Heritage Days

Heritage Days in my hometown is known, at least by those of us who now reside elsewhere, as the one time of year that one is most apt to run into all sorts of characters, both local and returning former locals, in and around the town. Usually Heritage Days takes place in late July, as it did this year. I planned my vacation around Heritage Days and despite all the fanfare (well, what fanfare a small town can muster in 90+ degree heat), I didn't attend any of the Heritage Days events.

Based out of my brother's wooded place not far from the rumbling train tracks, I rolled around town and in fact the entire north end of our valley...the Flathead Valley...to see what and who I could see. I recognized few faces. Perhaps people change in appearance with age, but I tend to hear "you look the same, Lyle" more often than not when I do run into an old acquaintance. I'm not sure if that is a compliment or a put down, but I'll go optimist on this one and say it is a compliment. For example, I'm 36 and still have a full head of hair, only some of which is grey. That's a start. A start of what, I'm not sure. With the windows down and moon roof open, all that hair blows around in the resulting wind as I head down some back roads that hold together the various small towns in the Valley. Columbia Falls, Whitefish, Kalispell...it seems much smaller now than it did when I was a boy. Of course back then I was likely riding in the back seat of a car or lurching along on a small bicycle.

The big draw for this particular weekend of July in the Flathead Valley was the air show. An air show, in case you haven't been to one, is where mostly military aircraft fly around in tight formations doing maneuvers they never do in actual training or combat, in an effort to get unwitting teens to sign up for the Air Force, Navy, Army, or Marine Corps. Having flown a helicopter or two myself, there is a lure of speed and power that goes with the whole pilot mystique. High paid truck drivers, that's how I see it. Nonetheless, their aerial arcs and dives were dramatic and many a sunburn was had by the local whitenecks-turned-rednecks. Traffic on the highway near the airport was sluggish at best, but it gave me an opportunity to see the aircraft on display there on the tarmac...helicopters, jets (some of them Russian apparently), even an enormous C5 Galaxy cargo plane which was open on both ends of the fuselage and had gawking folk stumbling through. I just drove by and didn't pay to go see what I'd seen for years in the Army. Once you've loaded cargo onto a C5, walking through it just isn't all that thrilling, especially in the heat.

I came from Arizona to escape the heat and the weather reports showed me it was actually cooler in my town in Arizona than it was in Montana. So much for using typical summer temperature averages to my advantage. At least I'm somewhat used to the 90s and above so I wasn't feeling to bad...heck, I wasn't even using my car's air conditioning. Desert rats don't break a sweat in the 90s.

I spent some time with my brother and some of his grown kids and his former wife. It was a good time. My brother and I went up the North Fork of the Flathead River and found huckleberries...lots of huckleberries! We picked enough to make a pie. Apparently we were the first folks to find a decent patch to pick this year. How do I know this? My hometown barber, Randy Bocksnick, said so. Hometown barbers know a lot of things, and one of those things is whether or not huckleberries have been found. Randy and I had a good visit while he removed some of that previously mentioned mane. Randy and I talk photography. Digital photography these days. Randy moonlights as a high school sports photographer, having done so for years. Sometimes I think his entire barber income goes into camera equipment. We also talked family, including his discovery that I'm related to a good number of people he's known most of his life. It's always fun to stun a barber, as long as they don't take off your ear in the process.

Back at my brother's house, I got a really nice shot of clouds directly over his property, caught in the evening light. I don't shoot sporting events or very many photos with humans in them at all. I'm more of a landscape photographer.

One afternoon, I hiked up the tracks on what is likely the aluminum plant's property and took some shots of the Flathead River, Teakettle Mountain, and Columbia Mountain, primarily to show the area where I grew up. Often people are amazed at the natural beauty of northwest Montana. Amazement is a wonderful thing.

Another afternoon, I drove out to Fairview Cemetery to see my Dad's veteran memorial marker on my grandfather's plot. Though my father is not buried there, it is nice that his marker is there with his mother and father. And true to the name, the view is not only fair, but downright grand. You can see the whole Flathead Valley from there. I had the place all to myself but felt comforted that I have roots there: many of my ancestors are buried there in that little cemetery. It was a bright sunny day, quiet and cloudless, and no Blue Angels roaring overhead. I reached down and put both my palms on the stone and told Dad I loved him. You won't see me cry often, but I did then, kneeling there next to where I'd lowered my grandmother into rest in 1985. Loose ends get tied in moments like that.