In Ennis in the morning I sat in the van at the town park
and read the Bozeman newspaper. Here are
a few items from the “Police Reports” section:
* “’Some kind of animal’ got into a North Fifth Ave
apartment and was hiding under a sofa there around 1:15 a.m.”
* “A 5-year-old child playing with a phone called 911 and
told a dispatcher his name was ‘Toothless.’”
* “A man called 911 saying he believed his brother stole his
vehicle and wrecked it while he was away. It turned out his brother was playing
a joke on their mother.”
* “A woman who thought her mother’s dog had been stolen
while her mother was at church discovered the animal was with her
sister-in-law.”
* “Golfers at River Road golf course said a couple nearby was
arguing loudly around 5:15 p.m. The couple told a deputy ‘they had been yelling
at one another in a normal manner of working out their differences.’ The deputy
told them to ‘keep their disagreements quieter in the future.’” ….
I talked to Alix on the phone and we decided to meet in
Bozeman. She and Dustin had left Minnesota four days previous, on their own
summer road trip. They have three weeks and plan to go as far as San Francisco.
I drove north and east, mostly along the Madison River.
Besides the handsome mountains and lovely valleys, this portion of Montana is
notable for two features: the large number of vacation homes and the numerous
“fishing access” dirt roads and parking lots along all streams. Flyfishing has
apparently replaced cattle ranching as the basis for region’s settlement and
economy….
Rafts of white pelicans gathered on the Madison mid-stream,
dunking their huge beaks into the water, in competition with the anglers
standing in the shallows…. I passed a number of small white crosses, markers
Montana uses to indicate a spot where someone has died in a car accident (with
a cross for each fatality). Some of them are dressed up by family, like one
near Norris, festooned with plastic flowers, white angel statuary, a
personalized license plate reading “Jimbo,” and an 8x 10 framed photograph of a
teenage girl blowing a kiss….
I was listening to Moby-Dick
as I drove along, and just along this stretch the narrator came to chapter 42,
“The Whiteness of the Whale.’ A theme seemed to have emerged, with the pelicans
and crosses and whale, to hold the morning together, inside and outside the van.
Melville pondered the doubleness of white, how
it is at once the most meaning symbol
of spiritual things …. and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in
things the most appalling to mankind.
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless
voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the
thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the Milky Way? Or
is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible
absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for
these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide
landscape of snows—a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And
when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other
earthly hues—every stately or lovely emblazoning—the sweet tinges of sunset
skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly
cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent
in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature
absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the
charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the
mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of
light, forever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without
medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its
own blank tinge—pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a
leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and
coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind
at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of
all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery
hunt?
Which gives you something to think about as you drive along
looking at pelicans and especially at small crosses marking lonely spots where
people have died….
In Bozeman I hung out at the town’s big fancy library and at
nearby Lindley Park….
At the park, Alix and Dustin pulled up in their white SUV
and parked next to my white van, and she got out and we hugged for a longer
than usual time. Then Lula got out too, and she jumped about and whined and
peed while I petted her and assured her that it was all right….
We drove in tandem through the hot (more 90s today) and
congested town, stopped at a grocery store for supplies, then drove an hour
south into the mountains and into the narrow Gallatin Canyon. The Gallatin
River was busy with rafters and the ubiquitous anglers in their khaki outfits
and rubber waders.
We turned off for the Swan Creek campground and found an
open site, one of only two available. Alix and I had stayed at this same small
and pretty campground back in early June on the way out to Boise. And we’ve stayed
at Swan Creek on previous trips too. It’s a mile up a tiny, steep-sided canyon,
the thirteen sites spread out congenially among the trees and thick
underbrush. You can’t see the neighbors,
nor hear them over the noise of the stream….
Dustin tied Lula to a tree on a long lead and tossed her a
ball, which she wrestled about in the dirt. Alix showed me their purchases from
a thrift store in Livingstone—a colorful 80s sweater, and a shellaced portrait
of two kittens (white)—and we talked and talked about the events of our two
trips…. I had so much to tell, and so much I wanted to hear….
Alix broke out their two new fishing poles, but it took us
some time to get her reel into working order. And then after just one inept
cast in the small stream we dashed back to the site and hid the poles behind
the van. Alix wants to fish, thus the equipment, but they don’t have fishing
licenses yet. The campground host probably doesn’t enforce fishing regulations,
but it was his passing car that caused us to suddenly abandon our efforts….
Later Alix started a fire and cooked chicken and baked beans
for us. I cut up a tomato and an avocado and a loaf of bread. We sat up late by
the fire, and I was tired out but didn’t want to go to bed. I would only have their company for this one
night. But I finally took to the van, and they got in their tent with Lula,
where they watched the first twenty minutes of Legends of the Fall before they too gave in to sleep.
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