A Journey to the Interior of Canuckistan.

Of course it's open 24 hours. Because the Canadians like to par-tay!



You call this a ski lift? It's all they got at Pass Powderkeg, Alberta.



After a day of skiing, I hit the golf course.



Dusk patrol on the Continental Divide.



Looking toward the prairie.



Back at the lodge.



Lovely Wapiti Ski Club ski area, Elkford, BC




Parting shot: Fernie at dusk.



Meanwhile, back in Montuckey...

Montana is one of two states unfortunate enough to have a budget surplus. (The other? Nortrh Dakota). I say 'unfortunate' because the lack of a focusing effort has left our legislature with too much time on their hands. Following are some of the Montana House's major efforts to date:

-An effort to legalize hunting with hand-thrown spears.
-Elimination of incentives to create wind power.
-A repeal of laws prohibiting concealed weapons in banks, schools and churches.
-Support of the U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations.
-Official designation of the 'Code of the West' as the Code of Montana; the code includes such inspirational encouragements such as 'Ride for the brand.'
-Nullification of endangered species laws.
-Elimination of educational requirements for persons running for state schools superintendent.

None of this should come as too much of a suprise. In 15 years of covering officials ranging from vice presidential candidates to at-large irrigation district board members, it was state representatives which left me, ahem, least hopeful for the future. (The best, by the way, were city councilors, followed my mayors and elected county attorneys.) Our budget surplus was maintained by Democrats, who were voted out in November in favor of Republicans, who pledged to 'create jobs' and 'eliminate wasteful spending.'

Luckily, the Montana legislature meets only every other year, so we get a 22 month break beginning in April.

These Mountains

"That was one of the main things that kept me from thinking of deserting when I first got to the mountains. It's a terrible shock to be suddenly plopped into that environment, especially when you're not prepared for it physically or mentally."



"You can't see in the mountains. Everything is dark at first, until gradually you start seeing like a cat. You start to differentiate among the dark shapes to make out the lay of the land. But at first it all looked the same."



"I never did figure out if I loved the mountains or not. Because it hurt me to leave them. But I also hated them; I came to hate the mountains. But I loved them too--who knew what the [heck] was going on inside of me."



"I remembered the railroad in Leon, when I took the train for the first time, and the thought of the train also brought back my childhood; coming down from the mountains in the truck was a continual coming and going over my own past, with the velocity, the agility, of a monkey ... That was how you went from your childhood to the mountains, from the mountains to the city, and so on--in a rapid-fire juggling, a sort of mental trapeze act over little bits of your life--going farther and farther back in time."



"Before entering the mountains I had no assessment of either the jungle or the forest, no conception of what the mountain really meant. So I went to bed with that standard beside me; I kept it always with me; I folded it neatly and put it under my head like a pillow, and went to sleep."




"Before long you quit listening for the noise of cars, or of bicycles, or television or radios, or for the shouts of kids hawking newspapers or Chiclets. You quit listening for that typical city tone in the cries of the kids. You no longer see movie houses, or billboards for films. And you keep going; no electric light. And on. Then no more colors, nothing but green; no colors but what people are wearing, and even those colors are starting to fade. You end up color blind."



"That night in the safe house in Leon a flood of sensations overwhelmed me; one of the things I felt most intensely was the sense of the absurd. Distances in the mountains are measured in time: eight days, let's say, or seven days, or a month. It was a minimum of three hours to get from one place to the next, right?"



"My God, I thought, the dialectic has stopped! As if the whole year I had been away was just one second, see? I didn't know if I had really lived it, if I had really been in the mountains, if I had really lived all those days, one after the other, until finally I had come back here. Or if, in fact, I had never been anywhere at all."



quotes from "The Mountain is More than a Wide Expanse of Green" (1982) by Omar Cabezas.

VIVA LA NINA!

Last week I made it to the summit of Stuart Peak after getting skunked on the mountain the previous two attempts -- once when I came across distressingly fresh grizzly tracks and once when I simply ran out of daylight. Stuart is not the biggest mountain around but is visible from the entire Missoula Valley and is a 16-mile trek. The trail to the summit starts in a leafy neighborhood, is flat for 3 miles, straight up for 3 more, and annoyingly flat for the last 2.

(Snowghosts on Stuart, Dec. 3, 2010)



This time, I was up at 4, hit the snooze a few times (LAZY!), had two espressos, and made it to the trailhead by 6. I hiked for 2 hours by headlamp then enjoyed full sunlight -- and cold temperatures -- the rest of the way. I made it to the summit just before 2 and was back at the car by 4.

The summit ski was made easier this time both due to the predawn start and the snowpack down low. When I attemped the summit last year on Christmas Day the bottom 3 miles of trail had less than a half foot of snow, and even halfway up the mountain there was barely enough snow to turn. This year the trail had perfect coverage the entire way, and the summit had more than 5 feet.

(From the summit, north into the Rattelsnake and Mission.)



The difference? Last year was one of the strongest El Ninos on record, which left Montana high and dry and Montgomery nearly as snowy as Missoula. This year is one of the stronger La Ninas on record; it started snowing the first week of November, things picked up with a Thanksgiving week blizzard, then the temperature went to minus 12, and things have not really let up since.

There's been more good skiing already this year.

Looking down 3,500 vertical on Sheep Mountain on Saturday after a delightful predawn start.



On Thanksgiving Day, Paul Smotherman and I found some surprisingly nice turns on Lolo Pass, that old standby.



Two days later Laura and I made a very important stop here:

(The new Florence Coffee on Brooks.)



Which helped us get here:

(Madison River, Yellowstone National Park.)



More to come!

James Meriwether Patterson

Last Thursday I left work early, rode my bike to the airport, and flew to Atlanta.



Laura had gone on Monday and I was joining her a few days later for the funeral and wake for her dad, who died the previous Thursday. The funeral, held in Stone Mountain, was well attended; there were more than 450 by one count, and in any case the crowd overflowed into the balcony. Well attended, too, was the wake, held at Laura's sister's afterward in Dunwoody, where about 100 came.



Laura's mom had asked me earlier to write an obituary for Jimmy. I like writing obituaries and wrote as many as I could as a reproter. What I wrote was eventually changed quite bit by the family, but I was happy to do it anyway. Here's my version:

James Meriwether Patterson, an engineer, commercial real estate developer and two-term DeKalb County commissioner, died Nov. 4 due to complications from cancer. He was 73.

Frustrated with rising taxes and administrative roadblocks facing developers, Patterson ran for the commission as a Democrat, serving consecutive terms beginning in 1978. He lost a bid for a third seat, but not before working to shrink the county administration, keep taxes low, and add common sense principles to county government.

Patterson’s time as commissioner grew in part from his work as an engineer and developer in the city’s growing east side. On the commission he used his engineering knowledge extensively, especially as the county expanded municipal water and sewer lines.

Patterson was born July 24, 1937 in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. to Mary Elizabeth Montgomery and Howard Meriwether Patterson. He graduated from Decatur High School in 1956 and received an engineering degree from Auburn in 1960. He worked with his father at Patterson and Dewar, an engineering firm still in operation, and after obtaining his professional engineering certificate opened his own firm, Patterson Engineering. Often working with his brother Charlie, Patterson developed residential and commercial properties across DeKalb County.

From a young age, Patterson was a traveler. He hitchhiked to Kentucky when he was 12 and to Mexico when he was in college. A third generation Rotary member, he traveled to Russia on a goodwill trip in the 1980s. He began flying when he was 16 and sailed extensively in the Caribbean. He was active in Stone Mountain tennis leagues.

Patterson is survived by his wife of 43 years, Patricia O’Callaghan Patterson. He is also surived by his: brother Charles Patterson, of Stone Mountain; brother Howard Meriwether Patterson, of Destin, Fla.; sister Catherine Jane Patterson Bath, of Monroe; sons James O’Callaghan Patterson of Telluride, Colo. and William Lee Patterson, of Stone Mountain, and daughters Meri Patterson Miller of Dunwoody and Laura Patterson Schmerker of Missoula, Mont.

By happy coincidence, my parents were in the 'hood, so we had a two-family reunion during this sad event.



We arrived back in Missoula Sunday afternoon to rain and snow, ending the most exhausting 55-hour weekend of my life.

Not yet winter, barely still fall

Time to hike. I leave the house early, before Laura's up and the sun's awake. After a few hours, I get here:




It's sunny in Montana, but cloudy off over Idaho.



Off the alpine, there's not much color left.



Hiking in the Scapegoat, Laura practices her ... her ... something.



Nearby, Heart Lake and its exquisite color.



I got a new light for my bike. Makes the commute to class easier.



I start to like waking up earlier and earlier to hike. Here's Missoula from Blue Mountain.



And when it's rainy or snowy, there's always house projects. This is a glass door handle from secondhand and scavenged parts.



Meanwhile, Laura takes a spin on the new saw.



Snow all up and down the valley this morning.

Ah, it's autumn in Montana.

Ah, yes. It's fall in Montana. The leaves are changing, snow is dusting the high peaks, and grizzly bear are crossing U.S. Highway 93.



I guess in most of the world, they put up signs like this warning of congestion ahead, or construction. In Montana, they are used to announce the presence of megafauna.

Did I say snow in the mountains? Here's the Missions on Sept. 26.



We went to Glacier National Park a few weeks ago, but Logan Pass was closed. You could get little further than this:



So we went to Whitefish Lake instead. This picture has that real end-of-summer feeling.



Then we went up to Big Mountain Ski Area. A few years ago they changed the name to "Whitefish Mountain Resort," but as a friend said, "Only (idiotic people) call it Whitefish Mountain Resort."



We also went here, to the Clearwater Mountains. Never heard of them? Neither had I until about two weeks ago, and they're just 60 miles from downtown Missoula.





Nearby is this lovely Western redcedar forest.



Briefly, the Bitterroot burned:



Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Laura worked on pimping out the doghouse.



Together, we did the front porch. (Technically, yes, not a porch.)



And I got a new job, which we celebrated by opening the 15 year old champagne (lowercase c, yes) which the former tenants forgot in the basement. Good times. And my mom will recognize the old fondue set.



It's weird to not be a newspaper reporter anymore. But three weeks on the new job and I have yet to be lectured to about the Constitution. Good times.

Meanwhile, Missoula slumbers along.



On our many camping trips, Laura has perfected the art of morning camp coffee. Witness:



She's also worked on her lake jumping skills. No, she did not let go this time.



Meanwhile, I've perfected hiking with the plott hound. Not as easy as it sounds.



We're neck deep in the orange-and-tan time of year.



Storm's coming!