Dawson Pass
With each step, we took two.
One was up to a mountain pass.
The other was back into heritage.
My friend, Colleen, and I had talked about taking this hike up Dawson Pass for three years.
Finally, on a Friday, we decided to hike it on Monday.
I woke up with plenty of time to feed my dependents at the barn and was still 15 minutes late.
Despite my attempts to sabotage our plan, we managed to catch the boat across Two Medicine Lake, cutting off 3 miles of the 14-mile hike.
The boat guide gave us a geology lesson and related Native American lore, but neglected to mention Tom Dawson, Colleen’s great-great-grandfather who trapped beaver, built a log cabin that still stands and guided Europeans through what would become Glacier National Park.
His loss.
The peaks ahead of us imposed their grandeur, but trail through sweet pines offered its own mysteries and temptations.
We spotted a coral-shaped fungus and had to wonder how a spore found its way to this forest.
No Name Lake was so clear we watched fish swim nonchalantly in front of us.
We admired the back sides of familiar peaks that gave us a completely different context for this mountain range.
We felt the fortune of having this stunningly powerful scenery in our backyard.
Once we climbed 2400 feet and topped out on a narrow ridge of oceanic shale, we considered continuing farther along the trail just to stay on top of the world for a little longer.
We peered over the edge of the pass and wondered how Tom Dawson found his way down into a marshy mountain lake at the bottom of a mountain cirque.
While we enjoyed a slight breeze, this pass has a reputation for catching hikers in blasts of wind and snowstorms.
Windbreaks made of amateurly-stacked shale on the ridge reinforced that reputation.
The mile of ridge-hugging trail forced us to consider how naked and exposed a person can unexpectedly find herself.
Tom Dawson needed to get off that ridge, down to where furbearers prefer to live.
Could we ever bushwack our way to that lake the way Dawson must have?
We celebrated our ancestors -- their determination, their wanderlust, their simplicity that allowed them to embrace that wanderlust -- and the parallels of our family stories.
What kind of man would travel through these mountains, learning their signals, their backsides, their bounty and their perils?
How could such a man return to the hubbub of civilization, marry and raise children?
How could his family move throughout our continent three or four or even five times?
With each move, what did they know about opportunities in next place?
How much could we leave behind if we – both tied so tightly to our respective ranches that sometimes we don’t know where we end and the land begins – decided to pick up and move?
Which of our own characteristics came from these people?
We considered the stories behind our family heirlooms – a walnut desk my grandfather made from trees he planted after the family left Montana with their tail tucked between their legs, a ring that holds Colleen’s great-grandmother’s rise from her childhood hardships.
We talked about visits to our distant relatives in Scotland and England that might answer so many of these questions, all the while knowing we might never go, knowing those questions leave holes in our spirits.
Our feet and knees were happy to step into the pickup.
Our eyes admired the glow of the sunset on the lake.
Our hands toasted Colleen’s heritage and, by extension, my heritage, too.
Our steps honored all those who came before us and made us who we are.