MONTANA DREAMING
It has been said that Montana is less of a destination and more of a state of mind, less of an actual place and more of an idea; sort of an amorphous collection of hopes and dreams composed of bits and pieces of fact, myth, and outright lies.
In 1970 I had never set foot in Montana, and my only connection with the place was through the eyes, lenses, and words of others. Having read the accounts of writers in such magazines as Sports Afield, Field and Stream and Outdoor Life my personal image of Montana was half truth and half legend. Montana was a place of wide open spaces, snow-capped mountains, and clear running streams. Big game wandered at will, and the crystal clear streams were filled with trout. It was the American Serengeti where elk, moose, antelope, and mule deer roamed. It was a place where cowboys still herded cattle across the endless plains; a paradise just waiting to be explored.
In 1971 I visited Montana for the first time on a whirlwind fishing trip with two other guys, each with their own personal vision of Montana. It was September, it was cold, the elk were bugling in Yellowstone National Park, and the trout were on the prowl. We fished Baetis to rising trout on Henry’s Fork, cast Trico imitations to gulpers on Hebgen Lake, slung Bitch-Creek Nymphs on the Madison, and spent a day in heaven on Nelson’s Spring Creek during the heaviest hatch of mayflies I had ever experienced. Despite my unrealistic expectations of Montana before I made that trip somehow Montana exceeded them.
Nearly 40 years have elapsed since the initial trip and I have been a resident of Montana for 36 years now. I arrived in Montana with a station wagon pulling a U-Haul trailer in January 1974, settled down in Livingston, and I have been there ever since. Except for brief sojourns to warmer climes during the winter months I have spent more than half my life there and have no intention of leaving anytime soon. However, the reality that is Montana has changed my understanding of what Montana really is all about.
The late Paul Harvey was fond of stating, “You can run but you can’t hide!” When I moved to Montana I soon came to realize that what made Montana “the last best place” was its isolation. In the early 70’s Montana was a long way from just about every place. The airports, even in the larger cities, offered only limited service. I remember arriving at the airport in Billings, Montana at 10:00 o’clock at night only to discover that it was closed! I had never been to an airport that closed, but in Billings [in the early 70’s] closed the terminal after the last flight arrived for the day. While I had planned on sleeping in the terminal until my flight left in the morning I had to find a motel for the night.
Much has changed in Montana in the last 40 years. My late wife and I used to drive down the Yellowstone valley in the evening and park on an overlook that allowed us to survey most of the valley. As darkness enveloped the valley you could count the number of lights that you could see on two hands. Most of the valley was totally encased in darkness once the sun disappeared behind the western horizon. If you park at that same spot today, as darkness descends, the valley comes alive with lights from Livingston to the north to Yankee Jim Canyon to the south. The lights flow down the valley floor and sweeps up the foothills; each light marking a new dwelling place that did not exist just a few years ago. Those lights mark a new reality, and the Montana that I knew just a few short years ago no longer exists.
Ted Leeson recently wrote a book entitled “Inventing Montana.” Part of his conclusion about Montana was that Montana is more of a state of mind than it is an actual place. To some extent I believe he is correct. Montana is that place that exists in our mind, a place where “the deer and the antelope play,” a place of uncluttered vistas, and where trout mostly die from old age without ever seeing an angler. While it’s possible to still find the ‘uncluttered vistas’ [think eastern Montana] trout that have never seen an angler are as scarce as hen’s teeth!
25 years ago if you found a couple cars at an access point along the Yellowstone it was crowded. Today you need to take a number just to launch your boat, and at the more popular access points if you don’t get there early you may not be able to find a place to park. I fished the Yellowstone during the winter during the 70’s and early 80’s. It was rare to find another angler on the river, especially a fly fisher. I had a canoe and I would float the river on warm days, and I never saw another boat during those years. Today there are more floaters on the river during the winter, especially on a sunny day, than you would have found during the summer season just a few years ago.
If you’re thinking that it’s possible to escape crowds on smaller streams think again. Flowing in from the north the Shields River joins the Yellowstone just east of Livingston. The Shields is a small freestone stream that is heavily dewatered for irrigation purposes, most of the river is less than 10 yards wide, and much of it runs through private lands. Parts of it can be floated with a canoe or pontoon boat, especially when the water is higher during runoff; but it is mostly a wading stream. Access is limited, unless you know the landowner, and for years the only people that fished the Shields were locals, mostly bait fishermen. Today, wherever the stream crosses the road, on any given day of the week you will find a car or two. During the summer many of these vehicles have out-of-state plates. “You can run but you can’t hide.”