Moments Frozen in the Big Sky

 

My comrades and accomplices who bravely endure the running of my mouth on a day-to-day basis will cringe when they see this brief adventure hashed over again in print form. I have been retelling this tale consistently since I slid safely into home base here on St. John last January. But this simple adventure in the mountains of Montana in the first few minutes of 2010 seems to sum up the infinite potential for life and adventure the Treasure State holds for me. My infatuation for Montana began in 1982 when I was “employed” as a fry cook in a lodge up near the infamous Crazy Mountain Range. Every summer day after work I threw my apron in the hamper, and the world seemed to be teeming with possibilities for adventure-hiking, fishing, parties, girls, cars, you name it. Much like St. John, the entire state seemed to me to be more like a state of mind than physical geography.
So on New Year’s Eve afternoon I’m at the Starvation Creek Ranch, out by the Blackfoot River, in the big mountains just east of Missoula’s Hellgate Canyon. There is a long sloping dirt road that winds up to this ranch house where I am huddled up close to the wood stove, watching old Star Trek movies on the VHS. I am pretty much terrified to go outside at this point as the temperature has dipped to about 5 degrees, but I am content on the couch where I can watch the snowflakes spiral down and go splat on the windowpane in front of me. Well, one of the ranch hands gets the bright idea to go outside and turn on the garden hose and let the water run down the long driveway. Everybody is home, so somehow it doesn’t seem like a bad idea. After just a couple of hours in this wintry country we have a veritable luge track. All ice.
When we get outside we realize it is a full moon, and la luna is shining down brightly on the virgin snow. The reflection on the white carpet makes it seem more like daytime than night, and the moon and stars really do twinkle on this still and quiet scene. We took to the toboggans and just as we were about to push off on this icy track a giant B-O-O-M erupts from way down the hill. The neighbors, it seems, have been up to the nearby Indian Reservation where just about everything is legal and have returned with boxes of fireworks to celebrate the New Year.
So now the sky is suddenly awash in color; red, purple and green spirals are bursting like giant sunflowers in the sky. There are about forty horses in the corrals in front of the ranch and they don’t like this one bit. They start galloping in a big circle around the corral, spooked and upset that their quiet night has become a circus of noise and color. Their galloping sounds almost like a freight train coming, no, wait, it is a freight train! The Burlington Northern has its whistle screaming and is chugging through the night up from Butte and bound for the big roundhouses on the north side of Missoula. In the distance we can make out the locomotive pulling what seems to be an endless string of boxcars stacked full of black sooty coal.
And now here we come, pushing off the sleds and it is like we are being shot out of a rocket as we whiz down this icy track underneath the fireworks. The kids are screaming, the adults are whooping like only Montana cowboys can whoop, the horses are galloping, the fireworks are blasting and the sound of a train whistle sings in the distance.
Happy New Year, Montana, land of wonder, beauty, adventure
and constant surprise.

Bob Tis lives on St. John, and is the author of Down Island, a novel about a man who writes for a newspaper in St. John.