‘A Montana summer’; a ‘Couzy-shaped hole’

Last week I skied with a guy from Colorado who said he was spending a few months here to, among other things, enjoy ‘a Montana summer’. While I’m partial to winter, of course, the Montana summer does have its charms: glistening snowfields, ambling grizzlies, wide rivers, green hills, etc., etc. With barely six hours a day of darkness, there’s also an incredible motivation to get out and enjoy it all. The other week, in Seattle, I was talking to a couple of PhDs about Montana. One in particular had not, I take it, had much opportunity to venture outside of Washington, D.C., and it was an interesting exercise to try and explain the vastness of the sweeping landscape, the unimpeded access, and the human place in it all. It’s harder still to explain to someone not familiar with the concept that the only true obstacle to overcome is your ability and motivation.

Motivation on Heart Lake, in a range some call the northern Bitterroot and others call the Stateline, June 9: low clouds and sideways snow.

Couzy, the plot hound, did not make it. We had her euthanized last week.

Couzy was an artifact of our last nine years. We got her from the pound in Haywood County a few weeks after our marriage and a few days before her prior-scheduled euthanasia. The state dog of North Carolina was bred to hunt bears, but judging by the fact that Couzy was scared of her own dim reflection on the stainless steel refrigerator, she was probably not of much use to hunters. We named her after Jean Couzy, a French mountaineer who was a member of Maurice Herzog’s famed first ascent of Annapurna. Such provenance did not wear off: she was afraid of leashes and not much of a socializer. She was also, I take it, subject at one point to a lot of abuse, judging by the way she would cower if we made any sudden moves.

We shuttled her to obedience school, which was interesting but of little practical value. Due to her propensity to both run away when off leash and attack other dogs when on leash she rarely went on hikes or to the dog park. We took her to Oregon and Canada but left her behind on other trips.

She started limping in January, and in March we found out why: bone cancer. Her death leaves the house with a sort of Couzy-shaped hole, which is to say a small, mostly unobtrusive hole, but one which is there nonetheless.