The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit.  ~Marya Mannes

Day 1

With my Old Towne canoe beached along the Wild & Scenic Missouri River in central Montana, I unload my gear and set up camp for the evening.  An impromptu but much needed trip, I am relieved that I will be utterly alone for the next 4 days.  The air is warm, and the soft breeze carries hints of sagebrush–a smell that will forever remind me of the American West.   Dusk shifts gently into night and a vast expanse of silence and stars opens above me.

President Clinton declared the area a National Monument, and with good reason.  It’s managed to escape the Wal-Mart’s, strip shopping malls, and suburban neighborhoods that have bulldozed over much of the American West.  The Missouri River Breaks is one of the most remote regions left in the United States.  In the National Monument, the Missouri River meanders through 160 miles of frontier wilderness.  There are ancient badlands, brilliant white sandstone cliffs, expansive rolling hills, and buttes that  tower many hundreds of feet above the never-ending prairieland.   For a place as beautiful as the Breaks, relatively few American’s have ever heard of this unique national treasure.

I put my canoe in at Coal Banks Landing, a BLM river access point just outside of Fort Benton, Montana.  Before I pushed off, the outfitter that rented me the canoe offered one last piece of advice:  “Be careful.  The next river access is a dirt road a full 50 miles downriver.  Don’t miss it, and you should also know that you won’t have a prayer at finding cell phone reception anywhere along the river.”   With a big grin on my face, I nod.  The outfitter smiles back.  I can tell he knows the isolation and adventure are precisely why I’m here.

Legendary conservationist Aldo Leopold once said, “I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”   I share Leopold’s sentiments.  In fact, I moved to Big Sky country precisely because it’s one of the last places where you can lose yourself in an expansive wilderness—a place that still echoes with howls of wolves, the heavy breath of the grizzly, and the ancient songs of Native Americans.

It was late August in the northern Rockies and the weather was perfect, so I made a last minute decision to head out on the river for one last expedition.  After some quick internet research and a pit stop at our local grocery store, I loaded up the car, and headed out.  With summer quickly waning into winter, I knew this would probably be my last window of opportunity to explore the river before blanket of winter settles over the region for 7 long months.

When Lewis and Clark first arrived in the Missouri River Breaks exactly 206 years earlier, they were also racing against the onset of winter.  However, unlike me, they had no map of what lay beyond.  They had heard rumors of great western mountain ranges– however no American had ever laid eyes upon the Rockies.  According to Historian Stephen Ambrose the expedition “was entering a heart of darkness.  Deserts, mountains, great cataracts, warlike Indian tribes – he could not imagine them, because no American had ever seen them.”

Lewis and Clark knew that if they were to have any chance of reaching the Pacific Ocean and one day returning home, they needed to cross the great mountains before the first snow.  They would soon discover that the fabled great mountains lay approximately 80 miles due west.   In a matter of weeks they would confront the most difficult and deadly challenges of their entire journey.

For the time being, though, travel up river was painfully slow for the expedition, but survival was easy.  In this part of Montana, the Missouri River more closely resembles the rivers I grew up with back east– warm, slow, meandering, and filled with catfish, bass, and carp.

It takes me about 7 hours to paddle and fish my way to my first campsite, where Eagle Creek meets the Missouri.  In May of 1805, Lewis and Clark’s expedition camped in this exact same spot.

Meriwether Lewis did not write in his journal every day, but he did make specific mention of this lovely campsite. He described the scene stating, “The hills and river clifts which we passed today exhibit a most romantic appearance.  The bluffs of the river rise to the height of from 200 to 300 feet and in most places nearly perpendicular; they are formed of remarkable white sandstone”

It was also recorded that on special occasions, Lewis & Clark’s party were permitted to drink some of the 30 gallons of “rectified spirits” they had brought along on their journey.   I don’t have any cheap whiskey, but my cooler is filled with ice cold Montana brews, and this will serve me just fine.   As I take a sip of my IPA, I imagine the expedition sharing swigs of whiskey here on a cool May evening 206 years ago.  I imagine this was a drinking night not only because Eagle’s Creek was mentioned by Meriwether as being a great joy, but also because it marked a significant turning point in the expedition; they were now further west than any American had ever journeyed into the interior of the continent.

On the surface, the area appears to be the same as when the expedition first entered the White Cliffs of the Missouri River.  But this is more a façade than reality.  Like many places in the west, mans’ activities have had a profound impact on the ecology of the Missouri River Breaks area.

Nearly 50 river miles away, Fort Benton is the closest town.  With only 1,400 residents, it’s a frontier outpost by most standards, but in a state with less than one million residents, it’s a full blown town with all of the amenities Montanans have come to consider necessities.   There is a post office, a couple of motels, a few gas stations, dentist and doctor’s office, as well as grocery and hardware store.   In typical Montana fashion, there are more bars than churches, although any self respecting local would tell you they’re equally holy places.

The pace of life here reflects a connection to an earlier era – one in which man’s life is quite literally tied to the land.  Cattle ranching, grain farming, logging, and resource extraction are the industries that built the west, and they continue to be the backbone of a slowly but surely modernizing Montana economy. In Fort Benton, the trading price of grain is followed with more diligence than any stock price buzzing across a New York Stock Exchange ticker.

Earlier this morning I had walked into the True Value hardware store in downtown Fort Benton, hoping to glean some local knowledge about what flies to throw on my river trip.  The man behind the counter quickly responds, “Son, we’re simple people here.  Night crawlers serve us just fine.”

When in Rome!  Night crawlers it is.

After trying to nail some fish on my fancy hand tied flies, I threw a big juicy night crawler onto my hook, complete with ‘made-in-china’ bright orange bobber.  The bobber goes under within a minute of tossing it out there, and I land a one and a half pound silver fish.

I let him go and open my Montana Fish, Wildlife, & Parks (FWP) regulation booklet to identify the species.   I learn I’ve caught a Golden Eye.  I also learn that FWP has issued a fish consumption advisory for the Missouri River Breaks.  Stated simply, this means that it might not be safe to consume the fish caught here.  You’ve been officially warned.

It was the first reminder on my trip that while I may be in one of the last great American river frontiers, I’m well within the reach of modern civilization and its dire effects on the environment.

This fish consumption advisory is a direct consequence of our industrialized food system – one which has pumped so many billions of gallons of petrochemical pesticides and herbicides onto nearby agricultural operations that even the most high-tech backpacking water filter is unable to make the water potable.  Sadly, even the wells along the Missouri which once extracted clean water have been rendered unfit for human consumption.  The cattle which graze on public lands have no problem drinking the toxic cocktail, and apparently the federal regulators responsible for ensuring the safety of our food have no objection either.

Alas, the White Cliffs are not what they were 206 years earlier when the Corps of Discovery partook of their rectified spirits.  I was alone, in a seemingly remote region of the country, yet well within the reach of modernity.  It was a sad reminder that no matter how hard one tries to escape civilized society, civilized society persists.

Thankfully, the yipping and howling of coyotes that night distracted me from such thoughts.

Day 3

The bacon pops and sizzles in my pan.   I poke the fire with a stick, causing more embers to dance with the rising smoke as they disappear into a dimly lit purple sky.   It’s a dance as ancient as the badlands which extend as far as I can see in every direction.  I finish my third cup of instant coffee and revel in the morning’s warmth.

I know that autumn will arrive in a matter of weeks, and shortly thereafter snow will fall from the sky for the next 7 months.

But summer is hanging on, at least for a little while longer

Across the way, a lone pronghorn antelope approaches the river’s edge and takes a drink from the Missouri.  She’s so close that I can see the distinctive markings on her face.  The jet black hair around her nose fades to a light brown around her closely set eyes.   But it’s the distinguishing white stripes on her cheeks  and unique black horns that are the sure sign that she’s not a mule or whitetail deer.

Earlier this summer I was driving through Grand Teton National Park, and as I came around a bend in the road, traveling at about 40 miles an hour, I startled a pronghorn that was grazing on the side of the road.  With a fierce explosion of speed, the pronghorn ran next to my car for three seconds or so before passing me and cutting deeper into the meadow.

“Holy shit”, I said out loud.  While I’d read that pronghorns were the second fastest animal on earth, nothing had prepared me for the remarkable site of being passed by an animal moving at such a blistering pace.

Since this experience, pronghorns have become one of my favorite animals.  The more I’ve learned about them, the more fascinating they’ve become.

Wolves, coyotes, and bears rarely waste their time trying to catch an adult pronghorn.  It’s almost impossible for any predator to sneak up on one, much less run him down.

Pronghorn’s eyes move and focus independently of one another, which gives them the incredible ability to scan their periphery while grazing.  When they graze, they’re usually in groups and work as a team so that at least one roving eye is scanning every part of the 360 degree horizon.

They also have a unique, silent communication system that allows them to quickly alert one another when danger is near.  Pronghorns’ rumps are covered by a circular patch of white hair, and if they become spooked they flair this white patch creating an even larger circle.  Within seconds, the entire herd is aware of the predator’s presence.  Game over for the hungry meat eater.

Millennia ago there was a North American cheetah which could run down the antelope.  But these days their biggest threats are not from elements of the ecological order, but rather the activities of modern man – cars and development.  Much like the American Bison, pronghorns used to roam from the arid lands of central Mexico all the way to the boreal forests of Canada.   While no one knows for sure how many pronghorn there used to be, estimates range from 40 to 70 million. At the turn of the century the pronghorn was driven to the brink of extinction, but thankfully they’ve managed to hang on.  Right now there are slightly less than one million, and they’re confined mostly to Montana and Wyoming.

As I watch this pronghorn in the morning light, I can’t help but wonder what she thinks of this place, and of me.  I knew that if she could tell the story of the great prarielands , it would be a  history of the Wild West far different than the one I learned of as a child.

American journalist, Ambrose Bierce, once said, “God alone knows the future, but only a historian can change the past.”

After all, our history is more honestly a series of perceptions — our collective best guesses as to what really happened, rather than a recounting of fact.  Sometimes these guesses have been manipulated purposefully, other times they’ve been shaped by forces of culture, emotion and the erosion of collective memory over time.  More often than not, though, I believe it’s our egos that get in the way the most.   We want to believe the best about our heritage and our people, and this can lead to selective memory and distorted one sided perspectives.

I think it’s safe to say that First Nation peoples like the Shoshone, Crow, and Blackfoot would recount a dramatically different historical narrative of the United States than the one our politicians, especially Republican politicians, cling to tightly during election season.  America, Liberty, Freedom, and Justice for all!

I always thought this platitude should come with an asterisk attached.   *some exclusions may apply *only in participating locations.

As I think about the pronghorn’s story, and my own, I’m struck by how ironically our ancestral paths intertwine.

Thomas Jefferson is a great uncle if mine somewhere down the line on my mom’s side of the family tree.

In 1803, Jefferson secured the Louisiana Purchase from the French Government.  Shortly thereafter, he commissioned an expedition to explore the lands which lay beyond the “Great Rock Mountains in the west”.  He hoped to find the famed Northwest Passage, a water linkage between the Missouri and Colombia Rivers, one which he that could carry ships all the way to the Pacific Ocean.  To lead this expedition, he chose his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis.

Here I am, 206 years later, in the exact same location where Lewis and Clark camped one evening in May, where Eagle Creek flows into the Missouri River.  Unlike Lewis and Clark, I was hardly the first white man to set eyes upon this remote countryside now called Montana.  While the expedition never found the Northwest Passage, their triumph of reaching the Pacific Ocean via land marked the most remarkable of achievements in a list of many national “firsts”.  Among these firsts, the Lewis and Clark expedition brought the pronghorn antelope into scientific notice.

On Monday, September 17^th, 1804, Lewis scribed in his journal the first written account of such a creature.

“We found the Antelope extreemly shye and watchfull insomuch that we had been unable to get a shot at them; when at rest they generally seelect the most elivated point in the neighbourhood, and as they are watchfull and extreemely quick of sight and their sense of smelling very accute it is almost impossible to approach them within gunshot… they will frequently discover and flee from you at the distance of three miles [4.8 kilometers]. I had this day an opportunity of witnessing the agility and the superior fleetness of this anamal which was to me really astonishing… I beheld the rapidity of their flight along the ridge before me it appeared reather the rappid flight of birds than the motion of quadrupeds.”

Lewis and Clark’s success in crossing the great unknown and returning to tell their stories served to strengthen the psyche of a new and unsure nation.  The journey ultimately paved a crude path for settlement of the West.  Manifest Destiny was the dominate paradigm of the day, and Lewis and Clark had just shown that it was indeed possible to venture into the unknown and return.  The same gritty and determined spirit which had led so many men and women to brave the deadly trans-Atlantic crossing for the hope of a better life continued to drive the emerging nation westward.

While the West has since been conquered, this gritty and adventurous spirit remains alive in Montana.

And so, here I am.

Much like Lewis and Clark’s expedition, I’m certain the resident pronghorn that has joined me for breakfast has a keen awareness that winter is quickly approaching.   After all, the advent of fall marks the beginning of the longest migration of any ungulate in the lower 48 states.  These Pronghorn migrate hundreds of miles each fall to southern ranges where climate is more temperate and survival is more likely.

As the region continues to be developed, their ancient migratory routes continue to be spliced by oil and gas fields, interstates, trophy homes, and cattle fences that are too high for the pronghorn to clear.  For now though, the pronghorn is hanging on.

The sun makes its entrance and peeks above the towering white sandstone buttes that are directly across the river from my campsite.  It’s 8:30 in the morning and its beginning to get hot.   I open up my Bureau of Land Management river map, and I see that I’m only 11 miles or so from my next campsite.  With the river flowing at 2 miles per hour, I know there is no rush to put in.

I spend much of the day climbing through the badlands, slot canyons, and coulees of the Missouri River Breaks.  I’m reminded how freeing it feels to get off trail and venture into the unknown.   Standing atop a tall sandstone Butte, I look in every direction.  No sign of humanity for as far as the eye can see.   I’d be more likely to have company if it were not for the motorized restriction on this part of the river.  The only way to get here is to paddle for days.

I arrive to my next campsite later in the evening, and hungry.

After grilling and devouring a juicy bison burger and drinking an ice cold beer, I build another fire and watch the last sunlight fade into darkness.  The obsidian sky is covered with so many stars that it appears there are clouds of faint light swirling into an endless abyss.  I realize it’s so dark I can clearly see the Milky Way.  As I lay on my back staring into an endless galaxy, I’m struck how long its been since I’ve spent 3 full days completely alone and away from the chatter of my fast paced modern existence.  At last, I’m flowing at the slow pace of the Missouri.

I fall asleep to the the sounds of crickets and the occasional howl of a coyote.  Solitude.