Dispatches from the road… Remote, Montana

 Dispatches from the road, by Bill Poindexter 

(Season 2: Diaries of a bicycle traveler and novice saloon keeper in remote Montana )

730am Wednesday 5/24

Day 1 and 2 of my summer adventures living in a cabin in remote northwestern -Montana four miles outside of the -off the grid- town of Polebridge, Montana and 6 miles to the northwest entrance of Glacier National Park and…for my Bikepacking/ Bicycle Touring “tribe” -10 miles from the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route… specifically the road that goes up to a Red Meadow Lake. 

This is an extraordinarily beautiful area -the town of Polebridge I’m not sure of the population size but it has a Mercantile store/general store and a saloon, the northern lights saloon and that’s where I’m gonna be working for the summer. I flew in from Kansas City yesterday. Had my friend Bill Fordyce pick me up In Kalispell-I met Bill back in 2017 when I came to Polebridge the first time to explore the area. He’s an interesting man and friend -75 years old tough as nails and spends his summers in solitary mode doing fire lookout tower (with his cat) for the national park, service or national forest service… I’m not sure which. He lives in a fire tower and is helicoptered in and they fly him in supplies for the summer… he’s in places you and I will never know. In winter he usually is a caretaker in the Polebridge area. An extraordinary man. He knows a lot about the area so I asked him to give me a ride from the airport. That way I could get up and get the lay of the land and get settled and sure enough he did we made our way to North 

Fork cabins where I have a small cabin OK not really a cabin as you’ll see in the pictures - a shed, made of metal and plywood -but I like it and it’s home so that’s all that matters -

when I walk out of my cabin. I have a view of one of the mountain tops and glacier national park as you’ll see in the pictures and as I found out this morning and this is my first morning waking up I went, took a shower came back, made some coffee and eggs, and found that I had two visitors two deer-

young ones that were just curious about me as I was them. I love this. It’s about 7:30 in the morning overcast it’s sprinkling right now so you can hear the rain pitter pattering on my metal roof and I’m sitting in front on my little dirt porch listening to the birds chatter drinking coffee, and doing a spot of writing.

I really like this place very remote -yesterday afternoon after I got settled in and put my bike back together. I had a box it up for the plane. I did a ride for about an hour and a half and saw a mountain lion so when I say -this is a remote wild place, it is in its most naturalistic way. The people that live up here are tough. They have -50f below winters and lots of darkness and solitude when summer comes, everybody’s is full of smiles and good moods. I’m supposed to be here until mid September, working as a bartender/cashier at the front of the house of the saloon, I met my fellow workers yesterday and seem to be a good group of people. Good mix of young and old people. I like that everybody’s here for their own reasons… Definitely a gypsy tribe. I’ll talk more about them later. Everybody has a story. I’m supposed to start a yoga class up here as well -that will be good. I haven’t taught for a couple years because of the weirdness of the last couple years. But I’m excited about teaching again. OK the rain starting to pick up a little bit. I can barely see the mountain now -I can’t tell you what the weathers gonna be like the rest of today cause I don’t have any cell service. I’m gonna have to get up to the saloon later and get on their Wi-Fi and send this out if I can. I’ll talk more about where I’m living and what the set up is what the amenities are… And are not. I’m just glad to be alive and be in the middle of the mountains in Montana -

I encourage you to look up Polebridge and get a Better idea where I’m at And if you like this writing, I’m gonna be posting this primarily right now on wholeearthguide.blogspot.com my Facebook page-and I’ll start posting videos fairly soon. You can subscribe on the blogspot and get email updates every time I post I just have to get the lay of the land so to speak on what kind of access to technology I’m gonna be having. Although if I had my druthers, I would just shit canned the phone all together, but I feel like I need to share my words with you all.

8:48pm 5/24 Wednesday 

day 2 -the bicycle commute to and from work is extraordinary heading to work on the left-hand side of the road is the Flathead national forest where in this area all the way to Idaho there’s about 1500 grizzly bears, and then to the right is glacier national Park, that you can see in the photos that I took the peaks off in the distance are just extraordinarily beautiful and there’s about 500 grizzly bears there. Those are quotes from fish and game -looking forward to exploring the park in the national forest this summer there’s a lot of forest -I’m excited. The owner Heather Matthews, of the Northern lights Saloon told me today she wants me to work primarily days only because there’s so many mountain lions at night. But I think I’ll be OK. They don’t want anything to do with me. It’s a good day of training- on operations, the bar, bear training by Montana Fish amd Game as well as the Glacier Institute on use of bear spray - it was excellent… Although I do disagree with fishing games, killing of some of the grizzlies in the area and why they did it but that’s a story for another time also.. I learned a lot was able to go on a short ride after work into glacier national park and then just turned around and came back home as I was hungry and needed to do a little bit of homework. But a lot of great people today Megan who was the bar trainer who is also, an astrologist was really fun to work with. We’re gonna be having some really cool drinks this summer that she created. Everything here just feels good environment for people just the whole vibe. There’s a lot of universal synchronicity going on. I came back had a light dinner made some coffee read the employment manual that’s my homework, and filled up my water bottles do a little bit of cleaning and I’m gonna probably read for a little while go to bed here in a few minutes. So signing off day one and two. If you’d like, what I write, let me know!

By the way, it ain’t all good, there’s a lot of mosquitoes in the early morning, and in the evening, especially in the evening. I fall asleep to the Hum of mosquitoes , I’m laying in bed right now and there’s probably 10 in here with me. Just taking a deep breath and ignoring them sticking my head under my sleeping bag. Typically after a couple of days you get used to it, and for some reason they just leave you alone well we’ll see if that theory works :-)

Peace and love from the road Bill Poindexter.

Disclaimer: for those new to my writing, I write very simply, and usually by hand or dictate on my iPhone in the notes and then I edit a little bit. This is primarily free writing so it’s very flowing-so if you read it and don’t get the vibe of it right away. I just keep reading it think of it as nature poetry. And think of it as me just sitting down with you having a cup of coffee or a beer and telling you a story. :-)