The Lady and the Trolley

Before Interstate 90 cut the East Ridge off from our family of climbing kids, we'd explore our side of our Rocky mountain on many a Butte Montana summer Saturday.  We lived just below Saddle Rock, a mile or so from the old Pest House, as I called it.  Saddle Rock has since been blasted away on one side and flattened and is no longer a saddle of rock formations quite like it was; it is now a cement base for The Lady of The Rockies, created by design and hope of men and women who once lived life in the shadow of the Berkley Pit and The Anaconda Company.

Our hiking days came before the Lady. Our mountain was our own sacred ground, a training camp for lives of ups and downs, challenges and victories, below the Rock and beyond. Nature was our teacher, our selves our greatest motivators, testing life away from watchful eyes of parents, teachers and neighbors. I savored those moments under trees and clouds and circling hawks.

My two brothers and I left home regularly. We tested our strength, endurance and bravery against weather, an occasional freight train crossing a trestle, edges of granite ledges, sandy slopes, coulees without footings, and real and imagined wild animals in the woods (ticks, black cougars, stray dogs, rattlesnakes and other people's horses).

Before we left home on our hiking days, dressed in our worn blue jeans and mother-made plaid cowboy shirts (with pearl snaps she had hand installed), we'd fill our green glass coca cola bottles with water and each attach a looped tupperware flip top, threaded through the denim belt holder. To that we re-inforced the holding power of the fliptop to the jeans with a length of white grocer's string or a shoelace tied in and around the bottle through a belt loop. The bottle banged against your leg the whole way up the mountain. If you left it on the mountain you buried it so it wouldn't start a forest fire when the sun beat down on it and turned the sand to glass or fire. Our dad told us we'd better "or else."

Maybe we packed a sandwich wrapped in crinkly wax paper folded with sharp corners and creases and then tossed into a brown paper bag.  Maybe we took some cookies or carrots or a boiled egg, and the salt and pepper in more waxed paper.  Often, however, we took no lunch after rowdily discussing who would carry the lunch and who would not. I knew just how much trouble it took to manage a brown paper bag clutched in a sweaty palm while maneuvering a sand covered bank of a mountin ravine, on a dry hot summer day, trying to keep up with two boys, who liked to outdo the tomboy girl tagging along.  If we opted to go hungry, we never left the water behind. Our dad told us we could live three days without food, but only one day without water. And he ought to know, because his parents were "pioneers".

My brothers were brave. I carefully followed their footsteps - most of the time. They nimbly scrambled upward into the mile high sky. Our goal was always the upper ridge of Saddle Rock, but our timex wristwatches always ran too fast.  We inevitably turned back down towards home before the sun touched the west "M" on tech hill, across the valley.

I personally never made it to Saddle Rock before I left Butte as a young adult, in spite of all those Saturdays.  Maybe that is part of this "cowgirlcards" game I play on Twitter;  another part may be the fact that besides being brave enough to ride other people's horses that we found in corals along our Saturday hiking arena... my brothers actually made it to the Rock, the Lady and the tour trolley took over.

If you visit Butte, you will see her if you look closely, at the top of the mountain to the east, especially at night, in the summer, as she watches over the town. The people now light the statue with money and prayers for those they love. They say she was placed there in honor of women all over the world.

I might visit the top of Saddle Rock, eventually. I do wish they would have asked me what I thought about a statue being placed on my mountain.  I think I'll take the trolly and my lunch if I go, next time.   Toni Wheat

http://twitter.com/cowgirlcards

http://bit.ly/ikAX8i    Our Lady of the Rockies  90 foot statue

You and the Weather

I read somewhere, that if one writes a blog, it should be about YOU, not about me.  Well, if that's true, YOU should be writing it and not me, right?  Grouchy enough? I apologize.

I have writer's block, and I mean - HUGETIME blogger's block. Since I don't write for a living, and don't have to pay the rent based on income from typing and intelligence, creativity, or pretending to know something about something, then it's not as huge an issue that many people I've met in cyberland, might experience.  I mean what do they do when they have a headache, and have writer's block?? I can say I now understand what you sometimes go through to just a tiny degree.

Possibly this typers'  block is due to changing weather, or possibly this particular unique bloggers' block is due to the dog waking me in the middle of the night telling me he is afraid of the wind, and I should get up and sit with him. Give me a break!  We live in Iowa. The wind blows here!  Deal with it!  (I once heard that).

This dog is the hugest dog I've ever known, and probably if you saw him, you would say the same.  He about smashes your arm when he wakes you - and then he smiles at you. I am not kidding. He does smile. And he really does ask fairly nicely if he can sit with one of us, So, one or the other of us gets up, and sits with him.  I mean after all, he's just four.

The 150 pound lap dog eventually feels better. So we feel better.  And when everything is better, we all go back to sleep, until the next round of wind flips through the rafters and he hits the repeat button.  I sincerely do hope we never have to experience an Iowa tornado; but if we do, could we come to your house, and you could take a turn? After all, this is about YOU (and just partly about the weather).  I think I'll catch a nap.  You think about it OK?