This summer brought fun and adventure for our family including most recently a trip to explore various parts of Montana's Big Sky Country. Here is a painting I did based on memories and impressions of some of our vacation time exploring the incredible beauty of Glacier National Park. In the painting I remembered the majesty of the mountains against the big sky, the crystal-clear glacier mountain lakes which are literally bright turquoise in color, the gorgeous wild flowers and tall pines, and the highly favored huckleberries that grow on the plants that surrounded us everywhere in the park. In all the park's awesomeness, we discovered that many views like this one I remembered can only be found by hiking the mountain on foot. The quaint and cozy Belton Chalet, a designated National Historic Landmark Hotel, is where we stayed during our time visiting Glacier National Park, and I would give it 5 stars for charm, history, setting, friendliness and comfort. Being able to keep our windows wide open in the old-fashioned luxury felt like the dream place to be for cool fresh mountain breezes and a relief from the summertime’s continued record-breaking heat waves. Fortunately for us, our chalet was angled away from the winds of the wildfires that have been ravaging devastation all over America's wild West. Sadly though, the presence of the continued overwhelming wildfires were clearly obvious in the skies veiling the views and mountains with thick layers of every shade of smoky grey. It was at The Belton Chalet, and then pretty much everywhere else on our travels, that we discovered the flavor of huckleberries. Huckleberries are where it's at up there! Most every restaurant and shop we crossed on our vacation advertised that they had huckleberries or huckleberry flavored or scented something or other; and as we were told, it was something to boldly advertise because huckleberries are hard to come by since they only grow in the wild at certain elevations. Before this trip we were not really aware of the distinctive and sweet huckleberry, but later we learned that we were at the very right place at the very right time for them. We were told that huckleberries are native to the northwestern United States and grow in the wild requiring the high elevations of 2,000 to 11,000 feet to thrive in the mountain soil. Their peak season is mid-August - - just the time we were there. This local refreshment was a favorite huckleberry treat of ours after a long day of hiking… As the Wild Huckleberry Larger can illustrates, another big fan of huckleberries are Wild Black Bears and 300-1200 pound Grizzly Bears that live in that habitat where huckleberries grow. The bears love the huckleberries and spend their late summer days eating them to help fill themselves up before taking at least a 5-month nap. However, huckleberries are hardly the only thing bears will bite into and if a hungry bear is startled and feels threatened by humans, they can attack. The signs and warnings similar to the one pictured below about the seriousness of encountering bears were everywhere. Maybe the wildfires had something to do with it or maybe just the time of year, but we were notified frequently about bears on the mountains and even had to take alternative trails because some were completely closed due to high 'bear activity' { ...insert wide-eyed emoji. } Hiking miles and climbing mountains, while constantly being ‘bear aware’ and constantly making noise as directed to keep from a dangerous surprise bear encounter, left me so winded at points that the only noise making energy I had was to repeatedly give a quick yell-out of 'Who-Dey' . ( "Who-Dey" = a conditioned seasonal hometown NFL inspired expression of sorts. ) Fortunately all the *Who-Deys and noise making worked through all our outback journeys past the “Warning: You Are Entering Grizzly Country” signs, and up all of the high winding mountain trails, and through all the lush huckleberry patches... Thankfully we didn’t come across a bear until our last day there when one crossed the street a little in front of our car leaving us with only great memories of our taste of adventure hiking to discover the amazing Big Sky Country views and awesome beauty in the majestic mountains of Montana's Glacier National Park.
"Oh, beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain. For purple mountain majesties, Above the fruited plain." ~ Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929)
1 Comment
Diana
8/28/2018 06:29:16 am
Beautiful story of your summer journey to Montana! Glad Heidi’s been and Keeley’s going next month! I’ll have to plan a trip too!!
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AuthorI am a 'self-taught' artist who can hardly remember a day when I wasn't in the process of creating something... Thanks for visiting my site where I can share some of my work. Archives
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