Weeks 44-46 - Whitehall

Well, more of the sedentary life. The Montana weather remained very pleasant, but smoke from the surrounding wildfires got worse. Nearby mountains were always hazy and the distant ones sometimes disappeared from view altogether. The sun would turn a dark red while still high in the sky, creating an eerie twilight. Sometimes the air smelled like a campfire, but mostly I guess my nose got used to it. Spending almost all my time outside, there wasn't much I could do about it, except to change my exercise program to be mainly stretching so as not to breathe hard. It was also a bit of a psychological adjustment to stay in one place for so long without a specific mission, but the more I slowed down, the more I realized it's exactly what I needed after nearly a year of being on the move and/or filling up my free time with projects like restoring Punkin.

On the Fourth of July, SE wanted to spend a day water-fasting and walking or sitting alone in nature on the land, and TB and I agreed to do the same by way of support. We started at seven in the morning by smudging with the smoke of sagebrush (which grows everywhere here), and then we took off in three different directions, each with a gallon of water. I circled slowly around the land, admiring the rays of morning sunlight streaming down from the clouds, climbing slowly over the rocky hillside, picking up pebbles from the sun-baked clay pits, meandering through a marsh buzzing with bees, and following the shady path of the creek where the cows were grazing. But I was pretty sure that eventually, not eating would get my body burning fat and detoxing, which makes me feel tired, so I found a place to spend the day resting. It was a sort of cave high on the hillside, under a large flat rock balanced on three others, with a gnarled desert shrub growing up and out at one end. I drank water, snoozed, and pondered all through the hottest part of the day. In the late afternoon I scrambled to the top of a boulder to watch a storm blow in from the west, and then curled into a dry corner of my cave until the driving rain had passed. Then I felt up to moving again, and walked across the highway to the other part of the ranch, which is just desert grass and sagebrush, but has a high hill in the middle. I made my way to the top and stood in the strong buffeting wind, which felt like it was blowing me clean. At seven in the evening we gathered back at the house to tell our stories and eat a little soup. Even though I had no blinding spiritual insights, it felt like a day of letting go of things I'd been carrying, and that felt valuable.

On Tuesday the 6th, the three of us went into Whitehall, ordered takeout from the Two Bit Saloon, and headed to the rodeo grounds to watch the weekly barrel racing competition. It was free, and the small number of other people in the stands all seemed to be friends and families of the riders. There was no clown, and the announcer mainly just told the names of the women and their horses, and announced their times when they finished. Barrel racing seems really intense and challenging. It's timed by a laser beam down to 100ths of a second, so even tiny errors add up. To do it fast, you have to get perilously close to the barrels, but each one knocked over adds a penalty of 5 seconds, which pretty much takes a rider out of the running. It was fun to watch girls and women of all ages putting their all into the ride, and to see the distinct spirit of each horse. Less exciting than the Big Timber Rodeo perhaps, but also more relaxing and with a small-town feel.

On Thursday the 8th, SE and TB got in their minivan to drive to New York and help SE's daughter fix up an AirBnB unit. They would be gone for a few weeks, so I was left to do some light house-sitting like watering plants and bringing in the mail. SE's brother SC arrived from Washington state to work on an underground electrical line. To remove a large rock from the trench, he drilled holes in it, filled them with gunpowder, placed an electric match, tapped in a piece of wooden dowel on top, and detonated from a distance with a car battery. It was pretty exciting to watch the explosions from a safe distance. One day I rode along with him to Bozeman and stocked up on fresh produce and other staples at the food co-op downtown. Otherwise I was the complete homebody, generally travelling no further than the mailbox. SC worked non-stop on the trench, drove back to Washington for a few days, and returned with a massive box of bing cherries fresh off the tree that he'd bought from some neighbors. Freshness really matters with cherries, they were a far cry from the ones you usually get on the east coast where every other berry is limp and insipid. I didn't think it was possible to eat them all but between giving most of them away and eating them with every meal, we did seem to manage it.

On the weekends, I mostly relaxed, but I also spent some time going over Punkin and finding all the little things that needed fixing: a burnt out tail light, loose electrical connections, tight valve clearances, and so on. I replaced the speedometer/odometer with one from eBay, which had apparently sat out in the sun for decades and looked much worse than the original despite having only 2,000 miles on it rather than 12,000. But hey, it could show the speed without even waggling much, and that was what counted. RM's joke about it being the Motorcycle of Theseus become more and more true. I changed the oil and both of the tires, tubes, and rim strips. I sprayed SeaFoam into the air intake to clean out any carbon buildup. I washed dust out of the heat exchanger fins. Basically I did everything I could think to do, and I believe Punkin can make it to the Pacific now, and hopefully further, although I keep expecting the engine to quit on me at any moment. It's a paranoia born out of inexperience I guess. But if that actually happens I feel like I'll either be able to fix the problem or continue the journey in some other form. It no longer causes me the kind of anxiety it used to.

One day my folding solar array just stopped working. I took it into the shop, cut it open so I could reach the electrical contacts, and determined that two out of three panels were still functional. I cut off the dead one, and the electronics package, and re-attached the cable to the remaining panels with wire nuts. It looked awful, and put out a third less power, but at least it worked long enough for new panels to come in the mail, and I was pleased to have been able to "fix" a piece of modern electronics, which is so rarely possible. It got me thinking about my electrical system though, and I decided to replace my battery pack as well. It's always annoyed me to have to run my laptop using AC power, because a few watts are lost converting the DC to AC, then even more is lost converting it back to DC for the laptop. Plus, it runs a noisy little fan that clashes with the sounds of nature. So I got a DC power supply for my laptop, a lithium battery, and a cheap charge controller. In total it was half the cost of the old one, 20% more capacity, easily replaced components, more efficient, and completely silent. It's fun to learn from experience what I want, and to get my gear closer and closer to that ideal.

In the third week, EL and her mom came to visit. EL is a friend of SE's who manages her AirBnB units, and she came to see the place so she can help guests better and also experience the local tourist attractions. They drove all around the area and saw and did so much that it made me feel a bit lazy for hanging around the ranch all the time. But I did join them to go eat dinner and see the rodeo in Whitehall, part of the annual Frontier Days celebration. The Two Bit Saloon was packed and the waitresses were dressed up in corsets, top hats, and the like. We ate an excellent dinner and then headed over to the rodeo grounds. This was a smaller affair than Big Timber, but much bigger than the barrel racing. The stands were so packed that I got antsy and went to watch from the fence; I guess I've gotten pretty shy of crowds. There were some new-to-me events. The cutest was "mutton busting", where tiny boys and girls try to stay on sheep that are frantically trying to join their herd. Dads picked up the fallen children and dusted them off. After one dramatic fall the announcer said, "this is a family event so I can't repeat what Layton said, but he's all right!" There was saddle bronc riding, of course, and standing by the fence and seeing a wild horse rearing within yards of me, its raw power was palpable and frightening. Even with a fence between us I jumped back, and some kids playing happily nearby were showered with clods to their great surprise. Then there were the IronMan and IronWoman events, which start with roping a steer and then releasing the rope, transition into a barrel race, and finally require jumping off the horse, grabbing a tethered goat, and tying three of its legs together. The plight of the goat was especially pathetic, because after the first time, it was clearly terrified about what was coming but unable to get away. At least they changed goats a few times, but it still seemed pretty traumatic. I think I might be about rodeo'd out for the time being.

Things I Learned

• The local wild hot spring was a no-go this summer. The river has to be at the right level to fill the pools, which requires 700 cubic feet per second of flow, but instead the flow is around 70 because of the drought. My planned route through Idaho passes by three wild hot springs, hopefully at least one of them will be working.
• A lot of roads are closed in Idaho because of wildfires. I heard this from some motorcycle tourists out of Arkansas, and they said some of the closures on small mountain roads required back-tracking up to 50 miles. I'm hoping that things are better in September when I plan to cross Idaho myself, but for all I know they could be worse. I'll just have to stay flexible.
• Apparently customers have a strong preference for redder fruit, and new varieties tend to get redder over time as mutants with color variations are discovered and propagated. SC used to own an orchard growing cherries and apples and he said he saw this happening with the apples over the years.
• An alternate route of the Continental Divide Trail passes through Whitehall. On my way into town one day I saw a large number of people with backpacks walking along the road, and wound up talking to two through-hikers resting on a bench downtown (trail names Rewind and Spicy). Apparently they were diverting to avoid wildfires and smoke.
• What happens when you start an engine with the dipstick unscrewed? A hell of a mess. Oil goes everywhere.

Wonderful Things

• A baby pronghorn, colored like a rock and pogoing away on all four legs.
• Catching a hummingbird that was stuck in the shop and feeling its tiny body against my hand.
• The rich smells after a rainstorm sweeps through the desert.
• Bunnies hopping here and there in the early morning, and cute little ground squirrels scurrying around me as I work.