MONTANA MONSOON

The Montana Monsoon, when it comes at the “proper” time, comes in Joon. Er, June. No one warns the tourists but locals know that for days and maybe weeks it will be cold and possibly blowing, with intermittent rain, sometimes tropically heavy but most of the time simply chilled and damp. The sun comes through for a little while, the bored-to-death cats who try to sleep through it all go out to stalk around in the tall grass, and then suddenly I have a wet cat in my lap, caught in another shower and eager to get warm and dry at my expense.

When driving, I try to ignore spatters on the windshield, pretty soon realize they’re too thick to see through, then again have to boost the wipers from slow to fast, then abruptly drive out of the edge of the storm so that I can see its black shape behind me with a fringe of rain hanging down. Or gathering pinpoint moisture on the glass prompts me to put the wipers on the slowest occasional flicker, only to realize the pavement is now dry and the rubber blades are squeaking as they travel. Occasionally I pass windrows of white along the highway, left from a shock of hail that, with luck, I never intersect. The new wheat sprouts, of course, can’t get out of the way.

Tourists from other parts of the country come expecting summer. David Loehr, a friend from seminary who had organized a cheap and friendly vacation across America by buying a rail pass and staying with old pals, arrived from Texas as school got out and Glacier Park opened. His red bus trek over the Going-to-the-Sun highway famous for crossing the Rockies with spectacular views saw only the insides of clouds. He said he got a nice nap out of it, since the kindly tour guide didn’t make them get out of the bus at viewing points.

In 1971 I moved from the little ranch on Two Medicine up to East Glacier, to the two-story yellow house where Ramona Wellman grew up and which she still owns. It had stood open for years with no glass in the windows and debris inside, so I kept warm that June by working at restoration. When I ran out of materials or ideas, I went up to the Big Hotel on the other side of the railroad and sat in front of their huge fireplace with its roaring blaze. My only heat was a little tin stove which I loaded with Prestologs. Once I gathered up a lot of newspapers that had been scattered while I painted, stuffed them into the stove and threw in a match. Very ill-advised. The short-lived but roaring fire had that little stove dancing on its toes so vigorously that it nearly disengaged the stovepipe and smoked up my fresh paint.

In this little house I hate to run the big floor furnace when the temperature is, after all, only in the fifties. In fact, I even hate to close all the windows I opened in the burst of warm weather just before this. (Why isn’t there a name for it? “Indian Spring” maybe?) One learns to rush out and do yard work quickly while it lasts. So I use those rollaround electric heaters that look like old-fashioned radiators but only heat one room at a time -- usually the computer room. And then my footwarmer. Bless that footwarmer! Mine has fleece pockets to stick your stocking feet into.

Little tappings come on the east window, showing how the wind is blowing the rain, and it finally rinses off the big swash of white bird poop some replete flyer left there. Then later the more usual source-direction is rattling on the northwest window, coming fast. The gutters overtop and instead of spilling the water out onto the ground, they filter it in under the roof and fill the wall inside! It took me a long time to figure out this was happening and as soon as I have money, I’ll have to address it. Otherwise, when I keel over for the last time in this house, they can just cave it in on my body -- won’t take but a good strong rap on the rotted walls.

This is the sort of thought one has when it’s gloomy and chilly for days and one is too stingy to heat the place properly. But there is a remedy: baking a good batch of my improvised All-Bran muffins. I add broken walnuts or sunflower seeds or even peanuts, plus whatever relatively sugarless fruit is around -- applesauce, plums off my underachieving ancient tree in the backyard, drained and rinsed mandarin oranges -- and whatever spice seems appropriate but replacing the sugar with Splenda. One of those for breakfast (about 5AM) keeps my stomach busy until noon. The warm exhalations from the oven are as effective as a dose of manmade serotonin-managing molecules. And taste better.

The Great Falls Tribune today has a photo essay on a disastrous flood there exactly one hundred years ago. It took out dams, swept away people, destroyed bridges, and demonstrated why the US Government instituted the idea of “flood plains” in hopes of discouraging people from building along rivers as they have done since the dawn of time. Or at least getting them to build in a way that might survive a flood. When one drives into Great Falls now, there are a lot of buildings in the flood plain, many of them designed to put the living spaces upstairs, on the assumption that bedrooms will have mostly replaceable beds and clothing. This shows the rules are too out-of-date to allow for modern electric and electronic bedrooms: state of the art computers, sound systems, televisions with their accoutrements. Even I have an electrically warmed mattress pad, a major cat comfort.

The Vanport flood, the 1964 northern Rockies flood -- both were this time of year and I was there for both. The New Orleans flood -- we’ve all contemplated that. This is the time of year that the Blackfeet open their Thunder Pipe Bundles both to pray for rain and to pray for protection from the lightning strikes that come with it. Just about every spring since I moved back to Valier a tree in town has been struck by lightning. The TV antenna that came with the house (soon falling over, unused) had a ceramic electricity interceptor on it. When the crashing and flashing begins, the cats go into hiding and I dive to unplug the computer. The sizzling excitement of it all puts us on notice.

Spectacular displays out in long-grass prairie of the Mid-west are more impressive, when the lightning dazzles on every side and water comes down in buckets. Only residents here really think about the Montana Monsoon, especially when it doesn’t happen and the drought continues. In the end we’re grateful for the rain.