The Dog Days of Summer . . .

a lot has happened since my last post and i hope more posts come in the next few weeks as i process my trip back east in may and the early days of june.
but for now here is a little taste of summer life out here in the rocky mountain west:

after a beautiful warm spring and a cool, green, and rainy first half of the season, missoula has finally entered the dog days of summer and is choking under a vail smoke like the rest of the country; a problem that has been
made worse by high winds, high 90 degree temps, and the occasional dry thunderstorm.





the sun setting over a very smokey missoula valley.

erica and dante and i got caught in such a mostly dry storm while walking on campus a couple of weeks ago and ran home assaulted by the dusty wind to
beat the rain that lasted only a few minutes and sadly did little to quench
the heat of the night or wet the increasingly arid soil of the earth. the
next day fire crews found two new lightning born fires in missoula county
west of town that added a heavier local component to the smoke already
blowing in from washington and oregon.





i have added watch duty to the small list of apps allowed to send me push notifications.

in the meantime dante has finally recovered from his cancer surgery and is ready to run wild and free except it is too hot and smokey here around
missoula to do any serious hiking; so his life as a lazy house dog has been prolonged. the surgery went well though, even if the recovery was slow, and
we are happy to report that our doggo is cancer free. yusef started a
gofundme to cover some of the surgery costs, so please contribute if you
can: https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-dante-surgery-for-our-beloved-dog





now cancer free, dante rides again!

in an attempt to escape the smoke, and give our dog some outside time, we
left missoula a few weekends ago to do some camping in the gravelly range
south virginia city. the mountains are rolling, in spite of their elevation, and there is a well kept forest service road that runs along the spine of
them that allows you to drive up to almost 10,000 feet past rocky craigs, though patches of subalpine fir and engelmann spruce forest, to beautiful grassy alpine meadows.





the rolling spruce forest and high alpine meadows of the gravelly range.

we parked the 4runner in one of these high meadows, and i made us a dinner
of smoked sausage, bell peppers, and green beans out the back on a cassette stove, and dante had is dogfood-soup (a bowl of kibble and warm water); and afterwards we put a blanket down and broke out the binoculars and lounged
among the wild flowers and scanned the surrounding hillsides for grizzlies
and wolves, both of which have been reported in the area but neither of
which we encountered. at some point a single pronghorn came over the
ridgeline behind us and stood staring at for a while huffing and snorting before disappearing back behind the horizon.





a lone pronghorn less than happy to see humans and a dog lounging in their meadow

after our evening lounge above treeline we drove back down a ways and
settled into a campsite out of the wind amongst an outcropping of rock that looked out over the madison river valley towards sphinx mountain and the
back side of big sky ski area. we parked the 4runner with its hatch towards
the cliff, made a fire, and watched distant thunderstorms roll over the landscape as the sun set and the moon rose. we spent some time in the
relative darkness drinking beer next to the fire, dante on a blanket between
us chewing the sticks we'd gathered to stoke it, and looked for shooting
starts between the fluffy moonlit clouds before eventually dousing the
embers of the fire and climbing into the back of the car to sleep.





looking east over the madison river valley towards big sky ski area.

in the morning we woke up to a campsite thankfully unmolested by bears, had
a breakfast of crackers, bell peppers, smoked salmon, and cream cheese, and looked for fossils among the rocks of the fire ring before packing up camp
and making our way slowly back towards civilization. part way down the road
we paused to look at the view and could hear the woop-and-yah of cowboys and the bawling of cattle in the valley below: we had stumbled upon a round-up. turns out even though she's from colorado erica had never seen real cowboys
on horseback doing real cowboy shit and was thrilled to see men on horses
with cattle dogs diving cows and calves down from the high country. it was a nice cherry on top of our south western montana adventure.





real cowboys on horseback doing real cowboy shit.
--
https://foodbark.io/posts/dog-days-of-summer/