Wisdom, Montana

As I said goodbye to Cassie and Tim I looked at the Bitterroots. The top one third of them where dusted with snow that wasn’t there yesterday. It was as if someone had taken a ruler and drawn a line along the entire range and said: Snow falls above this, no snow below it. It was a cold ride to Darby where I tucked in for breakfast.

I asked the waitress what Darby’s claim to fame was: “Dumb Larry, the town cop.” Seems several years ago David Letterman was driving through Darby at 27 miles an hour. Larry ticketed him for going 2 miles per hour over the limit. “Letterman let Larry and Darby have it on his TV show for the next week,” she said. “Larry catches you doing 25.5 miles per hour he’ll ticket you.”

As I mounted my bike and started to ride Larry cruised by.

Darby has two other claims to some fame. Country singer and composer Hoyt Axton lived in Darby. His most famous composition was “Joy To the World” sung by Three Dog Night. Side note: His mother co-wrote Elvis’s “Heartbreak Hotel.”

The other claim is Jimmy “The Hatman” Harrison. He makes mostly cowboy hats but even Guatemalan fine palm leaf hats. He sells them to the like of Garth Brooks, Emmylou Harris, Willy Nelson and anyone else willing to pay between $425 and $2,500 for his creation. Sells between 300 and 400 a year and has even shipped at the Antarctic.

The ride up Lost Trail and Chief Joseph Passes (6,990 and 7,241, respectively) was not fun because the higher I went the deeper into the snow I went. (They had plowed the passes in the early morning.) But at least the effort kept me warm. I stopped at the visitor’s hut at the top for a free cup of coffee and ate some Powerbars. It was the decent that nearly got me—rushing down wet, not-sure-if-there-might-be-black-ice-spots, my fingers going numb from the cold, trying to navigate through the snow and small icicles forming on my helmet brim. After about five miles I got below the snow line and came into a lovely narrow valley. My spirits lifted when I spotted four elks grazing alongside a stream. I stopped. Three of them looked at me, one dashed into the trees. We enjoyed each other’s company until a bus came roaring past. They took to the woods. My animal count on my way into Wisdom included two more elk, two mule deer, 15 Sandhill cranes, a fox, and two Pronghorn antelope.

I chided myself for all my negative thoughts going up and down the passes. If I hadn’t done that work I would not have been so rewarded. Those are one of the joys I get from moving at a human-powered pace.

I’m in a warm motel tonight looking at snow-dusted mountains.