Bear Tracks, Don’t Look Back
Oblivious and Thriving, Apparently
The trail had that early-season energy, part promise, part obstacle course. I was picking my way along when a Dusky Grouse stopped me cold. Just standing there in full display mode, fanned tail, orange combs raised, red throat patch puffed out like he’d been waiting for an audience. I stopped, grabbed my phone, fired off a few shots. Honestly, he looked like a tiny, unhinged turkey auditioning for something. I took a water break right there, snapped a quick selfie to send to Mo, feeling pretty good about the whole thing.
What I did not know, while I was standing there feeling smug about my wildlife encounter, was that there were bear tracks in the snow directly behind me. Fresh ones. Cool, cool, cool.
The trail didn’t get friendlier after that. Snow banks pushed across the path like they hadn’t gotten the memo that it was spring. Then came the elk remains, picked clean by what was almost certainly a mountain lion. Not exactly the vibe you want mid-hike. There’s a specific kind of quiet that settles over you when you’re standing next to something like that, equal parts sobering and reminder that you are not, in fact, the apex anything out here.
But you keep moving. The arrowleaf balsamroot was blooming everywhere, those big yellow flowers catching the afternoon light like they were trying to out-sunshine the actual sun. Hard to stay rattled when the hillside looks like that. The city spread out below in the golden hour, the Clark Fork winding through it all, and at some point the grim stuff just fell back a few steps. Not because it was tidy. Because it wasn’t.
May 14th Does It Again
May 14th has a pattern. Not a subtle one either. Over the years, this date has reliably delivered finals stress, Montana wandering, bike misadventures, and the particular joy of being outside when you probably should be doing something else.
It started back in 2001 with finals week and a nervous wait for a job offer, the woods already calling louder than any textbook. By 2004, May 14th meant a photo safari through Lambert, Montana, oil wells and a 24-hour flu included at no extra charge. Then 2008 brought the kind of racing news that stings, a venue change yanking the marathon finish line out from under carefully laid plans.
The 2010 version was pure group ride energy, fifteen people and a handful of ginger snaps, bombing Sidewinder in the last light of a real sunny evening. Two years later, 2012 produced what might be the finest accidental date story on record, complete with aggressive doves and a woman straight out of frontier fiction foiling any romantic ambitions.
Then came the quieter entries. Little yellow buttons in 2020. A week in Gardiner in 2021. A hard desert goodbye in 2022, rear-view mirror framing everything left behind. In 2023, a scree slope and a wrong turn on Dunn’s Draw ended exactly as it should, guided back by someone patient enough to wait.
And most recently, 2025 turned larch needles into crowns and a windblown forest into a kingdom, two fools grinning at the sky.
May 14th, it turns out, is just another day that keeps showing up and asking you to pay attention. Hard to argue with that.