No, I’m referring to the persistent weather pattern we’re still saddled with here in Montana. While it is alleged we may receive anywhere from an inch to several tonight; confidence remains low. I personally still haven’t strapped on skis or snowshoes, although my son has been snowboarding at Bridger Bowl a couple of times. Driving up there is really kind of alarming, and I’ve seen more snow in the Bridgers in September than we have currently. Hopefully by morning that will have changed. I have been hiking a few times, which ordinarily isn’t a viable option this time of year, except in lower elevations and often not even there. New Year’s Day we went for a hike on Blacktail Mountain at the north end of the Bridgers. I got up to nearly 8000’, and there was no snow whatsoever. At least it’s easy on wintering wildlife.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise to regular readers, but a holdover from my farming days is a preoccupation with weather. It no longer has quite as direct of bearing on my livelihood, not to mention daily activities, but is certainly far from inconsequential. Many business owners in Montana are singing the blues, as ordinarily ski vacationers are dropping a significant amount of coin in their coffers. Not this year. To that end, we have been arranging alternative activities for folks, and one fairly popular one is guided ice climbing. We are working with a superb guide/instructor on that, who literally wrote the book on ice climbing in these parts.

Another idea we just hatched a few days back are unguided, free-ranging bison hunts. We’ve been offering guided bison hunts and harvests for some time, and those have been immensely popular. Still, some folks aren’t taken with the "harvest" idea, but aren’t willing or able to shell out the coin for a guided fair-chase hunt. We’re thinking these unguided hunts have tremendous potential. We’re offering them on sort of an experimental basis here later this month, but it’s looking probable they will become nearly a year-round thing. They will definitely be a bona-fide hunt, and with four days to work with we trust most folks will be able to connect. If it gets down to the wire and you’re finding that those doggone buffalo are a whole lot more canny and agile than you’d guess based on their lumbering appearance, you can always go over to the harvest pasture and get one. Also, that way you’ll get it loaded in your truck. With the free-range hunts, you are on your own for meat retrieval. Generations of Native American women did it with nothing more than stone knives, though, and you can too!

In the larger scheme of things on this bison note; I’ve recently been reading Wallace Stegner’s "Wolf Willow". It’s about his growing up in the Cypress Hills, just north of the Montana border, and on the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan. As he repeatedly points out, it is a borderline region in more ways than one, and among other things points out the futility of farming in such a fickle if not downright hostile landscape. As Stegner most aptly describes, "that country is notable primarily for its weather, which is violent and prolonged; its emptiness, which is almost frighteningly total; and its wind, which blows all the time in a way to stiffen your hair and rattle the eyes in your head." I will concur with that assessment. On a trip some years back we went north from Havre, crossing the border at the port of Wildhorse. From there north nearly to Medicine Hat, there is basically no sign of human habitation. On the US side, there were a few farms, but this prolonged drought I keep mentioning, not to mention the global marketplace, just doesn’t bode well for grain farming in that country.

The book doesn’t just deal with his own experiences there, it covers known and speculates about unknown history back hundreds of years. One passage that struck me, was a report by someone who’d ridden from an outpost in the Cypress Hills to Fort Benton in 1873, and was never out of the sight of bison. I am not predicting that situation will again come to pass anytime soon, but am not completely ruling out the idea, either. One point Stegner makes repeatedly, is that when change comes to that country, it comes rapidly. The Native American bison culture came to an abrupt and violent end, although slightly less so in both regards in Canada than on the US side of the Medicine Line. Once the bison were gone, the region filled up with beef cattle, like "gas expanding into a vacuum". The brutal winter of 1906-07 put a near-total end to that, though. Then came the dirt farmers. The demise of that industry is something I have extensive personal experience with, and while its withering has not been an overnight phenomenon, it can very nearly be viewed so when placed on a larger timeline.

If you follow this column, first, thank you very much and I hope you find it entertaining and at least occasionally thought provoking. Secondly, besides weather you may notice a recurring theme pertaining to the paradigm shift we are currently in, from a primarily agricultural and resource extractive economy into something yet to be determined. The northern high plains were, not that long ago, a bison and other wildlife factory without parallel. The case can easily be made that a climax situation like that can re-occur, if nature is left to her own devices. That is already occurring to a significant extent in the Missouri Breaks, just to the south and east of where Stegner grew up. I’d like to think that this bison hunt we’re promoting here in southwest Montana has larger implications, and I believe it could become a key component of the Big Open idea.

And unless I am mistaken, I just saw a snowflake….