Two Medicine (24 page)

And if one looked down the
steep slope below one could see Two Med Lake stretched out in dark
blue far down in the bottom of the valley, and at the far end of
the lake one could even spot the store, my home, with the parking
lot gravel-grey seeming small and fragile, like a toy train-set
house or a little wooden matchbox that a small stone could easily
crush if thrown far enough.

Hiking always
centered
my mind to where it should be. On
the way up I stopped for a small lunch of a Snickers bar and some
granola, and I gazed a long time down in the valley and thought,
not for the first time, of my previous life back in Georgia. How
strange that old life already seemed, or, rather, how strange to
have been so recently in that life, and now just a few weeks later
sitting on a mountain, looking down at a new home. This was the
rugged beauty that I had imagined, had hoped for, as I was packing
my bags that crazy night in Atlanta. I also thought of Scott and
Holly, and even wondered how the magazine was getting on… in spite
of myself.

Then the wind blew across
the meadow as I repacked my bag on the trail. I smelled the
huckleberry blossoms and sun-dried grass, and I could hear the wind
in the distant trees and feel the sun warming my face, and I
thought that it would be nice if Alia came walking out of those
trees, into the meadow. I stood for a moment just watching the wind
play with the flower blossoms, and then I turned and trudged on up
the slope.

I finally reached Sky Lake
around three p.m. It was quicker going down so I knew I would be ok
on time, as far as getting back was concerned. There was no way I
was going to reach Sinopah’s peak again, of course – not after my
leisurely stroll up the mountain after my lunch.

As I crested the ridge
that protected the little lake from view, I looked down the slope
towards the small bowl-shaped valley below, of which Sky Lake was
the centerpiece. Above, Sinopah’s peak looked like a huge stone
skyscraper, rough and unfinished, brown and cracked and crumbling –
yet iron strong.

Sky Lake was truly what is
called an “alpine lake” – deep blue, small, and untouched; and I
reasoned it must have gotten its name by the way it reflected the
sky is such clarity, with no breeze disturbing its mirror surface
most of the time.

I trudged down the rocky
trail that led down to the lake. I passed through patches of trees,
but mostly the trail here was grassy and rocky, as the valley got
less sun than other parts of the mountain. As I got closer I saw
that the lake was so clear that I could see, even from a short
distance, the blurry profile of some spotted-pink lake trout
sliding effortlessly along a few feet below the surface, and also
some just sitting motionless at certain depths. I saw a couple of
bald eagles perched on tall scraggly pines near the lake as well –
they frequented the park in summer – being up here for the trout, I
presumed. Other than another marmot rooting around in the brush and
many birds, I didn’t see any other wildlife about.

I did see a figure walking
towards me on the wide trail, however, or rather he was walking but
at a wandering angle, sort of meandering over the trail. It was
hard to make out what he was wearing, but as I got closer I noticed
he wasn’t wearing anything at all, except for a brown leather or
deer-skin loincloth – an actual Tarzan-like loincloth. That was all
he had on – he wasn’t even wearing any shoes. He stepped along the
stones barefoot at a very careful, delicate pace, watching the
ground and lightly placing his feet here and there, and making slow
progress.

He had long flowing brown
hair, but it was a light brown and he was obviously a white guy –
not Blackfoot. A wild looking leather necklace with little shells
laced into it hung around his neck.

“
How’s
it going?” I called to him as I walked up. It was plenty warm
enough to be almost naked like that, if you wanted to be; but I
wondered what he’d do by nightfall, if he didn’t get back to a camp
somewhere – the nights were still chilled at this time in the early
summer.
And where was his food, or
at least some water?

He looked up at me from
the rocks he was daintily stepping over, and nodded, smiling
warmly, giving me a short wave.

“
Hi,” he said, and looking
up the hill to the top of the ridge where I had come. He asked,
“How far is it to Two Medicine?”

“
About four hours,
downhill,” I said, following his gaze to where the trail crested
the ridge again. “Where’d you start from?” I asked.

“
Oh… I’m not sure,” he
said, smiling. “Just been bushwhacking mostly, been out for three
days.”

“
Three days, on Sinopah?”
I asked, surprised and impressed. “Bushwhacking” was the hiker’s
term for avoiding the trails, striking out in the wilderness to
make your own way. Whacking bushes out of your way as you went, I
suppose.

He just nodded and smiled,
and I wondered if maybe he was mentally off or something. I looked
him over; he was athletic and well-built, but in a natural kind of
way, not in the gym or lifting-weights kind of way. And the
loincloth was weird, of course, but as I mentioned before, in
Glacier you met weird people all the time, very eccentric types
with odd habits and strange demeanors, those who led a
different
kind of life –
they were drawn to wild places like Glacier and Two Med.

“
Three days….” I marveled,
more to myself than to Tarzan. Then I asked him, “Where’s your
camp, your gear?”

He shrugged and pointed a thumb behind him
vaguely, “Oh I got a blanket by the lake, slept there last night.
Don’t have anything else, just been living off the land.”

“
You must have been
freezing…” I said.

He shook his head and gave
another of his shrugs. “It’s a good blanket. I just like to keep it
pure, man, feel the earth under me. Connect with nature and she’ll
take care of you.”

Apparently finished with
our conversation, he gave me a quick nod and then began stepping
along the trail, tenderly walking on the stones again. I watched
him go for a minute, in fascination, and not a little awe, and then
I headed down to Sky Lake’s shore.

As odd as he was, those
kinds of brief conversations on the trail with people you suddenly
came across were often like that – no names exchanged, some short
chit chat, mostly “where you from” and “how ‘bout this weather”
exchanged, along with some directions and notes about the trails,
but none I met were so exotic as the loincloth guy – not even
Thunderbird.

I was impressed with him,
despite the ridiculous, over-doing-it loincloth; and I respected
his extreme stripping away of all technology and trappings of
modern civilization. Guys like that sometimes came to bad ends in
the wilderness, especially up in the higher elevations, where a
sudden thunderstorm of chilling rain and hail can come down the
mountain with only a few minutes’ notice, and soak and then freeze
you to the core. Or they’d get lost and end up starving or getting
attacked by a moose or grizzly. Guys like The Loincloth did it
their own way, though, and gave a middle finger to all the rules of
backcountry hiking and camping (what would Greg make of this guy?),
but they also were some of the statistics that made up the deaths
in the park each season.

I had liked the guy though
– he seemed genuinely friendly and real, even in his outlandishness
and obvious image-consciousness. And I hoped, as I sat by the lake
and watched the mirror surface reflect the clouds above in the deep
sky, that I’d see him again.

I didn’t see him on the
way down to the valley, however, but he was “bushwhacking,” I
reminded myself – not the stamped out, well-traveled hiking trail
for him! So who knew where he had struck off to after gathering his
blanket and heading down the slope? I wished him well, and trudged
at a fast pace back home that evening.

Twenty

A strange atmosphere had
for some reason settled into the store the next day. It was a
Wednesday, and I was on gift-shop duty on the register. Ronnie and
Katie worked the kitchen. We were pretty busy, as the season was
now picking up; and I worked non-stop all day ringing up peoples’
gifts, answering questions about the store and Two Med, and
restocking the shelves with Larry as things were being bought up
and starting to run low. When Katie was on the grill and Ronnie on
the snack shop register, things always got backed up there because
Katie was a very slow cooker.

She took a long time
grilling burgers and making tacos, because she had to have
everything cooked perfectly, and, I think, because she was scared
of making people ill or something. Ronnie was always patient with
her, and never lost his cool – even when the line for food got way
backed up.

Larry, however, would rush
back to the snack area and openly scold her for being behind, in
front of the customers, rudely, and yell at her to get things
moving or he’d “damn well cook everything himself!” But Katie took
his berating with a grain of salt it seemed, in her stoic and quiet
way, and just kept up her slow, steady pace of grilling the perfect
hamburger patty and blending the perfect Huckleberry
shake.

I always marveled at
Katie’s patience with Larry, because she never lost her temper with
him that I saw, and had a Phyllis-like, long-suffering patience for
his blustering and meanness; and I wondered, yet again, why she
would come back to work at this particular place a second season,
despite its beauty, after dealing with Larry for one year already.
But she seemed at peace at the store and impervious to Larry; and
when Larry wasn’t around, and even sometimes when he was, she
seemed at home there too. Maybe she had had other Larrys in her
life and was immune.

That
evening
Ronnie, Katie and I had
another fire in the big fireplace in the store, using about three
large tree-trunk logs that Larry watched like a hawk during
business hours. After joking around and laughing too loudly at one
point, Larry again stormed out of his room around eleven p.m.,
screaming at us to “stop this racket or there’d be hell to pay!”
and slamming his bedroom door again even louder than any noise we
could have made. We had actually been playing poker, which Ronnie
had been trying to convince us to make strip poker, for Katie’s
benefit he said, when Larry boomed out of his room. I glanced up at
him and pictured Phyllis cowering in the bed, under the covers,
waiting for that hairy old beast to come back into the bed
grumbling and swearing. I felt terrible for her at those
times.

Katie wouldn’t agree to
strip poker however, so Ronnie and I said we would and she could
just play “regular.” I admit I had been eyeing Katie’s tight little
body and shapely, heavy breasts under her pajama pants and little
t-shirt, with an irresistible hunger. But we had a good joke with
the male-only poker game anyway, until Ronnie actually took off his
pants after losing a big hand (with about $50 in the pot on that
bet,) and he wasn’t wearing his classic “tighty whiteys” after
losing big on a hand. Katie laughed and Larry shouted something
again from his room without opening the door, and we gave up the
rest of the game. We put out the fire after that and trudged
upstairs to our respective rooms.

I had peeked into Katie’s
room one once when she was gone (she always kept her door closed)
and had noticed how much of a home she had made, as only women can.
It was much more intrusive to look into her private room with her
pictures of her travels and her friends set up here and there, with
her posters and art, with her bed covers she had brought and little
reading lamps she had for decorated her room with, than it was to
look in Ronnie’s or my rooms, which pretty much still appeared as
they did the day we moved in, except for our clothes on the floor
here and there, and my guitar and some books. Men traveled light in
this world, not leaving much of a mark from place to place and room
to room, I’ve always noticed; but women carry their lives with them
everywhere. They know how to make a home of a place, even with
barely anything to work with. A woman could make a submarine look
like a home.

After Katie went
upstairs, Ronnie knocked on my door and invited me
to drink down in the kitchen with him, apparently not yet ready to
call it a night. He had grabbed a six pack of Miller from the
store’s fridge out front, and we sat at the big kitchen
table.

“So are you still mourning
that girl – what was her name, Alia?” He asked, glancing at me with
half closed eyes and taking a long swig of beer.

“Yes.” I said.

“Is that why you wear that
necklace twenty-four-seven?”

I reached up and felt the
arrowhead. “I guess so,” I said, unconsciously resisting his
intrusion into this area, as usual.

He nodded. “Ranger Greg
seems to be very interested, even though it’s out of his
jurisdiction.”

“What do you know about
Greg’s jurisdiction?” I asked him, suddenly annoyed with his tiring
dislike of Greg, and with his broaching the subject of Alia in this
casual way at all.

“I know he should be
stamping out forest fires or something, rather than acting like a
big homicide detective,” Ronnie said.