View Glacier National Park Photo Gallery

YO! Human here! Now that is not the usual utterance of one human being passing another on a city sidewalk. Nor yet of a shopper traversing the treacherous terrain of a shopping mall parking lot, eyeing the predatory cars as they stalk the vacant spots. So there could only be one reason why I found myself—embarrassed, but loving life—announcing my species and presence at each blind turn of a gently ascending path that led towards a magnificent mountain pass.

Ursus arctos horribilis.

The name says it all, doesn’t it? Grizzly bear. I doubt anyone comes to Glacier National Park, Montana without inquiring as to his whereabouts, his eating habits and his mood that day. Every piece of park literature I picked up proffered advice on how to deal with bears. I can sum it up in a phrase—on their terms—but I would be remiss if I didn’t entertain you with this piece of wisdom gleaned from the official park guide. “If you feel you have been stalked and attacked as prey, try to escape.” Oh, those cutups in the National Forest Service! Perhaps while the bears cramp up with laughter, you can hightail it.

The point of this digression is simple. Individually, we may fear this four hundred-pound mountain monarch, but collectively we have whittled his numbers down from perhaps a hundred thousand in the lower forty-eight to about a thousand. He may be grumpy, and as interested in meeting you as you are in meeting an IRS agent, but he has every right. This is his place; he needs it more than you. And knowing that can put you in your place. Which is, I would argue, the reason we occasionally leave civilization behind and head for a spot where other species make the rules. We find ourselves there.

That, in a nutshell, is why I came to Montana. It was a trip three years in the making, as other trips, other fruitless endeavors–such as work–intervened. I won’t make that mistake again. Because in the week that I was there, I fell in love with the free form sculpture of the Rockies, the lakes, the fabled big sky, the vastness of the Great Plains and the tawny grass exhausted by summer, awaiting its blanket of snow. Now, like a dewy-eyed Romeo, I’ll be back.

I was in sixth grade when I was introduced to Robert Frost’s famous poem, The Road Not Taken. It ends–

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

This poem encapsulates my primary rule for travel – stay off the Interstates as much as possible. The Interstates are to state highways and county roads as shopping malls are to country stores. They may get you there, but the highways are a part of there. So I took I-84 only twice. First to zip me out of Oregon, then to whisk me back. The other rule I follow, when schedule permits, is travel off-season. I went in early October, both to avoid the summer crowds and to catch the aspens in their glory. It worked on both counts, though I recommend making the trip in mid-September, or at least after Labor Day. October in winter country can be dicey and many—though not all—of Glacier’s facilities close down at the end of September.

Highway 12, through the Bitterroot Mountains, let me know that October this year was going to work out just fine. There was color in the cottonwoods, aspens and western larches – deciduous conifers whose needles turn yellow in fall. At Lolo Pass, Montana welcomed me with two signs–the usual “howdy” and another positing the speed limit at 70 mph! A tad faster than I cared to descend this curvy highway to the Lolo valley. There is a swimming pool sized hot springs here for you to enjoy if you pass this way. A note to RVers. Despite the curves, Highway 12 is highly navigable by RV and the scenery put it high on my worthwhile list. You’re following the Nez Perce and Lewis and Clark here, so be prepared to make plenty of historic stops.

A few miles later I was back in civilization, heading up Highway 93 to Missoula. I wanted to see this town after hearing good reports, but my first impression was less than stellar. Miles of fast food “restaurants” and national brand mega-stores – the ubiquitous strip that has invaded nearly every American town of over ten thousand people. I’m well aware that my bias is showing, but it’s getting harder to find local, indigenous character in small town USA. The true Missoula lay a few miles down the road. There I discovered a bustling old town of brick buildings and wide streets, plus a lovely park, replete with pavilion, along the banks of the Clark Fork River. I wandered for hours, photographing the fine old buildings and finding—Eureka!—the Big Sky Brewing Company.

My exuberance may require some explanation. I hail from Oregon, a humble but mighty Mecca of micro-brewed beers. So, when traveling interstate, I consider it my solemn duty to test the local products. It’s not that I wanted to drink beer, mind you. But duty called and I, well I’m just a good soldier. I passed on the Moose Drool (no, I’m not making this up) and had a Scape Goat pale ale. It was good and just about the color of my waitress’ hair, which coincidence gave me a conversational in. I wanted to hear from a young local what it was like growing up and living in this mid-sized northern town.

She liked it fine – except that she was from Maine. Ditto with the retired lady in the park. She had moved here from L.A. (I assume some Montanans live in Missoula.) and loved it–except for the snow in winter. It was not time to tell her that Missoula is nicknamed the Garden City because of its mild winters... relative to the rest of Montana. It was time to go. I still had a long drive up the Flathead Valley to Glacier and I wanted to see Flathead Lake before the light waned.

The Flathead Valley is protected by the Salish Mountains to the west, and the Whitefish, Swan and Mission Ranges in the east. Here the concept of foothills was bypassed; the mountains rise, full-blown, from the valley floor, towering rock walls that distinctly define the sense of place here and provide a mild climate. You’ll find Christmas trees, cherries, champagne grapes (stop in at Mission Mountain Winery), as well as grains and potatoes. Covering one hundred and ninety-seven square miles, Flathead Lake is the largest lake west of the Mississippi, and one of the cleanest in the world. Impressive, yes, but this is just the puddle left by an ancient inland sea. And the tale of the flood caused by this lake is one of the geologic marvels of the world.

Today, the biggest flood in the Flathead Valley is tourism, and with good reason. The Valley boasts eight championship golf courses offering a season from April through October. In addition, there is fishing in the lake and streams, white water rafting, diving, hiking, and skiing and summer activities at the Big Mountain Ski Resort where you can take a gondola to the top to gain a panoramic view. The historic towns of Whitefish, Columbia Falls, Kalispell and others offer plenty of amenities, places to poke around and arts festivals in the summer. And, of course, this is the gateway to Glacier National Park.

I stayed the night on the threshold of the park in the small town of Hungry Horse. There I picked up the Hungry Horse News (“Montana’s Best Weekly Paper”) and learned that a grizzly that had been killed in the recent Moose Fire west of Glacier and the Annual Bison Roundup had begun.

At first approach, Glacier can be daunting simply because it is so... big. A few figures should serve to make this point. Over a million acres are protected within the boundaries of the park. There are six hundred and fifty lakes, over seven hundred miles of hiking trails and, yes, over fifty glaciers. I’m certain someone has counted all the peaks in the park, but this is a case where the word, “many” really comes into play. Six of the peaks are over ten thousand feet. Convinced? So, where to start? With a friendly Ranger, of course.

Look at nature with an artist’s eye and you’ll see that she always gets it right. The colors always agree, from the expressionist splash of spring wildflowers’ exuberant hues to the grayed and complex tones of autumn, accented by deciduous fire. The shapes, too, are never discordant. They compliment each other from every vantagepoint. Looked at in this way, Glacier National Park, is a masterpiece. What tools didn’t nature use to sculpt this work? Subduction and upthrust, the unimaginable collision of tectonic plates that launched a mountain range out of a shallow sea, the millennial chisel of ice half a mile thick, fire, wind, water and snow. The geologic story of this place covers over a billion years. The geologic delight of Glacier is that all this is in colorful evidence. These are some of the oldest and best-preserved sedimentary rocks in the United States. I don’t have a billion years to detail the process. Happily, the park offers numerous interpretive talks and hikes to acquaint visitors with the geology, glaciers and multitudinous flora and fauna of Glacier.

Of less duration, but no less interest, is the human history of the park. Several Indian tribes lived at its margins – to the west the Kootenai, Kallispel and Salish. On the eastern plains, the Blackfeet, buffalo hunters, were the dominant tribe. The mountains served as hunting grounds as well as sacred sites for ceremonial rituals, such as vision quests. Visit beautiful Running Eagle Falls, a short walk from the road in Two Medicine for a feel of what this place meant to these peoples. To the north, a legend recounts how a Blackfeet brave climbed 9,066-foot Chief Mountain, leaving a bison skull as an offering. Lore became fact when an 1892 climbing party found a decomposed bison skull at the summit.

First sighted by a white man in the 1780s, Glacier endured a century of trapping, mineral exploration and the competition of nations for its possession until, in 1891, its history became inextricably linked with the growing cause of conservation in the United States. In this year, Congress established the Lewis and Clark Forest Reserve within the present day boundaries of the park. During this era the park was visited by the conservationist, George Bird Grinnell, who in a 1981 essay knighted the region with the name, “The Crown of the Continent.” His subsequent efforts were instrumental in persuading President Taft to sign legislation creating Glacier National Park on May 11, 1910.

Tourism was widely promoted by the Great Northern Railway, and cabins, lodges, pack horse trips and chalets spaced a day’s horseback ride apart were developed. Among these historic stone and timber lodges, three still operate today in a magnificently preserved state: Lake McDonald Lodge on the west side; Many Glacier Lodge to the east with a breathtaking view of Swiftcurrent Lake and Mount Gould; and the Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier, known as The Big Tree Hotel for the giant Douglas fir pillars of its lobby. These bastions of rustic luxury are worth a visit even from those of you who already travel in your own grand lodges.

Early developers envisioned Glacier as a “playground for the rich.” The automobile soon changed all that. Visitors in “tin lizzies” came in droves. To accommodate them, Going-to-the-Sun-Road was completed in 1932, at a cost of three million dollars and three lives. The history and sheer engineering feat of this 52-mile highway blasted from limestone rivals its scenery. Its cost should have been absorbed by camera manufacturers – I found myself unable to drive fifty yards without stopping for a shot. In short, spectacular falls short of describing this drive; jaw dropping comes close. Numerous hikes and short walks punctuate the ascent for those of a mind to partake. I took one heavily forested path up to Avalanche Lake where I was rewarded with the sighting of a mountain goat.

Near the east entrance, in Two Dog Flat, I stopped to watch a herd of elk and heard the eerily beautiful trill of the dominant male elk bugling in his cows. Glacier National Park, a World Biosphere Reserve, is justly famous its wildlife. I cannot do more than hint at a tantalizing list here: badgers, beaver, bighorn sheep, cougars, elk, gray wolves, grizzly and black bears, moose, mountain goats and weasels, to name but a few of the sixty mammal species. Over two hundred bird species, including bald eagles, frequent the park in summer. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t see a moose, but I did see three bears–two black and one that I maintain was a grizzly. As it turns out, the unruly ursi don’t follow our rules. The black bears can be brown, the grizzlies can be black, and even experts sometimes have a problem differentiating them.

On the drier, east side of the park I spent the next two days exploring the areas of Two Medicine, Many Glacier and Chief Mountain. My home was the Red Eagle Motel atop a bluff in St. Mary with ten mile long St. Mary’s Lake, the Lewis Range and acres of achingly gold aspen groves for my front yard. I liked this country where the mountains meet the plains, the population is sparse and the “towns” are no bigger than a blink. Of the two “traffic jams” I encountered, one was caused by a Blackfeet rancher astride a small, lawn mover-sized tractor escorting his cattle, and the other by a herd of horses, presumably domestic, traipsing down highway 89 unattended. Do not miss the Two Sisters Café, just north of St. Mary, a vibrant example of rural creativity that’s more colorful and more indicative of our national spirit than anything found in a gallery.

East of the Rockies is where Montana really earns its nickname, Big Sky Country. Despite my allegiance to vertical scenery, I found the Great Plains alluring. A wicked wind that had kicked up from the northwest was clearly intent on staying. Clouds marched on the park and claimed it. Angelic rays strummed the peaks through rifts in the cumulus. All smelled of winter’s coming. So when crisp kernels of corn snow pelted me at Sun Point, I knew it was time to light out. I stopped in Browning, in the Blackfeet reservation, to see the Museum of the Plains Indians, which I recommend. Then, with the radio locked onto a country station from Alberta and the cruise control glued to seventy-five, I churned up the miles through the rumpled country of the Rocky Mountain Front before hopping the Rockies to spend the night in Butte. This region is bubbling with hot springs-I made note to return with more time to soak my traveler’s bones in Boulder.

West of Butte is Big Hole National Battleground, where I stopped to pay homage to Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce who fought so bravely here. If you don’t know the story of the Nez Perce flight to Canada, there are several books about it. Or visit Big Hole to learn what finally drove a courageous, proud and unjustly treated people to lay down their arms and say, “From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

Snow was falling as I left Big Hole. A few miles later a sign welcomed me to Idaho, where a trip down the Salmon River canyon headed me to I-84 and home again. Road-weary, but happy, I felt I had gained a new friend. More importantly, Montana had renewed my sense that it is the vastness of the land, far more than our cities, that defines the American character. It had told me that there are still places where you can shout out into the distance, “Yo, human here,” and if you listen carefully, the sound of the wind through the trees and the water over rock will whisper to you what that means.

Peter Herring is a freelance writer based in Eugene, Oregon. He writes articles on travel, food, wine and assorted Holidays topics.