Hidden Lake
Photo by Ireland Headrick
During my first Montana summer, a season in which snowfall and seventy-degree temperatures can occur less than a week apart, I drove three hours north from Missoula to West Glacier to hike the Hidden Lake Trail. It was the first of July. I wore an old T-shirt and older running shoes, stretchy pink pants and a yellow drawstring backpack with a single item—bear spray—inside.
On the way up to the overlook, as I stomped and stumbled like a big, delighted baby through the patches of snow, it had not yet occurred to me how difficult it would be to make a new life out West. I had started over before, moving as a teenager from Tennessee to North Carolina, moving as an adult from DC to Brooklyn. But this landscape was a new one, with a vastness and an aridity foreign to me. I had a New York license and Carolina plates. I had never heard of Wallace Stegner or corner crossing.
But there on the trail my task was twofold, and simple: I marveled at the crackle of ice underneath my spongy sneakers, and I wondered if my exposed arms would burn. When I finally made it to the overlook, I spotted a mountain goat with gnarly tufts of white fur and two dark, elegant horns. I met its neutral gaze and was pleased. Between us there was no conflict, no bid for connection. We simply stood in the warm sun between snowfalls, looking at one another.
