Panopticon.

Meadow Lake, Mission Mountains:

Crystal Lake, Mission Mountains:

Kilbrennan Lake:

Petty Mountain:

The incredible Yaak River:

Lily Lake, Idaho:

Lower Miner Lake, Beaverhead Mountains:

Hub Lake:

Below Trapper Peak, Bitterroot Mountains:

The Bitterroot from the crest of the Sapphires:

Undisclosed location in the Mission:

Wallowas:

Wallowas:

Near La Push, Olympic National Park:

Hurricane Ridge:

Wallowas:

The Rattlesnake:

The Mission from Red Butte:

The Missoula Valley from the Death Star:

Near Hoodoo Pass along the Stateline:

The Clearwaters in Idaho:

(Click on the images, then to expand click on the magnifying glass.)

Mise en place.

Everything in its place.

At his namesake lake on the edge of the Scapegoat.

After a week of highs in the 40s, a 63-degree afternoon feels like it might as well be 90. Seeley Lake.

Wildlife blind a long the upper Clearwater. All we saw was a stupid deer.

What part of ‘party’ don’t you understand?

Glacier Lake: too cold for a swim.

Beached at a not-so-secret island on Lake Alva.

Midway through a 2,400 vertical foot mountain bike descent from University Mountain to my garage.

Missoula.

Crystal Lake.

No pictures, please.

Naptime on the climb out of Crystal.

Meadow Lake, Lindy Peak.

Mommy’s 5k.

Party: Mardi Gras beads and chocolate cupcakes.

The end of fall.

Western Montana does a lot of things well, but in general fall is not one of them. Most vanish under lingering heat, early snowstorms, persistent smoke, or neverending drizzle. Not so 2013: a late-September snow broke the warmth and ushered in nearly four continuous weeks of Chamber of Commerce fall – highs in the 50s, lows in the 20s, blue skies, snowcapped mountains, and memorable foliage. Going by the forecast, it’ll be a distant memory by Sunday.

This is warmer:

(People from the interior of Democratic Republic of Congo (the old 'Zaire') continue to stream into Kinshasha, but in this case they bring their dance with them. The concrete-and-plastic bar this is filmed in reminds me a lot of the hotel I wound up in after I was discharged from the hospital in Mombasa. Nevermind. This video is so incredibly kickass it defies coherent description. I believe the dude with the cowboy hat is Mputu Ebondo 'Mi Amor', and the dance is from the Songye, who live in the very center of DR Congo. The music is dubbed 'Congotronics' -- electrified traditional music.)

Because who doesn’t want a satay recipe every once in a while?

“Chicken on a stick! Of course I want one.” That comment came from Whitney on Sunday but I think it’s a fairly common sentiment. Chicken on a stick is the national go-to snack dish/dinner in Thailand, a country that has perfected the art of food stuck on sticks, poured into plastic bags, or wrapped in banana leaves.

Pre-made satay sauces are easy enough to come by, I guess, but not particularly cheap. This recipe won’t win bragging rights at the night market in Udon Thani, but I think it does well enough considering it’s made with mostly regular around-the-house ingredients.

1. Take some bamboo skewers and marinate them in water for about an hour. I used a coffee cup to hold them under water otherwise they just float to the surface.
2. Chop 4 cloves of garlic and 4 small dried (or fresh) red chilies (seeds removed). Drop a few tablespoons of sesame seed oil in a pan and heat; add the garlic and chili and cook until fragrant.
3. Put the chili/garlic mix in a food processor and pulse for a minute. Add about 1 cup of chunky peanut butter, and then some soy sauce and lime juice. Mix it up good.
4. Take 2 chicken breasts, and pound each until decently thin. Then use kitchen scissors to slice the breasts lengthwise so they are like 6 inches long or so and a quarter-inch wide.
5. Remove the skewers from the water and thread the chicken on them. If you wound up with extra odds and ends pieces of chicken, add those pieces to the skewer as bonus chicken. Take the satay sauce and spread it all over the chicken and let it sit in the fridge for an hour or two. All told, you'll probably have 15 skewers' worth of chicken.
6. Now this is actually the hard part. Fire up the grill and place the skewers on the grates. The first thing you will notice is that any peanut butter that falls off the chicken and on to the burner will flame up considerably. The chicken has to sit on the flame long enough to cook (duh) but not so long that the skewers catch fire. A few probably will, but that just proves that you are a suburban American trying to be cool and not a Thai street vendor.

See? Babies like satay too.

Transcript of a letter not sent to The Missoulian on Oct. 10 because Laura said it was a bad idea and she was probably right.

Editor:

The current government shutdown should offer President Obama the chance to do what’s been needed to be done for years: suspend the Constitution and dissolve Congress.

Many people suggest we “throw the bums out”, and I’m all for this, but due to gerrymandering, most of the bums never get thrown out (although our own Denny Rehberg was one notable exception). Because congressional seats are drawn to be safe, the bums actually just get bummier.

It’s been a while since the House of Representatives has done anything useful. Once set up with the noble notion of representing “the people”, this group of intellectual lightweights is simply no longer needed. Just trash it.

The Senate does on occasion serve a purpose, but not in its current configuration, which favors career politics over rational thought and money over common causes. I’d recommend replacing it with a true citizen-led system similar to jury duty selection – say, everyone who registers is eligible to serve a term, you’re called up for a set period, and it’s possible to claim hardship and defer your seat to others.

I understand that my plan will cause unemployment in America to increase by 535, but I think most of these guys would be eligible for job training assistance. They voted to fund that, right?

Jeff Schmerker
Missoula

Morning in America

Even before Laura vetoed this, I had already self-edited the final paragraph, the gist of which was that while the Constitution was temporarily off-line someone could take about five minutes and rewrite the stupid Second Amendment so it made sense.

Lately I’ve had the radio alarm set to Bill Bennett’s ‘Morning in America’. Despite having an AM talk show, Bennett is sometimes not completely irrational, yet there he was the second morning after the shutdown, saying: ‘This is good. This is unity for the party.’ Did he see this ? I’m long past the point where I will ever vote for another Republican, but still I think having such a weak party is bad for the two-party system. (Which, when I come into power, will be done away with, of course.)

I guess this guy did not see that poll, either. But he’s probably not the type to give a shit.

Some people have better things to do, I guess.

In this morning’s paper, instead of my letter to the editor, was this quote, from Richard Layne, who is about to embark on a three-year quest to hike the Continental Divide across Montana on snowshoes.

‘Before David, before Solomon, even before Abraham, there was snowfall on the Continental Divide and the horrific conditions I get to see when I go out. I get to see what was here 10,000 years ago. That means more to me than anything else.’

Anyway, here’s a picture of a baby climbing a mountain:

Vogue la galère.

Sitting at work all day I look directly at the summer’s to-do list, and see a long list of things that I swore I would do this summer but as of today are left undone. What happened to my goal to ski the Salamander Glacier? What about the plan to bike to Saskatchewan? Or do 1,000 push-ups in an hour (the second consecutive summer I’ve failed on this goal)? Visit the Crazy Mountains? Paddle the Bull River? Read Fugitive Days? Become a drummer in a punk band? Plan a beach holiday to Ghana? WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING?

(Leaving the truck on Fleecer Ridge.)

Miles biked (since June 1): 1,326
Miles hiked: 153
Nights camped: 29
Bagels consumed at breakfast while camping: 37
“Mandatory Watercraft Inspection Checkpoint” stops: 15
Times chased down by DWR officer for running an aforementioned checkpoint: 1
Lakes kayaked: 9
Mountains climbed: 8
Bald eagles sighted: 14

Apparently I’ve been spending a lot of time idling at “Mandatory Watercraft Inspection Checkpoint” stops, which for someone with a kayak are about as annoying as border checkpoints. I think I went through that one at Clearwater Junction eight times. It was probably on the eighth time, then, that I said – with Laura’s silent though implicit blessing – Oh screw this!, and did not stop, only to look in my rearview mirror 100 yards later and see a wildlife officer (yes they have such things here) gaining on me, fast, with lights flashing. Well, I told him the baby had just fallen asleep, which he seemed to buy.

As the French say, “Keep on rowing”.

(View from Fleecer)

Cannondale: the saga continues

So when this story finished last my poor dear 22-year old M1000 was laying in two distinct pieces and not what you would technically call in a state where it could logically be “ridden”. So in September I put it up on Craigslist, asking $100, and made clear that though the picture in the ad showed a bike that looked perfectly decent, if not pretty, the reality was somewhat different. I had a number of interested parties call who apparently looked hard at the picture and ignored the witty yet honest the sales copy. Finally, a college kid wearing a shirt that said “I is Idaho” offered me $80 for it. I declined and the next day took it to Hellgate Cyclery.

I’m not sure where I got the idea that it would be fun to ride a single-speed bike, but converting the Cannondale to a single speed had some plusses on its side: (a) since the front derailleur was seized up and the shifting barely worked to begin with, not having no gears to shift none at all would seem to be a fine solution to the problem, and (b) the bike was 24.5 pounds to begin with, so shedding some superfluous shifting thingies and assorted whatnots should make it even lighter, and (c) all the cool kids are riding single speed bikes these days.

(Humbug Spires on a wet Sunday)

Hellgate charged me $133 for the work, which included the conversion kit, labor, new brake pads, and a full tune up. It occurred to me as I was handing over the Visa card that $133 (conversion price) + $80 (high bid from “I is Idaho”) = $213, or about $87 less than you can get a hip-looking-though-heavy-made-in-China single speed replete with back-pedal brakes and a cool name (one bike is actually called – this is so rad! – “Torker”). Unfortunately, because of the Cannondale’s dropout I could not get the coveted back-pedal brakes. Anyway, at that point it was basically too late to call back “I is Idaho” and accept the offer. I took the new/ancient Cannondale home and biked around the block. MIND = BLOWN! Well, not really, but it’s pretty fun anyway. And it now weighs 22.5 pounds.

(Rainbow Pass, Pintler Mountains)

Mountain Hardware: case closed!

When I left this story off last my (well, our) poor dear Mountain Hardware two-person tent that was dragged all over Australia had been sent back to the manufacturer with what even I would admit was a dubious warranty claim. Since this is America and all I expected that not only would the warranty claim be denied but that I would be sued, too. Imagine my surprise, then, when less than week later I got a personal phone call from Mountain Hardware Central telling me that while they wanted to replace my broken poles they could not since that tent was years out of production, and since the tents were out of production they could not give me a replacement tent, and because of those two factors I could have the equivalent value of the tent in company credit. I believe his actual words were “Take a look at our web site and see what you want. Just try to keep it less than about $250.” I did, and four days later a spiffy new Mountain Hardware Drifter 2 tent was leaning against my front door. SCORE!

(Baby with his tummy hanging out, Yaak River)

Triple J? How about Zimnet?

I listen to Internet radio at work (ooops – was I supposed to admit that?) and for a long time listened to Australia’s Triple J. Recently I switched to Zimnet Radio, from Harare. The DJs are so chipper (well it sounds chipper, although they mostly speak in Shona so I have no clue what they are saying really) I half wonder if Mugabe is holding a pistol to their heads while they make announcements. I spent a bit of time in Zimbabwe in the 1990s and it’s hard to reconcile the happy country of then with the trainwreck of a country today. (Mugabe was in power when I was there, too, but either he was not as ghoulish as he is today or he was just as ghoulish then but no one cared.) Anyway, Zimbabwean pop music today is basically unchanged from when I visited the country in the 1990s, and so listening to this station brings back a lot of memories of bouncy bus rides and late-night bar scenes.

Anyway, here’s a video of one of the best musicians in the country (although it is clearly one of the worst music videos of all time).

(Humbug Spires Wilderness Study Area)

While I’m partial to the lilting melodies of Zimbabwe, to me the Congo-Zaireans will always be the kings of kwassa-kwassa. Here is one of the masters, though things really don’t make sense until about 10 minutes in (and again, ignore the bizarre video itself).

Speaking of Africa, here’s a wonderful video showing some of the great, important work the NRA is doing to rid Botswana of elephants.

(This NRA moment was brought to you by a beer can hidden in a log. Nice work guys!)

Deep in the outYaak.

The spectacular Yaak River.

Spar Lake -- never would have known about it had Tabitha and Thomas not recommended it.

Cedar forest in the Yaak.

Lunch time!

Kilbrennan Lake -- another recommendation.

I swear, most of the trash in America is associated with Bud Light. You never see a can of Cold Smoke tossed onto a highway shoulder.

Fall in the morning air. And a bit of haze.

"Yaak", I believe, means arrowhead. Just another valley 3.5 hours from home.