A Voyage of Discovery: Betsy and Bubba on the Road

Well, Big Sky is the generic name for the Montana landscape, and appropriately so. It is so open and so large. By day, what seems to be a million miles of blue stretch out before my eyes. By night, I see stars I could never have imagined, and have never seen so vividly even in the middle of the Atlantic with no lights for a thousand miles in any direction. The dry dry air certainly plays a part in the wonderful clarity of the air. So does the fact that we’re not downwind of a couple thousand miles of factories emitting pollutants. That yellow haze that so often mars the New England skyscape is certainly nowhere to be seen in my immediate area.

But I’m also working in Big Sky. I started work about a month ago as a reservations person at Lone Mountain Ranch, a guest ranch in Big Sky. Homesteaded in the nineteenth century, the ranch began to be developed as a guest destination in the 20s. Not much happened in Big Sky until a partnership involving Chet Huntley began a ski resort development in the 60s, and acquired massive amounts of land, including the ranch. They began the development of the Big Sky ski resort, one of the largest on the continent. With it, of course came Mondo Condo. And now, Big Sky is becoming the home of the private enclaves: super inflated real estate values, a private club called the Yellowstone Club, with astronomic initiation fees and even bigger prices to own a home in the “club”.

In the 1970s, the Huntley group sould off the ranch to the Schaap family, who had previously run a motel and ski touring business in West Yellowstone. They developed the ranch into a first class low key resort. Some of their guests, returning year after year, have done so for 10, 15 18, 20 years or more. In the winter, more than 80 kilometers of cross country ski trails are groomed. They run a marvelous sleighride dinner, taking guests by horse drawn sleigh to a kerosene lantern-lit cabin, where a prime rib dinner is served up, along with entertainment by one of three different Montana cowboy singers.

Guests are housed in charming simple cabins with a western motif. There are a couple of newer lodge type buildings, but the majority of folks want to be in the cozy little cabins. There’s an inviting saloon and dining room, and a great outdoor shop.

In the summer, they offer, in addition to the usual fare of riding, an Orvis fishing program, and a terrific naturalist program, with guided hikes of the ranch, the Gallatin National Forst and Yellowstone.

We are between seasons now, and the winter skiing guests begin to arrive in two weeks. So we’re engaged in the bustle of getting things going.

I leave the house in the morning before the sun is up.I confess that I’m already counting the days til the solstice, in anticipation of the days getting longer. I drive about ten miles down a back road from the house to get out to Montana Highway 191, often known as the highway of death. Of course, this is not the road we usually think of as a highway. It’s two lanes, and winds its sinuous way through a deep canyon, alongside the Gallatin River, which crosses under the road three times in the 20 or so miles. There is a fair amount of traffic, largely due to the pace of development in Big Sky; contractors, supplies, etc. Like so many communities, its cost of living does not permit most workers to live there, unless their employers provide housing. Everyone’s in a hurry to get to work or get home, and there have been about 9 fatalities on this thirty mile stretch in 2006.

As I am getting to the canyon, the day is lightening, but it will be some time before the sun actually makes it over the hills and lights the canyon. The last three days, the morning temperatures have been below zero (yes, fahrenheit, not centigrade), and there has been what I still call sea smoke rising off the river. The rocks in the river are covered with snow, and ice is starting to extend out from them.

The canyon opens up as we get about six miles north of Big Sky. I turn west off the Highway, and often encounter mountain sheep close to the intersection. They come down a pretty sheer hill to lick at the road salt. The road weaves through the first of several series of condos and retail centers, but I very shortly get the stunning view of Lone Peak.

We had a bit of an Indian summer last week. The ski areas were originally going to open Thanksgiving Day. But that snow you saw from Thanksgiving Day in Bozeman-well, it missed the mountains entirely. I drove home Monday in a blinding storm, and, as you can see, we’ve started to get some snow in the hills. By the way, people ski down that peak. I will not be one of those people.

I look out my office windown and have a pretty lovely view as well. Notwithstanding the Mondo Condo style of Big Sky, the ranch is tucked into a little valley, and the development is invisible unless you climb up into the hills. I did enough walking right after I got there to see the less appealing views; now I’m trying to confine myself to the appealing ones. They have snowmaking equipment, and, while we wait for Nature’s Own, they are making snow so that the horse drawn sleigh can actually be on the snow for the first sleighride dinner on the 2nd. I’ll start bringing the snowshoes to work next week and snowshoeing during my lunch break. They offer free ski instruction to employees. My cross country skiing is all self-taught or improvised. I’m told, by folks who’d taken lessons after years of backyard skiing, that it will open up a new world for me, so I’ll take advantage of this opportunity ASAP.

Maybelline has her winter coat on, since Sunday when they promised a dip in the temperature below zero. The high for today was about 12 and it s not expected to be quite that tropical tomorrow. Even Bubba is finding it too cold to stay out for too long, and high winds are forecast for the morrow. But a warming trend is in the offing, with temperatures as high as 25 by Sunday.

I know, I know, I should have written sooner…the unaddressed blog feels a little like a neglected older relative. A day like Thanksgiving brings out in me the need to connect with all of you, and to send you individual notes over the next few weeks. The computer is a wonderful expedient for staying in touch, but it’s sufficiently impersonal to not allow me to feel connected.

So, greetings, on this Thanksgiving Day, 2006, from sunny Montana, from Bubba and me.

I had a whirlwind trip back to New England in mid October. Welcomed at the airport by my dear friend, Maggie, who was willing to stay up late and come to Green at some outrageous hour when my flight was more than two hours late. I spent a couple of days in the barn at our old home, sorting through memories and deciding what would actually come with me. I have enjoyed the emancipation from possessions during the ten months in the van, and was torn when faced with all the many things I have accumulated over the years: did I want them? Did I need them? Do I still need to enjoy the satisfaction of doing without them and thus making some sort of a statement-for me, no one else was listening? I tried to take a relatively minimalist approach, but the stuff is all still there waiting for me. It’s really only the books and pictures that are calling my name.

I drove up to Vermont and spent some time with Benjamin, who seems totally happy in his environment at Middlebury. I had an opportunity to spend a little time with his friends, who are bright, down to earth, funny and just nice people. I’m thrilled to see him independent and happy with the choices he has made. He is looking into spending a semester in France next year, studying at the Universite de Poitiers. I’m wildly impressed that he has the facility in French to undertake that.

I visited with my brother and his wife on my way to Middlebury, and spent an hour or so having coffee and chatting with my father’s sister, my aunt Pearl, on the way back. I’ve never gone to great lengths to stay connected, and my efforts, when I made them, were usually much resented by some of the members of my immediate family. The knowledge of the great distance I’m placing between myself and the familiar seems to make me need those connections in a way I’ve never seen.

Back to Newport, and a whirlwind of saying hi and bye, a walk on the trails at the Sanctuary, a ride in the woods in Tiverton, and back on the plane to Jackson, Wyoming. I returned to a snowy evening and morning, and headed back up to Bozeman.

Sarah came out to join me on October 21 and I spent a week exploring the area with her. Of course, much of my agenda with both the kids is about enchanting them with the area, with the hope/belief that they would love living out here. I think that’s true, Bozeman is a youthful, active, unstressful community, and many of the things that each of them enjoys, they will find here. But it’s probably about my selfish desire to have my cake and eat it. I’ve wanted for years to be here, but it’s often painful and lonely without the people I love here, even though it has many moments of pleasure. I’d love to be closer to them. That hasn’t existed since they went off to college, but I preserved the illusion of it while I was in familiar territory.

Sarah and I spent two heavenly days at Chico Hot Springs, a wonderful little hotel about twenty-five miles north of Gardiner, MT and Yellowstone National Park. Chico almost looks more like a small New England resort than a western one, neat clapboard buildings painted white, although they do have the traditional log guest cabins. It’s comfortable and informal. We celebrated Sarah’s birthday with an exquisite dinner, followed by a relaxing evening in the pools. The big pool, open to the sky, is only about 96 degrees. Next to it, and covered by a roof but still open to the air is the warmer “therapeutic “pool- well, it was all therapy for me, the bath lover in withdrawal. The warm pool was about 110. The air was about 35. Ahhhhh-priceless. Our second day there, we indulged in massages, and Andra Spurr joined us for dinner and a soak. Andra tells me about the pocket vacation- we’ll leave Bozeman early in the morning, go to Chico’s $8.95 all you can eat breakfast, soak in the pools, and be back in Bozeman by 2PM. I could be a regular!

Sarah had an opportunity to visit the Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center in Gardiner, where I volunteered an afternoon a week during the summer. She did some research on her coyotes, found a wealth of information in this incredible resource. We drove into the park and went for a hike in the hills above Mammoth Hot Springs, tracked some coyotes, watched a herd of elk go up the hill above us, and saw not a soul on the trail. It was lovely.

Unexpectedly, things came together and on November 3, I became a homeowner. I wasn’t planning to move right in, but things continued to be unexpected. So here I am at the Rancho del Eiris. The house was built in 1988. The folks who built it either had an odd sense of humor or an odd sense of design. The good news is that it’s structurally sound. The house is in some very flat bottom land, all old hay fields as far as I can gather. It’s a fairly high water table and the folks who built it wanted a full basement. So they built the basement at ground level, and then went up, mounding the earth around the basement. In a perfectly flat plain, there stands Bubba Mountain.

Hmmm, not a lot to recommend it from a design standpoint, huh? This is the north side of the house and the entrance to the illegal apartment in the basement. I inherited two tenants with the house. One is a young guy who is a farrier and hunt outfitter, he’s currently in Alaska for a few weeks, and is moving down to Cody, WY after Christmas. He has the two mules and two horses in the snowy Thanksgiving scene at the top of the page. The other is the sister of the girl who sold me the house. She has a sweet dog, reminiscent of Honey, whom she leaves outside about 18 hours a day regardless of weather, and who has bonded with Bubba and me. She is looking for a place with a friend, and is having problems finding a place that will take dogs. I have offered the obvious solution to that particular problem: You go, the dog stays.

The couple selling the house were trying to market it as a three bedroom house. Unfortunately a couple of those bedrooms are in the basement and have those little teensy-tinsy windows at the top of the foundation. Not a huge draw for the average family.

Here’s the south side of the house. Marginally better. But, as you can gather, the view is from Maybelline’s soon to be new home. And the window on the right is the “Master Bedroom” (for a rather small master, sized 8x10), so I will look out my bedroom window and see the charming Ms. May.

The wonderful part is that I have seven acres. About four are in pasture, fenced , grassy, ready for Ms. May and a saner companion that I hope to find in the spring. There are apparently some interesting features in the pastures. My neighbor tells me that there is a large hole that once contained the front half of an airplane fuselage, and may still, she wasn’t sure. Immediately to the south of the house, and next to the little pole structure that will be May’s home, is an area about 150x250 that the owners had cleared for an arena; they both ride rodeo. Unfortunately, they cleared it, and then did nothing else, so it is now home to 3/4 acre of noxious weeks. These are a BIG deal around here, so much so that you are required, in some of these counties, to have certified weed-free hay before you can take your stock into the National Forests. I’ve been to the Ag. Extension Office to pick up materials that will let me identify them, but am mostly identifying them now by the burrs in Bubba’s coat. My spraying is cut out for me in the spring, fortunately, one of my favorite jobs in the Sanctuary was spraying the poison ivy, so I’m looking forward to this new task.

One of the highlights of the place is the irrigation ditch that runs between the house and the road. Well’, they call it a ditch, I call it a creek.

Needless to say, Bubba is thrilled.

My stuff arrived a few days before I closed.We had momentary drama, as I asked the realtor to convince the sellers that I could move the stuff in so as not to have to move it again. They were reluctant. It appears that they had been given a rather inflated idea of what the house was worth initially well in excess of $150,000 over what I paid according to my neighbors. They had bought a place about 60 miles southwest of here, and were heavily in debt and under the gun. The realtor recommended, given the condition of the market nationally, that they take my offer and run. They did but weren’t happy about it, and their unhappiness is focused on me as the problem, he tells me. They finally agreed, provided all funds were held in the escrow account of the Title company. So my stuff got into the house, under the watchful eye of the realtor, as I was at work. The boys did not unload the plywood on which my mattress would sit, so there followed another couple of weeks on an air mattress on the floor until I could hie myself to Home Depot and get the job done. And one of the boxes, containing the cushions that would go back in the RoadTrek once I brought my futon mattress into my new digs, also contained some very interesting lacy iridescent blue thong underwear. I’ve changed my lifestyle but not that much. I suspect someone had temporarily unpacked some of my stuff en route… But the rest is here. I’m only wishing for a couple of things, most notably a painting of Hanging Rock that the Board at the Norman Bird Sanctuary gave me when I left my position there, one of the images that is in my heart and that I’d love to have on my walls. I’ll see if the kids can bring it out.

So the pictures are on the walls, the rugs on the floors, the mattress actually on the bed, and I’m starting to feel at home. More to the point, the windows, all of which will need to be replaced, are plasticked, wonderful stuff (I did pack the hair dryer for this important task!), the wood stove should be installed this week, and about half a cord is so far stacked on the porch, with the rest to be done this holiday weekend. I’ll shovel snow, continue to figure out which kitchen cabinet should hold what, and get ready for the holidays with a playing of Benj’s cd of Dominic the Christmas Donkey (followed by the Hamster dance, always a favorite in our house).

Oh, by the way, even before my inherited tenants move on at the end of the year, there is at least one guest room available. You may have to sleep on the air mattress, but I can vouch for it, the only hard part, for those of us whose joints are starting to age, is getting up off the mattress from the floor. I’m working on a real bed before the kids come for their visits in a month.

Well, we’re ready for this holiday. Bubba’s out hunting for our turkey.

Enjoy your turkeys and embrace your loved ones, and join me in a prayer for peace in the face of this horrific worldwide violence in which our country has so much responsibility. You are all in my heart, and I’ll look forward to your saddling up and riding out to the Rancho.