsy fly rod.

Fortunately a moose never showed that day.  I've been thinking a lot about wild animals lately.  After all my travels this summer I must be exuding a different vibe than I normally do.  A Dr. Doolittle sort of vibe, perhaps, because it seems wild animals are beginning to enjoy my presence.  In the campground near the aforementioned Middle Fork, a chipmunk joined me as I sat in a camp chair by a campfire after a long afternoon of fishing and dined on gourmet cheeses and fancy table crackers.  I tossed the friendly and adorable rodent a cracker and he scurried right up to my feet, incautiously nibbling as he sat high on his rear legs looking me with what I interpreted as a fraternal stare.  Then there was the quartet of ducklings that followed me down the banks of the upper Big Hole River northeast of Wisdom as I cast my fly line over their heads to small rising trout.  Whenever I moved upstream a few steps, they swam alongside, and whenever I paused to cast for a while, they closed their eyes and took a short nap.  I'm not sure where their mother was - perhaps flown away forever - but they seemed to bond on me.  Here they are, waiting patiently for my next move:

I've seen a great many bald eagles this year, and a few golden eagles.  None were so spectacular in flight as those I saw on the Big Hole the evening of the same day I took the picture of the ducklings.  As the sun sank behind the ridge near my primitive and private campsite on the river, a mature bald eagle flew downriver as if in a desperate hurry to be somewhere.  He was almost out of my sight when he entered a thermal updraft.  Suddenly he began to rise and circle until eventually he was so far above and beyond that I could no longer distinguish his majesty in the distant sky and clouds.  When I turned my attention back upstream and across the river, two golden eagles appeared above the trees, also circling.  One of them occasionally dove at the other, but the passive one seemed unperturbed by the attentions of the aggressor.  The behavior did not appear to be violent, but was more in the nature of courtship.  As they continued to circle, joining and separating repeatedly and eventually passing over my head before returning to the other side of the river and beyond the trees, I was reminded of one of my favorite poems by the great American poet Walt Whitman, "The Dalliance of the Eagles."  Check it out if you haven't read it, or even if you have.  You can Google it right now and it would be well worth your effort.

Here's a look at Camelot (my Northstar truck camper, mounted on Excalibur) with its top popped up, perched on the banks of the Big Hole, and a shot looking upriver from the campsite with clouds reflected on the shimmering surface of the river:

Out here in Montana, at times on my own, I am enveloped by raw nature.  The flora and the fauna, the vast blue skies and thunderous dark clouds, the infinite mountains.  It's almost unreal, and more entertaining than television.  In "Travels with Charley," John Steinbeck sang Montana's praises.  I think his depiction of the grandeur of the state was disappointingly vague, but I certainly agree with his general sentiment.  It's an amazing state.  If Henry David Thoreau had come to Montana he'd have forgotten all about Walden Pond.  The state's license plates should say "The Transcendental State."

As I mentioned above, I fished one afternoon on the Middle Fork of Rock Creek.  Rock Creek proper is a famous and popular fly-fishing stream that originates in the Anaconda Mountains southwest of Missoula and flows north to the Clark Fork River.  When I left Butte on Day 79 I decided to explore the obscure headwaters of Rock Creek, including the streams that flow into and near Moose Lake.  Bouncing along the gravel road in that direction, I was at first discouraged by the fact that there were miles and miles of fencing separating me from the beautiful water of the Middle Fork.  Here's a typical stretch of the Middle Fork, looking down from the rough road:

My patience was rewarded, however.  A few miles downstream from the Copper Creek Campground and Moose Lake, the fence mercifully ended when I crossed a cattle guard.  That's when I assembled my fly-fishing gear and wandered into the moosey-looking meadow.  That afternoon was to be one of the most pleasant I've spent on my entire journey so far.  Sadly, I didn't pack any of my cameras into the meadow, not even the one in my Droid smartphone.  I thought I might catch a few small trout in the inviting water, but the fish I actually found far exceeded my expectations.  They were fat, healthy Westslope cutthroat trout up to 17" (several in that class, and not many small ones) that rose to large dry flies.  Every deep channel around every bend of the creek held one of those beauties and there was not a soul in sight all afternoon, not even a moose.  At times I felt like I was living in a dream, it was so perfect.  If I wasn't so much hairier and older, and less chiseled, I would have looked just like Brad Pitt in one of the most rapturous scenes from "A River Runs Through It."

That evening I parked Camelot in a quiet campground among a tall stand of lodgepole pines and firs.  The trees shaded me from the next morning's sun, so much so that I didn't awaken until 10 AM.  I had considered spending more time on the Middle Fork and its tributaries, but due to the late hour I departed soon after waking and began driving the long circle north and east around the Anaconda Range and south into the Big Hole Valley.  There is an unmarked section of state-owned land there that Bob Bushmaker told me about.  My campsite, just a few feet from the water, had a long view of the Big Hole River, with no other people in sight in either direction - just ducks and eagles. I fished there for several hours but could only get the attention of a couple of small trout.  Admittedly I went about the fishing in a half-hearted way because I was too busy drinking in the surroundings and the solitude.  I had planned to cook dinner on a campfire, and there was a convenient ring of stones quite near Camelot for that purpose, but a row of black clouds soon swept in from the south and I thought it prudent to stow my gear inside just before a downpour began.  I shrugged and went to bed early.  It had been a fine day.

The next morning I built the campfire I had intended for the prior evening and used it to cook Italian sausage and eggs for breakfast.  There was still no one around.  It was very pleasant to watch the steam rise off the glassy surface of the slow-moving river while I ate.  I took my time the rest of the morning cleaning and reorganizing some of my gear in preparation for the next leg of my trip, which begins tomorrow.  The rest of the day I drove under gorgeous skies south of the Anacondas, turning west at Wisdom and passing the Big Hole National Battlefield.

In a previous blog I mentioned the plight of the Cherokee Indians who were herded from the southeast U.S. to Oklahoma, and of the Cheyenne Indians who were butchered by George Custer at the Washita River.  I can't now go without mentioning that among the greatest of travesties committed against Native Americans was the harrassment of the Nez Perce Indians by white settlers and the U.S. Army in the 1870s.  To make a long story short, the Nez Perce (the name is French for Big Nose) were a friendly tribe (very helpful to Lewis and Clark, for instance) that lived primarily in western Idaho and eastern Washington.  As often happened in that era, white settlers encroached on their lands and the Nez Perce were corraled into tighter and tighter spaces.  When a group of young braves grew weary of their treatment and fought back, a "war" was launched.  Chief Joseph had no desire to fight, and instead decided to lead the entire tribe to safety in Canada.  The ensuing exodus was epic on the scale of the Jews migrating from Egypt in the era of the Pharoahs.  Unfortunately, the U.S. Army was not content to let the Nez Perce disappear into Canada, and engaged the Nez Perce on several occasions during the tribe's long and arduous journey over and around dozens of mountain ranges in Idaho, Montana and northern Wyoming.  But Chief Joseph was unable to part the mountains so his tribe could pass and then cause the mountains to fall on the Army, as Moses had done when parting the Red Sea and destroying the Egyptians.  One battle was fought near the headwaters of the Big Hole.  Chief Joseph was wily and his tribe escaped with relatively few casualties, as it was to do in subsequent skirmishes with the Army.  After taking a very roundabout course the Nez Perce trekked north through central Montana to a point only miles from the Canadian border.  On the eve of the tribe's escape to freedom, the Army finally mustered enough force and strategy to stall the Indians and compel them to return to a small reservation in southeast Washington and languish.  "I will fight no more forever," Chief Joseph famously said, no doubt with large teardrops falling down his handsome and war-weary cheeks.

Sorry for the digression, but that story gets to me every time I think of it.  I have been reminded of it dozens of times travelling in Wyoming and Montana, generally following the route of the Nez Perce in reverse.  Not even the Indians who tried their best to cooperate with the European invaders fared well in the American Holocaust.  It's hard for us today to conceive of the fact that tens of millions, and by some estimates hundreds of millions of people were wiped out in the genocide we called "Manifest Destiny."  The silver lining is that I get to go fly fishing where the Indians once fished and hunted, and I say that with all the gritty sarcasm and facetiousness that you can imagine.

Anyway, like the bubbly newscasters who describe nightmarish events in one breath and then smile and laugh about the weather in the next, I return my attentions to the lighter side of life.  After passing the Big Hole National Battefield, I negotiated a couple of steep passes north of the Beaverhead Mountains (part of the Bitterroot Range) near the Idaho border, criss-crossing the Continental Divide for perhaps the 20th time this summer.  I dropped down into the gorgeous Bitteroot River Valley, pausing briefly to make a couple of calls when I finally had cell phone reception and to gawk at craggyTrapper Peak southwest of Darby, MT.  Then I was on to Missoula, which is where I am now, all packed and ready to fly tomorrow to Anchorage, Alaska where I will hook up with Trish.  On Friday morning we'll fly a float plane to a lodge at Lake Creek northwest of Anchorage, there to find a trio of salmon species eager to eat our flies.  We'll be gone for a week, so you may not hear from me again for a while.  When you do, I hope to have some truly riveting video and pictures.