Thanksgiving in Montana

INTO THE WEST

Blame the economic downturn: the planes - both flights -from Boston to Bozeman via Salt Lake City were not full. For the first time in recent years, I flew with an empty seat next to me.
Delta continues to serve at no charge water, coffee , soft drinks,peanuts and a single cookie. But even in a flight lasting more than five and a half hours, anything else cost $5 and up. I saw no pillows and no blankets.
Mara was waiting for me in weather that was warmer than what I had left in Boston. There was a little snow left over from earlier storms, and footing was slippery in places. It melted during the day and refroze at night, when the temperatures dipped from the 40’s to the 20’s.

MONDAY

Monday was gorgeous - temperatures in the low 40s, a few puffy clouds in the wide open sky. We had lunch in downtown Bozeman, and later stopped to visit Mara’s Mongolian friends, - the family she “adopted” seven years ago - in their just-moved-into new home, their first after seven years in Montana.
Not unexpectedly, the three bedroom, two bath, two floor tract home with attached garage was priced at about half of what the same house sells for in Lexington.
Their delight in showing us around was palpable. Chimbat, the father, is three years into a five-year program that will give him a plumber’s license. He was recently laid off from the company he has been working for, but had already been called back and expected to be working full time again.
BoBo, the mother, manages the Bozeman office of Boojum Expeditions, which runs adventure travel trips to Mongolia, where members of BoBo’s family run the operations in the capital city of Ulan Bator.
Onyuka, the now 14 year old daughter whom Mara taught to skate seven years ago when they arrived in Bozeman, now attends public high school in Bozeman. Also at home was BoBo’s mother, here on a long visit. A fascinating woman, she is an M.D. and worked as a pathologist for a hospital in Ulan Bator run by and for the Russian KGB.

TUESDAY

Tuesday, Mara needed to be at her office, and she dropped me off at a local health club where I hoped to get in my normal water aerobics. The information as to time and dates of classes got lost in translation, Later I spent time in the brand new and magnificent Bozeman Public Library, built on a site a street away from Mara’s office. Soon, I was enmeshed in the stupidity of the National Park Service in Yellowstone, courtesy of a book entitled “Playing God in Yellowstone” by Alson Chase, which I will finish at another time.

WEDNESDAY

By Wednesday, I had sorted out the exercise schedule at the Ridge, the club with the water aerobics. (The classes were not all that different from what I have been experiencing at the Waltham YMCA. Except: more male participants and a lot more talking during class, a “no-no” in Waltham.)
After the exercise class, we drove south and west to the area of Mara’s latest project, in the town of Twin Bridges. Abuilding is a guest “cabin” and an exercise house for the Jim Kennedy family. Kennedy is CEO of Cox Communications, of Atlanta, Georgia, a huge media organization. Kennedy famous in southwestern Montana for trying to keep outsiders from accessing “his” fishing streams, a frequent source of conflict between the locals and the rich sportsmen from Away.
Before going to the site, we had lunch with Ron, the builder, the same contractor with whom Mara had done the Goldberg buildings. At Land’s End, the Kennedy estate/ranch/spread, the guest house, built of stone is well along, together with an exercise building (doesn’t everyone need one?). The work will keep the contractor and Mara busy through June.
There is nothing comparable committed but one job appears to have excellent prospects, albeit with a difficult client. Mara is cutting back expenses to the extent she can on payroll, and marketing hard.
We drove home through Alder, where the vacation house she has done for here friends, the Reeves, is located. Les Reeves was ion residence, bemoaning the fact that the house was bigger then he wanted it to be - his wife’;s wishes and checkbook prevailed.
From there, we checked out the O’Dell Ranch, the Goldberg’s establishment which got Mara’ practice off the ground. In addition to the main house, there is a beautiful new barn with a bunk house to come.
What effect the economic downturn will have on the future of projects like Land’s End that she has been doing so successfully isn’t clear. Her clients would appear to be well protected against the buffets of the economy. However, inquiries have been few and far between since September.
Conventional wisdom would say that the market niche she is in will hold up better than others in this economy.
On the commercial side, at least in Bozeman, there appears to have been extensive overbuilding, with large box stores already closing. Linen and Things was in the process of liquidating, a high end women’s western wear store is closing, and a large rug store on the highway is going out of business.
Tract housing in Bozeman continues to go up and sell, apparently, but people are getting nervous.

THURSDAY

Thanksgiving was very traditional as to food but not as far as guests. The Mongolians - Chimbat, BoBo, Onyuka, and BoBo’s mother sat down to turkey, green beans, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce with pineapple chunks(new to me and delicious), gravy, baked apples (my contribution), and pie (store bought).
We sent the guests home with enough for at least another meal.
The family is here for the long term, with BoBo about to get her green card, which will entitle them to at least 20 years in the states.
The dream of Olympic stardom on skates for Onyuka seems to have been shelved. The very expensive private school/skating academy in Minneapolis proved too much of struggle financially . She seems comfortable with the local high school and the new friends and opportunities that affords.

FRIDAY

On Friday, Mara and I left Bozeman about noon, heading east on the interstate I-90 towards Livingston, a funky town on the Yellowstone River, which flows north out of the park. We cut off after a few miles on to Trailcreek Road and headed southeast, eventually reaching the banks of the river, and then headed south.
Called Paradise Valley, the land on both sides of the river has seen a great deal of development since we were first here in the middle 90s. Mara did one of her first major architectural projects there, an addition to the resort at Chico Hot Springs, in the center of the Valley.
Gardiner is a small town, built at the northwestern entrance to the park, and the starting point for many visitors, as the entrance is closest to a major airport (Bozeman). The entrance arch to the Park, dedicated by Teddy Roosevelt, stands at the edge of the small business district, now mostly shut for the winter.
A single restaurant was open, reached through a darkened souvenir store. The sole waitress appeared unhappy in her work, and the food somehow reflected the waitress’ lack of interest. My hamburger was great, but the meal on Mara’s plate was greasy. and barely edible.
The rest of the town featured “CLOSED” signs in most windows. Gardiner is a jumping off place for bus trips into the park, and the busses were parked in herds awaiting next season.
Normally, by mid-November, the park roads are shutdown to ordinary auto traffic, in part due to usually heavy snows. But this year, on November 28th, there were just remnants of previous storms in the meadows and fields , and the only ice appeared in shady places along the shoulders of the road.
No guards at the entrance kiosk, no admission charges in November - and the road, we were told, was open across the top of the park to Cook City at the northeast entrance. The road went south first to Mammoth Hot Springs, where the huge hotel was shuttered for the season , but the steam rose from the terraced hot springs that gave the area its name.
With the road south blocked, we started east. A few miles in, Mara shrieked,
“Big horn sheep!” Normally seen only on the peaks of the mountains, a dozen had wandered down close to the road, with one actually sitting along the shoulder .
(On our way out later, in the same general area, we saw the same band, this time clinging to a sheer rock wall above a highway cut. A photograph would have been wonderful, but an unpleasant ranger prevented us from stopping - despite the fact that there were no cars parked along the road and traffic was virtually non-existent. In the first sighting, there were half a dozen cars and no ranger.)
By three thirty, we had reached the Lamar Valley, about two thirds of the way across the park. A large grey fox crossed the road in front of us, not hurrying in the knowledge he had control of his environment. There were bison in the river meadows and elk in large herds.
Turning back about three thirty, we came upon the most riveting sight of the trip: on an escarpment, perhaps five hundred feet in the air, above the road, about thirty elk were standing in a line silhouetted against the sky, primarily female, . as though posing for us lower mortals.
In November, the summer greens had been replaced by browns, tans and greys, but we had the park to ourselves for a few hours, and it was extraordinarily peaceful.


MARA’S PLACE

It is hard to know the right name for Mara’s three and a half acres. It is not a farm, certainly - perhaps homestead in the right word.
The main house continues to evolve inside, with a couple of Morris style rockers now in the living room, facing the huge fireplace. The wood shingles on the outside of the house have had a fresh coat of clear finish and look great.
A storm several years ago took down a couple of cottonwoods, and several others needed to go - Mara now has firewood to spare, after a long siege of cutting and splitting.
The deck that runs around the entire main house holds a free-standing potbellied stove, and a hot tub along with a large barbecue unit. Lying submerged in the hot tub, with the leafless cottonwood trees overhead is a very pleasant experience.
The cabin continues to attract visitors. An electrician from Phoenix, working on the chair lifts at Bridger Bowl Ski Resort which will open December 11th, has been in residence for several weeks, and was still there when I left.
The cabin was rented for virtually the entire summer and well into the fall, with repeat bookings for next year already in place.
The front door and deck of the cabin face north, away from the main house, giving privacy to both units. There is a smaller cabin awaiting evolution into another rental unit at some point in the future. A third building, a long low storage shed, will remain just that is all likelihood. Add to that a horse shelter, and another small storage building, and the square footage under roofs adds up. I almost forgot a garage that is also used for storage.