Me, in a familiar place (I think I posted from here a few years back). No, I'm not frowning. The Beneficiary told me to stop screwing around so she could get a good picture so I stuck my tongue out at her and the pixilation obscured it. Compared with other pictures of me, this is formal album-worthy.
In a first ever, a picture of the Beneficiary. She's taking a picture of a handy waterfall we ran across somewhere in Montana. Hard to believe we've been married for nearly 50 years...
Lunch and a swimming place. The water is so cold it almost burns, and the very fast current deeper than about waist-high will grab you and sling you toward the rapids downstream. Montana I think. Or Idaho.
The Blackfeet Tribe decided they were afraid of COVID, even though Montana has about the lowest rate in the country, and the Blackfeet have a last reported rate of ZERO, so they closed their borders, which means that all East entries to the park were closed. This resulted in all the west-side entrances (West Glacier and related towns) being asshole-deep in tourists and doing BOOMING business, because they can't just loop through the park and move on like they used to. So, they go in the west entrances, turn around, and go back out when they're done recreating, which means double the people on half the roadways. Meanwhile East Glacier and related towns (including Browning, the main stomping grounds of the Blackfeet) look like East Germany in 1955, with most of the businesses boarded up and what little is left in the same economic class as street stalls selling mud trinkets in Afghanistan.
Nice job, Blackfeet. Glad you stood up to that spineless bunch of turds in the National Park Service, 'cause NOW you have a big dick. Count one pointless coup that cost you millions.
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| Counting Coup Against The Evil National Park Service |
This may have a marginal impact on COVID, as all over the Western part of the state are giant wads of Blackfeet stuffed into their ratty family station-wagons and pickup trucks clomping around in herds in every spare space from Great Falls to Whitefish with nary a mask nor any concept of 6' distances in evidence with any of them. Oh, well, at least the Blackfeet Business Council can say they Did Something and will shortly be whining at the Feds for economic relief. Politics and politicians, after all, are irredeemably maggot-ridden shitbuckets in any society.
The scenery, however, continues to not give a crap: More trees, mountains, whatnot. Glacier Park, MT.
Spent some days out on the desert -- y'all may have seen some version of this recent picture -- can't remember if I posted any from previous runs or not. In the middle of this particular picture you can see a rock jutting out -- the picture flattens the perspective, but it's about a 150' drop to the valley floor, and another 150' or so down into the plain stretching out into the distance. The blue "hills" in the distance are Colorado mountains. That rock is where I stood and bayed with the coyotes once upon a time. (Click here for that story). The Beneficiary and I have decided to have our ashes mixed and scattered here for two reasons:
1. It's one of our favorite places in the world.
2. It requires traveling over 40 miles of frequently right-damned-sporty dirt road and a high-profile, probably 4X4 vehicle to get to it, which will annoy the bejesus out of whoever is stuck with doing it which will be worth a laugh.
The Beneficiary said she loves the place but just as an observation, no one will ever visit us there, which is probably true. But, I told her, a generation from now, two at the most, they wouldn't visit if we had a 30' monument downtown they could teleport to. The dead just aren't that important, and, really, we won't be there anyhow. We'll have a memorial stone at the family burying place which will have our GPS coordinates on it. I'd bet some pretty safe money that we'll have visitors as long as anyone with a smidgen of curiosity can read it.
Oh, I almost forgot -- saw this sign at an intersection in Polson, MT. I wanted to come back and buy a couple of 'em, but she won't let me. I think she's just being mean.
Overall, one of the better vacations, and I didn't even include the week we spent with grown kids and teenage and older grandkids swimming in freezing creeks in the Bridger-Teton Wilderness, playing with llamas in the moonlight on a back road (long story there), exploring old mining ghost towns, and laying in lawn chairs bundled in sleeping bags against a cold night in a big clearing long after midnight in High Wyoming forest and mountain country talking quietly about anything that came to anyone's mind and picking out the Iridium satellites streaking through the constellations in the huge sky...
I'm so relaxed right now that I may just go in Monday and drop my shit on the boss's desk and retire.
Naw. Two years to go...I can do this.
Awesome! Welcome back 🙂
ReplyDeleteThanks! Was nice to get into country where the only people around me were my tribe/family/group. No computer, and all I used motel room TVs for was extra storage space. When we were anywhere, some little greasy-spoon cafe or whatever, and the news came on, I'd leave. My phone was shut down to emergency contacts only.
ReplyDeleteAfter a time, there were middle-of-the-night realizations that the only thing we could hear was the thundering small natural sounds and breathing silence of the forest -- or desert, depending on the night. Not a single yammering, whining bitch-fest mewling out of the fascist left or the totalitarian right, no Emergency News Alerts! that didn't take care of themselves without me giving a fuck. Two years to go, then retired and out of the city, and whichever bunch of dickheads are in charge of the mob that week can burn the fucking thing to the ground behind me for all I care. I've done my part, have now for more years than most have been alive, and it seems to have been for -- well not much, if anything.
(shrug) All I know is that I'll bet some really safe money that there will be a lot more silent days/nights then...
But for now, back to The Game. As if I knew how to do anything else.
Fantastic. Asbestos Ashes in a geocache. I really like the idea of GPS coordinates on a memorial stone. But I won't visit either. Wonderful country I'd like to see someday but my patience for cross-country adventure is on a diminishing trend.
ReplyDelete