An Ri Ra 2010: Butte Montana's Irish Music Festival

I returned to town early from a backpacking trip to catch the last day of music at An Ri Ra, the Irish festival hosted in our little city of Butte Montana. As a quick nod to some great performers, there were the Dillon Junior Fiddlers, an amazingly talented and energetic group of kids:

 On YouTube, you can see their song/performance of Banshee from An Ri Ra 2008 (someone needs to learn to use a microphone windscreen).

Dubliner Tom O'Carroll was there, with his incredible brand of native Irish wit & music (conveniently he performed on the stage next to the Quarry Brew Pub):

Check out some of his tunes here (professional recordings).

There were also "headliners" like the Makem & Spain Brothers:

They play classic tunes such as the stunningly beautiful Will You Go, Lassie, Go ["Oh the summer time is comin' and the trees are sweetly bloomin'; And the wild mountain thyme grows around the bloomin' heather; Will ye go, Lassie go?"] Give it a listen. I sing it at full voice hiking in the moutnains but you wouldn't want to hear me now would ya?


Dancers of course galore, including the Trinity Irish from Chicago:

Best of all, The Prodigals of "jig-punk" fame were here with the most exciting button-box accordion and bass guitar played lead that I've ever heard:

Here's one of my favorites, Happy Man.

Classes begin next week and the festival season is at an end. It's not the end of summer in Butte America, but you can see it from here.

SkyWatch Friday: View from the top of the Rockies

Late afternoon, upper Clark Fork River valley of SW Montana, near the Continental Divide looking west from Butte Montana. Storm across the valley (sheets of rain in lower right):

Backpacking in to Mount Howe, one of the peaks in the photo above, I started out with crystal clear blue skies (that later turned to snow):

View from the summit of Mt Howe, where the mountain meets the sky (and the weather):

August Wildflowers, Trout Fishing, and a bit of history

Depending on how you look at it, I've been blessed or cursed with a bull moose hunting permit for this fall. A tag of a lifetime, perhaps, but one friend told me that "Second prize is TWO moose tags." I'm a bit ambivalent about the whole thing, since I rather like moose on a personal level and much of the moose venison I've had over the years has not been very tasty when compared with elk or even mule deer. At any rate, Dave & I loaded the dogs into the LandRover and took a drive to scout the unfamiliar, eastern side of my tag area. Not a bad road in this pic, but where it climbed from the lower meadows to the ridge it was wet, deeply rutted, and treacherous--low range, first gear; never even thought of stopping for a photo there!:

Wildflowers
The area had mostly dry ridges forested with lodgepole pine and narrow stream bottoms without many willow, tag alder, or other lush moose habitat. It was a pleasant drive nonetheless, with some striking scenes like this lovely bed of Mountain Arnica (Arnica latifolia):

We stopped to explore a lush spring-fed meadow of Mountain Bluebell (Mertensia ciliata) and Arrowleaf Groundsel (Senecio triangulus):

Looking more closely, we found Big-pod Mariposa Lily (Calochortus eurycarpus), aptly named as the "butterfly flower":

Also Yellow Monkeyflower (Mimulus guttatus):

Sticky Geranium (Geranium viscosissimum):

And Rosy Everlasting (Antennaria microphylla):

Though not a striking plant, tiny flowers of Narrow-leafed Collomia (Collomia linearis) also dotted the grassy coolness:

Climbing from the wet, north-east facing sidehill, we crossed the large park (in the West, a "park" is a big open area surrounded by forest) at the northern end of Mount Fleecer:

Out on the dry sagebrush prairie, we spotted Orange Globemallow (Sphaeralcea munroana):

No moose and very little moose sign sighted, but all in all a good day in the hills. As we ate a mid-morning lunch, we pondered the meditative question learned from Dennis Haley and Jack Goebel, "What are the poor people doing today?"

Trout Fishing
I'm not getting away for my usual weekly summer backpacking trips (yes, still spending weekends on the kitchen renovation), I do get a kitchen pass to fish once a week. The Big Hole River continues to fish well, especially in my favorite pocket water in the canyon:

While the trout were not running consistently large as they were last week, they were eager for a dry fly. As morning light spilled over the steep ridge, small rainbows and browns began "looking up" (i.e. feeding on the surface):

And soon larger fish came to hand:

My net is often just in the way, but while wading swift, deep water it came in handy for those times when a "shake & release" didn't free the fly:

I experimented a bit, but as usual it was hard to beat a Parachute Adams fly. By the way, when folks ask an angler, "Where'd you catch 'em?," the proper reply is, "Right in the lip, every one of 'em:"

As has become our custom, the morning ended with MollyTheDog performing some stick fetching on our hike upriver to the parking spot:

A Bit of History
Back home in Walkerville, I heard heavy machinery and walked up the street to investigate. New owners of the Mike Brunell house are tearing down the old Brunell homestead that was in their backyard:

A little home of perhaps 600 square feet (plus a basement), it's hard to believe the parents of Mike and Don "Gubby" Brunell (my former neighbors) raised six or more kids there in the early 1900s. The little house was a  testament to the frugality and modesty (and crowded living conditions!) of an earlier time. It hasn't been occupied for decades and was long overdue in being torn down, but I can't let the week pass without remembering this small bit of history:

Skywatch Friday: Big Sky Pot of Gold

Though a diverse little city of immigrants, Butte Montana was always dominated by a mythic sense of Irish culture. Blame it on the wee Leprechaun that stowed away in the pocket of Marcus Daly, made him a rich Copper King, and went about hiding pots of gold throughout the hills of southwest Montana. I live in Walkerville, the old town on the hill above Butte. Walkerville's original name was "Rainbow"-- very appropriate, given this recent view from my front porch:

Rainbows, like the one above, are best when they come at sunset as the low sun creates a high rainbow arc. Butte/Walkerville is well situated for rainbows: storms move up the low Clark Fork River valley from the west, pass over the town, and then dump a rainshower as they move eastward surmounting the cool air of the Continental Divide that borders our city. The clear, dry mountain air makes for discrete summer storm cells that, once over us, allow the sun to slip in under from the clear skies to the west. If the western sky isn't clear, then even if we don't get a rainbow we'll have a pretty sunset:

Two storm cells moved over the town before the one producing the high, bright rainbow pictured above. The first was a typical, faint, low-angle, mid-day rainbow. The second (late-afternoon) made a nice higher-angle rainbow--actually a bunch of them. Obviously a double, but also with a faint additional "reversed" rainbow below each of the main two:

If you look closely at this pic stitched to form a full panorama, you'll notice a small white dot on the right near where the rainbow touches the East Ridge:

Zoom in with binoculars, and you see the 90-foot tall statue, "Our Lady of the Rockies," officially "the Blessed Virgin Mary, a tribute to mothers everywhere." AKA the Earth Mother Goddess. Seems the Leprechaun planted a pot of gold under her skirts. Good place to begin looking, I should think:

With Montana's warm summer sun and low humidity, "whatever comes down must go up." Sure enough, early next day, the morning sun raised a fog from the previous day's well-watered Earth (that's an old mining headrame -- aka "gallows frame" at the lower right):

Butte America: there might not be much material wealth left here, but the beauty of the place is certainly pure gold.

Big Hole River Fly Fishing for Trout: Being One with Nature

I probably like fly fishing for trout better than any of the other outdoor activities I engage in, including: elk hunting, backpacking/peak bagging, or cross country skiing. I say "probably" because if you asked me in November or February, or while I'm sitting on top of some craggy peak, you'd likely get a different answer. Truth is, whatever I'm doing in or with nature -- at that moment -- is exactly right or, at least, as perfect as life gets.

Still fly fishing for trout is GOOD. Let me qualify "good": fly fishing for wild trout; fly fishing in the exceptionally beautiful places trout tend to live; fly fishing in a place that is familiar home water; and fly fishing in solitude. Trout do not have to be large: fishing for brook trout on a babbling meadow creek choked with beaver ponds or native westslope cutthroat trout on a plunging mountain stream is equal to any trophy river. As one of life's little celebrations, I took off a few hours last week to celebrate completing the key steps in an application for some academic work planned for Spring 2012.

8:30 a.m., morning sun just breaking into the Big Hole canyon, cool water a little deep & swift for this time of year but wade-able (with care), lots of mayflies and caddisflies on the water, no one else parked in "my" area: so far, so good. I began fishing with a #16 Parachute Adams on a long (12 foot) leader with 5X tippet:

Pretty standard beginning fare. I began by searching the head of a pool--lots of pocket water formed by the many large rocks that dot this section of the river. Nothing much happened for an hour or so: no riseforms indicating a feeding trout, and casting to pocket water I took only a few small fish. But then I moved down into the slow, deep center of the pool and cast to the splashy rise of a whitefish. Though many anglers despise them, I like whitefish--they are a native fish that looks like a cross between a trout and a sucker, and larger ones (18 inches or so) give a good account of themselves when caught on 5-weight tackle. I even kill a few now and then too, as they are excellent smoked. But, this morning, I was simply bored and wanted to catch a sizable fish. Which I did:

I moved down further yet to the tailout--the place where a pool becomes shallow and the water becomes swift. On the Big Hole, it's often leads to shallow riffles and then to the head of the next pool. In its twisting, throbbing struggle to get free (whitefish have a unique fighting style), the whitie had thoroughly slimed my fly, meaning that it would no longer float well. Instead of cleaning it properly (wash, press between layers of cotton shirt, shake in dessicant powder, re-apply paraffin floatant), I simply false cast a few times and hoped for the best. The fly sank into the surface film where I could barely see it 35-feet away, but almost immediately a large trout lunged at it. A bit eager, I struck and missed. But I had figured out what was going on: trout were feeding in shallow water (a foot or less deep) on mayfly duns still caught in the surface film.

You see, the surface of water is a physical barrier that requires force to break through--just as an ant or other small creature can easily "float" on water without breaking that film, so too do emerging insects get caught on the underside. The whitefish, in sliming my jaunty bouyant dry fly, had done me a great favor. For the next two hours, I watched for the flashing color or shadows of feeding fish and cast to them, catching a half-dozen or so larger brown trout (15 to 19 inches):

As an experiement, I tried mayfly emerger patterns, such as crippled duns and this Comparadun (superbly tied by friend Mike Morris):

I settled on the Comparadun just because the color looked more like typical mayfly emergers--but the real secret was having the right size, the right silhouette, and fishing in the film rather than the surface per se. As the sun climbed higher, large trout continued to feed though they refused my fly more often. After adding 18" or so of a finer (6X) tippet, I again hooked up on fish though I also lost a few (6X breaks with just a few pounds of force and quickly weakens in use).

Getting back to where I began with this post, this is why I like fly fishing for trout so much. To be successful, it demands that you play close attention to the natural world and what is happening there. It is not enough to be a passive observer--you must interact, test various hypotheses, and be open to the eloquence of nature. Failure is always possible. Success is always temporary. Each cast demands that you live fully in the moment to observe a feeding fish, cast accurately just upstream of it, and then -- drag free -- drify a fly over it. If the trout takes your fly, you might or might not actually hook it. Strike too soon and you scare the trout so it won't rise again for 15 minutes. Strike too late and the fish has already spit out the fly. And the infiinite number of angles that a hook can enter the complex geometry of a trout's mouth makes for even more uncertainty:

Casting to a feeding trout is total engagement. I forget about the rattlesnake that might be on the path back to the truck, what MollyTheDog might be doing on the bank (luckily she's not one for trouble), whether a thunderhead is about to fling a lightning bolt at me, and certainly about things like completing a grant application or when I'm going to finish the kitchen remodel! Once I take the rod apart for the hike back to the truck, though, MTD does demand some attention in the form of "You throw & I'll fetch this scary root that I've been fighting with for the past hour":

To complete the morning, I killed one good fish to grill for Mrs Rover and I. Savoring its flaky, sweet orange flesh was like stepping back into that morning's grace:

Skywatch Friday: Summer Fun in Montana

The Bell Diamond mine headframe (aka "gallows frame") stands watch over the dancers at the Cool Water Hula celebration in Butte Montana [all pics enlarge, of course, if you click on them]:

Windmills dot the skyline along the Columbia River on a recent trip to Portland Oregon:

A nearly full moon rises over the high sagebrush prairie on a campout in the upper Big Hole River basin of southwest Montana (near Butte America):

A high sun and bright sky make for poor catching but great fishing on the Big Hole River just south of Butte:

Smoke billows from a forest fire about 100 miles from us during a float on a tributary of the Clark Fork River a headwater of the Columbia River:

Yesterday we had clouds in the sky (and a thunderstom) for the first time in weeks. But I blinked and missed it all.

Summer Fun: Elk Rib BBQ, Camping, Celebration, Floating

Summertime in Butte, Montana: hot (80+ deg F) clear days, cool starry nights, maybe the occasional cloud or thunderstorm. It's time to party and live outdoors.

Elk Rib BBQ
Normally we time our annual elk rib BBQ with the blooming of Bitterroots on the Butte Hill, but we postponed this year in deference to daughter Emily's visit home. It all begins with elk season and the added bit of labor of hauling the ribs (bones and all) out of the mountains instead of boning the meat. Cooking starts off with a 24-hour vinegar-based marinade, followed by a dry rub and long, slow, moist smoking:

This year we were blessed with hickory scraps -- next to apple wood, my favorite for smoking meat -- from the custom cabinets Ben built for our kitchen. I use a big kettle grill with a pan of water under the trays of meat, drink a lot of Quarry Brew Pub beer, and fuss around keeping the temperature between 150 and 200 deg F for an entire day (or, sometimes, the previous night):

As party time approaches, the ribs get a finish mopping with raspberry chipotle sauce and a bit more time in the smoker to produce a nice glaze:

Add Quarry Beer, tasty side dishes, and a yard full of friends:

And enjoy:

Campout
My old friend Don Kieffer and his wife Kathie blessed us with a visit from upstate New York. Don & I took off for a night in the hills to watch the full moon rise and be serenaded by song dogs (coyotes) & chirping herds of elk (you might recognize this favorite spot of mine from last month's camping pics at the same place):

On the high prairie, the temperature went from the afternoon high of mid-80s to a frosty (yes, ice on anything above grass level) morning. Here's the morning mist rising from the spring meadow above camp:

Morning sun bathing Saddle Mountain (East & West Goat Peaks) in the nearby Pintler Wilderness:

And a big pot of coffee on a crackling fire:

On the way home, we stopped for an hour of fishing on the Big Hole River. Fishing was great although the catching left a lot to be desired, at least on dry flies:

MollyTheDog had a great time too, fetching sticks from the swift currents:

Celebration with Live Music
Our friends at Farm 51 near Bozeman hosted a party to celebrate their adoption of B--a wonderful party complete with live music from Mountain Moongrass, a keg of beer from their local brewery, and more yummy BBQ. Here's new mom Jen dancing with B to a lively tune:

Our friends Don & Kathie taking in the friendly fest (Montana is truly a small town with very long streets--in this case, those streets extended all the way to upstate NY):

Kids:

And more kids:

Donkey (aka "Brave Protector of All Goats) would have liked to party with us too, but had to make do with frequent visits over the fence:

If you're in the Butte America area and have a chance to give Mountain Moongrass a listen, don't miss 'em--they play a nice range of tunes, including my favorite TownesVan Zandt tune,  "Pancho and Lefty" and originals such as "Miner, Oh Miner." (note Donk listening in at upper right in pic below):

Floating
For many years, ever since daughter Emily began investigating the connection between entomology and water quality in local streams as grade school science fair projects, we have floated our Tahiti Boats (inflatable "kayaks") on the "Mill-Willow Bypass"--two nice streams that were built into a new channel to bypass the minewaste polluted waters of Silver Bow Creek. It's one of several creeks that converge to form the Clark Fork River. Here's Emily enjoying a perfect Montana summer day--hot sun & cool clear water:

And here's MollyTheDog in a rare moment when she's sitting in my boat instead of swimming, running, and leaping:

Emily again, this time negotiating her way over a beaver dam:

We saw lots of wildlife--including ospreys, great blue herons, ducks, muskrat, and beaver. But only the darning needles (Look out, they'll sew your mouth shut!) held still long enough for me to get my camera out of its protective ziplock bag. I like the way they have stolen the blue of the summer sky:

As the shadows drew long, a long peculiar cloud stretched over the sky--smoke from a forest fire near Hamilton about 100 miles away:

Oh yeah, in between all this good fun we managed to find Emily her first car--a sweet, blue, bug-eyed 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX (yep, with the turbo...). I figure after 6 years of driving my 1972 Series III LandRover, she's ready for a car like this. As Neal Young might say, "Long may you run" (pic from hoobly.com--I forgot to take one!):