Missouri River Near Cascade

The color brown dominated my other trips to the Idaho and Montana prairies. They were in summer, most of them, after the high heat of that season knocked the green of spring from seas of grass. It was all hot and brown and blue skies, those family visits. Spring still dominates the land on this trip.

On the way to Montana’s wheat country, I’m in Missoula, the state’s cosmo college town. It tends to collect bookstores, writers, and people willing to sell you a decent fancy coffee drink.  It also has some good bike stores. One rented me a road bike, which I’m riding along the Clark’s Fork River that runs high with the energy of Spring. A guy in a wet suit surfs on a small standing wave. He falls before I can get out my camera and fights the current taking him quickly downriver.

 Crossing a bumpy wooden pedestrian bridge, I pass through a shopping mall parking lot, under a freeway and out of urban Montana. After a mile of well tended suburban yards I’m briefly in farm land where fat cattle feed on rich green grass. The path then passes into a pine forest.

In summer our forests in Southeast Alaska thicken with devil’s club and berry brush making for a difficult passage. This Montana forest, formed along Rattlesnake Creek, is open and welcoming. The pines, with their thick furrowed trunks have spaced themselves apart like shy persons at a school reunion. Green grass grows tall and thick between the trees.

The roadside bike path ended in the farm land so I am riding on a narrow lightly used road. I stop where it comes closest to the creek to listen to a bird trying to be heard over the noisy stream. It rained yesterday and snowed in the surrounding mountains. It will rain again tomorrow. Today I stand under full sun enjoying the coolness of the day, a land still green with spring, and the song of my now favorite bird.