Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This publication is free for now, but please consider clicking on the button at the bottom to become a paid subscriber to enjoy this along with Monday’s “Off The Shelf” feature about books and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.
Dear Friends,
I am writing this in advance of Friday, so by the time you read this I will be pretty much off the grid. A very longtime friend whom I haven’t seen in many years got a gig housesitting at a swanky place in the mountains and he invited me up for a little retreat. I suddenly realized that I really need it. I definitely feel a little bit dry when it comes to scrounging up newsletter content. Doom-scrolling through Twitter looking for something interesting certainly isn’t producing anything.
I’ll take my guitar and maybe work on a song I’ve got cooking, and my friend will probably sketch and paint—he’s an artist. And I’m sure we’ll get all caught up on the last twenty years over good food and beverages. As I get older I realize that there is no blessing quite like long friendships. The brother that sticks is to be prized.
It may or may not interest you, but let me tell you a bit about the mountains. The Absaroka-Beartooth range in south central Montana is a vanguard of the Rockies and a gateway to Yellowstone National Park. It hosts a lot of 12,000+ peaks, and the designated wilderness area is vast—just shy of one million acres. It looks like this:
Right now you won’t find any of those flowers because everything it is still completely snow-capped. Hopefully our temperatures will rise a bit more gradually than last year.
That is because last year we had a 500-year flood event. The snow just decided to melt all at once and smash down through the waterways like we’ve never seen. The town of Red Lodge had cabins washing down Main Street. In Stillwater County, the sole road leading to the Stillwater Mine—the only palladium mine in North America—completely washed out. I haven’t been up there in a while, but I am pretty sure that road is still closed. The mine quickly made a makeshift access because they had to, but the main highway isn’t repaired yet.
My good friends in Absarokee watched their entire yard—I mean, acres—vanish right before their eyes. The river got ten feet from their house before it finally subsided. It was as close a call as you can imagine. Other neighbors were not so fortunate.
So, yes. Here in Montana we like that we don’t get hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, or tarantulas. But we do get the occasional devastating flood and always a lot of forest fires. Oh, and since I’m really not trying to sell you on moving here, winter is really cold and we have Grizzly bears.
I have a theory about the bears that I’ve been mulling over. Remember that palladium mine I mentioned? Well, just past the mine is a very popular campground and trailhead. You can hike a trail up out of there and basically disappear into the entirety of that sprawling million acres. It is one of the most popular places to access the mountains. The trails get a lot of human traffic during the summer months with backpackers and day hikers and fishermen. Because of that traffic and the constant human presence, it has been very rare (but not unheard of) to have Grizzly sightings along those trails. The bears pretty much give the area a wide berth. Here’s what I wonder. A year and a half or more is a long time for there to be almost no human presence in that area. Long enough for bears to change their habit patterns, I suspect. When that road gets repaired and people start flooding back in to that access, I wonder if we are going to have an uptick in bear sightings and/or attacks? I will not be surprised, and I think I’ll let some other people try it out first.
One of my life’s regrets is that this wilderness is basically in my backyard, but I have utilized it so little. Last year you’ll recall that I tried to remedy that to an extent by taking my daughter on a backpacking trip. I was so out of shape I am surprised I survived. It was so much fun, but really it does take a lot of equipment and work and time. Nevertheless, I will endeavor to do more exploring—it’s so big you can never run out of places to explore.
The mountains themselves can also kill you, even without the Grizzlies. It is hard to describe to the uninitiated just how severe the weather can be at those altitudes. On our trip last summer, my daughter and I got to our lake at 9,000 feet just as a storm was popping up out of nowhere. We got the tent set up just in time for a barrage of violent hail and lightning.
When my oldest brother was 19 or maybe 20 he and a West Point buddy took a summer backpacking trip up on the Silver Run Plateau and got caught in a massive snowstorm. Stumbling through a massive rock field in zero visibility, they somehow lost their tent and a really nice spotting scope off of one of their backpacks. Being resilient military men, they survived (if I recall correctly) by sharing a sleeping bag in a narrow crevice between two rocks. In the morning, the sun was shining on a sea of snow, and they were far above the clouds. And… they were mere yards from a 1,000 foot cliff. Yeah, that one on the south side of Silver Run Plateau that you can see from the Beartooth Highway lookout. Yikes. God preserved them.
The next summer my brother and I went back, bushwhacking our way without a trail—just old fashioned “land nav.” I can’t describe to you just how vast these mountains are. The rock field they had stumbled around in was just massive. I went up near Silver Run peak (12k) and watched him disappear like a little speck to search for his tent and scope. And would you believe it? He found them. Miraculously. That ended up being a 40-miler for us, and it’s full of great memories. “Skiing” without skis down Sundance Pass, from thigh-high snow all the way down to lush grass, a gurgling creek, and wildflowers at the bottom.
I don’t think I have a point in telling you all this. Except maybe this: get offline for a while and go and see the wonders God has made. You may not have a wilderness like mine, but there is beauty and wonder everywhere. Go find it.
And take a friend.
Thanks for reading The Square Inch Newsletter. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to receive all three of my weekly offerings. Have a wonderful weekend!
Forty-plus years ago I went on two week-long backpack trips with friends—one into the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, and one into the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. Those two trips still stand out in my memory more than a score of more recent trips driving down various interstate highways.
I dunno how any commentator, except maybe Kevin Williamson, could churn out readable content several times per week, if it's politics they're drawing on. It's such dreck. You have to be committed. I'd think it helps to leaven it with arts and culture pieces, or go insane.
Enjoy the hills. Hope they've got the roads around Gardner river fixed by the time I get back up to Yellowstone.