When my fly-fishing, tale-telling, river-loving dad started fishing the Bitterroot River about 30 years ago, he figured he was standing in the Montanan's Montana. A handsome rainbow trout and some bumper stickers persuaded him to settle there. The nearest airport was two hours away on a two-lane, no-shoulder highway. "Pray for me, I drive 93," the bumper stickers read.
Time passed, and so did Dad. The highway improved and a good many foreigners rode into town - people from Seattle, Los Angeles, Missoula. Now, when they fish the Bitterroot, they're liable to put in at "The Wally Crawford," Dad's memorial.
The Montanan's Montana, however, moved north. A friend of mine moved with it. It was getting so she could see her neighbors down in the Bitterroot Valley.
Not long ago, we poked around her new territory, the Seeley-Swan Valley. We hit upon a slew of Montana classics - all still comfortably miles apart. We're figuring it for the current Montanan's Montana.
Sculpted by glaciers and notched by saw-toothed peaks, the Seeley-Swan is studded with alpine lakes and run through by rivers. Ponderosa and lodgepole pine cover the slopes - when the trees have not been clear-cut.
The Mission Mountains rising to the west and the Swans to the east are part of the more than two dozen ranges that shape Montana's hunk of the Rocky Mountains. No Montanan, however, refers to these sets of mountains as "the Rockies." They call them by name.
The Seeley-Swan starts at Swan Lake, south of Bigfork - town of tourists, artists and musicals - and rolls down to the loon-nesting lakes of Seeley and Salmon. The Blackfoot River - of A River Runs Through It fame - flows past the valley's southern tip on its way from the Continental Divide to Missoula - town of students, loggers and writers.
The Swan, the Clearwater and Route 83 run through this valley. It's the long way to get from Missoula to Glacier National Park: The Montanan's Montana is never easy to reach.
One hundred miles of wilderness - one of the best-preserved mountain ecosystems in the world - spreads along the valley's eastern brim. Montanans call this area, as they call everyone, by its first name: The Bob.
The Bob Marshall Wilderness takes up more space than Delaware, and no roads run through it. There's trail though, totaling enough distance to walk from Bigfork to San Francisco.
The Montanans I know figure the Bob is the "last best place."
Bob Marshall, the person, was a wilderness advocate, writer, scientist and bureaucrat. His biographer called him, "a kind of da Vinci in high-topped sneakers."
When he wasn't hiking in the wilderness, Bob Marshall was fighting to keep it wild. No three-piece-suit lobbyist, he would leave Washington soirees walking on his hands, and he would greet Supreme Court justices with an impromptu somersault - irrepressible and irreplaceable, just like the Bob he helped create.
When asked how many acres of wilderness America really needs, Marshall replied, "How many Brahms symphonies do we really need?"
Marshall wasn't the only character attracted to this valley. Gary Hastings, in chef's jacket and jeans, with a salt-and-pepper braid hanging down his back, sharpens his knives here now.
His spread along the Swan River includes a restaurant, inn, riverside cottages and the lashed poles of a teepee - Hastings's first Montana home. He delivered his own child here. He's a master of the bold stroke and the mastermind of Coyote Roadhouse Inn and Restaurant.
I'm betting it's one of the top 10 restaurants in the West. Take the fried green tomatoes: Coated with Japanese panko bread crumbs - coarser than those most folks use - slices of green tomato fry up crisp and stay light. Then each slice, topped with a blackened shrimp, floats on a pond of ancho chili sauce.
That's the way Hastings works. One flavor - here, the sweetness in the cooked tomatoes - echoes another - the sweetness of the shrimp. Then he sparks it with a surprise, the smoky bite of chili sauce, spirited by five different Yucatan chilies.
The green tomatoes pair well with his jambalaya from New Orleans, his pastas from Tuscany and his entrees of fish so fresh you'd think it was the Swan Ocean out there.
The wines are picked by Hastings and imported from small wineries in Tuscany.
Why name such a fancy place the Coyote Roadhouse?
"A roadhouse brings to mind an old country inn of the 16th century, where you could get good, down-home cooking," Hastings answers.
And Coyote?
"I used to raise coyotes and wolves. Someone shot them. So, I named the restaurant after my "boys.' "
Mosey on down Route 83 past Condon and then follow a dirt road east to its end. There, by the shore of the shivery-green Holland Lake, where waterfalls plummet from the peaks of the saw-toothed, mountainous far shore, a rustic lodge has been greeting guests since 1905.
It's a down-home, up-country retreat, where guests put up in nine basic lodge rooms or six simple lakeshore cabins. The main lodge's lodgepole pine and leather furniture fits like a well-worn boot.
Days on the lake and up the mountain ripen into nights sitting and singing round the campfire.
The first dude ranch in these parts is now a resort, the Double Arrow. In 1929, three log cabins and some 70-foot-long larch logs were carved and notched by hand, transforming into a magnificent lodge.
The ranch itself was subdivided in the 1980s. The horses went, the lodge was restored, condos and a golf course were added.
The deer, however, did not get the word that their meadow is now a golf course. They still arrive for their evening feed about the time guests start dining at Double Arrow's restaurant, Seasons.
The Rich Ranch, four generations of people plus horses, is the oldest outfitting operation in Montana still in the same family. Their ranch guests bed down in the house or nearby cabins. Meals are family style, nothing fancy, but nice.
Guests saddle up on one of the 62 fine western horses and meander through meadows or ride up into the Bob. A Montanan's Montana get-away? You bet.
Grizzlies, elk and gray wolf range the Bob's vastness. Eagles and ospreys soar on the updrafts of its glacial peaks. The ranch's C.B. Rich says, "Maybe even more thrilling is watching the stars come out and be so clear and low that they seem to hang like tiny lanterns within reach."
Getting into the Bob for a few sundowns is the way to capture its immensity and peace. A Rich Ranch pack trip means travel by horseback, sleep in teepee tents and grub from the camp cook.
Cutthroat, rainbows, brookies and browns - trout, that is - inhabit the Bob's tarns and streams. "Prettiest fishing anywhere," Dad used to say.
But something more drew him here. On a summer's day, when the sun was high and the fish biting, just as the arc of his line floated down from the big sky and his fly kissed the river, Dad caught his glimpse of heaven.
- Freelance writer Kate Crawford now lives in Sebastopol, Calif.
If you go
GETTING THERE: Delta, United, Northwest and Continental have connecting service to Missoula from the Tampa Bay area. Rental cars are available at the airport.
STAYING THERE: Coyote Roadhouse Inn and Cottages, Bigfork, Mont. Call 406 837-4250; www.coyoteroadhouse.com Rustic riverside cottages and western inn rooms, and lots of space to wander and fish. Inn room rates are $85 to $145 per night, cabins, $145 to $175.
Holland Lake Lodge, Swan Valley, Mont. Call 406 754-2282 or toll-free 1-877-925-6343; www.hollandlakelodge.com Canoeing, riding, fly-fishing, hiking and cross-country skiing available. $95 to $115 per person per day includes all meals.
The Double Arrow Resort, Seeley Lake, Mont. Call 406 677-2777 or toll-free 1-800-468-0777; www.doublearrowresort.com Golf, swimming, tennis and cross-country skiing. Double rooms, $75 to $130, cabins sleeping as many as four, $115 to $160. Golf, $29 a round.
The Rich Ranch, Seeley Lake, Mont. Call 406 677-2317 or toll-free 1-800-532-4350; www.richranch.com A guest ranch and outfitters for pack trips into the Bob. $225 per adult per day includes meals and activities for ranch or pack trip.
EATING THERE: Coyote Roadhouse, Bigfork, Mont. Call 406 837-4250; www.coyoteroadhouse.com Worth a very long drive out of your way. Entrees, $21 to $26.
Seasons at the Double Arrow Resort, Seeley Lake, Mont. Call 406 677-2777 or toll-free 1-800-468-0777; www.doublearrowresort.com Where the rainbow trout has a Carolina blue crab stuffing and the tenderloin of bison is mesquite-smoked, garlic-chili rubbed and doused with chipotle butter. Entrees, $18 to $32.
FOR MORE iNFORMATION: The Pathfinder has brochures, news and features on the people and places of the Seeley-Swan. www.seeleyswanpathfinder.com
Contact the state tourism agency, Travel Montana, P.O. Box 200533, Helena, Mont. 59620. Call 406 841-2870 or toll-free 1-800-847-4868; www.visitmt.com Information on activates, parks and wilderness areas, lodging and food. Has a complete list of guest ranches and licensed outfitters.
