Letter From America: Adventure on Swede Mountain
Ronnie Bray faces the unappealing prospect of a night on Swede Mountain.
Swede Mountain is one of the many sugar-loaf mountains that follow the line of the Kootenai River as it rushes from Libby Dam to the east edge of Libby. It is one of the towering round-topped tree bearing mountains that brought loggers into the area and kept them there until the mill closed down last year.
I am not a mountain climber by nature and the precipitous sides of these green massives are suited only to bears, deer, and the fearless mountain goats native to the area.
However, Andy’s husband, Bob, said he’d drive us to the top, and so I was game.
He had a twenty-year old Ford Brougham that looked and drove as if it had just rolled out of the factory. It made short work of the logging trails as it climbed almost vertical before levelling out where a logging machine was hauling felled trees out of the biggest hole I have ever seen. It must have been a mile across and a half mile deep.
Brave men, working at the most dangerous occupation in the USA, were systematically denuding its sides.
We slowed to pass the machinery, saluting the loggers as we did so. They waved us on and continued to haul hundred-foot tree trunks from the terraced trails a quarter of a mile below.
Bob drove on, following the inside curve of the mountain into a vast area that had been stripped. The post-holocaust scenario chilled my blood with a sense of desolate isolation.
I was happy when Bob delicately turned the Brougham around to go back on our trail in a place where I knew a three-point turn was impossible. Jolly clever, these Americans!
When we reached the logging machine its boom was laid to rest on the roadway, its long cables and chains lying still down the dusty slope. The loggers’ pickups were nowhere to be seen. It was past finishing time and they had headed for home or for a watering place to slake the thirst of their powder-dry throats.
There was no dust blowing up from the trail so we knew they had left a good time before our planned descent. It was getting close to teatime and we were all ready for dinner, especially Bobbi Ann, who was nine months old and bottle hungry.
When we reached the end of the trail where the dirt road joined the asphalted road, we saw that the barrier was down and padlocked!
Thoughts of a night on Swede Mountain flooded my mind. It was summer, so cold would not be a problem, but what would we eat and drink?
Bob and I got out of the car to inspect the padlock at close quarters. But for all the looking and poking at it that we did, it would not open. Bob, went to the boot of the car, out his trusty hacksaw, and sawed through the padlock clasp.
Jolly ingenious, these Americans.
Bob laid the broken padlock on top of the post, then drove his car through. I lowered the barrier and saw the sign prohibiting our entry, and then we continued our journey admiring ourselves for our escape, rejoicing that we would not be late for dinner, and musing on the motives of the lumberjacks who had locked us in, knowing that there was no other way off the mountain. But most of all looking forward to a dinner that seemed, at one point, to have been torn from our grasp.
Once we arrived home, we ate our dinners with unaccustomed relish. It is surprising how hungry adventure makes you. Especially when you have looked desertion and starvation in the teeth, coupled with the unappealing prospect of a night on Swede Mountain.
Copyright © Ronnie Bray 2004
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
