Two of the horses that graze and run through the acres of The Ranch at Rock Creek
The first time I stepped Mountain it was by chance. We needed to cross those checkered borders between American states to reach Utah, where he was waiting for us the Mormon bombast of Salt Lake City and the mighty Bryce Canyon. But that's how we went through Montana, from the car, playing Agnès Varda in The Gleaners and the Gleaner, catching with our hand the red barns of the highway and hunting with our fingers the Black Angus cattle that dot the hills of this land.
we spent the night in Missoula, because he played in this random game that is the road trip, and because at the perfect moment of absolute exhaustion he arrived, like a Marian apparition, like a redeeming savior, a Motel 6. The next day, with little time to explore the city but wanting to have breakfast, we ran into the best coffee of the trip in an old hangar from where we could see huge freight trains pass by that never ended.
Life in Missoula revolves around culture, local markets, farmer's fairs and specialty coffee
We fell in love with a city that seemed like a bend of freedom in this deep America (The one in which Americans are surprised if you answer in Spanish to the Mexican attendant at the gas station: "If he doesn't look Mexican, why does he speak 'Mexican'?").
Who would have thought that a year later I would return to Montana, this time to leave the Nouvelle Vague games and get into the Western (not surprisingly, Legends of the Passion, The Man Who Whispered to Horses, Open Range and so many others were filmed here), and living the last flickers of summer in a land that suffers one of the harshest winters on the planet. Those harsh winters, of solitary confinement, of lethal snow, of bears that come down from the mountains to appear curious in the villages.
The cold of Montana sinks into the bone once and never goes away. Rick Bass, in his book Winter, he rediscovered himself in the lonely and defiant yak valley while he tended a ranch and wrote a book (edited by Errata Naturae): "I had no reason to be there after dark, no reason to be up there at all, and yet I had every reason."
Not even cowboys, accustomed to riding along its shores, can resist the charm of Lake McDonald
I also had no reason to go back to Montana. And he had every reason. She wanted to stop capturing images of rolling hills, half asleep with Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird looping in the background... she wanted to get out of the car and touch Bass's story, get 'up there', to the Glacier and the border with Canada and understand what is the magnetism of a place where "there is nothing to see".
There is no Statue of Liberty here, because for free and majestic the mountains of Glacier National Park; Broadway signs or Las Vegas neon translate, in Montana, into the bright stars on a clear sky. And the best of the world's museums, those great guardians of beauty and history, can be found in a half-uninhabited town, listening to those stories that would bristle the skin of the most austere. That was exactly what happened to us when we got to butt, our first stop, our first surprise...
In Butte, which lives quietly between Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, there seems to be nothing. Really, nothing. It could be said that, at a glance, the only thing in Butte is its past. butte was a buoyant mining town, that grew very fast in 1860 thanks to the extraction of copper that today continues to provide work for most of the neighbors.
Cowboys in front of a towering trestle, in Butte
Almost all the shops we come across carry the 'mining stamp' (such as our hotel, Clarion Copper King , referring to copper; either Covellite Film Festival, the city's independent film festival, which honors the covelita). Wait. Independent film festival? It is hard for us to think that an Andréi Tarkovski cycle or a series of LGBTIQ+ short films is possible strolling between shops closed to lime and song. It seems that there is no life. But there is an independent film festival held in an old Presbyterian church from 1896 converted into a theater. So is Butte.
Its streets ooze a greatness from another time, generating a certain unease within us and spurring the imagination. One of the most characteristic buildings is Dumas Brothel, an old brothel that opened in 1890 and closed in 1982. Today you can visit and even offers a route for lovers of the afterlife. Among the numerous buildings of that past Wild West, green and young shoots emerge: craft breweries (such as Quarry Brewing, the quarry brewery), antique shops where we would lose hours (like Sassy Antiques), cafes with live music (like Venus Rising Espresso House)...
But maybe, the great totem of the past is the Metals Bank building, the great ghost of wealth that once flooded these streets, when gold and silver took a backseat to copper being the most precious metal, filling Butte with 'Copper Kings' and millions of dollars. Today, closed, its ground floor houses different businesses.
Gamer's Cafe Bacon Burger
However, there is another place that is considered the epicenter of neighborhood gatherings despite the fact that its architecture may go unnoticed a priori, and it has been that way for a century: Gamer's Café, an old saloon. There we met Maria Pochervina, Visit Butte delegate. She asserts that according to recent studies by the city's University of Engineering, Butte has about 50 years of mining activity left, “Thanks to copper!” she exclaims.
Maria is determined that we meet the inhabitants of Butte who seem to live more with the ghosts of the past than with the present, and she skips the official speech almost from minute one. So she introduces us to Chris: “Above this dining room is the old saloon hotel; To this day, you can still hear the melodies that have been trapped there and even the occasional fight between the Irish...”.
Interior of Gamer's Café, in Butte, an old saloon where, they say, ghosts dance at night
Chris Fisk He's a high school teacher, a scholar of Butte history, and why not? spirit hunter. He is in charge of organizing historical city tours to which he also adds brushstrokes of beings that appear at night, lights that turn on by themselves and fights from another era that reach the present in the form of faint echoes... he assures us that in his incursions he has noticed the presence of Serbian and Irish miners strolling through the boarding houses of the time, the hostels in which these two communities (still very present in Butte; do not be surprised to find a Neo-Byzantine-style Orthodox church or an Irish souvenir shop) slept after a long day digging in search of coppermade.
But to understand that past, the best option is to go into it, literally. World Museum of Mining It's the place. It is an old mine now dedicated to educational and museum work. And what Americans do best: performance. Because not only will we enter the bowels of a mine, we will notice how we lack oxygen as we descend, we will touch an old car and see the work tools, we will look into the hole of an elevator without being able to glimpse the end of that disturbing hole to the center of the earth and we will see the entrance to dozens of tunnels in the light of a lamp... but, in addition, outside we will walk between giant trestles and through the streets of an old western town, rebuilt in all kinds of detail around the mine.
Reconstructed mining town street inside Butte's World Museum of Mining
Montana's past is part of its most current present. They have been able to convert their numerous ghost towns (those mining towns that did not suffer the same fate as Butte) into tourist attractions, and even they have transformed architectures of the Wild West into charming villas through which to walk as if we were living in a movie. And this is the case of Philipsburg.
Upon arrival, it's hard not to think of Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls. All pretty, all colorful. All crowded, not like Butte. There is a candy store (The Sweet Palace) which could be the Sugarplum from Diagon Alley from Harry Potter. What's more, you might even get lucky and see Dale shaping sugar paste into handcrafted candy. Horror vacui of color and sugar: wherever you look, candy canes of all flavors, liquorice, bonbons, chocolates, sweets...
Philipsburg functions as a commercial and craft street. The best gift is found in Back Creek Pottery, handcrafted pottery with typical Montana motifs, so deer, bears and moose are the recurring motifs of his pieces. But we can't help but get into SapphireGallery, a jewelry that reuses the minerals found in the mines of the area, or Stuff & Such, which, as its name indicates, is a place that stores all the rarities you can imagine.
Interior of The Sweet Palace, in Philipsburg, the Eden of candy
Someone beeps from a van. She is Sheila. With this New Yorker in love with Montana, we'll get to Glacier National Park . Sheila was looking for tranquility and honesty (so she tells us). And so she decided to hunker down in the brutal wilderness of Montana leaving the big city behind. And now, that she finds it difficult to understand the political drift of her country, here she feels safe and happy: "Although I never leave the house without my anti-bear spray."
As we leave Philipsburg we realize that the landscape is changing. We leave the rolling hills behind to welcome wildest landscapes, where the imposing larch trees warn us that the Rockies are getting closer.
We hit the road through Highway 12, famous for being a favorite of Bonnie & Clyde. Tourism in Montana is fundamentally national. And what the American traveler is looking for is to soak up the essence of each state. In the case of Montana: cattle, horses, wild water rivers, starlight campfires to heat marshmallows, hunting trails, fishing, hiking, archery... And all this is what it offers The Ranch at Rock Creek, our next stop, a Relais & Châteaux on the banks of the river that gives it its name and in the middle of the Sapphire Mountains.
This is what in the luxurious The Ranch at Rock Creek they understand by 'tent'
It has four types of accommodation: its log homes, small apartments perfect for families; a glamping experience, with large tents with all the comforts; the rooms in the main building, Granite Lodge; and the barn, remodeled and perfect for groups. But what is impressive about the place is its location and the land on which it is located: 2,670 hectares of plains, of green, where you can meet deer on the way to your store while you see one of the cowboys who work on the ranch ride in the background. The luxury Far West of the 21st century.
Getting out of here becomes difficult, but we must continue our way to the mountains. We continue north, spending the night in Missoula, where I was happy watching trains and drinking coffee. Let's be again.
Missoula is just as ravishing as when I met her. There is something here that feels different. We are in the land of hunters, of austere men and women, used to dealing with a ruthless nature and with those winters that Rick Bass radically fell in love with: “As the snow melted and the roads became passable again (accessible to any shitty tourist who wants to visit, any old pilgrim), we felt exposed. I want more cold, more hardness, more depth. No more heat."
Wagon on the grounds of The Ranch at Rock Creek
Interestingly, Sheila tells us about a certain migratory effect from California to Idaho and Montana, and how the arrival of the neighbor does not just enter the premises with a good eye, who fear that exposure from cities like Missoula. Getting here is not easy, there are not many roads in Montana: "Everyone wants to come to Montana but few want to travel to it... there are many hours, very monotonous roads” Sheila comments. Perhaps this is what saves them from the dreaded exposure and, perhaps for this reason, It's still such a genuine place.
in Missouri there is a lot of neighborhood life, flea markets on every corner and plaza (one of the most popular is held every Saturday by the river, the Clark Fork River Market). There are even surfers who ride the rapids of the Clark Fork River, in the so-called Brennan's Wave. A young man plays Eddie Vedder's Rise guitar, part of the Into The Wild soundtrack (how timely).
Sheila tells us how Jeffrey Allen Ament (Pearl Jam bass) lives between Seattle and Missoula, where he studied during his university days, and how the musician financed the city's skate park. And yes, Pearl Jam have played countless times in this city.
Interior of Black Coffee Roasters, an impressive hangar that houses one of the most promising coffee roasters in the state
There are many rehearsal rooms, as well as theaters, small bars and a large stadium that fill the musical posters of the city with big names. One of the most central Wilma Theater , hides in its basement one of the most delicious restaurants, Scotty's Table , defined as an 'American bistro' where the Mediterranean influence makes its way into a menu with Italian notes (look at the seafood ravioli and mascarpone with fine herbs).
We've only been a few hours and it overwhelms us. We would need a few days to go through all its signature shops, its tireless nightlife and the anecdotes of those winters that, even in the city, they get tough. We see “We can end gun violence” signs all over town, wallpaper from the tamale food truck to the Cloth & Crown clothing store, the Fact & Fiction bookstore or the natural herbalist at Butterfly Herbs. There is a common attunement and a feeling that here we reflect and criticize without filter (Not surprisingly, it is one of the few –very few– counties in Montana that voted for the Democratic party in 2016).
But the reunion that puts the icing on the cake is missing: we arrive at Black Coffee Roasters, a roaster stationed in an old hangar. The space is overwhelming and the coffee tastes like glory. We leave hoping to see a freight train that completes the picture, but this time we have no luck. We will have to go back a third time.
We face the last stage of the journey, the one that will take us from the ghosts of the past and the city of the present, to the eternal of Montana: the Glacier awaits us. We are in land of the Salish, Kootenai and Blackfeet, three Amerindian tribes that, to this day, continue to live in reserves in the vicinity of the national park accompanied by lynx, bison, black bears and grizzlies, wolves... We are facing an indomitable land, in which ranches, an essential part of local economies, take care of the best meats in Montana.
Roads leading into Glacier National Park trade rolling pasture hills for towering larch and pine forests
Anything we say about the Glacier will come to nothing. Because we will become insignificant, tiny, invisible... in front of everything. The impressive Lake McDonald reflects the grandeur of the landscape, doubling its power; the glacier route, reaching Grinnell Glacier, one of the most surprising; the going-to-the-sun highway, one of the most beautiful in the world, only open to traffic during the hottest summer months, crossing the Continental Divide of the Americas through Logan Pass; and on the other side, there in Canada, its continuation with the Waterton Lakes National Park crowned by the great Prince of Wales hotel.
I think, while reviewing all that I have covered in the great hall of Lake McDonald Lodge , that if he had prodigious eyesight that could cross mountains, he could see, from here, the Yaak Valley in which Rick Bass took refuge: "Could it be that we had come here to hide, to take refuge, to build a fortress against the rest of the world?" If in this world, globalized and gentrified to the point of exhaustion, there is a place where we can be free and unique, that, perhaps, could be Montana.
A few months after the trip, I write about this madness that is Montana asking myself if I am deifying it, if with my words I give it a greater meaning than it has. But I humbly consider that I am right. Montana is not about “checking”: it is about loosening the rigid lists of “things to see” to get lost among what we did not expect.
Lake McDonald
Who would have thought that a few months after this trip we would end up confined at home, breaking plans and tearing up calendars, realizing that improvisation and surprise are a luxury. That the fortuitous stops and the motel would stop being anecdotes to be a privilege. That Montana was a gift of absolute freedom, of that emotion that rises through the gut and sends a chill to all the nerve endings of the body.
In Montana we talked to ghosts, traveled to the center of the earth, walked through movie scenes and breathed air so pure it ached with pleasure. And there, where apparently there is nothing, is where the concept of travel recovers all its meaning.
WHAT TO SEE
On the way to Montana: Craters of the Moon
If you're traveling from Idaho, stop at this lunar landscape, of lava and black earth, result of eruptions on the Snake River Plain. It happened 15,000 years ago and today the result is overwhelming: a vast ocean of lava in which phenomena as beautiful as the flowering of native plants take place.
Jan's Café, in the town of Lima, the truckers' favorite diner
WHERE TO EAT
Jan's Cafe, Lima (108 Bailey St., Lima)
Someone described it as “the gem of eating awesomeness”, that is, the jewel in the crown of truckers, carriers and wanderers that land on their tables. It has an unattractive drawing of what we believe to be a Shoshone Indian, and a forceful homemade kitchen where chili con carne, cheese and sour cream reign supreme. While you eat, American Pie sounds and everything makes sense.
Gamer's Cafe (15 W Park St., Butte)
Don't be scared by ghosts: This is an old saloon where the Irish mine workers used to sleep on the top floor. Today it keeps part of its decoration and offers the typical Butte dishes. eye to its beef burger and its gargantuan milkshakes.
Scotty's Table (131 S Higgins Ave. p3, Missoula)
Alaskan scallops with caramelized leek, sweet potato cream and smoked paprika aioli and crème fraiche with chives; Grilled marinated portobello on tomato with red pepper and caper sauce with asparagus, parmesan, pea puree and arugula. And so the whole letter of this ‘American bistro’ with a cultural atmosphere. Above, the Wilma Theater.
Black Coffee Roasting Company (525 E Spruce St., Missoula)
The owners of Black Coffee knew that Missoula needed a roaster of its own. Thus, they found this hangar in front of the train tracks and occupied the cold industrial style with the heat of slow roasting. Steaming cups and delicious toast, such as avocado or brie.
Tupelo Grille (17 Central Ave., Whitefish)
Comfort food a la Montana. Their bread pudding is so famous that a certain journalist from Bon Appétit came to these parts to get hold of the recipe. He didn't get it.
The welcoming lobby of the Residence Inn by Marriott Missoula Downtown hotel with its large fireplace
WHERE TO SLEEP
Clarion Copper King Hotel (4655 Harrison Ave., Butte)
Simple, comfortable and warm, despite its industrial decor. The breakfast bagels are delicious.
Residence Inn by Marriott Missoula Downtown (125 N Pattee St., Missoula)
The new hotel in town It occupies an old factory. Its lobby anticipates what you will find in the town: color and dynamism.
The Ranch at Rock Creek (79 Carriage House Lane Philipsburg)
This Relais & Châteaux is unfathomable. More than 2,000 hectares of nature where the river sets the pace. A ranch with a spa, bowling alley, nursery and outdoor activities with the horse as the protagonist. There are several types of accommodation that will make you feel in the Far West... with the comforts of the s. XXI. At night, in the Silver Dollar Saloon, there is dancing.
Lake McDonald Lodge (288 Lake McDonald Lodge Loop, West Glacier)
At the gates of Glacier National Park and overlooking the lake that gives it its name. Its lobby, full of landscape paintings, and the grandiose fireplace, are the best welcome.
The Lodge at Whitefish Lake (1380 Wisconsin Avenue Whitefish)
South of Glacier and close to the Kalispell airport and Glacier Park, it sits on the shores of Whitefish Lake, in the town of the same name that inherits the architecture of the Wild West. Enjoy the full American breakfast in its Boat Club with views of the lake.
Bathtub in one of the cabins at The Ranch at Rock Creek