Flathead summer going full tilt

Plenty of road construction, old men in Bermuda shorts and car after car with Canadian license plates driving blissfully unaware that we here in America count our speed in miles per hour rather than kilometers. Yes, it's summer at last.

And with summer comes all the scourges of good weather — mosquitos, sunburns and house guests.

Growing up, my family had a place on a great trout stream in Northern Arkansas. And once the weather started warming up a calendar was no longer needed to keep the weeks straight. If the Brunsons were there, then it must be mid-June. If it was my aunt and uncle from Chicago, then the week preceding July 4 was a pretty safe bet.

Here in Western Montana, the effect may even be more pronounced. Living here is not unlike winning the lottery (though it feels as though the former requires the latter) in that as soon as your zip code begins with "59" you start getting phone calls from second cousins and third grade classmates looking to reacquaint themselves.

Not that I can blame them. It does take a certain amount of luck and good fortune to reside between the Swan and Salish Mountains and it would be both selfish and wrong to exclude family and friends.

But it sure does give you second thoughts about the relative quiet of February.

Get up, get out

At the Flathead Lakers 50th anniversary party and meeting last week in Lakeside, UM professor and about-as-famous-as-you-can-get Montanan Rick Graetz gave a short presentation and slideshow about the Crown of the Continent.

I had the good fortune of taking a class from Rick in college so I got to hear him talk about the mountains of the world for months, but last week's 20 minute quickie was just as inspiring.

He told the crowd of lake loving people to get out there into the mountains around us and explore and enjoy this wild and wonderful country. In his day, Graetz — who founded Montana Magazine — was a top-flight mountaineer, scaling some of the great mountains of the world. But for a man who's seen it all, one gets the impression that back home in Montana is a hard place to beat.

"You can step off the road along the North Fork and be in the Brooks Range or wherever you want to be." he told the crowd, likening the wilderness north of the Valley to the wildest place on the continent.

It's a safe bet that Rick wanted to be exactly were he was, and we should all be so happy about it.

—Alex Strickland