Dispatches from Polebridge, Montana

 Dispatches from the Road by Bill Poindexter

Life in Polebridge, MT- Fourth of July, french fries, marijuana, universal, thinking, time, space-time Vortex, accordion Bob, chance, and yoga

Part one the Fourth of July: well, the Fourth of July started off a little bit eventful. I woke up about 2 o’clock in the morning and decided I needed to write some things. Lotta frustrations just had to get it out on paper collect my thoughts and that’s what you do at  2 o’clock in the morning till 3 o’clock in the morning I call it 3 o’clock in the morning courage . Because you are all alone with the darkness, and in this case, I had the company of a full moon shining through my cozy cabin window right on my bed. I just needed to vent my frustrations and I know that you probably want to hear about my bicycling adventures and me, wrestling grizzly bears and mountain lions and such, well maybe that will come later but right now my my grizzly bears are working issues and some life issues and and such… It happened to be that the night before last I got chastised embarrassed in front of coworkers and patrons of the Saloon. The owner gave me a tongue lashing for eating the competitions french fries on our front porch of the saloon while I was eating a Saloon burger and drinking a Saloon beer after my long record-breaking shift. Like I told you in the past post, there’s a lot of politics around and the saloon owner and the Mercantile owner next-door in the food truck, who is the food truck owner too -they don’t care for each other-but I worked hard all day and people bring food over from the other place and vice versa all day long …And I thought it be OK if I just sat out there quietly by myself, contemplating all the seeds of life with my cheeseburger in my scotch ale, and my big plate of french fries… Which I only ate a few of it was too much for my belly, so I did ask the owner if I could take them inside and give them to the rest of the staff in the back of the kitchen, and she looked at me and smiled and nodded as she was bringing her dog inside the saloon and so I went through the back door and put the french fries out and let everybody know that there’s french fries forming they seem to be mighty happy and I came back in for another beer whole 15 minutes or so later and that’s when she came out I was standing in the middle of the bar and talking with somebody and she let me know that she didn’t appreciate me bringing those french fries on the property and that since I’ve been working all day if people saw me and they knew who I was and I was eating french fries french fries on their porch and they would bring french fries too which isn’t necessarily true you got a like french fries. Now I’m not even gonna tell you how I reacted cause you can imagine… there was no anger or anything like that and I really wasn’t embarrassed but it was embarrassing….I think for the other staff because they told me that yesterday, but I was more embarrassed for her and sad because if that type of behavior keeps happening I’m not gonna be here very long. Life is too short -time is too precious and I don’t have time for any of that nonsense… 

good news, though got through the Fourth of July was able to see the parade I was going to go out and be in it, but decided not to because my coworker was a little bit stressed out with the manager in counter but we did really well together and it was a lot of fun and it’s super busy where you can barely take a breath nonstop people coming in. Polebridge is truly a special place on Fourth of July. The parade was lotta fun I’ll post pictures and then there was a Grateful Dead cover band at the saloon on the stage behind the saloon, and I danced, probably more than I should have at 59 years old with a bunch of the Mercantile people and some other young people and it was fun! Hopefully I don’t look silly out there but the way I figure -it is it’s just like the Dalai Lama said “live your life like you want to live. Do good things don’t expect anything in return and dance like no one‘s watching because no one’s watching…”

Part two:

I do enjoy talking to people I’m having a lot of fun meeting people even though some days I’ve been a little bit grumpy and when I become grumpy, I have to remember that everybody’s here just to have a good time and live their life and there’s no reason to be grumpy sure they ask the same questions over and over again but it’s innocent they just want answers. “Where does the road go, how do I get into the park? How do I get to Bowman lake? Where do you live? Where do I live? Where are you from? Where can I go from here? Where can I go to see grizzly bears? Where can I go to see a moose… “ Really the questions are endless, but most the time they’re all the same and I get them all the same answer this way that way any which way you want… 

I don’t have many vices in life but I do have to say that coffee is one of my vices and I drink too much of it. I’m an excess person and it’s just the way it is I like food and I like drink and I like coffee I like stimulants I like to get a buzz going occasionally the other night we were all sitting around the campfire over at home bottom ranch and they were passed around the marijuana joint. I haven’t smoked pot for a long time and I ended up taking a hit of that stuff and call for a few minutes. Kind of felt like a novice pot smoker even though I’m an expert pot smoker from the 70s and 80s… But one thing for sure is I don’t wanna smoke pot anymore. It was just one hit-one toke-then I did like the smell of it. 

I was sitting in front of the saloon yesterday after my shift with a Awho works at the Mercantile he’s a local legend he basically is an alcoholic and a functional alcoholic who fixes things, and he’s really good at it and he gets paid well for it. He’s a young man and 35 and well who knows what’s gonna happen with them in the future, but I think you’ll get it all figured out and hopefully he’ll join AA and become sober at some point because his liver is not gonna be able to stand that alcohol more than 10 years more. But that’s a journey. He’s gonna have to go on by himself, but I will say this he is a good man and I like him very much and I do call him a friend. anyway he was sitting outside and we were talking girls and nature and such and a young girl came up who was working at the bar for her aunt and she’s from California really pretty young girl can’t be more than 17 or 18 and she lit up a joint right on the porch, and I just kind of smiled, and then she asked if it was OK and I said “do whatever you want sister it’s your life and it’s your world.”

I admire her, Hanna-it’s kind of funny that she was comfortable enough to be chatting with two older men and doing that definitely free spirit might be interested in hearing her story in about 20 years. I do like the kids that are around here. They’re all very smart, very self-sufficient they like camping in the woods, peeing in the bushes, skinny dipping…as well we all should. I kind of imagine them as the same type of women that had the pioneer spirit to go across the United States from east to west back in the 1800s gypsy like women who were not afraid to work hard they have strong wills, are good in their own skin, and just like the rest of us just are curious about life. I do love strong women.

Part three:

Time has been on my mind lately- i.e. How much time do I have? How much time do we all have? It’s a good question to ask. I’m getting ready to teach yoga next week and one of things I noticed during my yoga classes is how time and space transcends. Somehow I get into a deep meditation in the yoga class I’m teaching and even though the class is just over an hour, it seems only like a few minutes has passed. That’s cause I use universal laws like gravity and whole water dynamics, and the power of the moon and the power of the sun and all sorts of cool universal law stuff. Cause-and-effect is a favorite. But just gonna go back to time and just being aware of time-most of us will live to 80 years that is-700,000 hours, and we’ll waste a lot of our time in our life and right now I’m getting ready to hit 60 this year and that means that I basically have 20 years left which really comes down to just over 170,000 hours I think. Time is precious and right now I have to constantly remind myself to relax and to sit on the side of the river, or stream, or on the side of a road or go for a bike ride and just really embrace it, maybe sit on the front porch of my little cozy cabin like I’m doing right now And just take deep breath’s watch the birds and watch the deer walk by. I’m just curious how you’re spending your time I’ve always spent time on my own terms for the most part if I do work for somebody else it’s cause I want to and it’s more of an adventure and experience.

Part four the vortex:

I’ve been told by many gypsy/ hippie folk, that in this world and universe there are vortexes… Now I’m not exactly sure what vortex is -but the way I understand it is that it’s a place where the universe has a multi dimensional opening and it’s a powerful place possibly magnetically thinking/lots of interesting energy where people tend to be drawn to, and congregate… Now an example of this would be the little Grand Canyon just outside of Taos, New Mexico, the lost coast section in California, and well I’m really not sure where else except possibly where I’m living right now which is Polebridge Montana. An off the grid community powered by solar panels and generators where only 10 hearty souls live all year round. I was told by one of the previous owners of the saloon that back in the 70s and 80s when they owned it that people would come in to the saloon and just want to know why they came to the saloon and the area and wanted you to tell them why they were there… It’s almost like a field of dreams like that movie with Kevin Costner is that people will just somehow step out of their world into another world. And as I said previously, they like to ask a lot of questions and they asked lotta personal questions they wanna know a lot about us and they wanna know a lot about the area that we live in. 

And I think that each of us work up here are caretakers, so to speak, of the area, and we have a responsibility to give these people a good experience, and to help guide them on their inner journey and the vortex 

Part five – flat tires

I met two young men yesterday on a bicycle trip from whitefish Montana up and over red Meadow down to Polebridge and then over to Glacier in the inside N. Fork Rd., and then back down to West Glacier and then back over to whitefish. It’s a loop that a lot of people do around here truly beautiful. 

And the first question out of their mouth “do you have any extra spare tubes” and I said well my tires are different than yours and my tubes. This wouldn’t fit on your bicycles I said, but I do have a patch kit and ask them if they had a patch kid and they didn’t and they said they were embarrassed, but they were mostly mountain bikers and weren’t used to having flat tires, and that one of them had a multiple flat tires and had no more way to to fix a flat tire even though we had two spare tubes and so I proceeded to pull out my repair kit. All I had was three patches left, and I gave them two of them and show them how to patch up their tires and I told him that I was an expert at it because I had many times where I was on the side of the road and had to patch my own tires, even in the middle of a thunderstorm, and so we had some fine conversations and I told him I was the author of Bikepacking School which is on Amazon. If none of you have read it, it’s her just a collection travel stories with a little bit of poetry and some interesting experiences I had on the road and but it’s also a little bit of a how to guide and where to get the information if you want to start traveling by bicycle for either transportation or travel purposes. I wrote in 2020 a little out of date I’ll get the new addition up this fall which will be a lot of fun cause I’m gonna be talking about this trip and my last trip last year when I rode my bicycle from Kansas City Missouri down to the Ozarks and rode all the way to the East Coast to Yorktown Virginia. But I digress -back to the boys. They were fine young man, and they were very appreciative of me helping them out and asked me if they could buy me a cup of coffee and a huckleberry bear claw at the Mercantile and I said no I said I’d rather you just pass this on to other people pay it forward so to speak because there’s been many time where I was in their place, and nobody stopped to help me and I ended up having to walk my bicycle home. And nobody should have to do that if somebody’s in need, we should always do our best to help them out and at the very least ask them if they need help.

Part six: July 7 9:13 AM… I’m laying on my bed with my cabin door open. Thanks to those mosquito screens I have now listening to the music that’s about oh 75 yards away. It’s a Cajun band playing at home Ranch bottoms just had a shower a few minutes ago and Jennifer-my general manager dropped off my load of laundry she did for me today which I am very thankful for, so actually the first time since May 24 that I had all my laundry done -so it’s not that I haven’t been doing laundry it’s just that I’ve been doing it out of a sink for the last month and 20 days so I’m super stoked and I’m wearing a clean shirt. It’s a little things my friends. :-) She also grab me some food at the grocery store some tortillas and Cheese an more instant coffee, staples for my overnight bike trips so I’m pretty stoked. Guess I already said that huh? Today was a good day. It was an off day and instead of going on a long trip I decided to take it slow got up late made coffee journaled did some illustrations in the new sketchbook. I then made my way to the Mercantile where I got a ham sandwich with egg for breakfast it’s kind of expensive about $10 I think but it’s a good sandwich and it’s really the only place I can get breakfast and then I saw accordion Bob who came over and sat next to me and we ended up talking for probably about two hours with him, telling me stories about when he was younger, and what he did for a living and about his sons and his travels throughout Europe and we had a fine time and then he had it over to the saloon where he was going to play for a couple hours this afternoon. Then I headed out for a bike ride and rode for about two hours and came back and I saw some really beautiful country though I went about halfway there Kintla Lake the lake itself is about 15 miles north of Polebridge and on a dusty gravel road paralleling the north fork river and I rode slow. It was a hot day and I turned around about halfway to the lake. And rode slowly back to town just enjoying the beautiful scenery and the amazing expanse of prairie in the valley between the Flathead in National in Forest and the big mountains in the continental divide in Glacier National in Park. There is called big Prairie and it’s really really pretty specially having the north fork river Right there as well. It’s a lonely stretch road that is mostly flat, dusty and gravelly. And if you’re heading towards the north, you’re heading right into Canada so you just kind of feel like you’re I don’t know on the edge so to speak.

Part seven:

There was a shift a couple of days ago here… Then had to deal with all the workers at work with well most of them. Seems like we all of this readily admitted that we were in a very dysfunctional workplace, and that we’re OK with it matter fact, we kind of like it… Maybe that says something about all of us we’re all learning adventure here for the summer it’s the way I see it and we just make the best of it opportunities. This keep popping themselves open from new friendships to relationships to financial opportunities to incredible adventure, nature experiences, and self reflection And universally speaking universal experiences with serendipity/fate/synchronicity that really can’t be explained and then there’s always chance… “Chance“ my old friend.

July 8:

It’s about 730 in the morning, I can see my mountain of the distance just over the tips of the pine trees, the sun is rising to my right, and I’m anticipating its warmth in about five minutes. It was a chilly night as most nights are up here, but I was warm and toasty in my little cozy cabin with my sleeping bag. I had a good nights sleep. The plan today is to load up my bicycle and roll out to work. I have my usual bacon or sausage sandwich at the Mercantile. It’s hard enough to get me through the entire day then I’ll have my second meal sometime after work And I was thinking after work today I would roll up to one of the camping spots in glacier national park and camp out tonight. Not sure if I’m gonna go to the lake or a creek or just a patch of dirt in the woods. But one thing about being up here is that it’s nice to have that option, is that every night if I want to I can sleep in a different location in the woods and having that option is extraordinary.

One of the pictures is my friend Alex, who was giving me a tarot card reading… That was kind of interesting universally speaking he the gent-smiling with the table in the tarot card spread out

Well that’s it for today and this post. If you like my writing, let me know let me know in the comments someday I’ll get more organized with the blog itself but right now it’s just kept really simple. That’s why I like it. I don’t have a lot of opportunity to get on the laptop up here because of limited Internet service.

And another note, if you are up here next Tuesday, I’m teaching a yoga class at Northfork Yoga on Numa Peak Road at 830a