So many choices, so little time.
Picking a hiking adventure in Northwest Montana is difficult. Its kind of like opening a box of chocolates… which one to choose? Do I go for the slow eating sticky middle one or the hard, solid chocolate? Understand, we are not going for the peak bagging, alpine, roped up experience but for someplace we can bring the dog, not see too many, if any, people, and have a great view at the end. This time we decided to try Firefighter Mountain overlooking Hungry Horse Reservoir.

​There was a movie with Antonio Banderas called The 13th Warrior. In the movie, Antonio is an exiled Arab warrior who, through twists of fate, and the imagination of the writer, finds himself in the land of the Vikings fighting a mythical beast that slinks through the hills out of the fog. It looked similar here in NW Montana this week. 

There was a far-off gunshot. Bang. It came from well down the valley where people go to shoot on weekends. Hercules dug his paws into the snow. He wasn’t moving.

We have a long driveway. It winds its way up a hill to where we decided to build the house. Winter snow allows you to see who has passed along as they leave their footprints in the snow. Yesterday there were turkey feathers all over the road and fox tracks in the snow. What drama unfolded the night before?

Usually on Friday’s I volunteer at Habitat for Humanity. It’s a good cause, there’s a fun group of mostly retired guys that I work with and, building stuff is fun. Today, though, it was cancelled, too cold.  Now what? Instead, I went for a walk way back into the woods.

It gets cold in Montana so when we built the house, we had a big woodstove installed. Of course, all that “free” heat requires wood be cut, split and stacked. As I set each piece down and swung my axe, I realized things haven’t changed much since the 1970s.

With Glacier National Park and thousands of other peaks and hiking trails surrounding the area, the Flathead Valley sees a hoard of visitors each summer. Some come prepared for mountains and others, well let’s just say this isn’t Central Park.

The person calling in the report to the 911 Center said that she heard, what she thought, was a whistle being blown over and over high up the trail to Jewel Basin in the Swan Mountains. The 911 Center dispatched Search and Rescue.

Seeking to expand our hiking horizons and see more of Montana, we spent the weekend at a campground near Seeley Lake and hiked to Morrell Falls. I was loaded for bear but… ran into something else.

I saw a couple of robins the other day. This, by itself, probably isn’t worthy of a blog but, along with the robins come other creatures. Some great, some small and some with very long claws.