Quiet virtues

The trail is nondescript. It’s not a trail, really, but an old logging road. It has one of those signs on it that says “no motorized use” that snowmobilers ignored all winter, based on the tracks.

At some point, the road was apparently more popular. There’s beer cans sunk in the layers of leaves and even an old paint can. I found a pair of new bear bells and someone took a poop in the middle of the road. The toilet paper and the feces themselves were perfectly preserved in the snow.

Using my decades of scat analysis, I’m guessing it was a woman in her 40s, because a man never has the wherewithal to remember t.p., nevermind use it in the woods. Which is to say snow works in a pinch, but soggy leaves and moss are better.

But poop and paint cans aside, the walk is very, very quiet, which is why we like it.

In this time of coronavirus, some trailheads have become crowded, governor’s directive or not.

No matter. I’ve never really liked the Columbia Mountain Trail, where many locals have congregated. Never even came close to the top.

“There’s no water,” a friend whose been up it more than once warned me the other day.

He was speaking of a summer hike, of course.

So we’ve ventured here and there over the past few weeks. On one off-trail excursion, one of my infamous “short cuts” took 45 minutes to go a quarter mile. We were in doghair lodgepole walking on top of downed lodgepole, about six feet above the actual ground.

To make matters worse, the downed logs were coated in slime.

Outside of completely destroying a $100 merino wool sweater when it snagged on a branch, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.

Wait a minute, yes it was.

Our old logging road walk gets a bit longer every day. As the snow melts, we go further and further up. There’s signs of big wildlife, but we haven’t seen anything bigger than a squirrel, yet. No bear tracks, even though it’s good bear habitat. The woods are young, a mix of Douglas fir, larch, lodgepole and a surprisingly good number of white pine. There’s even cedar and a hemlock sprinkled in and lots of paper bark birch.

The other day I noticed the first trillium of the season, way up high, growing next to a spring.

It probably will never go down as a favorite hike. Once Glacier National Park reopens, I’m sure we’ll go back to our old haunts, which are uncrowded as well.

But until then, this walk will do just fine. If coronavirus teaches us anything in Montana, it’s that we shouldn’t take public lands for granted. They’re a refuge from a worrying world, and for us fortunate ones, they’re just around the corner.