One of the more bizarre words I've stumbled across makes it to the top of the pile for today's word. Skwala. It's a bug. More specifically it's a stonefly. Interestingly, it hatches in February, so desperate (enthusiastic?) fly fishermen (and women) can get a fix for their mid-winter jones.
Here's a few words on the Bitterroot Skwala fishery as told by a local. People do strange things. Fly fishing in February. Who wudda' thunk it? Good thing the Bitterroot is in the banana belt.....
Montana is all that and then some, as my kids say on occasion. Having gone to school there and lived there for a few years, there's a few parts I remember that aren't seen in most descriptions.
The first memory is of the people. Montana natives hunt. That is their excuse for getting outside. Many of them, a decent majority grew up in rural settings (not all), so they were outside as part of work and daily life. They never went camping or skiing or hiking. They did some, if not all of that in the course of their "work life". Students, on the other hand, were of course all over the outdoor rec opps. This made for an interesting clash. The School of Forestry attracted some Montana natives and as you might expect their goals were more resource extraction than conservation. The Forestry School also attracted a fair amount of tree huggers, especially from New Jersey for some reason. They, were more passionate about resource conservation than extraction. This double humped camel of student interests made things interesting at times. I was on campus at the height of the spotted owl controversy. Lots of passionate discussions.
The Rattlesnake Wilderness Area was adjacent to the Missoula City Limits. Back then and likely still now, it was the only wilderness area in the USA with bus service to the main trailhead. Rattlesnake Creek poured down into the Clark Fork, wild and unkempt. There was city park up and down both sides of it. Running paths all over. One of my favorite places.
There were bighorn sheep on Mount Sentinel as well as mountain lions. Every once in awhile you could hike to the M and spot bighorns off in the distance. Every once in awhile, there would be a picture in the city paper of a mountain lion on a patio eating the cat food out of a bowl someone had left outside. What a thrill that must have been, open the drapes as the sun comes up and there's a mountain lion three feet away......
In the Idaho-based world of New Grass Growing (and River and Ranch) there are hot springs. They exist in the real Idaho as well. One of the pleasant outcomes of living in a geologically active setting is hot water. Generally this is because geologic activity tends to generate heat. Plate subduction, terrane accretion, plate moving over hot spot, granitic pluton cooling, you know, all the usual suspects.
Water, usually in the form of melted snow, works its way downward through mostly local fractures in overlying material. Heat increases with depth, so the deeper the water goes in proximity to the heat source (e.g. a granitic intrusion like the Idaho batholith) the hotter it gets. Literature fails to provide a consistent explanation for the introduction of water to the system for heating and then a separate exit of the now hot water from the system. Happily for whatever reasons of nature's plumbing, hot springs work.
In the world of River and Ranch and New Grass Growing, you'll find Lolo Hot Springs (most developed), Jerry Johnson's (on the far side of the Lochsa may now have a locked gate), Weir Creek (hardest to get to), Sharkey Hot Springs (out near Cayuse Creek), and the hot springs at the base of Lost Trail Pass. Down the river(s) you encounter Barth, Sheepeater, Sunflower, Hospital Bar and others that at the moment I am forgetting.
They are natural, others don't always leave them clean, and they may have naturally occurring sulphur-centric microbes giving them a distinct odor. So, use at your own risk and please leave them cleaner than you found them. They are really neat places.
Such a humble entry. Don't be fooled though, this simple word is an entry point for big themes within this book series. At least one anyway. For me (the author) a fierce internal debate rages over how much of a reveal this blog series should be. The more I write here, the more plot spoilers are going to pop up. Grrr.
New Grass Growing is about "next steps in life" that the characters begin taking. I have to confess the great bulk of my reading falls in the thriller/adventure/action/suspense genre. In that broad category, action is non-stop as the MCs rush from cliffhanger to world ender to life threatening fight, etc. There's no break and virtually no look into life beyond their current crisis. Fans of this genre are quick to point out that nonstop action is critical to maintaining reader interest. While mostly true, I am asserting that this is not an absolute. Maybe it is for the Mitch Rapp-inspired thriller genre. For me, after a long diet of thrillers and suspense, my mind is wandering a bit, looking for more dimensions to the characters that I like.
In looking back on what I have read over the years, Clive Cussler provides an interesting example of this additional character dimension and complexity. CC provides numerous other examples as well, but my point here is that CC takes his main character, Dirk Pitt, off in other directions as the years pass in Dirk's fictional world. I was somewhat thrilled to realize this as my own world building aged and broadened. If CC does it, then I can too I guess.....
My point? as I wander ever further from it....
Amongst a myriad of other worthy subjects, at the end of River and Ranch, fate lands Cale in Salmon for the year with his new-found daughter, Sabé (btw New Grass Growing picks up where R&R left off). This kid turns out to be an athlete (OK so I revealed one spoiler, but so far am managing to conceal a couple others). She's a ninth grader and quite the basketball player. Ultimately Cale and Lane, now virtually "retired" from their clandestine globe trotting rigors, become the girl's basketball coaches at Salmon High School. Once again do I weave a somewhat tortuous trail, but I do arrive at the word for the day. Basketball serves as a segue for introducing more characters and possibly more themes to the River and Ranch family.
In another digression, I have to give much credit to Sherman Alexie for his writing, of which I have (re)read much, as well as for his thoughts on writing about Native Americans. Indians for short. Mr. Alexie brings up the theme of colonialist writing in referring to white guys like me writing about Indians. His observation (greatly streamlined by me) is that "outside" writers tend towards stereotypic themes when writing about natives. Feather in hair, tall savage, noble, etc. Literature does seem to bear out his observations on this. With Coeur d'Alene/Spokane blood flowing in his veins, his writing, as you might expect, veers well away from these stereotypes. And he does veer. In many big ways. His point about colonial writing is a good one and one that I take with me as I work my way through the new characters and themes in New Grass Growing (hopefully that is merely a hint and not a plot spoiler).
That about wraps up today's rambling discourse. Tune in tomorrow for the letter "C" and more in the ongoing drama that is 26 days of New Grass Growing......
