Glacier Centennial: Historic Red Buses

Glacier National Park’s fleet of 33 buses might just be the oldest working fleet of passenger vehicles in the world. Built by the White Motor Company between 1936 and 1938, each 15-passenger, convertible bus with a rollback canvas top has an estimated 600,000 miles on it. And each one has always been painted bright red, to match the berries of the Mountain Ash.

Sun Road - 1939 GNRR Brochure

The Cleveland, Ohio company that built them—once a leading maker of trucks and buses that began as a subsidiary of the White Sewing Machine Company—was purchased by Volvo in 1987. The similar White Motor Company buses that once ran in other national parks have long since been retired.

The noisy manual transmissions responsible for the bus drivers’ nickname “gear jammers” were replaced with automatic transmissions in 1989. The buses themselves were almost lost during the summer of 1999 when developing cracks in the chassis were discovered.

Author Ray Djuff wrote in a 1999 issue of the Glacier Park Foundation’s Inside Trail newsletter that “an expert on White Motor Company vehicles stated recently that, but for an unfortunate retrofitting project in 1989, Glacier’s reds might have run without major problems for another 60 years.” The power steering added when the transmissions were replaced created stresses on the vehicles’ frames.

Since repairing the fleet didn’t appear financially viable, the Glacier Park, Inc. transportation company, once a subsidiary of the Great Northern Railway, told the National Park Service that the buses should be retired. But the pubic saw it differently

After all, when “The Reds” were introduced, they became the most popular way to experience Sun Road or to travel the Chief Mountain Highway from Many Glacier Hotel on the east side of the park up to the Prince of Wales Hotel in Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park. “Everyone rode them—including Clark Gable, Carol Lombard, William Randolph Hearst, and, more recently, then-Vice President George H. Bush, the Queen of the Netherlands, and Robin Williams,” wrote Amy B, Vanderbilt in On the Road Again: Glacier National Park’s Red Buses. “The Reds provided a memorable experience to every visitor and a reminder of when adventure.”

Designed by Count Alexis de Sakhoffsky, a famous industrial stylist and advocate of streamlining styles, the buses represented the park’s golden age when visitors arrived on the Great Northern Railway’s Empire Builder and Oriental Limited. The visitors were lured by western myths and a See-America-First advertising campaign that used some of the best writers and artists in the country. In 1999, the majority of the 7,000 comments received during the park’s General Management Plan review wanted the National Park Service to keep Glacier the way it was—including the historic buses.

Refurbished Buses at Ford

An endowment was created through the contributions of park concessionaire Glacier Park, Inc, the Glacier Park Foundation and the Ford Motor Company to inspect and evaluate the fleet for prospective restoration. Ford was seriously interested in the project. The rehabilitation solution included a lengthened Ford F450 chassis, a 5.4L V8 bi-fuel power-train, and upgraded flooring, insulation, doors, wiring and instrument panel.

According to Vanderbilt, “The Red Bus project took more than 2 years and a team of over 200 experts from over six different organizations to make the dream of returning the historic Red Buses a reality. Ford completely renovated the Red Buses using new technology and its extensive expertise in alternative fuels. While preserving the exterior of the buses along with their historic charm, Ford used alternative fuel technologies to change the engine and drive-train, making them cleaner and quieter than the originals.” The buses now run on either gasoline or propane.

In the world of restoration, one might say that the buses are rather like the standard example of “Paul Bunyan’s Axe.” The handle is replaced, then the head is replaced, then later another handle is needed. Are these Reds the same buses the White Motor Company built in the 1930s? Yes and no. Even without the old symphony of whirring and squalling gears, the essential ambiance of the riding experience remained in 2002.

Sure, the bus drivers no longer jammed the gears as they double-clutched their ancient horses up over Logan Pass. But they were the once again the knights of the mountain roads who spun tall tales along the backbone of the world with the mysterious daring-do deportment of all minstrels who know how to enchant and steal hearts.

When the buses came back from their rehabilitation at Ford in June, 2002, the mountain gods chased the celebration inside with a heavy snow storm. It was a good sign.

Snowy Celebration - NPS Photo

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Copyright (c) 2010 by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of “The Sun Singer,” a mythic novel set in Glacier National Park

Interview with the Earth Mage

Smoky Trudeau is the author of two novels, “Redeeming Grace” and “The Cabin” as well as two non-fiction books for writers. This month, Vanilla Heart Publishing released her collection of essays, poetry, and color illustrations, “Observations of an Earth Mage,” in print and e-book formats.

In her blog, Trudeau recently wrote that she is passionate about “nature and our intimate, intricate connection with what is wild.” This passion is clearly evident in stories that take the reader from the Great Smoky Mountains and the Appalachian Trail to Joshua Tree to Yosemite to tidal pools along the California Coast.

Malcolm: You set the tone for “Observations of an Earth Mage” in the book’s prologue with a memory of climbing an apple tree behind your house when you were three years old: “I closed my eyes,” you said, “and felt for the pulse of the tree in the trunk beneath my fingertips, for surely this tree had a heart that beat like mine. The trunk warmed beneath my gentle touch as my branch swayed in the easy spring breeze. It felt like the tree was breathing. I matched the rhythm of my own breath to that of the tree. I was the tree. The tree was me.”

Was this a unique and singular moment, or have you been able to maintain this level of empathy with the natural world throughout your life?

Smoky: Both. It was a unique and singular moment in that it was the moment when I made the connection that, as a person, I was not above nature, not separate from nature. I was nature, and nature was me. One can make that realization but once in a lifetime. What made it unique, I think, is that I was just a baby when it happened. Yes, I have been able to maintain this level of connection with the natural world for the fifty years that have passed since that day. Although I have to admit, when I was struck by lightning, there were a few months when I thought perhaps that was being a little too connected to Mother Nature!

Malcolm: Lightning is definitely too much nature at once. (See first of Trudeau’s five-post lightning story here.) What are the genesis and scope of “Observations of an Earth Mage,” and what do you hope your readers will take away from their experience with the book?

Smoky: The book is a memoir told in both essay and poetic form. I open with a series of stories that I wrote when my children were little about encounters my family had with the famous Great Smoky Mountain National Park black bears. Back then—we’re talking the early to mid 1960’s—black bears were all over the Smokies due to bad garbage management. It was impossible to go to the park and not have a close encounter of the bear kind. My family seemed to attract the bears wherever we went in the park. The book continues with stories of my life on the prairies of Illinois, and then follows me when I moved to California and began exploring the California wilderness with my husband Scott. I hope that, upon reading the book, readers will want to get outdoors themselves, take a hike, go camping, splash in a tidepool. But more than that, I hope they learn how to see the natural world with the eyes of someone who is a part of it, a participant, rather than as a spectator.

Malcolm: When I was young, my parents took my two brothers and I on family vacations to such places as Key West, Mammoth Cave, the Smoky Mountains and Niagara Falls. As I read your book, was struck by the fact that your late father dreamt up similar vacations as well. Was this your introduction to wanderlust and to seeing the natural world in its many shapes and sizes?

Smoky: Absolutely. My father took us to those places, too, and to Shenandoah National Park, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Canada, and on a couple of great tours of the West. We camped; we hiked. One of the most sacred experiences of my life happened on one of these trips, when we saw a gray wolf trot across a forest road in the Upper Peninsula when I was maybe ten years old. I have as clear an image of that wolf in my mind today as I had when it was happening. My dad instilled in me not only my wanderlust, but something I call wonderlust—the propensity for always asking, “I wonder what’s over there/down that road/under that rock/up that mountain?” It was his greatest gift to me. Dad’s gone now—he died Thanksgiving weekend—but when I’m out hiking, I still feel him with me. He still tags along on my explores. The book is dedicated to his memory.

Malcolm: You tell several stories about bears in the book. How did you happen on so many of them? I wondered if they were a totem animal or if you were, in fact, a bear whisperer.

Smoky: I mentioned a few minutes ago that we always saw bears when we went to the Smokies when I was a child. And boy, did we ever see bears! I know people who have camped in the same campgrounds, hiked the same trails, and never saw a single bear. As a child, I thought we were lucky. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized perhaps it was I who somehow called the bears.

Yes, I have a spiritual connection to the bear. It wasn’t until I had what a Native American acquaintance of mine termed a shamanic experience with a bear after I was struck by lightning that I understood my connection to her. He pointed out that, on the medicine wheel, Bear is the symbol of the West, and also that lightning comes from the West. It wasn’t a coincidence, he said, that Bear was reaching out to me.

I wrote about that shamanic journey; it’s one of the stories in the book, the story called The Bear Whisperer. My daughter, who was maybe ten at the time, dubbed me that. Is it true? You’d have to ask Sister Bear, but I’ll tell you this: the last time I was in the Smokies, a black bear actually nuzzled my forehead through the wall of my tent one night. It was an amazing experience. It was like three kisses on the forehead, as gentle as a mother kissing her child. And no, I wasn’t afraid.

Bear is always with me. I have her tattooed on my arm, beneath a pair of lightning bolts, a sort of personal symbol of my strength. It is an honor and a privilege to have been touched by such a powerful creature.

Malcolm: Tell me about the red cap you’re wearing in 98.6 percent of the pictures I see of you. Is it your lucky hat?

Smoky: Only 98.6 percent? I thought it was higher than that! Yes, that’s my Earth Mage hat. It has secret powers. I can’t tell you about them, though—they wouldn’t be secret anymore.

Seriously, though, my husband gave me that hat the first time he and I went hiking together. I’ve been attached to it ever since. My father used to always give me three pieces of advice: (1) Don’t bite anyone’s dog; (2) Check the air in your tires, and (3) Wear your hat. I like to think Dad’s looking down from the great hiking trails in the afterlife and saying , “Good, she’s wearing her hat.”

Malcolm: Of all the places you describe in prose, poetry and photographs in “Observations of an Earth Mage,” do you have a favorite?

Smoky: Well, the Smoky Mountains are my heart’s home. I’m named for them; they are where my soul always longs to be. But now that I live in California, I’ve made strong connections to the mountains here, too. Mount Baldy, the third-highest peak in Southern California, shoots up from the San Gabriel Valley floor just twenty miles from my house; my back deck affords me a spectacular view not only of Baldy but also, on clear days, of Mount San Jacinto and Mount San Gorgonio, the second-highest and highest mountains, respectively, in Southern California. We’ve been camping in the Sierras several times—I’ve lived in California less than two years—and have trips back planned for this spring and summer. And I love the ocean, especially exploring the tidepools. But I guess, deep down, if I have to pick a favorite, I’m a mountain girl at heart.

Malcolm: From reading your blog on Xanga, I see that from hikes around your neighborhood to longer trips to national parks, being out of doors is a part of your weekly agenda. Will there be Further “Observations of an Earth Mage” in your future?

Smoky: That’s the plan! In fact, we’re planning a trip to Anzo Borrego in just a few weeks to begin research for “Further Observations of an Earth Mage: The Desert.” The deserts out here are beginning to flower; there is nothing more beautiful than an ocotillo or a beavertail cactus in bloom!

Malcolm: What other projects are you working on that keep you in the house and at the computer rather than out on the trail?

Smoky: Well, I’m a freelance editor and writing coach; that’s what pays the bills. I like to make sculptures of—what else?—bears. Nothing fancy; just little clay bear totems, maybe an inch or so long, out of oven-fired clay. They’re my stress relief; I must have made fifty of them during the holiday season, after my dad died. I’ve started a tradition with them: I take one with me when we go hiking, and leave it somewhere along the trail, first as an offering to Mother Nature, and then as a gift to whatever hiker may find it, nestled in a tree branch or among rocks.

I live in this charming little shack perched on the side of the foothills in the San Gabriel Valley. Red-tailed hawks are screaming overhead, courting, building nests in the oak trees above my deck. We have deer, coyote, and bobcat roaming our neighborhood. The mountains are covered in snow. All this I see from my writing studio’s window. With inspiration like this right outside my house, how can I not write? I’m working on my third novel, “The Storyteller’s Bracelet.” I actually think I’m going to finish it within the next few months! I was going to work on it today, after this interview.

But right now, the hawks are screaming, and the sun is peeking through the clouds. Chia, my big mutt puppy, is getting restless. And I think I hear, off in the distance, Mother Nature calling to me, “Come … come ….”

I better obey.

Malcolm: As ever, my well-worn boots await by the front door. Thank you for sharing your journey.

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Part of the proceeds from the sale of both print and electronic copies and from the sale of related merchandise will be donated to the Yosemite Association.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Malcolm R. Campbell

Glacier Centennial: Green Business Program

from NPS Glacier…

The National Parks Conservation Association has teamed up with the Centennial Program to launch a Green Business Program. This program will empower local businesses to reduce their environmental impact, resulting in a more efficient and sustainable means of doing business.

Through collective action, Glacier Centennial Green Businesses will help to reduce the environmental impact on our region; decrease the amount of unnecessary waste that goes into our landfill, reduce energy use, conserve water, and foster a healthy local economy by supporting local businesses.

Mark your calendars! Join us for several Green Business Activities on April 20-22, 2010. Stay tuned for more information.

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Click here for more information and a PDF application form. Even if you’re not applying, the form itself has a lot of valuable tips and links.

–Malcolm

Jock learns Race Ready not meant for real men

from Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, a comedy/thriller about horses, horse thieves, girl friends and murderers. In the following excerpt, he’s on the trail of whoever stole Mayor Clark Trail’s race horse Sea of Fire.

Coral Snake Smith needed two omelets to loosen his tongue. For an informed source who made his living trading information for food, one might think Smith would have picked up some table manners along with the details of everyone else’s life. Jock drank half a cup of cold, gritty coffee and tried not to watch. Smith’s pig-in-a-trough noise was bad enough.

Jock’s dear old daddy always said, “Jock, take my word for it. Sloppy people are all going to hell.” He also said, “If a man smells like a whore house, he’s going to hell.” Smith had two strikes against him today and it wasn’t even noon yet.

“What did Lucinda Trail have to say?” asked Jock while Smith was licking his plate like an all day sucker.

Smith almost dropped the plate.

“Are your people following me around?”

Jock shrugged. “That, plus you’re wearing her perfume.”

“We were together, but not in the Biblical sense,” said Smith, and he grinned like it was something he spent a fair amount of time contemplating. “A man can do worse.”

“Word is, Clark has.”

Smith did a spit take with the remains of his coffee.

“So has your boss, but none of this is what Lucinda asked me about. She wanted to know why Monique Starnes bought two sacks of Race Ready.”

“What is that, some kind of Viagra knockoff?” asked Jock, recalling that while his Scotch tasted funny last night his performance had been better than usual.

Smith sat there with his mouth open, for once empty of anything approaching food. He looked like he’d seen a dunce.

“Race Ready is a brand of horse feed,” Smith said, with a fair amount of exasperation and condescension. “Martin and Brian Bentley over at the seed and feed stock it especially for Clark Trail. A new employee who didn’t know the feed had been set aside for Sea of Fire sold one sack to Ms. Starnes at seven AM and another sack at seven thirty-two AM. Brian called Lucinda and apologized for being out of stock.”

Since the waitress had temporarily lost interest in her job, Jock went to her station, selected a pot of coffee with the least amount of sludge in the bottom, and refilled Smith’s cup as well as his own. Doing this gave him time to collect his thoughts such as they were. Out of the universe of probabilities, one begged him to allow it to come to mind. But he wasn’t ready to think that way. So Jock temporarily dodged that line of thought by considering why Lucinda came to the Purple Platter.

“What was a woman like Lucinda doing in a place like this?”

“We keep in touch on a daily basis,” said Smith. “She facilitates that by sitting where you’re sitting now. She’s not exactly eye candy, but she trumps your sourpuss look without having to bat an eyelash or shove a shoe up a man’s trouser leg under the table.”

“Fine.”

So far, Smith had slung four sugar cubes into his cup. Now, he seemed to be studying the sugar bowl as though, what with the rain and all, Monday was turning into a five-cube day. He tasted his coffee, and then he dropped in another cube.

“Lucinda came in this morning dressed to the nines even though it was only eight thirty. Her face was blanched out more than her hair. She was disappointed when she learned that my network of quasi-ubiquitous sources knew nothing about the two sacks of Race Ready.”

“You’re not a seed and feed kind of guy,” observed Jock.

“Hardly.”

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Copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm R. Campbell

COMING SOON

An interview with Smoky Trudeau, author of “Observations of an Earth Mage.”

Golden Eagle’s Gift

Píta, the Golden Eagle, leaned forward into Wind’s gentle breath and came to him on soft wings. David looked up to the outstretched legs uncomprehending like a lamb, tagged, docked, weaned and newly out of the pen into greened up spring. When the talons closed around his head, he saw pain and brighter light, then a sudden upward thrust of great wings pulled him free of the world.

Safe beneath the shadow of those wings, vision came to him as a pure chaos of cloud, as talons dangling above his head as from a mirror, as glimpses of earth. He was almost air. He heard elk mating, stones disturbed on high ridges beneath his feet, water clear and cold. The sky carried snow’s scent.

Manna flung back to heaven, he was limp and drugged by height and claws, his hands and arms flapped uselessly beside him, slightly feathered and somewhat wing. Blood trickled into his eyes and mouth.

He spat salt, choked and felt himself bank southward.

He blinked until his eyes were clear and there lay the world, horizons shattered and clarified out to uncommon distances. He saw the unseen.

He saw the Mokakínsi, the backbone of the earth, and its seven points of power from the crown of the continent running south shone like suns.

He saw Grandmother standing upon a great wall of rock above Apinákui-Píta, the falls of Morning Eagle, facing east, her arms raised to the sky.

He saw lives unfolding along great rivers that emptied into one ocean and in this land where substantial water is a treasure, the rivers flowed as liquid gold.

He saw ignorant men desecrating Mother Earth.

He saw old men telling stories, the smoke of pipes and camp fires rising to the sun.

He saw the far sides of clouds.

He saw the elements dancing naked as secret lovers.

He saw tomorrow and the day after.

He saw lambs waiting to be born.

He saw the seasons change beneath his feet in a spinning blur of white, then green, then the a rainbow resolving to gold, around and around, with sparkling lights and stirring music and bobbing horses, with laughter and tears.

He saw with absolute clarity that an absolute clarity of objects was a crafted illusion, there were no defined edges, no chasms between viewer and viewed, no spaces between here and there, no times between here and now.

The universe spoke, was speaking with Píta’s voice keeeee his vision clearing keeeee over a clarified world keeeee where he merged with his horizons. Lost in limitless light, he was an ocean of stars, a deep flowing tide of emotion, a flooding river of thought, wave after wave of energy, keeeee keeeee keeeee, heard the light coalesce and there the photons were named Mokakínsi, were named Grandmother, were named this person and that person, were named river, were named smoke rising, were named sun, were named cloud, were named lambs, were named autumn, were named God.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Malcolm R. Campbell, excerpted from “Garden of Heaven,” a work in progress.

COMING SOON

An interview with Smoky Trudeau, author of “Observations of an Earth Mage.”

The Coffee Pot Blues

As a writer, I depend on coffee. Hundreds of gallons a week. Maxwell House which is still good to the last drop. But keeping a working coffee pot in this house apparently takes an act of Congress.

When I mentioned my coffee pot blues on Facebook, people said there’s no point in buying an expensive one because they break down as fast as the cheap ones. After some 200 plastic (drip style) coffee pots, I’ve come to the same conclusion. I don’t know what it’s like in your job, but frankly, the last thing I want happening is to be writing a sentence like, “Bob poured Nora a hot cup of coffee to get her in the mood,” only to find out my coffee is stone cold.

Or that the pot is empty because the water never boiled and dripped down. Or that the pot is half full because half of the water leaked out of the tank and ran down between the counter and the refrigerator where it can just dry the hell up down there all by itself since I’m not moving major appliances just to wipe up a spill.

I’ve tried all brands of “reasonably priced” pots from $20 to $60. They usually work fine for six months. After that, anything can happen, and by the time I get it fixed, I’m no longer in the mood to figure out just what Nora was going to do after Bob poured her a steaming cup of joe, a cup that should, actually, be here on my desk keeping my energy level high.

Today I bought a $10 pot at Dollar General. Never heard of the brand, something like “CoffeeFix” or “Lobster-and-Coffee-Machine,” or some such thing. Maybe cheaper is better. If this one breaks any time this year, I’m going back to boiling coffee in an enamel pot on the stove top, or perhaps on a bonfire made of all the pots stacked up in the garage that don’t work any more but are out there just in case I need them for something.

–Malcolm

Glacier Centennial: Nature is YOU

“That was the moment that defined my place in the natural world. The moment I understood that I, a human being, was not above the other creatures of Creation. Not better than the bees and the birds and the bears. Not superior to the snakes and the snails and the swallows. I was Nature. Nature was me.” –Smoky Trudeau, writing of an early childhood experience in Observations of an Earth Mage

Glacier

Like many visitors to Montana’s Glacier National Park, I enjoy the historic hotels, the ancient red tour buses, the launch trips on the lakes, and a fine meal in the dining room with a wide-windowed vista such as Waterton and Swiftcurrent Lakes.

The highlighted sites and activities in park service and hotel brochures hardly scratch the surface of what a park is–and what it could be.

There has always been a fight over what the parks are for. Are they wildlife habitats and protected ecosystems or are they recreation areas that must continue to be “developed” for use by visitors at the expense of that which is preserved?

Montana’s Glacier National Park and Alberta’s Waterton Lakes National Park form the world’s first International Peace Park, a designation they received in 1932. Since 1976, the parks have also been designated by the U.N. as Biosphere Reserves; and, since 1995, also has World Heritage Sites.

Biosphere Reserves focus, to great extent, on the relationship between man and nature. I like the idea, but see in that outlook the fiction that nature and man are opposing forces with different agendas. True, it often looks that way, and we have a lot of damage to show for it. Nonetheless, the biosphere approach and designation take us deeper into the heart of what wilderness is, deeper than the red buses and the old hotels, and the sightseeing approach to the natural world.

The National Parks Second Century Commission wrote in its recent “Advancing the National Park Idea” report that “In 1916, Congress created the National Park Service to manage a growing collection of special places ‘unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.’ The world has changed profoundly since that time, and so has the national park idea, adapting to the needs of a changing society. But at the core of the idea abides an ethic that embraces the preservation of nature and our shared heritage, and promotes regard for their significance inside the parks and throughout our country.”

I hope this report will help generate the positive discussions we need for ensuring that continuation of Glacier National Park as a safe haven for wildlife and a continuation of the natural world of the Crown of the Continent. What, indeed, will we have in here in this mountain fastness to celebrate 100 years from now. While public access and enjoyment is part of the picture, I see no entitlement there that allows access at the expense of what we are trying to preserve. Perhaps this means limits to daily visitor counts, the elimination of park overflights, the reduction of vehicle traffic, and other facilities and features that lend themselves more to crowds and theme parks than wilderness.

Not everyone wants to step off the historic red bus and get out on a trail. That’s fine, but it’s also a pity. For, as Robert Pirsig said in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” seeing the world from a car window is just like watching TV. I agree. One only experiences a fraction of his own heritage–as opposed to a separate nature heritage–by riding on launches and buses. And, attempts to sanitize and make nature overly accessible simply put the world of which we are a part at a further remove while creating unnatural eyesores where the mountains, lakes and forests are all that we need.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Malcolm R. Campbell

Glacier Centennial: Caroline Lockhart

Newspaper reporter, bestselling novelist and rancher Caroline Lockhart (1871-1962) was probably the first woman to go over Glacier National Park’s Swiftcurrent Pass. Working for a Philadelphia newspaper under the pseudonym “Suzette,” she came to Altyn, Montana in 1901 and spent the rest of her life in the West.

At the time, Altyn was a boisterous mining boom town in the Swiftcurrent Valley in present-day Glacier National Park, a town its promoters said would soon become the rich center for gold, silver, copper and even oil. (See my essay about Altyn and the Swiftcurrent Valley in the upcoming “Nature’s Gifts” anthology to be released in March.)

In Cowboy Girl, an excellent biography of Caroline Lockhart, John Clayton writes that “Suzette’s arrival represented major news for Altyn, which had been born less than three years previously, when a strip of land was taken from the Blackfeet Indians and thrown open to mining. Altyn’s prospectors believed that within a few years its destiny would be decided: ‘the richest and biggest camp on earth or nothing.’”

By all accounts, Lockhart was ornery, strong-minded, strong-willed, and outspoken. (She called novelist Zane Grey a “tooth-pulling ass!”) Some suggest that her liberated personality kept Lockhart and her novels–several of which were made into movies–from being better known over the long term. Her novels include Me-Smith, Lady Doc, The Man from Bitter Roots, and The Fighting Shepherdess.

Lockhart owned a newspaper in Cody, Wyoming, where she also served as the first president of the Cody Stampede. Her fight against prohibition would keep Lockhart and her paper in the public’s often-angry eye. Even though she came west as a Phildelphia “Bulletin” reporter, she had grown up on a ranch; she found her dream again when she bought a ranch at Dryhead, Montana near the Pryor Mountains. She increased the size of the ranch and became, in her mind, a true cattle queen. The ranch is now owned by the National Park Service as part of the Bighorn Canyon Recreation Area.

In his article “Project Slows Decay at Lockhart Ranch,” Clayton addressed challenges of restoration–historical authenticity vs. practicality–when he noted that “the research also provides delicious evidence of how characters of the past dealt with hardships. For example, Lockhart had an old-style plank floor in her kitchen. She liked the look of it, but mice could easily creep through its gaps. So she kept two bullsnakes in the house to kill the mice. Today, by contrast, the Park Service uses gravel fill beneath the planks to keep out the rodents.”

Lockhart came west via the Great Northern Railway looking for adventure. By all accounts she not only found it but became a part of it. According to a the National Park Service’s Caroline Lockhart page, the aging liberated lady wrote, “There are no old timers left anymore. I feel like the last leaf on the tree.”

Copyright (c) 2010 by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of two novels, “The Sun Singer” (set in Glacier Park) and “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire” (set in an imaginary Texas town).

Disappointed in Jerry and Bobby

I don’t know how I would react to fame, the ever-prying lenses of cameras, the crush of people’s expectations, the constant roar of the crowd. Fame kills, I think, and it does so without remorse.

When I was young and in need of heroes, I saw chess champion Bobby Fischer as a viable candidate. I played chess badly, and so it was that I admired a guy about my age who played better chess at 13 than most chess players will ever play in their prime.

As a writer in training, I grew up with the canon of literature as it was preached during the 1950s; I rebelled against it, and so it was that I admired a guy of my mother’s generation who brought the Caulfield and Glass families to life outside the scope of what my teachers taught.

No one likes to see their heroes rusting away with age and crumbling into apparently flawed and strange creatures. Perhaps neither man expected the fame he achieved or understood its dangers. Bobby Fischer became eccentric and mean spirited and J. D. Salinger hid away from the public eye with what, at times, was an admirable persistence and what, at other times, seemed more like a self-righteous disdain for the rest of the world.

Rightly or wrongly, I am disappointed in both men because each of them threw his talent away. If Bobby’s mission was chess and if Jerry’s mission was short stories and novels, then let the vicissitudes of fame be damned and find a way to stay on course.

Bobby’s chess, including his innovations for the game, will continue to influence prospective masters who might benefit from his contributions to openings and end games. Jerry’s “The Catcher in the Rye” may well fade with time as its focus becomes more and more dated, but his writing brought us more than that in his sparse, but strong collected works. And perhaps there’s more, novels and stories sequestered for years in a safe that may one day find a friendly light of day.

Bottom line, though, I disappointed in Jerry and Bobby because they both quit, perhaps for cause, but that’s ultimately the weakest of rationale.

–Malcolm

Review: ‘Buffaloed’ by Fairlee Winfield

Buffaloed by Fairlee Winfield

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
When teenager Ovidia Odegard arrives in the United States in 1904, her first duty is to find suitable work so she can begin paying back her uncle for his out-of-pocket costs in sponsoring her immigration from Norway. Her dream, though is not only to be an American, but a Westerner, and that includes wearing a fancy buckskin jacket.

Providentially, Nancy Russell–the wife of the famed Montana cowboy artist Charles M. Russell–is looking for a housemaid at the couple’s home in Great Falls. When Ovida sees a copy of Russell’s pictorial “Studies of Western Life,” she can’t wait to board the train and head for the West she’s seen at the Nickelodeon.

When she arrives in Great Falls, she finds a dirty, modern city, and once she meets Charlie Russell, she begins discovering that the idealized West as it exists in books and movies is gone–if it ever existed. While Nancy Russell wants contracts and sales for Charlie’s art, Charlie would rather spend his time spinning yarns about the old days with his “bunch” down at the saloon. Not surprisingly, the house is a mess.

“Buffaloed” is Ovidia’s story as told to her grandson just before she died at 94, and it all begins when she mentions a secret she has never shared with anyone: the famous Charles M. Russell mural “Lewis and Clark Meeting the Indians at Ross’ Hole” at the Montana State House of Representatives” wasn’t really painted by Russell. It was a con, or so Ovidia claims.

Ovidia dangles this con before her grandson’s eyes throughout her remembrances because, as she sees it, he wouldn’t understand it if he didn’t know what happened in the Russell household from the moment she reported for work. What had she gotten herself into?

This well-researched book is just the kind of yarn that the master of tall tales, one Charles Marion Russell (1862-1926), would endorse without hesitation. The dialogue, the atmosphere, and the historical period in “Buffaloed” are superb. Fans of Russell and Montana history will discover that the book includes real events and places along with a supporting cast of historical personages.

In his book “Montana Adventure,” a friend and contemporary of Russell, Frank B. Linderman, writes that “Charlie Russell was the most lovable man I have ever known.” This is the Charlie Russell who emerges in Fairlee Winfield’s wonderful novel.

Now, if you live in Montana, mostly everything having to do with Charlie Russell is sacred, and that includes a lot of living and story telling that was also delightfully profane. Ovidia does have a confession to make in regard to that mural, but this is a novel, of course.

Winfield’s disclaimer at the beginning of the book reminds us that “Buffaloed” is a work of fiction. In addition to the standard reference books about Charles and Nancy Russell, Winfield also had a more personal resource for this story: her Norwegian grandmother did work in the artist’s home and had a lot of humorous and gritty stories to tell.

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Copyright (c) by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of “The Sun Singer” and “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire”