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| While snapping a photo of smoke in the air as we crossed the bridge over the Kootenai River yesterday, I accomplished a longtime photographic dream, catching an image of the giant flag that flies over Bonner's Ferry. |
With all the smoke in today's morning air, it's pretty hard to inhale and exhale slowly while watching the stock market tank for yet another day.
I'm mildly concerned about the coinciding double whammy of black lungs and blood red financial implosion. Ouch!
Just kidding! Let's just say the day is definitely starting out with extremes----on the stock market and in the friendly skies.
I guess in both cases, it's just best to hide under the covers and hope for the best.
Anyway, we went out into the smoky skies yesterday. Bill was looking for fish; I was looking for something pretty to photograph with the heavy haze of smoke.
Well, we each succeeded.
We drove to Callahan Creek, just east of the Montana-Idaho border near Troy. I brought along a book to read.
Yesterday I read in the paper that Ivan Doig did publish one last book before he died, and I love the title Last Bus to Wisdom.
We're lovers of Wisdom----Montana, that is.
Bill and I spent the night there at the Nez Perce Lodge a couple of years ago. The next day we met my friend Susie for a visit at the local restaurant where delicious bacon comes specially cut from a butcher in Missoula.
It's a fascinating, old Western town in the midst of the expansive and beautiful Big Hole River country. I can't wait to see what Ivan Doig does with Wisdom in his last book.
But wait!
I have two Ivan Doig books to finish before I allow myself to go to the bookstore and purchase Last Bus to Wisdom.
I've been part way through The Bartender's Tale for some time-----long enough, in fact, for the book cover to be a bit dusty when I took it from the pile yesterday.
Somewhere in this house lies another Doig book Sweet Thunder, which Bill gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago.
Being a journalist, I've been really excited to read that book---for two years.
A sentence in The Bartender's Tale notes that it's a good bedside book. Well, if I used that method of reading my Ivan Doig fiction, I'd be into another lifetime before ever getting to think about the Last Bus from Wisdom.
So, yesterday I took the book and a lawn chair along on our Sunday drive. Bill asked for 45 minutes of fishing.
Sounded good to me, especially since I've been nursing my sore knee. It would be good to give it some rest, sit and read while he walked with his fly rod and fish stick amidst the boulders of a low but stunningly clear Callahan Creek.
All worked out well. My character in The Bartender's Tale not only learned some information about the snooty woman from Hollywood who's asked him and his friend to do some acting, but he also got to take a trip with his dad and friend to Great Falls.
Dad, the bartender, is being honored by the owners of Great Falls Select Beer for leading the state of Montana in beer sales. So, the kids accompany him, getting a taste of the big city, including a fancy luncheon.
By the time, Dad has given his award acceptance speech and wowed the company owners, Bill, the fisherman in Montana's Callahan Creek has started his ascent to the pickup.
He pretty much kept on schedule, reporting a few catches, while I felt some satisfaction with 30 or so more pages read in my book.
It wasn't really THAT much visual fun going for our Sunday drive because the smoke does dominate virtually every scene along the way.
Still, we enjoyed the trip, 'cept for the fact that once again ZIPS Restaurant in Bonners Ferry let Bill down.
He had stopped at Stein's Supermarket in Troy for some fried chicken. Figuring that would be his dinner, he looked forward to a refreshing and tasty Hurricane on down the road at the ZIP"s.
Ice cream machine, broken.
Last time we stopped at ZIP's in Bonner's for the same treat, the staff had just turned off the OPEN sign and were sitting in their car, ready to head home.
I think that night we moved on to Super 1 for their delicious 25-cent cones.
Last night, Bill just settled for a Schwan's treat from the freezer at home.
News Flash: I just peeked out from under my covers at the stock market----only 400 points down as opposed to the 800-plus last time I looked.
While horrifying myself with the dismal numbers, I also looked out the window for Schweitzer.
Still not visible and no sign yet of those fire red suns we've all been seeing of late.
In other news on this Monday morning, the deer had a field day on the inside-the-garden-fence nasturtiums which I was so admiring yesterday while driving my lawnmower around in a cloud of dust and dirt.
After a while, those ever-accumulating dead leaves that keep falling from the trees get to me, so I have to clean things up.
While half the dirt flying through the air is landing down my front or the seat of my pants, I can at least revel in the beauty of the nasturtiums.
Not this morning. They're all gone.
It was a field day inside the garden last night because, in addition to the nasturtiums, the whole row of Swiss chard got a close but uniform clipping. At least now, any chard that has the nerve to grow will all be the same size.
And, that cabbage----only the big leaves around the outside remain this morning. Maybe the intruder will give the garden a break tonight and go steal something else.
Fun times. I still can't see Schweitzer, and it's time to get at the morning chores.
Happy Monday.
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