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A Letter to my Friend






http://www.greatoutdoors.com/published/across-montanas-beartooths
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78HnNT689ac

The Beartooth Mountains are one of those places for me, kind of mystical and magical and always breathtaking.  Charles Kuralt called the Beartooth Highway the most beautiful drive in America, and my experience so far is that he is right.  My favorite drive starts in Soda Springs Idaho and follows back country roads to Jackson Wyoming, north into Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone, exiting Yellowstone’s northeast entrance.  I was lucky enough to be able to make that trip twice every summer while I was going to school, once on the way to Nevada, and once on the way back.  The highway gets up above the treeline onto the Beartooth Plateau and flattens out and you are driving on the top of the world on rocks that came from the basement of the world.  It crosses Chief Joseph’s Trail and you can detour south and follow the Chief Joseph Highway through Sunlight Basin and over Dead Indian Pass (another spectacular drive) or you can continue on to Red Lodge and the Beartooth Pass (or you can do a loop and hit both passes).

During my last summer in Jackson I got a puppy, he was half wolf and of course I named him Lobo.  He was my constant companion and he was with me on every one of those trips.  I remember stopping in Yellowstone so we could take a break and eat sandwiches (yes, I packed him his own sandwich) and thinking that he could be the only wolf in the park (that was before they reintroduced them).

Telling you about all of these things I have done and places I have been has been cathartic for me.  It reminds me of how lucky I have been.  It makes my heart ache to remember how much I loved living in Montana.  It is beautiful, most people would say that western Montana is the part to visit, but Billings was perfect.

Billings is right on the edge of the plains and the Beartooths are only 60 miles away.  The plains of Eastern Montana were home to the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, Arapaho and Absaroka (Crow)… Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Chief Gall.

I love the history of the area, I took a class called Indians of North America and I had to read a biography called “Two Leggings, the Making of a Crow Warrior”. I remember walking in the Pryor Mountains thinking that he had been there, that I was probably walking on the same path he had taken when traveling through Pryor Gap.

Billings is close to the Little Big Horn Monument and I have been there several times. I love the history of the place.  David beat Goliath and they got to hang on to their way of life for a little longer.  They had to have been terrified, and at the same time fierce and terrifying.

Thanks for letting me ramble on about these things that I love.
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