By Jennifer Savage
As a mother I know I’m supposed to kiss the owies, put the four hundredth bandaid of the day on dirty, sticky fingers and serve the oatmeal with strawberries in the purple bowl along with the Elmo fork. I know I’m supposed to read the cat book at least three times before bed, help Eliza write her name, Lucille’s name, our dog Imogene’s name and not protest when bath time turns into a bathroom soaking, all out water fight. These are things every mother does: the ass kicking, the kung fu, the back flips. But in summer in Montana we mamas do all this while hiking mountain trails, swimming in creeks and sleeping outside.
It’s a part of the negotiation, I’m finding, to raise children here. Even those of us who come from somewhere else spend our summers gently removing hooks from the mouths of rainbow trout, floating rivers, starting fires and reading our children to sleep by the light of head lamp looking at the stars through the roof of our tent.
It’s one thing to live in Montana it’s another wholly to be raising little Montanans.
I grew up in a subdivision in South Carolina. I was in a sorority. Can you tell where this is headed? I didn’t exactly camp growing up. I wasn’t a girl scout. I didn’t learn how to start a fire without matches. I went to the mall, to the movies, to friend’s houses who didn’t camp either. I am not begrudging the way I grew up, I’m just saying Laura Ingles Wilder I was not.
I went hiking for the first time in high school, fell in love with the North Carolina mountains and by the time I was in college was spending a few weekends a month there.
I was timid still.
I had a deep and visceral fear of snakes and preferred campgrounds to backpacking. But I got it, that taste of something sweet and distant, when you are in the woods, on a trail, by a cold mountain lake. My desire to be there outweighed my fears of what could be hidden under the next rock and I eventually worked through them. I started carrying my stuff on my back, finally learned to light a Whisperlite camp stove and set out for places I could only get to by foot.
By the time I got to Montana I thought I was pretty hardy. Then Seth and I bought a house at the base of the Mission Mountains and starting venturing into them with regularity. Seth, who probably did learn to start a fire without matches when he was 10 or something, was completely comfortable. He’d been in the woods with a water bottle in a duct tape sling over his shoulder since he could remember. There are pictures to prove it. I was a little hesitant because in the Missions there always seemed to be something missing for me. Namely, a trail. We spent so many hours bushwhacking up the sides of mountains only to do it all again coming down. The payoff at the top was always worth it but my legs may never forget those climbs.
I wouldn’t trade those days in the mountains for anything. The faint trail we broke in those days is littered with my old fears. And I am so glad.
Now when Eliza asks can we climb that hill, can we swim today, can we go fishing. I can say yes, yes and yes. The landscape of her childhood will be mountain peaks and yellow-green grass covered hillsides. She’ll know where to find the trail and how to start the fire. And I hope it’s because she saw her mama do it often, Montana style.
Jennifer Savage is a writer and mama of Eliza and Lucille. Lately, she's learning to be a city girl. She writes from her home in Missoula, Montana. She is also one of Mamalode's favorite writers and you can fall in love with her too at Jennifer-Savage.com Read more of Jennifer's mamalode articles here.
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Ha! This is SO me. I love it.
Right on! Love those Mission Mtns!
I love this, although it makes me sad because the tough little Montanan I thought I was raising has recently become a Texan…
[...] It’s one thing to live in Montana it’s another wholly to be raising little Montanans. Read More » [...]
I grew up in Missoula, a 5th generation Montanan. My mom’s mantra was, “Be a tough Montana woman!” I live in Seattle now, & grateful for the inner Rockies that are the landscape of who I am.