MOUNTAIN TOWN

It was 1973 when we pulled into Seeley Lake in our yellow pick up truck. The baby was under a year, we had a teepee, a 100# bag of wheat, and one hundred dollars. We never would have found this little gem if our friend, whom we thought were going to live with, hadn't pawned us off on another friend. He'd promised us a job and a place to stay in Seeley, and he came through with both, then left, never to be seen or heard of again.

Seeley had 300 hearty people in the winter and 500 in the summer. The logging truck traffic had begun to slow down from the sixties, when a truck left the mill every 10 minutes of daylight. The valley lays almost due north-south, so in the winter you were lucky to get home from a day job before the sun went down. It's a narrow valley, about 70 miles long, hugging the mountains, skirting the Clearwater River. You couldn't walk far before heading up. Sledding was great, especially down the dirt road from the high School Road, right into town. We had spotters at the bottom of course, but traffic wasn't all that much a problem.

The loggers still ruled the town, and the trappers. It was a man's culture, right down to the two live mountain lions caged at the bar. Dog sled races, pool tournaments, and ice skating made the California culture we arrived from look down right frivolous. This was a tough life, five foot snow on the level where you learned to put on chains in the dark if you had to, and I quit singing while I drove so as not to end up in a snowbank.

Oh but the beauty! Arriving in May, bear grass in blossom, green pastures with plentiful deer and elk, I thought I'd finally made it to Barbara Stanwyke's Big Sky Country (a walk-in movie I'd seen as a kid in Napa, California. The lake itself was one of a string, like blue sapphires on a green chain. Narrow enough to walk across in winter to get your mail, and long enough to give a good workout in a canoe. Not to mention the fish; summer or winter they were a lure to most men and a lot of women living in the mountains. Lots of old refrigerators sat in back lots rigged up for smoke houses. There was salmon then too, spawning in the fall, green as moss.

More on Seeley Lake as time allows!