Wednesday, September 14
During the routine of breaking camp, I was assigned to find our morning coffee. I went back to the Missoula strip and found a Starbucks in a Target. Such a departure this trip has been from our wilderness ventures into Canada!
At a gas station in Lolo, we decided to step into the neighboring state of Idaho and vaguely set a town called Elk City as our destination. We liked the name. While setting our course beside the pumps, a stranger told my father he was the spitting image of a Forest Service doctor who died ten years ago. I began calling him “Doc.” As we broke west and entered the Bitterroot National Forest, the hilly plains became sparse pine forest upon the hills and mountains again. We saw ranches and small farms on either side of the road, but also evidence of wildfire in the previous season. Each of these little farms is marked by a ranch gate: two vertical pieces support a third horizontal beam that protrudes from each end, like serifs in text. Sadly, there was not actually a home behind each gate, likely taken in the fires.