Roadtrip ’99 part 3: Montana Meandering
Correction on the last article. My first campground was Turtle River State Park, outside of Grand Forks, ND not Fargo.
I am publishing the first draft of my world travels as I write it, starting as a solo road trip from Minnesota. It all begins here.
I asked advice for places to visit. Someone recommended the Badlands so I detoured South. Now that I had a taste for being impulsive I randomly stopped along side the road and climbed on top of a giant round bale to paint a landscape of the rolling hillside. A man with a load of old tires stopped to find out what I was up to. This was the countryside of curiosity. I loved meeting a fellow questioner.
When I crossed the border into Montana I followed a sign for a historical museum in Culberston. Do you have these where you are? It’s like every small town where I am from has a small county run museum. I would always see signs for them and I had never stopped. This time I stopped and paid the small entrance fee. I read little captions on old photos of cowboys and farmers and men working on one construction project or another. There were mannequins wearing old handmade wedding dresses, ancestor in oval portraits with the curved glass. Lots of black and white images, lots of faded garments, lots of rusty farm tools and a few old rifles. It’s like all the local families got together and consolidated their attics into one display of community history.
The woman running the place was so sweet, we had a wonderful conversation about the old days and simple life. We shared in our enthusiasm for it. I wondered how many people she saw in a day.
Did you know this about me? I was obsessed with Simple Living when I was little. Not the magazine. The lifestyle. When I was 11 I learned of the Amish, a people that actually lived like in the olden days, I decided right there I would be Amish. A minute after learning about the existence of the Amish I found out their lifestyle was based on their religious beliefs. My religion was already weird enough, I couldn’t add more rules. Sadly, I put aside the idea to join the Amish but now that I was in Montana, maybe there was another lifestyle I hadn’t discovered. A simple life? Rancher life? My mom had bought me a subscription to a plain living magazine. It’s contributors were Quakers and Mennonites. It had articles for building compost bins, gardening with chickens, building fences with pallets. I used to read it cover to cover with such enthusiasm and excitement to apply this to my own homestead.
What did I even ask the woman at the heritage museum? That I was looking for a place to live out my olden day fantasies? I don’t remember, but she told me of a piece of property with a house on it for sale for $21,000. That was the price of a car! I could have my simple life! I just had to take a big detour South to see it.
Miles of wide dirt roads turned off into rutted roads that looked more like former river beds than a man made passage, with warnings that they weren’t passable in bad weather. The wife on the property had gotten sick, the husband was selling their home to take care of here. My trusty Bug maneuvered the crevices and giant rocks in the road. I drove up a steep shale covered driveway to a quiet wood house on top of a hill looking over miles of flatland. It had no electricity or running water. The whole place was unfinished wood. I liked the peace, the low ceiling, the coziness, the quiet. It smelled like a carpenter shop, it felt hand made and loved. I imagined myself up here alone in the winters listening to the wind howling by the window, knitting by kerosene lamp. The land also didn’t have a flat piece of ground. There was one small patch, it looked like it might have been tilled up for a garden but the dirt was deep red sand. I actually have never gardened. I’ve helped Dad do a little weeding here and there. This dream of mine would be an entire learning process in an empty landscape. Maybe there were 4 families to get to know in a 50 mile radius, that’s what I imagined. I wasn’t sure I was ready for a life of such solitude and a steep learning curve.
I spent a good deal of time getting to know the family that was watching over the empty house. The granddaughter was only a couple years younger than me. They were also a devout family, the women wore long denim skirts and long hair. They didn’t own playing cards because they are pagan. I listened to their life story. I asked them all about life out in Montana and heard about the 3 feet of snow, sub zero temperatures, and ice storms and road washouts. Town was an hour away and there wasn’t much for skilled labor jobs. I heard about the politics of how the ranchers own the land but not the mineral rights and the nearby oil drilling. How would I live out here as a single woman? I didn’t really see myself as a rancher wife material. I didn’t really see myself meeting anyone out here.
I drew each family member in my sketchbook. There was a woman, almost the same age as me crippled by arthritis, a younger granddaughter whose mom couldn’t take care of her. The Matriarch of the family was nearly blind from diabetes and cared for a severely mentally handicapped daughter with a missing leg, from the complications of her birth. The handicapped daughter spent her time on the floor where she could scooch herself around but she mostly sat cross-eyed and grinning. There were also many dogs. It seemed each person claimed 2 or 3 dogs as their own.
We chatted a bit about beliefs and faith and what it might mean to lead a good life. I had a lot of questions for this trip. What is the yes and no’s? What exactly is “God’s will” for us? I asked about other plain living communities and they gave me some directions to Northwest Montana.
The Amish
As I drove through the “neighborhood” I came across an Amish community. I stopped in and got up the courage to ask questions to the girls that came out to pump water. I met the mother of the household. I spent the day there. The house I visited was the original farmhouse on the large property the community had bought and built on. They had to go through house and pull out all the electrical wiring and remove the plumbing to make it Amish compliant.
There were so many kids! It was like being in a daycare. So many children of all different ages. Older ones watching young ones. I got to see the women use their foot pedaled sewing machine. All the girls and women wore white bonnets. They’re aprons were the same color as they’re dresses to help them stay clean. I followed the young girls around for the day. We were about the same age. The house had a 2 seater outhouse out back, and the kids would sit side by side to use it at the same time. There was a brown cow staked outside to hand milk. It was impressive to watch the teenage girl milk the cow with such efficiency. My best friend in church lived on a dairy farm. I had learned the difficulty of hand milking cows from when I had stayed at her house. I never got to be that good at it.
I really only talked to one guy. He was working with hay in the barn. He was an old man with a white beard. He carried around a jar with bees in it and would sting his thumb joint when his arthritis was acting up. The woman of the household complained to me that he had left his wife and had just come to stay at this community. “He just won’t leave,” she said.
I even got invited to a birthday party that night. There was a young woman, newly married and very pregnant. The girls hitched up the horses and the buggy and we rode out on the dirt road to a small house. I got to ride in a horse and buggy! It’s loud and jostling. We played Rook by kerosene lamp. Regular playing cards are not allowed here either. It was a very subdued birthday party with very little talking. They did talk more often in a German dialect. I asked the birthday girl about her about married life. I asked her about her love story. She was lonely without her family and was looking forward to having a large family to fill up the quiet.
I slept out in the yard that night.
The Mercantile
I spent nearly a whole day on dirt roads. I was headed in the direction to find Hutterite communities. I was bored listening to my Eve 6 and Everclear CDs. Instead, I listened to whatever radio station would come in. It was only AM stations. I found some droning preachers telling me how to live my life. I couldn’t listen for too long without flashing back to the hour long sermons I grew up with. It made me want to sleep or start taking notes.
Sermon Note Taking tips: 1. When the minister pauses for emphasis, try to write down the last thing he said. 2. If he repeats a sentence write that down. 3. See if you can copy down every word of a scripture that is referenced before he references another scripture. That looks like your taking diligent notes and fills up the pages faster.
My other choice was crop prices news. I’m not sure what I was listening to but they would say “bushels” a lot and name grains and then say some prices. It sounded like a list being read. I decided it was the graineries in the area announcing what they would pay for delivered crops that day.
I finally came across something to paint, a Mercantile store. Another hope of selling a piece of art. I painted the mechanic garage next to it as well. The garage was closed and the owner of the Merc was away on vacation so I made no sales but I did meet a woman shopping in the store. Melda. She was like this lit up angel when she heard about me on my trip. She was so amazed and encouraging. We became penpals and I kept her informed of my travels for years to come. She was such a spark of encouragement. I can’t remember the words but I just remember leaving the Mercantile completely lit up inside determined to live a beautiful life and follow my dreams and passions. I felt so validated. I am on a path and it’s the right path and it’s amazing! Out here in the middle of Montana! I belong right here.
So fast forward to February 2000. My trip is over. I am at some family friend’s house and there on the table is a spread of National Georgraphic magazines. Earlier I explained to you the significance National Geographic had on influencing my travels. I picked up the January 2000 edition because, you know, a new century, and January is my birthday. I start leafing through the articles and there, the same summer that I was driving around in my Bug, National Georgraphic had 2 guys road tripping around the US as well. They took a bit of a different path but our paths had crossed in one spot. That spot was that Mercantile store. In fact, there in National Geographic was a photo of the same building I had painted. The photo was taken looking out the window of the cafe across from the Mercantile. I had sat below that very same cafe window while I painted. I have the photo in my sketchbook next to the painting.
Hutterites
With a little asking I found the Hutterites. I pulled into a farm. Instead of the long chicken barns there was one long townhouse, all linked together, all the same. They looked like normal white houses from the 60s. Almost like barracks. And there were various outbuildings, workshops, cafeterias, a school. I had never seen a kind of living like this. I had never heard of Hutterites.
Some women welcomed me and led me around on a tour. There was a modern milking barn, a pig barn, there were other workshops, it was a whole independent community. They used electricity, running water, tractors, machinery. Each family had their own house to live in but everything else was shared. Cooking duties were rotated by the women, the men had their various jobs. Everyone worked to support the community. Food was eaten in shifts, men, women, the children. I don’t remember the order. Parts of different groups took turns serving each other.
They sewed their own clothes. The head minister’s wife chose discount fabrics and bought them in bulk to distribute to the community. The fabric was dark prints or light prints and they would mix and match them that way. She showed me her closet and it was like any normal closet, with the big sliding doors along the length of the wall. The clothing rack was full of blouses, vests, skirts, and aprons. It was all the exact same cut of clothing but every piece was a different print. The outfits looked like Russian folk dress. All women wore their hair covered under a starched polka dot scarf. I even asked one of the women to tell me how they did their hair. She took her long hair down and then put it back up in a bun. It was several years before my hair would be long enough to stay on its own in the style she taught me.
It was fascinating that everyone was so kind and welcoming of this wide eyed curly haired girl in their midst. I did wear my denim skirt to meet them but I stumbled around on the gravel in my platform sandals. The men chided me for my impractical shoes and pointed out that nothing was impractical that they owned.
It was getting late in the day. I didn’t know where I would be staying that night. Really, I wanted to spend a night at the community. So I asked them for camping suggestions. They directed me to a campsite a few miles away. That was not the answer I was looking for. So somehow I started talking about my art. I showed them my sketchbook of my travels and then one of the men wanted me to draw him so I obliged. I drew standing in the driveway with a crowd of men in their plain clothes watching me draw one of them as the sun was going down. It turns out that the man I drew was the head minister. He laughed when he saw my drawing, and I think he was laughing at me trying to get an invite. He invited me to spend the night with his family.
I got to see the cafeteria in action. I had a long discussion in the living room of the head minister about beliefs and joining. There were a couple more guys as well. I was told that it was really difficult for an outsider to join and accept the culture. Also, radio was the forbidden thing. That was the main thing the kids got caught and punished for. I think punishment was shunning. I was very interested to know who dealt judgements and punishments but I was more curious about the women’s role.
While I sat with the men there were a couple women always bustling around, refilling drinks, wiping down tables, bringing out cookies. It’s nice to be waited on but I wondered what part of this was the norm. Do the women sit around and meet up for drinks? Is this just part of them hosting? Or do they regularly serve while the men visit? I can’t remember if they were allowed to drink coffee or not. The minister pointed out how they were much cleaner and neater than the Amish. The Hutterites take it more seriously that “cleanliness is next to godliness”. I was a bit disappointed to hear to hear one Plain group dissing another Plain group. I was hoping to find a place that would deal with their own selves instead of checking up on others.
Great Uncle Julian
I headed farther North. Through Glacier, called my mom when I went through Kalispel since she lived there after high school. I spent a couple days with my great Uncle Julian. He and my Grandpa had come out to work the big Montana ranches after World War 2. I wonder what their story is, of Grandma coming out to live and work near Grandpa for a year before they were married. Uncle Julian stayed in Montana and lived and worked the farms till he retired while my Grandpa and Grandma returned home and got married and raised their family in Northern Minnesota. Now Uncle Julian was a true “Norwegian Bachelor Farmer”. Wearing cowboy boots, driving a little pickup. He let me handle his revolver that he had stored. I am not as familiar with handguns as I am with rifles. The hammer slipped when I hadn’t fully cocked it and it slammed down. The chamber was empty, I had mostly been careful pointing the barrel away and down in a safe manner but I was examining this gun in a one bedroom apartment. On inspection I saw that Uncle Julian had every other chamber loaded. It was part of his strategy for robbers breaking in. One click to warn them, and then a real bullet. I had avoided an accidental discharge by just one chamber.
Uncle Julian was nearly deaf from driving tractors. He put drops in his ears to cure his hearing, he ate cartilage off of chicken bones to build up his own cartilage and cure his arthritis. He drank tea with 2 teabags steeped and aggressively wrung out. He drank a coffee substitute called Postum or something. It is one of the worst things I have ever drunk and I drink some weird smoothies. Most of his stories started with “One time when we had been out celebratin’,” which was code for “we drank too much.” He liked to talk about his old cars, of life on the ship when he was in the Navy. Mostly, though he was lonely and he convinced me to stay an extra day and then another. I had this thought, maybe I should just live here and be his caretaker. He shared rhubarb wine that he bought from Hutterites.
The Yaak
Uncle Julian told me about an Amish store in Libby. I wasn’t done checking out the Amish. The Amish there directed me even further North to the Yaak. They told me of a community of people that weren’t Amish but lived a simple life. The Yaak is right on the border of Canada. I drove into the big deep woods of Montana where the pine trees seemed endlessly tall. I left the windy paved road with the guard rails for gravel roads that had been cut right through the forest. That gravel road broke off into a winding dirt packed road, and there appeared a little clearing with an adorable log cabin made out of giant logs. It was so beautiful and peaceful. How did I find these places without a phone and GPS?
The leader of this place was a more typical Christian. Much more about Jesus’s love. He had found Jesus on an acid trip. Jesus came to him and told him to quit the drugs and start preaching. So he had come out into the woods and built this cabin with his wife, a former nurse. Others had followed and there were now 4 or 5 cabins.
The two girls living in this “neighborhood” were my people! Wearing bib-overalls and Carharts, running barefoot with long braids. One was living out here with her father, one was living out here with her mother. They were only a few years younger than me. We ran with a pack of kids barefoot through pine needle forests, exploring the rocky creek, swimming in the dark, sleeping in the barn. We went all day on a horseback ride to the Canadian border and swimming in a swim hole that was a secret spot from the adults. We were gone the whole day, we even took food with us. I was raised riding workhorses bareback. My hippie aunt and uncle farmed with horses in Northern Minnesota. I was thrilled at the chance to ride bareback when they didn’t have enough saddles. My horse even jumped a fallen log on the path and I didn’t get ditched. That leap in mid gallop is a rockstar snapshot for my life. THIS. This is me wild and free and in the deep dark forest, my hands buried into a horse’s mane, my legs gripping the swelling ribs of this graceful animal. I hope I never forget this moment.
It was here in this community that I learned to chop wood. Amy taught me. How to find the week spot, aim off center, come up high and then pull down with the axe. She was an extra strong teenager. The little preteen boys were in awe of here, they were like her little bards shrieking about her feats of strength. I wanted to be like her. She collected small bones from dead animals and made them into delicate jewelry. She had bird skull earrings. The other girl, Cat, had hitchhiked from California to join her dad. She was all about playing the guitar and singing. I don’t even think she was 18. She was another hero. Both of these young girls had these bright brown eyes and smiles that glowed. They just seemed so happy and content where they were in life. They had this ease that made me feel at ease. It made me realize that I was usually working on improving myself, checking my thoughts and actions. Cat almost came with me for the rest of the road trip. I invited her to join me on my travels, she even packed her bag but in the morning, when it came time to depart, she said she had prayed about it and got the answer to stay.
Amy’s mom was a massage therapist. Amy taught Cat and I different massage techniques in her mom’s one room cabin, that she had built herself (such a badass). Their cabin had a swing that was a bed! There is no way to describe 3 girls no older than 20, practicing massage on each other in a quiet cabin in the middle of the woods without it sounding like the beginning of sexual experimentation. I will have you know I didn’t even see nipple. Go ahead and imagine it how you like but it was one of the most magical experiences of my life. The only light we had was what came in from the window. There was this softness from the natural light and stillness from the lack of electronics and in that space my hands were following another pair of hands along along a spine and around shoulder blades. Cat had this golden brown skin and the lighting was like a Renaissance painting. The three of us were surrounded by walls made by the trees. We were in the forest, we were part of the forest.
I love my hands. They are my favorite part of my body because of all the skills they are capable of. I did not realize the connection I could feel just by touching someone. I practiced these techniques and then it was my turn to receive while Cat learned and Amy showed her. I am so grateful and amazed to know these girls. I still use those techniques in my massage practice.
The second night in the Yaak all us kids slept in an old renovated bus. Mr. Covey wanted to take it on the road to evangelize. He had a dream to turn his place into retreat. He was going to build showers on his property. The kids also showed me a pup tent set up. It was going to be the place to retreat to when the world ended at the end of the year. I cried for a long time when I drove away from that community. I had found a place I could feel comfortable living in.
Every year my family and I take a trip somewhere, it’s to keep one of the Feasts in the Old Testament, Feast of Tabernacles. One of these trips we went out to Mount Hood and took the train. On the train I met an Amish family. The kids were about our age. We stayed up all night in the lounge car and played Rook. We exchanged addresses and wrote to each other. I stopped at their house next. I even painted their house. It was huge. The other interesting this is they had gas lamps in the house. They told me that every Amish house has to have a basement large enough to fit the community in for a service. They take turns rotating the weekly services to the different houses.
I asked me Amish friend to show me how she did her hair under her bonnet and she obliged. We stood in her bedroom in front of a dresser and mirror that looked antique. The hair is looped, and then wrapped around itself and a big barrette holds it in place and flat. I never used this style because of how the metal barrette would cut into the hair.
Next in part 4: I end up at a Lutheran retreat, I get between a mother bear and her cub, and I tried to help strangers. (keep reading)
Rachael Shores is posting her travel story to encourage those that don’t fit in, to explore the world and their inner desires. Your path can be different than the standard options layed out for us. Follow current travel,art, and life on Instagram @sparrowshand.
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