Mile 1122: Between
Whitefish and Kalispell, MT: Snyder household, home of our niece, Kelsey
 |
| The bathtub of Lake Koocanusa |
We left Koocanusa Resort well before sunrise, afraid that we
would burn out from the sun, as we had the day before. We need our jackets and are cycling
well. It is 48 miles to the little town
of Eureka, where Wes lived 40 years ago.
He has been looking forward to going back and we have been thinking a
lot about what this Canadian border town has meant to us.
Koocanusa Reservoir stretches 80 miles of the Kootenai River
(well into Canada) and was one of the last big dams built by the US Army Corps
of Engineers. It had been a beautiful,
rather large mountain river, sacred to the Kalispell people. The dam is several hundred feet high, which
means that the road on either side of reservoir had to be carved into the
living rock, and that the bank is a hard edge.
There are none of the wetlands, beaches, deltas, or even rocky points
that would be typical of a natural lake.
Mile after mile we ride, cut rock cliffs to our right, a
line of trees to our left, and an occasional glimpse of hard-edged water
below. For reasons we cannot fathom, the
road climbs several hundred feet above the reservoir, then swoops down to 50
feet above the reservoir, over and over.
It never goes to the water, and other than going down to cross the
occasional incoming stream, we cannot understand why it keeps going up and
down, up and down. After going thirty
miles with what feels like pointless changes in elevation, we are cursing the
road designers, the Forest Service, and whoever thought an 80 mile bathtub was
a good idea. There are no services, few
turnouts, and a kind of relentless tiring tedium.
We are very pleased when we finally leave the bathtub to
head east and go the town of Eureka.
There a series of steep ups and downs, in traffic, with no shoulder to
get into town, and we are hot and tired when we pull in. Wes and I had visited Eureka in the early 1980’s,
when we took a hitchhiking tour of the US.
It was a nearly dead lumber town at that time; the lumber mill that had
employed Wes in the 1970’s was long gone.
We don’t know what to expect 30 years later.
As we entered the town from the north, Wes keeps saying, “I
don’t recognize any of this.” When we
finally get into the older part of the town, we are stunned. There are galleries, massage therapy
businesses, sushi, and yoga places. We
stop at an eatery that had been the only restaurant in town 30 years ago. We find out that original Eureka Café was
closed, but then the daughter of the former sawmill owner (Wes’ former boss)
had reopened it as a retro chic diner.
At one gallery we visit, the shopkeeper says, “Oh yeah, if it weren’t
for the Canadians, this town would be dead.”
They come here to shop and for recreation. An automatic 15% discount on taxes, and a
favorable exchange rate means great bargains for them.
We go set up camp in the little town park where Wes’ life
changed. He had just lost his job at the
lumber mill, and was camping out, trying to figure out his next move. He saw an older man, riding a bike with
saddlebags, come down the hill into town.
He ended up at the same little park.
Wes had a long conversation with this former City University of New York (CUNY) professor who left his position to go
explore America. It was 1973. The talk stretched into the night, and the
next morning, Wes loaded his tent, sleeping bag and what-all into a backpack,
and rode off with Bob Rowe, to ride across America. Traveling with this odd genius was Wes’
personal tutorial. Years later, when I
heard Wes’ stories of these travels, I fell in love with him and knew I had at
last met my traveling companion.
I had gone up to the main street to go to a thrift
store. On the way back, I followed a
young man riding on a much too small bike, who went to a small tent set up next
to ours in the community park. As it
turns out, he was an economic refugee, out of a job, staying in the park, trying
to figure out what to do. I lent him a
tool to raise his bike seat; he immediately broke the tool. He offered to trade me a screwdriver for the
broken bike tool, with the caveat that he had no money. I didn’t want his tool,
but incident does encourage him to work on the bike and make it work better and
fit him better.
He said, “I rode this bike over 150 miles to get here, hoping
I can find something.” Over the next
hours, as he smokes cigarette after cigarette, he tells us of his efforts to
find a job and a place to live. A friend
of his has cabin he can stay in, but he can’t find the friend, and any way the
cabin doesn’t have either heat or electricity.
He seems quite beaten down by his experience, almost rudderless, not
quite at-- but not far from-- desperate.
We ask if he has tried in Williston, ND, the famous oil shale
boomtown. He tells us a story being
hired as a subcontractor there to paint modular school rooms, only to have the
contractor pocket the whole fee and never pay them. “I thought I’d come back to Montana, where at
least people tell ya’ the truth.” A
local couple from town bring him some food and drink, and offer some
suggestions about where he could get work.
He offers reasons why their suggestions won’t succeed.
That night, we secure everything and go to bed early. In the middle of the night, we are awakened
by someone hollering. “Yo, yo, yo” then “Hey, I’m yellin’ as loud as I
can.” At first we think it is our hard-luck
neighbor, but then realize it is coming from a different part of the park. After the ruckus goes on for a while, Wes
decides to go investigate. Across the
park, Wes sees a youngish man, staggeringly drunk, reeling about, trying
unsuccessfully to put up a tent.
Apparently, he was trying to rouse the other campers to get some
help. Very shortly afterward, a truck
pulls up and we hear the voice of a young woman. “Mike, Mike, c’mon. Get in the truck. C’mon Mike, get in truck.” After a bit of back and forth, Mike finally
relents and off they go. There is no
sign of Mike or his failed camp making the next morning.
Before we can fall back asleep, a big storm blows in
bringing strong winds and lashing rains.
Our tent with a full rain fly holds tight, even though it leans crazily
in the gusts. The next morning, we see
our neighbor’s tent has not fared so well.
Although it is standing, it is clear that its tiny rain fly only kept
part of the rain out. We guess his
sleeping bag and clothes must have gotten wet.
We tuck a little cash in his bike bottle rack. We hope he buys groceries. We take our leave while he gently
snores. We are not the people that will
change his life, but we hope that someone rides down that hill and does.
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