Woodpecker Lips Part 3
If you have not read Part 1& 2 here, you probably want to do that before continuing.
Those of you just joining this programing known as my life may be confused, so let me give you a Stan insight about Josh, he once told me on a scorcher of a September day hunting elk in the Missouri River Breaks in Northeast Montana, a day the temperature topped out at 110 degrees, that basically I was like Hunter S. Thompson but big game hunter, rambling through the desert shirtless looking for wild animals to chase. I suppose this was prompted by my typical take on life, I was living in a van, and in fact I was hunting elk shirtless in a magical high desert paradise, admittingly I enjoyed it and have embraced the comparison, always a fan of his insights and writing. Owning a bit of a hippie mindset yet being excited about the adventure of hunting, cooking, and eating wild food is a confusing enigma for most people, not particularly appreciated by either side in this increasingly divisive world. This is what I am though, a human being living and breathing on this earth, with a touch of counterculture tendency, fascinated by playing my role as a human hunter and gather, and advocate for wild creatures and places.
Picking back up where we left the story, I got through the night without incident, knowledge of a big grizzly in the area certainly made my 2:00 am pee more interesting than usual. I assumed the bear had moved away from the area, taking no chances though, I carried my Ruger revolver in a ready position for the duration of said pee. I mentioned the rain earlier, well it started as I fell asleep and it rained all night. That next morning, I did my best to kill time in the tent, queue the creature comforts, clouds and fog moved in thick and the rain fell steady, visibility was down to a few hundred yards in all directions. Awful conditions to look for bears through optics. I expected rain and drizzle, in fact I welcomed it, as do the bears. By early afternoon the weather forecast and visibility looked bleak for the rest of the weekend, so I decided it was time to pack up and leave. I was only two miles from the trailhead, I could always hike back in, if and when the weather cleared.
Met up with Stan that evening at his house, we cooked steaks, drank a few beers, discussed grizzly bears, and I slept in the bed of my truck. Tucked inside his garage, warm, dry, and with a full belly. The weather was just terrible the next day, so we drove mountain roads, scouted for hunting spots, but mostly we just spent time doing what grown men do when riding around in a truck all day, telling the tales of our lives.
The following day was looking a bit better, at least there appeared to be a break in the weather the next morning, with more rain and colder weather in the forecast later in the day. Neither of us are the type to sit around doing nothing, the day of driving endless mountain roads had us eager to burn boot leather, so we made our plans to hike back into that same spot the next morning.
Once boots hit the ground and I worked up a good lather, the bears I had witnessed two evenings before began to race though my mind, both the pristine blonde bear and the big grizz. Hiking in and out of the mountains as we are requires a level of stamina and fitness, Stan is 14 years younger than me, and having lived in Montana at elevation for years gives him a big advantage, I just do my best to keep up. As we approached the final big climb up to our preferred glassing knob, grizzly encounter number two occurs. We are gaining elevation quickly now, I am winded and on tired legs as we come up over a rise in the trail, in front of us, a juvenile grizzly bear at 80 yards. This was a smaller bear, it happened quickly and at a safe distance, the bear wasted no time turning to run. While the encounter did make the hair on my neck stand up, it happened so fast and there was never much concern of impending danger. That young bear had no intentions of anything besides running away.
As I mentioned before, we only expected a brief window in the weather, and that is what we got. An hour or two into our glassing session, the rain started again, with the elevation and a cold front moving in, it quickly turned to the heavy wet snow you would expect in June. Within 30 minutes the mountain was socked in and visibility was nil, giant wet snow flakes the size of half dollars are coming down at a clip. We do our best to stay dry and warm and wait it out, but the forecast looked bleak and it is hard to stay dry in that type of snow without shelter, so we hiked off the mountain and went to a watering hole in Ennis for burgers and a beer. Then I made the drive from the Madison Valley, with the Tobacco Root Mountains to my left, over Bozeman Pass, past the outlet of the Madison River at Bear Trap Canyon, back to everyday life in Bozeman. The blonde bear would have to wait for another day.
At this point the timeline gets fuzzy in my head, a couple weeks past, a business trip to Monterrey, life in Bozeman, and the weather was not cooperative. In fact, it felt like it rained continuously for weeks. With the weather at higher elevations even less favorable, Stan and I spent some time streamer fishing a world famous stretch of the Madison River, landing some nice trout, rainbows and browns. This stretch of the Madison is beyond imagination, miles of riffles, seams, slack water pockets, undercut banks, unapparelled scenery, an abundance of big trout, and best of all, accessible by foot. As usual Stan was sharing with me his favorite spots, paid for with time and miles hiked over a period of 8 years. I guess he was just happy to have someone as devoted to the outdoors as him to kick around with, many people like to talk about outdoor pursuits and buy gear, but few are willing to put in the time and effort to get after it with regularity. I will forever be grateful for every single waypoint he shared with me.
To be continued with a fourth and likely the final part.
“Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.” - Hunter S. Thompson
