Trying to find the right lock, then the right key, then put everything back together again when you were done-it wasn’t easy.
More chunks of chain, and another lock… some of these could have 10 or more locks on them. Since multiple parties needed to enter the gate on their own, the chain would be in numerous chunks, held together by one lock. Just a big steel gate that would swing open, but the interesting part for me was the chain. If you’ve never seen a gate like this, it’s something. We’d drive through, the gate would be closed and locked, and we’d drive on. Dad would pull up near the gate, mom would get out, and she’d unlock the gate and open it. At each one, I seem to remember the same pattern being repeated. I seem to remember three gates, but there may have been more. But not just dirt roads – as is commonplace in this part of the country, you have to drive across other people’s land to get to yours, so you must go through multiple gates. Once you’ve gotten through the section of highway, I recall what felt like a never-ending expanse of rutted dirt roads. Of course in the spring there’s more green – but I don’t remember ever going to the cabin site in winter (too hard to get to through unplowed snow, and nothing to do when you got there), or spring (when the river would be too high and angry for fishing or wading). Dried grass, with exposed rock here and there. In general, the colors around you are limited to shades of tan and brown. Small, meandering rivers or creeks (“cricks”) cut through the prairie, often disappearing from sight into the ruts they’ve cut, many of them reduced to a trickle or bone dry in the heat of summer once the snow melt is gone. But in this part of Montana, you’re more likely to see cattle (or seemingly empty ranch land set on gently rolling plains), and an antelope or three. The best part of this section of Montana is that Mountains are off in the distance for your viewing enjoyment-much like they are to the east and west in Seattle where I live today. Like most trips in Montana, it starts with a fair bit of two-lane highway – as I recall, all through prairie. Bear in mind as you’re taking this journey with me, that I haven’t been to the cabin site in at least 30 years, so we’re driving through my memory, not a trip I took recently. But the journey felt like forever, and honestly got slower the closer you got. I can’t imagine, looking back, that the site was more than 60 miles away from our house. It was a lump of property located on a small river ( “ river” being used rather liberally) in the middle of Montana. Some time in the early 1980’s, my parents bought what we always referred to as “the cabin site”. I didn’t appreciate the meditative properties of fly fishing until adulthood until I realized what a difference it had made in the lives of my family. Growing up there, I can’t probably ever describe all the journeys we took – camping, hiking, skiing, fishing… well, I didn’t fish. I grew up in Great Falls, which is clearly prairie-but I often say it’s “mountain adjacent”. The reality is that there’s actually more of Montana that is considered prairie than mountains. But there are two distinct sides to Montana: the mountains, and the plains. If you’ve never lived in Montana, or visited multiple parts of it, you probably think of it as all mountains, all trees, or both. When we would go visit the river, I don’t ever remember asking my parents “ Are we there yet?” It was obvious when you were there-because everything changed.
Some have gone and some remain” “In My Life” – The Beatles
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