Murrs Across America

The color has drained from the rocks since we left Montana. Over the continental divide in the Clearwater National Forest, the rocks are more rugged and grey, but cloaked also with an extensive earthen palate of lichens and mosses that deeply animate the banks of the Lochsa (pronounced “lock saw”) and ground the firs and ancient cedars of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.

The ride from our thimbleberry oatmeal breakfast down scenic Highway 12 was breathtaking. It drizzled. We met some motorcyclists. Stuart’s red jacket blazed against the wet greens of the trees and river. Falls like silver chains scored cliffs. White water cheered us downstream. The kids sang Christmas songs.

We met a family on an adventure from Wichita at Lowell, and Shelly, the store attendant there gave us some buffalo jerky and wished us well on our journey. She and her husband made the leap from Seattle area to realize their dream of owning a business in a rural community. A cherry tree outside the store provided a yummy treat.

While the stop in Lowell was sunny all around, a few miles down the road things clouded over, literally, and about the time Stuart stopped to fix his flat rear tire, it started to rain again. With 22 miles to go for the evening I was less than enchanted with the rain this time, but it didn’t last long and we eventually made it to Kooskia, where we met Tina and Doug Ulmer, out for an evening stroll.

The pair pointed us in the direction of the town’s restaurant, then invited us to barbeque at their house, then invited us to spend the night. They see lots of bikers pass through town, and sometimes they go talk with them, but they don’t generally have them over.

The Ulmers are very busy. We talked about the shifts in challenges as kids age and the trials and rewards of life and relationships that revolve around schedules of teens.  We had the pleasure of meeting young Garhett, a lifeguard who recently won a national high school inventor’s competition. His team constructed and demonstrated an incinerator burn barrel for inversion zones. He says he got a really big medal. Kyndahl, fourteen, graciously pulled out the old Barbie castle for the kids.

Thank you, Ulmers, for your generous hospitality.

This was the day we’ve thought about since the inception of the trip: the day we cross the continental divide. We’ve had near daily reminders in our interactions with folks that there are, in fact, a broad range of mountains out west before our final destination. We generally politely tell people that we’re going to cross the Rockies where Lewis and Clark did at Lolo Pass, and then we address the other queries, which may or may not call into question our sanity.

I’ve always taken quiet comfort in the name of the pass. Sounds cute, short. But we anticipated that the day would be a doosie, with nearly 60 miles before services and with a long 2000 foot climb.

Despite our anticipation, today was beautiful. Our friend, Tom, was along with us. He graciously shuttled our gear and sleeping children up and over the pass, and Stuart and I enjoyed our second “alone time” on the trip. (The first alone time was in Missouri, when my parents took the kids for the night and we camped at Klondike Park along the Katy trail. Technically, I hesitate to qualify this as “alone time” due to the merciless hoard of mosquitoes in attendance).

It turned out to be sort of a joy ride. Our bikes were light, the climb was gradual, we watched water-bombing planes fight a fire. When we reached the summit we took goofy pictures then descended through the Lolo National forest to the DeVoto Memorial Cedar Grove, where 3000-year-old western cedar trees dwell harmoniously in the subalpine fir ecosystem. The space is inspiring, which is probably why DeVoto chose to camp here while editing the Lewis and Clark journals. Our descent was fast and flying. I believe we dropped 2000 feet in 13 miles.

We met up with Tom and the kids in Powell, and Tom drove us down the road to a campground where we made camp and ate thimbleberries, which taste like pomegranate raspberries and are one of the primary sources of vitamin-C for fairies.

I’m sitting at breakfast with the family and Chris, our new friend who is circumscribing the country making his own route. He’s twenty-one. He wears a tye-dyed San Francisco tee shirt when he’s not riding, a dark tanned back when he is. Currently, he’s making his famous, sustaining, caloric intake treat: a flour tortilla smeared with peanut butter, honey, two tablespoons of Tang drink mix powder and a tablespoon of powdered milk. He calls his concoction “food” and claims it is the perfect solution for keeping one healthy for dirt cheap. He’s living on $50 a week, after all, his sister has taken over his paper route in Grand Rapids and is reserving this payment for him. Chris is great with the kids, and a fabulous addition to our pack. Yesterday when we were riding with him on Old Highway 2 through canola fields, nuclear missile caches, and oil fields, it felt like being a kid and riding bikes with your buddy. We could have been chasing bad guys, or flying to mars.

You can follow Chris’s adventure here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Springfield-MO/Murrs-Across-America/284089620749?v=photos&ref=ts#!/pages/Chris-Steffens-Grand-Adventure/137692636244200?ref=mf

Dear friends,

They say a photograph is worth a thousand words, so I strongly urge you to check out this album on our public Facebook page. I’ve captioned all the images, so hopefully along with the notes below you’ll get a good sense of these days. I’m flying over them quickly in the interest of catching you up with where we are today in Missoula, MT. If you have any specific questions about these days, please comment on the photographs or this post and I’ll address them.

June 26

• Talk with Healer
• Hills
• Making our own shade
• Mary and Pat, the governor of Fairfax, at the Koenig Corner Market
• Terra Cota building?
• A long ride
• Burke doesn’t have a restaurant after all
• Met Abby and Jon at Pete’s convenient store
• Abby, Jon, Dale, Mike, and Debbie
• Dale’s pickle trick and the largest marshmallows in the history of the world

June 27

• Ingredients for a 6000 acre ranch
• Drop-off in Peirre
• Groceries in Dakota Mart-Brady earns four stars for tantrum
• Lake play
• Walkin’ Tacos and evening with the Hansons (Hillary and Jason and kids)

June 28

• Jason drop off at substation (25 mile jump)
• Picnic at the electric substation
• Pleasant ride to Whitlock Bay
• Greeted with wine by Daisy
• Paul offers to shuttle us to dinner
• Dinner with a view of the Missouri

June 29

• Linda’s gift
• Ride to Selby
• How to order beer in South Dakota
• Kathy volunteers Vince
• Vince’s camper, gave up after discovering fourth break in waterline. Gabe.
• Neon and Argon
• The neighborhood
• Windy night
• A soldier returning

June 30

• Breakfast at Behrns: Get your own coffee and sit with people of your gender. Leave a dollar.
• Fond farewells and flowers
• Kathy’s sincerity
• Flying to Mound City for lunch
• Flying to Herrired
• Jane SWIMS!
• Struggling to Pollack and a visit from Mr. Puppe
• Home on the farm- cooking dinner in a kitchen!
• Cindy and Merlin
• Sunset on the prairie
• Pheasants Forever

July 1, 2010

• 100 degrees
• Coffee and Prairie
• Stuart helps pick out paint for the station
• Cheese plant tour and the big cheese
• Chicken hot dish with Jim Puppe- of history and stories
• Dinner with Cindy and Merlin
• Twenty Seconds of Joy documentary

July 2, 2010

• 100 Degrees
• to Big M town with Mr. Puppe
• Yellow Sub
• Historic sites/ Native American art at the casino
• Sitting Bull
• Grocery store foray- Mr. Puppe generously buys groceries!
• Dinner with Cindy and Merlin
• Grilled Peaches
• Farm tour/missing glasses
• Sunset

July 3

• Merlin offers to drive us to Bismark
• Sporting good store
• Campground
• Bounty Hunters and community
• Fire

July 4

• Kate sick
• Dairy Queen
• Hotel
• Naps
• Swimming
• Symphony and fireworks
• Walk home

July 5

• Grammy’s birthday
• Kate to coffee shop
• 1804 road out town
• Double ditch village/ prairie dogs picnic
• Setting off fireworks by the river

July 6

• Headwind
• Grumpy
• The generosity of Coleharbor- astounding.

July 7

• To Max
• headwind
• bees
• birds, wetlands
• gas station at Max
• Lightning McQueen washout
• restaurant warning
• city park camping

July 8

• Max to Minot
• Homesickness and Windmills
• The Waldsteins
• ND prosperity

July 9

• From Minot
• Highway 83
• Highway 2 bad shoulder
• Lists and poems
• Dinner in the bar with cursing
• Meeting Mike
• City park camping
• Meeting Chris

We awoke to the charismatic announcer, Jerry, crooning over the PA a song in the tonality and rhythm of those we had heard the night before. It was in English though, something about an elephant.

The first business of the day was recognition of the veterans and the raising of the American flag to songs of victory. At the evening ceremony Jerry would chide the singers for playing too long, as some of the veterans complained that this morning’s enthusiastic victory song was hard on their old wounds. Indeed, a footless veteran, who later would give Brady a drumstick, danced from his wheelchair along with the others that circled the center flagpole.  Respect for the men and women warriors of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota tribes was fierce.

I chatted next with the lead singer from the Hilltop Singers drum circle. He told me a story alternate to the textbooks about Little Bighorn, the battle where Custer fell and the victorious Sioux captured an American flag, the whereabouts of which is locally known, but purposely undisclosed here…

The singer told me about the meanings of some songs and that he is a maker of songs. He told me about a traditional way of making songs that involves sitting still and using the hills as a reference for a melody’s pitch.

Runners arrived from various important landmarks to celebrate their clan’s ancestry. They carried staffs and were mostly high school-aged, but one runner I’m told is an elderly distance runner who has run for kings and queens all over the world. I wish I had caught his name; he did look awfully spry.

We received tee shirts to commemorate the run and I volunteered to help serve lunch. My services were welcome and I was placed on fruit salad duty. We had soup again, this time it didn’t have potatoes but tomatoes. It was delicious.

The day was sticky hot and we all took a nap in the tent. The grand entry was delayed an hour for heat, but when things got underway for the evening there was so much color and spirit that the kids, quiet at first, had a blast, dancing and shouting. Jane pointed out that the Indians really knew how to play dress up, and she started plotting her new costume she’ll make when she gets home, a shawl with bells.

There were grass dancers that blessed the ground first, with their kinetic costumes and fluid stomping. Then all types of dancers with feathers, beads, spears, shawls, bells, and pelts joined the circle. Since it was a contest pow-wow, one of the 24 drum circles in attendance played music for each dancer category and sometimes for each age group within the category. Occasionally Jerry would announce an Intertribal Dance, which meant that everyone was invited to dance, regardless of their costume or area of expertise. Brady and I jumped at the invitation, Stuart and Jane joined us later.

Exhausted, we turned in before the conclusion of the evening, which I was sad about. But the early bedtime afforded one of my favorite memories of the trip so far: I fell asleep with the drummers singing a spirited song for the shawl dancers, and the moon didn’t bother me.

For more photographs of the pow-wow, please visit our Facebook page. Videos to follow.