Montana’s breathtaking beauty and heartbreaking poverty, plus our encounter with a grizzly bear

Big Sky Country is home to some of the most awe-inspiring vistas on the planet, from mountains to lakes and prairies, and some of the most amazing animals in the United States, but nature cannot hide the poverty plaguing small towns like Browning.

Glacier National Park occupies 1,583 square miles in the northwestern corner of Montana, nestled in the Rocky Mountains right up against the Canadian border.  Over 3,000,000 visitors arrive every year to enjoy some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet, a unique combination of mountain ranges carved by glaciers, the glaciers themselves, crystal lakes, dense pine forest, and alpine meadows.  Rich in wildlife, Glacier features black and brown bears, mountain goats, moose, coyote, deer, even wolves and mountain lions, many of which can be seen on the side of the road or marching up a hiking trail.  Montana in general is known as “Big Sky Country” and needs to be witnessed in person to be believed.  The heavens vault over you as a bright, unbelievable blue crown, lighter around the edges than rising to an almost indigo directly above.  The clouds seem to float against this backdrop, either a glowing white or tinged with the orange of the sun, somehow closer and brighter than elsewhere in the world, as though they painted on some fancy dome in a Las Vegas mega-hotel, too perfect to be real.  There is a raw vitality and wildness that differentiates the landscape from other mountain ranges in more populated areas.  There are no chalets nestled in the hills or ski lifts winding up the slopes, only nature in all its glory.  It’s as if you stumbled onto a prehistoric landscape, one not touched by humans, existing as it has before we walked the Earth.  The vistas inspire awe in even the most jaded heart, a place where you can only stand, watch, and marvel at the jagged peaks in all their varied shapes, splotches of glacier, green grasses and pine trees, and glorious lakes.  Beneath those trees and beside those lakes, I was reminded of President Teddy Roosevelt in Yosemite, who claimed to have the feeling of “lying in a great solemn cathedral, far vaster and more beautiful than any built by the hands of man.”

The mountains of Glacier Park are a unique product of the interaction with an ancient inland sea, more recent tectonic activity, and the force of the glaciers during the last ice age.  Between 1.6 billion and 800 million years ago, the inland sea deposited unique sediments in the region, many were rich in iron that has since oxidized and become the bright red of rust.  Other sediments are a unique turquoise or aquamarine that shades the rocks and the approximately 175 lakes that dot the region, turning the water into a shimmering blue in the sunshine.  The mountains formed more recently, approximately 170 million years ago, but even here the process was unique.  Normally, the tectonic plates push up against one another, causing the crust of the Earth in the middle to rise, the same as if you were to push two stacks of paper together, but in Glacier National Park, the tectonic plate flipped over on top of itself, unearthing rock from the bottom layers that is billions of years old in a process known as a “Lewis Overthrust.”  The raw mountains were further chiseled during the last ice age, when thousands of feet of ice pressed down from the north, grinding away any of the softer stone and revealing the harder minerals beneath the surface, making it no exaggeration to say the region was carved by the glacier, same as a sculptor.  The ice strips away all but the strongest stone, resulting in mountains that appear almost intentionally shaped.  Some have flat tops, similar to a tower or a spire.  Others have smooth, sweeping sides like the bow of a ship.  A few are jagged or lopsided, with steep faces and cliffs.  The exposed rock reveals the striations of the eons, and shimmers in a wide variety of colors from pale hues to the almost ubiquitous reds.  The receding glacier around 12,000 years ago left behind the freshwater lakes, bathed in the dissolved sediments that reflect the sun and change color based on the time of the day, from deep blue to a bright azure, and aquamarine.  Today, the lakes are fed by streams, brooks, and waterfalls running down from the mountains.  So spectacular are these views, that Stanley Kubrick chose the setting for the opening sequence of The Shining.  The camera pans over Wild Goose Island in St. Mary’s Lake and proceeds up Follow the Sun  Road.

Beyond the landscapes, Glacier Park is home to a broad diversity of animals.  The untamed wilderness hosts critters large and small, docile and dangerous, aware of humans and yet uncaring of their presence, frequently stopping traffic.  As we entered the Many Glacier region, cars were stopped shortly before the trailhead for a female moose on the side of the road, apparently enjoying a late lunch, munching on different plants while people gathered to take photographs.  A ranger appeared to ensure no one got too close. A moose might not view people as a potential source of food but at hundreds of pounds and with a powerful stride, it could easily trample you.  These are large and powerful animals, and Glacier Park is no zoo with bars or glass separating them from spectators, more on that in a moment.  In the meantime, the animals go where they want and the humans need to get out of the way.  The moose made its way across the street to the trailhead, almost as if it were posing for pictures at that point.  Less than an hour later, we had made our way down the trail to a beautiful lake, one side faced a stream and the mountains, the other one of the few rustic hotels by the entrance to this area of the park.  We were walking toward a small wooden dock (boat tours take people through the lake on vessels from early last century) when we heard calls of “bear, bear” from further up the trail.  Normally, a bear in the woods would not be so easy to spot, but this one was marching right up the trail itself, and it was traveling in our direction.  We – my mother, my brother, my wife, and I – were positioned a few yards off the trail proper with our backs to the lake, as the bear, moderately sized and reddish brown in color, loped right past us, continuing around the trail without a care in the world.

A few days earlier, we had seen both brown and grizzly bears at the Calgary Zoo, but there is no comparison to seeing one in the wild.  The wild version walks with a certain pride.  This is its domain and its every motion, from the heavy paws on the ground, to the undulations of its back with each step, suggest the creature knows it is the lord of this wilderness and it will brook no argument.  The bear’s coat was thick and lustrous, a reddish brown that both blends in with the surroundings better than one would expect, or when on the trail stands out from just about anything else on this Earth.  The calls of “bear, bear,” continued as it followed the trail around the lake, moving past us at a steady, almost casual speed, minding its own business, though the sheer size and obvious power make it clear that was by choice as well.  Once it cleared our position, my brother and I emerged from the woods and watched it proceed up the trail, then promptly began following it at a reasonably safe distance.  I’ll leave it to posterity to decide what constitutes a safe distance and the wisdom of following a bear we believed to be a grizzly, but in the moment there was no question in my mind.  I wasn’t going to simply watch the bear disappear, getting only a glimpse through the trees.  I needed to see this marvelous creature in action, and so we carefully followed up the trail, as the sounds of “bear, bear” continued to proceed its progress.  The bear itself glanced back at us once, for a brief moment, probably wondering who this idiot was with a backpack and a beer.  It disappeared from view rounding a bend in the trail, and then went down by the water.  We didn’t see it again, although the water itself was only about 20 yards from the trail, a bear in dense brush is hard to spot.  On the way out of the park, our car was stopped on the road for the second time.  A few moments later, a mother brown bear and two cubs, one brown, one black, crossed the road and disappeared just as easily into the brush on the other side.  I live in black bear country in New Jersey and had never seen one.  In Montana, I saw four in a few hours, one of which was likely a grizzly.

Glacier National Park was founded in 1910 after being acquired from the Blackfeet Indians by President William Howard Taft.  President Taft was following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt who helped found the conservation movement.  The location had long been under consideration by the Boone and Crockett Club, of which Roosevelt was a founding member as well.  Today, the Blackfeet still live in the area’s only town, Browning, located just outside the park as the remaining part of the Indian Reservation.  Browning itself is far from beautiful, however.  Other than the backdrop, there is nothing picturesque about this town of barely 1,000 people with a median income of a scant $23,879 per household and just $8,995 per capita.  Close to 30% of the population lives below the poverty line and an astounding 33.4% of children under 18.  The houses, such as they are, are largely prefab and mobile homes that have long since fallen into disrepair.  Some didn’t appear to be livable at all, literally burned out shacks with boards for windows, and yet there were people inside.  Junk litters the lawn, broken down old cars, indescribable odds and ends, sometimes just plain garbage.  I was reminded of Bruce Springsteen singing about Youngstown, Ohio in a different context, “Well my daddy come on the Ohio works, When he come home from World War II, Now the yard’s just scrap and rubble, He said ‘Them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do.’”   Dogs wander the streets day and night, marginally owned by the occupants, but free to roam as they please; seemingly dozens of them as it was not uncommon to see five or more after driving down a block or two.  Children play in the scraps of grass or just the dirt.  Parents gather on steps with the listlessness of the destitute.

The few homes that defy this trend, such as the AirBnB we stayed at on the edge of town, are fenced in with security systems. Our host was actually a Blackfoot Indian himself, whose family (along with his wife) had lived on this same land for generations.  There was a photo of one of his wife’s ancestors, Killing Inside, who was born in 1820 long before the Civil War of the Indian Wars that were waged in the area in its wake as the White man spread further and further west.  Some of his ancestors passed down the stories of those times, whether or not they were the truth, he didn’t really know, only that hundreds were massacred and some starved.  There was one thing he did know, however.  Speaking to him one morning, he turned to me and my brother and said, “I don’t know if you are Democrats or Republicans, but if you want to know what socialism is, just look around you.  This is the product of socialism.”  In his view, rightly in my opinion, the bulk of the population on the reservation has been reduced to a subsistence existence because they live almost purely on government subsidies in government provided housing.  Our host was rightfully proud of his AirBnB, which they referred to as Farmer’s Inn, and his own home next door, as were some of the others in the community who took the path of work and earning money.  Those houses stood out like flowers in a field of scrub.  The rest of the population, however, had allowed itself to deteriorate on the dole, a topic that was obviously heartbreaking and frustrating to our new Indian friend.  They let their homes fall into disrepair.  They allowed the tribe itself to grow corrupt, where officials make well over $100,000 per year and then dole out a meager $100 in payments per year from casino profits.  Corruption was also at the top of our host’s mind.  The two previous Chairmen of the tribe had gone to jail, one for embezzlement and one for dealing drugs.  In his view, the problem wasn’t that the government was spending too little, but those at the top were stealing too much, and leaving the bulk of the population to eke out a living below the poverty line.

I cannot say if everything he said was true, but it certainly smacked of truth to me.  As he put it, he started working when he was less than 10 years old, first mowing lawns, then shining shoes.  He went to college, and as an adult, opened a store, served as a firefighter in the park, volunteered as an ambulance driver, and acquired some property.  By the standards of New York City, he was not rich by any means, but he had dignity, pride, and a little something for his family that most of his fellow Indians do not.  These things were taken from them by socialism, as they always will be when you do not control your income or fate.  It seems to me there is a lesson there, one of the haves and have nots, and why it might be so even among some of the grandest beauty in the known universe.