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It's Better in the Bitterroot
August 08, 2010
BY JUDY KLEIN
I try the screwdriver first, then the wrench. When that doesn't work, I switch to pliers. And when that doesn't work, I reach for the really big screwdriver and the really big hammer.
In utter frustration, irritation and a still unwavering determination to make this happen today, I resort to an electric drill.
But no matter what I do I can't get the last bolt holding my New York license plate off the front bumper of my Honda Civic.
I stop, breathe deeply, listen for a message, a cosmic cry of "Don't do it, don't cast off your Big Apple badge of honor!" Nothing. That's it then. I'm going to Howard's.
I'm new to Montana. I arrived during what I supposed would be a three-month break from a high-octane New York City life. Driving south on U.S. 93, the ribbon of road that also runs through James Lee Burke's novel Bitterroot, which I'd just read, I decided to investigate his Bitterroot Valley. I took a left turn off the main road, left into Stevensville, left into a different life.
I'm not the first traveler to be awed or enticed by this swath of land stretching nearly 100 miles south from Missoula to the Idaho border, with its steaming hot springs, tapered ridgelines, and sinuous river. Lewis and Clark traversed it in September 1805, admiring the friendliness of the Salish Indians and admittedly anxious about crossing the formidable chain of Bitterroot Mountains with peaks reaching to 10,000 feet and already snowcapped. This valley is also the site of the first permanent white settlement in Montana. It was in Stevensville that Father Pierre Jean DeSmet established St. Mary's Mission in 1841, laying the groundwork for many more Montana firsts: the first trading post; first doctor's office, first flour mill, even the first apple orchard.
The Bitterroot is a valley accustomed to the comings and goings of strangers; be they missionaries, merchants, lumbermen, or even Californians. The Bitterroot - named for the nutritious rosette-shaped plant that flowers light pink each spring and is the official state flower - is one of the fastest growing regions in Montana, with over 40,000 residents. Its towns ebb and flow along U.S. 93 and the Eastside Highway.
They weave their way from Missoula's bedroom community, Lolo, to snug little Sula, a perfect site for spotting bighorn sheep at the extreme south end of the valley. Quaint, quiet communities like Victor and Conner rear up against the Bitterroot National Forest and its thousands of acres of wilderness, while Corvallis and Stevensville are flanked by wildlife refuges.
At the heart of the valley is the bustling yet unruffled commercial and government center, Ravalli's county seat, Hamilton.
But still, I'm eyed with a measure of distrust as a tourist. Being a 40-something unmarried childless female traveling solo makes you a bit of an oddity, not only in Botswana and Burma, but also in the Bitterroot.
"Where's your husband?" "Why are you so far from home, honey?" "Whaddaya lookin' for?" I'm asked. I've stopped saying I'm here to revel in the rare beauty of Big Sky country; to try my hand at fly-fishing; to watch bald eagles soar and to savor the taste of fresh huckleberries before returning to my "real" life in Manhattan.
No one hears this. They don't accept that traveling alone can be satisfying, or a goal in itself. It's much easier to say I'm a writer, a professional observer looking for a temporary nook in this exquisite landscape, a place where I can wield my pen privately, far from the hussle and hassle of the east coast.
Telling this little fib puts paid to sometimes suspicious, sometimes-puzzled glances cast my way. I'm apparently convincing enough that some good-hearted soul points me toward a fully furnished rental, a house 10 miles east of Stevensville up the Middle Burnt Fork, 10 miles from the nearest market, gas station or cup of coffee. It's a wonderful timber-sided cabin alone atop 20 acres, hanging at the knees of the Sapphire Range with stunning views straight across to the towering Bitterroots. Within a week I have a library card, an axe for chopping firewood, several pounds of French-Roast coffee, and even a part-time job at the charming Chapter One book store in Hamilton.
I love this unexpected immersion into rural life. For a city girl - Manhattan veteran, raised in Montreal, resident at one time or another of New Orleans, Budapest, London and Jerusalem - my little corner of the Bitterroot is exotic. Here to collect the mail I walk (sometimes drive) 2.5 miles roundtrip down my rutted mountain road, through sagebrush, past rabbits, mule and white-tailed deer, draft horses, the odd wild turkey and rumors of mountain lion. At Mary's Café, I greet Dean, the town mortician, Dale the local jeweler, and Paul the carwash owner. I help myself to coffee when Mary is busy. I rebuff the advances of a 60-year-old trucker and a 30-year-old single father (more romantic attention in a month than I've had in a year).
This might not be the most perfect place in Montana, not the most rugged or secluded or bucolic. But the weeks are turning into months and maybe years and I'm still here. My phone rings and friends ask if I'm coming back and how it is that someone more at home in an Ethiopian restaurant than a VFW hall, happier with wine racks than gun racks is still in the Bitterroot?
I tell them about the changing seasons; how the snows move slowly down the mountain slopes in the autumn, how the valley inhales, bracing itself for winter and the air tinkles and the sky crackles electric blue. After the irrigation ditch that supplies the east side of the valley with water is shut off in mid-September, the last patches of green fade away. The harvest is in, the fields are threshed and hayed; the cottonwoods, quaking aspen and maples explode into shades of gold, plum and pumpkin; and calves are rounded up and taken to market.
Then I pour a glass of wine, take a seat on the deck and look out at a September sunset so spectacular no camera lens is wide enough to do it justice, no photograph could truly capture how seductively the light reflects off snow-crowned peaks and out of the crooked canyons of the unbroken Bitterroot range, or the texture and color of the fields below.
I do get the license plate off today, with the help of Howard the mechanic and Howard's electric saw. (No charge.) I am now the proud driver of a mud-splattered Honda Civic sporting Montana plates. Behind Montana plates I'm just another Montanan. Here I am happily ensconced, pretending to be local, pretending to be a writer. Pretending that I'm not just passing through.
Who's kidding whom?
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